I’ve asked a few of my favorite bloggers and friends to tell me about their vacation cooking style, whether they’re visiting friends or family, renting a place, camping, etc. I wasn’t necessarily looking for anything fancy, and was just as interested in the lazy stuff one cooks under those circumstances.

What do they like to bring with them? What are their best and worst vacation memories, and what tip or saving grace can they share?

Thanks to my wonderful guests, these Q&As read like so many escapist vignettes. I hope you’ll be as inspired and delighted as I am by my guests’ answers. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel transported by the stories they shared from their nomadic kitchens — and I hope you’ll chime in with your own.

• Cooking on vacation with Sarah McColl, the Brooklyn-based writer and lifestyle blogger behind Pink of Perfection.

• Cooking on vacation with Tara Austen Weaver, who is the Seattle-based author of the book The Butcher and the Vegetarian.

• Cooking on vacation with Chika Yoshizaki, who is the Japanese writer, photographer, and translator behind the blog She who eats.

• Cooking on vacation with Gena Hamshaw, who is the author of The Full Helping, a blog that showcases high-raw, vegan foods, as well as the Food52 Vegan Cookbook.

• Cooking on vacation with Lucy Vanel, who is an American writer and photographer who lives in Lyon, and writes beautifully about food on her blog Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook.

• Cooking on vacation with Heidi Swanson, who is the talented writer and photographer behind the blog 101 Cookbooks.

• Cooking on vacation with Derrick Schneider, who is an Oakland-based writer who created one of the first food blogs ever, An Obsession With Food (which I credit for giving me the blogging bug back in the day!).

• Cooking on vacation with Luisa Weiss, who is a New York writer currently based in Berlin, and the author of the wonderful book My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story.

• Cooking on vacation with Molly Wizenberg is the author of the best-selling memoir called A Homemade Life, and she and her husband Brandon Pettit have created a well-loved pizza place in Seattle called Delancey.

A companion series is running on the French version of Chocolate & Zucchini, so if you read French, you’re in for a double treat: head over to read La Cuisine des vacances!

These days, when I get to the Batignolles farmers market on Saturday mornings — as early as I can but not as early as I’d like — my first order of business is to dart upon whatever rhubarb is left at my favorite produce stall.

My strategy is not 100% proper, I’m afraid.

The pile of stalks is usually found a third of the way down the length of the stall, wedged in between, say, a basket of short cucumbers and a crate of tiny new potatoes, and by the time I get to the greenmarket (see above), there’s barely enough left for my needs.

So rather than wait until the line moves up enough that the rhubarb is within my reach, or worse yet, until it’s my turn to get one of the attendants’ attention, I squeeze in between two customers in the line, all smiles and apologies and “I’m just here for the rhubarb” assurances, and gather the stalks I want, picking the ones that are firm and blemish-free. Only then do I get in line, an armful of stalks bunched up in one of my trusty produce bags, reclining contentedly in the knowledge that we’ll be eating poached rhubarb all week long.

I have a particular soft spot for rhubarb, and there are very many things I like to do with it — including this rhubarb tart with lemon verbena and this butterless crumble — but for my everyday consumption, rhubarb compote is what I crave.

For years and years I’ve cooked it softly with a bit of sugar until the rhubarb chunks collapse into feathery strands, but this year I’ve adopted an entirely new approach I like even better: I now poach my rhubarb.

The idea is to prepare a syrup (just a fancy word for water that has sugar in it) infused with some fresh vanilla, bring it to a simmer, add small amounts of rhubarb to it, and cook it every so briefly — just one minute after the syrup returns to a simmer — so that the chunks are cooked through, but still retaining their shape.

You repeat this process using the same syrup with however much rhubarb you have to cook, and you get this lovely compote that requires a little more human intervention, but is considerably more presentable than its baby-food counterpart.

I like to eat a small bowl of it for breakfast or as a snack, with optional granola mixed in, and it is a well received, homey dessert, too, with sablés on the side and perhaps a little crème fraîche.

The bonus of this method is that you’ll likely have rhubarb syrup leftover once you’ve eaten all the rhubarb chunks, and you’ll get to use the soft pink liquid to sweeten plain yogurt, to cook rice or tapioca pudding, to imbibe your babas, or to make la-di-da cocktails with sparkling white wine.

What about you, what are your favorite ways to cook and eat rhubarb?

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Photography by Astrid Berglund.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week’s expression is, “Mettre les bouchées doubles.”

Literally (and awkwardly) translated as, “putting the double bites,” it means doubling your efforts.

Example: “Il va falloir mettre les bouchées doubles si on veut boucler le projet avant la fin du mois.” “We need to double our efforts if we want to complete the project before the end of the month.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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When Maxence and I went to Japan last year, one of the items I was determined to hunt down and bring back was a bag of shiso seeds to grow my own.

Shiso (pronounced “she-so”) is the Japanese name for an annual herb called Perilla, which belongs to the mint family. Other aliases include beefsteak plant (which makes little sense, if you ask me) or Japanese basil. It is used in quite a few Asian cuisines, but the shiso recipes I’ve encountered have mostly been for Japanese dishes.

Shiso comes in green or purple leaves with a slightly prickly texture and pointy, jagged edges, and it has a unique and vibrant taste that I could describe as herbaceous and citrusy. Like most leafy herbs, I find it is best used raw, the leaves whole or chiffonaded.

The green variety produces more tender and more flavorful leaves than the purple variety, but the latter makes up for that with a potent dyeing action: it is what gives umeboshi its color.

We did find shiso seeds in a deserted gardening section on the very top floor of a Tokyo department store, and I planted them in a pot outside my bedroom window as a cure for travel nostalgia when we got back. They sprouted with very little prodding, and soon developed into a bushy plant* from which I excitedly plucked leaves throughout the summer.

I hadn’t used all of the seeds, so I was able to plant a new batch this year, and while I wait for the teeny green leaves to shoot up from under the soil, I wanted to discuss possible uses for this lovely, lovely herb.

The simplified rule of thumb is that you can use shiso pretty much anywhere you would normally use basil or mint, but I thought we could go into a bit more detail.

As I’ve done before with sage and sorrel, I called out for suggestions on Twitter, and because you’re such an inspired bunch, you came through with great shiso recipes, which I’m listing below along with my own. Thanks to all of you who chimed in, and the comment section is wide open if you want to add more!

See also:
– 45 Things To Do With Fresh Sage,
– 50 Things To Do With Fresh Sorrel.

* I’m an enthusiastic but inexperienced gardener and I put in too many seeds, so some of the smaller seedlings never matured in the shade created by the bigger ones. Live and learn.

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