Cooking inspiration is not the least of the pleasures I draw from a vacation, especially when I’m able to bring back a few local ingredients. It’s not always a sensible maneuver, though: I’m sure we all have old packages of dusty exotic spices we haven’t once cooked with, but can’t quite bring ourselves to toss.

I’ve done this often enough over the years that I am now a lot more prudent about my vacation ingredient purchases. My strategy is twofold: one, I try hard to assess whether this string of chilli peppers or that guava jam really will look as appealing once my tan (though barely visible to the naked eye) has receded; and two, whatever it is I opt to bring back, I vow to put to use within a few weeks of my return.

I had a mind to make bite-size savory canistrelli to emulate the ones we’d bought from a shop in Sagone on our last day on the island.

These savory chestnut canistrelli are living proof that I’ve been successful this time, as they’ve allowed me to put the first dent into a bag of roasted chestnut flour from Corsica, and a sachet of herbes du maquis, a dried herb mix made up of thyme, rosemary, myrtle, and bay leaf from the local scrubland.

What are canistrelli, you ask? They’re the typical Corsican cookie (singular form: canistrellu), a rustic, crisp little cookie that is much more than it looks, and which I first discovered at U Spuntinu, a Corsican épicerie on rue des Mathurins, not far from the Paris Opera.

I adore the original, not-too-sweet version, and in fact included a recipe for them in my Paris book, but this time I had a mind to make bite-size savory canistrelli to emulate the ones we’d bought from a shop in Sagone on our last day on the island. We were expecting friends for the apéritif, and I thought they would go well with the white wine chilling in the fridge.

I took out my sweet canistrelli recipe to build on that, and all went smoothly; it is a very easy dough to work with. The crunchy little diamonds (which happen to be vegan) turned out to be so flavorful I prepared a second batch on the spot, thinking any extras would get nibbled on during the week. A wise move, as it turns out; very little was left that night.

If you’ve never had anything made with chesnut flour, it’s worth seeking it out. It’s a gluten-free flour with an assertive flavor that doesn’t taste like actual chestnuts, but is earthy and sweet in its own way. The one I got is a Corsican flour dried over a wood fire, which makes it subtly smoky. Chestnut flour is not cheap (mine was 10€/kg, or $6/lb), but a little goes a long way as it is generally used in combination with other, milder flours.

I now intend to use more of that flour to make chesnut flour crêpes and also sweet chestnut canistrelli such as the ones I bought in the village of Evisa, and which proved quite the extraordinary snack, eaten in alternating bites with a square of dark chocolate.

Any other ideas on how to use chestnut flour?

The dough is cut into squares or diamonds with a dough cutter or sharp knife.

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When I read Heidi’s July post about her homemade celery salt, I bookmarked it immediately, murmuring to myself how simple and beautiful and clever the idea was.

While I am an enthusiastic consumer of celery root, I don’t cook with celery stalks much, and only ever buy it in small quantities to flavor stock. Still, in those cases, I am faced with a fair amount of celery leaves that come with the stalks. I usually just add those to the stockpot along with everything else, but I much, much prefer the idea of turning them into something new altogether.

And it’s precisely what Heidi suggests: wash those leaves, dry them until crisp, and crumble them with salt to produce an incredibly fragrant condiment* that you can then use to season eggs and salads (especially tomato or potato salads, or in this herbed couscous salad), to flavor bread (I’ve made really good little dinner rolls with it), to sprinkle as a finishing salt on soups, bean or lentil stews, to season a tomato or carrot juice… the list is endless.

Being thrifty is one of the traits I’m most looking to develop as a person in general and a cook in particular, and this works doubly in that direction: not only does it make use of the celery leaves one might otherwise discard, but in my take on Heidi’s recipe, I’m also suggesting you dry the leaves in the oven while you preheat it for something else, to make the most of the energy it expends.

Such optimization is something I always try to do: whenever I turn on the oven I ask myself whether I have any seeds, nuts, or spices that need toasting, or lemon peel that needs roasting.

Another bonus of this celery salt recipe is that it will also lead you on the track to the crispest celery stalks available, since the health and vibrancy of the leaves are an unmistakable sign of freshness. (The same is true of any vegetable that comes with the leaves still attached: radishes, carrots, kohlrabi, beets, etc.)

Do you make flavored salts yourself? Any favorites you want to tell us about?

* The celery salt you can buy at the store is in fact made by grinding celery seeds with salt, so the texture is different, but the flavor is very similar.

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As those of you who subscribe to the free C&Z newsletter already know, Maxence and I have just come back from Corsica — the French island that’s floating in the Mediterranean between France and Italy, just above Sardinia — where we spent an altogether enthralling vacation with my sister and brother-in-law.

It was our first time there after years and years of thinking we absolutely must go, and although our expectations were as lofty as the accounts made by friends who’d already been, they were exceeded by the reality of this insanely gorgeous piece of land and sea.

We stayed in Cargèse, a small village with twin churches on the western coast of the island, about an hour north of Ajaccio. There we devoted our time to exploring the coast, swimming and snorkelling in limpid waters, hiking, boating, and swimming some more. We ate extremely well, too, even in the simplest of places, and took full advantage of the local produce and seafood.

As can be expected after such a wonderful trip, it’s a little hard to get back to work, so I hope you’ll indulge me as I savor some of my fondest memories:

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This is part of a series of Q&A’s about cooking on vacation. The complete list of posts in this series is available here.

Sarah McColl is a senior editor at Yahoo! Shine and the very lovable writer behind Pink of Perfection, a lifestyle blog on which the Dallasite-turned-Brooklynite discusses everything a girl needs to feast, delight and flourish. She does so with a gracious and insightful touch that makes readers feel she and they could be the best of friends, and a visit to her site always leaves me refreshed and nurtured. Also, wouldn’t she be perfect to play Joan Holloway‘s younger sister?

Here she tells us about cocktail hour on the deck, barbecued rattlesnake, and cold-press coffee.

Are you taking a vacation this summer? Will you have a chance to cook while there?

We have been looking forward all summer to our vacation in Washington’s San Juan Islands, but it’s our first vacation where we will be staying in a rented house and cooking most of our own meals. Right now my vision is to keep things really simple: putting my husband to work on the grill, sandwiches, roast chicken on cool nights, cheese and crackers, simple salads. It will be an experiment and adventure!

In what way do you feel your vacation cooking style differs from your everyday cooking style?

I think I expect my everyday cooking to do a lot more than sate my hunger. I want it to be pleasurable, to set me right again after the indignities of the workday. The cooking quiets me and the eating brings our family together. But it’s a lot to demand from a meal! I think there are fewer expectations on vacation. When you’ve been lucky enough to spend the day reading in a hammock or swimming in a lake, dinner doesn’t need to be the highlight of the day in the same way.

The entire vibe of this vacation is going to be low-key and relaxed, so I can see us picking up a few things at a farmer’s market, packing sandwiches for picnics or making dinner an extended cocktail hour: put out some cheese and crackers, pour a glass of wine and call it a day. On the other hand, once we’ve had a few days to relax, we might feel like getting ambitious again. We’ll see!

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