As you may or may not know, I have a new cookbook in the works that’s all about French cooking and vegetables, scheduled for publication in the spring of 2013. (You can read more about the project in the posts About my new book, and Shooting photos for my new book.)

I wrapped up the manuscript shortly before I had the baby, and it then went into my editor’s hands for some edits, and in the copyeditor’s for more tiying up of loose ends (copyeditors are my personal eagle-eyed heroes). The designer worked on the layout of the inside of the book, submitting a few different ideas for our consideration before perfecting the one we all felt happiest about (and I am very happy about it).

I should be receiving the first dummy soon, i.e. the complete text integrated into the layout, and there will be a bit of work there to make the copy fit neatly within the boundaries of the pages.

But at the forefront of my mind now is this all-important question: what should we call the book?

Up until now, the book has been referred to as “Untitled French Vegetable Book” (glamorous, no?) and my editor and I have been exchanging title ideas back and forth, but we haven’t yet found the one.

So I thought I would come to you, dear readers who are so good with words, and ask for your help: what would you name a cookbook that celebrates the love story between French cuisine and vegetables, one that focuses on fresh, seasonal ingredients combined simply but tastefully in vegetarian dishes, one that comes with lots of stories about shopping, cooking, and living in Paris?

Of course, there is a prize! If you’re the first person to suggest the title we end up using, you’ll receive a signed copy of the book when it comes out, and a surprise gift from Paris that I will tailor specifically to you and your tastes*. (I’ll send that out to you at any postal address on the planet, so feel free to participate regardless of your location.)

If you want to play, I’ll be so very grateful for your ideas! We most likely need the words “French” or “Paris”, and “vegetables” or “vegetarian” in there, but don’t let that cramp your style. Please submit your title suggestions — with optional subtitle — by Sunday, September 23 in the comments section below, or send them to me privately, if you prefer, via the contact form. (In both cases, make sure you enter a correct email address, or I won’t be able to contact you if you win.)

Thank you so much!

Edit: The call for submission is now closed. Many, many thanks to all who participated with such enthusiasm. You’ve really outdone yourselves, and I am thrilled with all your ideas! As soon as the definitive title is chosen, I’ll announce it here, along with the name of the winner.

* It is understood that we will then be able to use the title free and clear of any obligations.

If Julia Child hadn’t died in her California retirement home in 2004, she would have turned one hundred this August. Learning this made me realize that she was just a few months younger than my own grandmother, who turned a century old last fall, and passed away in the spring.

Looking at Child’s biography, it seems the two lived in Paris during some of the same years, and because my grandmother was also an avid cook, I like to imagine their paths crossing at one point or another, over some market stall or perhaps browsing the shelves at G.Detou.

Although I own Julia Child’s monumental Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I’ve only ever used it as a reference book, but I credit her for introducing me to the idea of baked cucumbers.

In my mind before then, cucumbers were firmly entrenched in crudité territory, their quenching crunch typically enjoyed in sticks with an appetizer dip, in slices for a Japanese-inspired salad, or grated for tzatziki. I was therefore intrigued by Child’s recipe for concombres au beurre, a preparation I’d never heard of before.

In it, she peels the cucumbers and cuts them into sticks, tosses them with salt, sugar, and vinegar, leaves them to rest awhile to draw out the excess moisture, then bakes them with butter, scallions, and herbs. (You can read the detailed process here.)

I confess I never followed the recipe exactly, but I took the concept and ran with it, tinkering with the measurements a bit, substituting olive oil for the butter, holding the herbs until the moment of serving, and baking the cucumbers along with the small pink turnips I get this time of year (see below).

The result is absolutely lovely, and has made frequent appearances on our table over the summer: cucumbers take on a surprisingly silky, tender texture when baked, and the subtle bitterness of the turnips is an ideal match to their sweetness.

What about you, do you have any cooked cucumber experience to share? Or unusual ways to prepare the cucurbitaceae ?

Cucumber and pink turnips

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For this new installment of our Draw Me A Fridge series (read about it here), Alexia met with naturopath Chico Shigeta. The caption on her drawing (click here to enlarge) translates to, “My fridge isn’t a space for storing foods, it’s for storing the enchanted life.”

