Harengs pommes à l’huile — literally, herring and potatoes with oil — is a great classic among French hors-d’oeuvres, one that you’ll still find on brasserie and traditional (or neo-traditional) bistro menus.

{I’ll take this opportunity to mention this formidable project from the New York Public Library Labs: What’s on the menu? is a digitized collection of restaurant menus dating back to the 1850’s, and harengs pommes à l’huile appears in quite a few of them.}

It’s easy to see what’s so winning about the combination: the strength of the herring, salty and smoky, is mitigated by the potato slices, sweet and still warm, their edges softened by a rapid tossing in a tangy vinaigrette.

It’s everything a winter dish should be: nutritious, filling, with a bright herby note from the chervil, and a nice edge of acidity and bite from the lemon juice and onion.

It’s everything a winter dish should be: nutritious (herring has all the good kinds of fat and is low on the food chain), filling (the staying power of the potato), with a bright herby note from the chervil, and a nice edge of acidity and bite from the lemon juice and onion. It’s also quick, cheap, and sustainable, and no one complains about that, either.

The smoked herring you use should be somewhat salty — such is the nature of smoked herring — but not overly so. Try a small piece: if it is pleasantly salty, you can use it as is. If it is uncomfortably salty, soak the fillets overnight in milk or water, ideally placing the fish on a small rack so it doesn’t touch the bottom of the container, where the excess salt will collect. Drain, rinse, and pat dry.

Smoked herring has many more uses, such as rillettes, a rough-textured spread for appetizer toasts, a parmentier with broccoli, or croquettes such as these. If you have a favorite recipe, I’d love to hear about it!

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Aran with Jon and Miren, photographed by Marcus Nilsson.

Parents Who Cook is a Q&A series in which I ask my guests about how their cooking has changed after kids entered the picture, and pick their brains on their best strategies to cook with little ones underfoot.

Aran Goyoaga is the talented baker, stylist, photographer, and writer behind the gorgeous blog Cannelle & Vanille. She was born and raised in the Spanish Basque country, and now lives in Florida with her husband and two children.

She and I have been in touch for years, and I was delighted to finally meet her in person over lunch when she came to Paris last year, on her way home from teaching one of her workshops in Dordogne.

Aran has recently released her first cookbook, Small Plates and Sweet Treats, an inspired collection of seasonal, gluten-free recipes, and it is a pleasure to have her as a guest in the Parents Who Cook series.

Can you tell us a few words about your children? Ages, names, temperaments?

I am the mother of a boy, Jon, and a girl, Miren.

Jon, 6, is very emotional, kind, thoughtful, inquisitive (he is a Cancer) and Miren, 3, is spontaneous, independent, and social (she is a Scorpio). They are both very creative as well and love spending time together.

Did having children change the way you cook?

I am sure in a way it made me adapt certain recipes to accommodate their preferences and the textures they were eating at different times in their lives, but overall I would say that the way I cook hasn’t changed much.

Do you remember what it was like to cook with a newborn? Any tips or saving grace for new parents going through that phase?

I am not sure I should reveal this, but when Jon was a newborn, I used to carry him in a sling everywhere. It was the only way he liked to be held (and sleep). So I kept him in the sling while I cooked. I have to admit those first weeks of his life are a bit hazy in my mind today, but I remember cooking very simply.

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Peeling onions is one of my least favorite cooking tasks. The stubborn papery skin that refuses to come away smoothly, the pesky little flakes that get stuck under your fingernails and on the cutting board, not to mention the occasional outer layer that’s part flesh part skin (what to do with those?), all conspire to vex me.

Yet I adore onions and the pungent or sweet things they do, so I put my head down and try to take each specimen as an opportunity to refine my onion peeling skills, hoping I may one day come to enjoy the process.

And for a welcome respite when I want perfectly tender, caramelized onions without the peeling hassle, there’s roasted onions, as presented in the book What Katie Ate by Katie Quinn Davies, food photographer and author of the same-name food blog.

The idea is quite simple and I have no idea why it never occurred to me before, but I am certainly grateful to Katie for introducing me to it: you just halve onions — with! the! skin! on! — place them on a baking sheet, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt, and place in a hot oven.

And just a little while later, what you pull out is a batch of beautifully softened onion halves, the concentric layers tinged a dark gold at the rims.

These you can serve with or without the skin, as you prefer. But when I tried the recipe with the cute plum-sized onions I was putting off using because they were so small the peeling daunted me, I confess I just plopped the baking sheet on the table and we helped ourselves right off of it, plucking the little morsels of sweet onion flesh out of their skin nests.

Katie sprinkles thyme sprigs over the onions before baking, but I opted against it, fearing that they might burn during the roasting. If you’d like to add the thyme back in, I suggest sprinkling it on for the final 10 minutes of baking.

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Happy New Year! Here’s to 2013 and the glorious meals, peals of laughter, new friends, and unforgettable adventures I hope it has in store for you.

Before we remove the protective film from this brand new year, I’d like to take a moment to look back on some of the best things 2012 brought. The two biggest, happiest events for me have been (1) the birth of my baby boy in the spring — Milan is now seven and a half months and he’s a ray of sunshine — and (2) wrapping up the manuscript for my upcoming vegetable cookbook, which will come out mid-2013 under the title The French Market Cookbook.

Here on Chocolate & Zucchini, after a little post-baby break, I was delighted to come back with two new series of Q&A posts: Draw Me A Fridge (in collaboration with my friend Alexia Colson-Duparchy) offers a sneak peek into our guests’ fridge habits, while Parents Who Cook asks parents about their kitchen life after they had children. I also picked up the Edible Idioms series where I’d left it, except now they’re illustrated by Mélina Baumert‘s wonderful watercolors.

Aside from these, here are some of the highlights of my year — and if you care to share your own, I’d love to hear about them!

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