Meet one of my favorite greens, the crystalline iceplant, known as Mesembryanthemum cristallinum in Latin and ficoïde glaciale in French.

It’s a succulent, leafy plant that originated in South Africa and belongs to the same family as tetragon, another unusual green I’m very fond of.

The leaves of the iceplant are thick and fleshy, with a frosted look, as if they were covered with tiny dew droplets. Depending on the variety, they may be flat and large, about the size of a hand (as shown above), or smaller and sold attached to the stem. Full-size leaves I will slice into short ribbons; small ones I’ll keep whole, trimming the thicker parts of the stem.

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Three and a half years ago, I followed my friend Adam’s lead and imagined what I would do if I was given just Twelve Hours in Paris.

I still stand by the choices I made then. But, prompted by reader Patricia’s recent comment on that post, I thought it would be fun to revisit that theme now, and dream up another ideal Parisian day, featuring shops and restaurants that have opened in the meantime.

My twelve hours in Paris, 2012 edition, will begin in late morning with a croissant from Gontran Cherrier’s bakery, which I think is one of the best in Paris, extra flaky and extra good. I will also buy a half loaf of his rye and red miso bread, so good I won’t mind schlepping it around with me all day.

I will then spend a couple of leisurely hours walking up and around the Montmartre hill, which remains full of secrets even when you’ve lived in the neighborhood for many years. I will climb up staircases and down cobblestoned streets, check out the vineyard, peek into courtyards (and tiptoe in for a closer look if the gate happened to be open), and enjoy the village-y quiet and the greenery.

Hopping onto the metro or catching a Vélib’, I will go and have lunch at Bob’s Kitchen, the vegetarian restaurant where I cooked for a short while last year. I will order the day’s veggie stew, the satisfying mix of grains, legumes, roasted vegetables, and crudités I lunched on day in, day out during my stint there. I might also get one of their irresistible maki (garnished with avocado, mango, and daikon radish) to share.

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The Omnivore World Tour — formerly known as the Omnivore Food Festival — is an inspiring event during which an audience of pros and enthusiasts watch live demos by up-and-coming chefs.

The French edition will be held in Paris (rather than Deauville*) this year, from Sunday, March 11 to Tuesday, March 13, and I will be hosting the chocolate masterclasses, a series of chocolate-centric demos and discussions with pastry chefs and chocolatiers.

If you’d like to join in the fun, the tickets are available for purchase online. I hope to meet some of you there!

* See my post about the chicken in a bread crust to read about my experience last year.

We have just wrapped up the final photo shoot for my new book about vegetables and French cuisine, and as someone who loves to know how things work behind the scenes, I thought I would tell you a bit about what the process has been like.

For my first two books, I shot all the pictures myself, but I felt that being a one-woman-band was not the most relaxed experience of all, so for this new project I wanted to work with a team of pros to produce the photos.

This meant finding a photographer and a stylist for the photos of the finished dishes, and I was hoping to work with Françoise Nicol and Virginie Michelin, because I loved what they had done for Alain Ducasse’s Nature book. They were up for it, and my editor approved the choice after looking at their portfolios, so we were in business.

Because produce and seasonality are central to my book, it was important to me that we shoot each chapter in season. Had we shot everything at once, as is often done for practical reasons, we would have had to work with out-of-season fruits and vegetables, and it would have bothered me (a lot) to practice the opposite of what I was advocating. A secondary bonus was a lower food budget, since seasonal produce is generally cheaper.

The one hiccup in this carefully laid plan was that the stylist injured her hand a week before the fall shoot, so we decided to postpone it until she had fully recovered, and shoot fall and winter back-to-back. This was doable without compromise because, in truth, fall market stalls are not that different from winter ones, and it turned out to have a silver lining: instead of enduring the dark of December, we were able to benefit from the longer, brighter days of late February.

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