A naturopath, aromatherapist, and shiatsu specialist, this super kawaii Japanese-but-French-at-heart woman launched her Coaching Vitalité method, inspired by universal wellness techniques, in 2003. This method is based, among other things, on food, with seasonal fruits and veggies taking the prime spot.

Her expertise has made her a favorite in the celebrity and business worlds, while her Shigeta care line (face and body cosmetics, essential oils, floral waters and herbal teas) is quickly expanding. Chico shares her tips for a delicious detox full of vitality in her book Détox 100% Vitalité (in French).

AC: What are your fridge staples?

CS: Right now I keep delicious seaweed from Japan which my aunt, who lives on the coast, gets from a place that she keeps secret. Their taste is unlike any other. I always have soy sauce available, even though I don’t use very much of it, as well as wasabi. I have fresh ginger and yuzu kosho, a Japanese condiment made with yuzu citrus zest and Japanese chili. I also store capers and green peppercorns. In my fridge you’ll also find excellent fruit vinegars (currently raspberry and mango) that have to be kept chilled because they are so rich in fruits.

I make sure I always have chives and flat parsley, carrots (for their juice), and salad leaves. I actually keep fruits and veggies at room temperature and I buy fish on the same day I cook it, so my fridge is more of a storage unit than anything else. And I buy milk maybe once a year if I really need it for a recipe.

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When Maxence and I traveled to Japan two years ago, one of the treats I indulged in on a daily basis was the onigiri, the ubiquitous rice ball that is a staple of the Japanese diet, eaten as a nicely portable snack and packed for lunches outside the home* and also called musubi or omusubi.

We mostly bought them from konbini, the 24/7 convenience stores that pepper the streets of Tokyo, and on one occasion from a specialized shop that sold nothing but onigiri (imagine that!), and always I reveled in the unique satisfaction one gets from biting through the thin, crisp layer of seaweed and into the cool, plump, clean-tasting rice inside.

I have been making my own easy onigiri on a regular basis at home since then**. All it takes, really, is getting the right kind of rice (sushi or japonica rice), cooking it properly (rinse well*** and boil in one and a half its volume of water), stirring in some kind of flavoring (I mostly make “mixed-rice” onigiri), and scooping the still-warm rice into my hands to form small mounds.

The flavorings I add in most often are ready-made furikake (various dehydrated flakes designed to adorn rice) that I buy from one of the Japanese markets in Paris, or gomasio (a mix of toasted sesame and salt), or salt and seaweed flakes. In the pictures that illustrate this post, I used a happy mix of toasted sesame, purple shiso furikake, and some river seaweed.

I do like naked onigiri, but I like them even better with toasted nori wrapped around them, on the condition that it’s added at the last minute so it will retain its crisp texture rather than become chewy. Konbini onigiri come in this clever (but not very green) packaging that isolates the seaweed from the rice until you pull it open from the sides to reunite them; I just keep the rice balls and the seaweed strips separate, and wrap each onigiri just before eating.

These easy onigiri are a swell option to consider if you pack your lunch to bring into the office, or if you plan on having a picnic on a patch of green somewhere. I’ve also found it to be a good way to upcycle leftover rice the next day: add a touch of boiling water from the kettle to reheat and re-moisten the rice, stir, and proceed with the seasoning and shaping.

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* The wonderfully knowledgeable Makiko Itoh has written just about everything you could possibly want to know about onigiri in the following posts: Onigiri shapes, Onigiri FAQ, Onigiri revisited and More about onigiri.

** I also buy them ready-made from Aki Boulanger (16 rue Sainte-Anne, Paris 1er), K-Mart (8 rue Sainte-Anne, Paris 1er), and Nanashi.

*** And here I’m always super careful not to let even a single grain of rice escape into the sink, thinking of Tara‘s wonderful Tales from High Mountain, in which she is taught an old Japanese proverb that says, “If you waste rice, you will go blind.”

Onigiri from an onigiri shop on Aoyama-dori, Tokyo

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