Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter already know that I worked for a little while last month at Bob’s Kitchen, a (very good) vegetarian lunch restaurant and juice bar in the 3rd arrondissement.

The team had been hired to provide the food during a film festival that was held at Beaubourg, so they needed a few more hands on deck, and I seized this opportunity to gain a little pro cooking experience, to catch a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how such a restaurant works, and (perk of perks) to have lunch there every day for the duration of my employ.

I was extraordinarily happy with the experience, which left me with a new callus on my right index finger from chopping so many vegetables, a bunch of new friends, and a newly acquired dexterity at tying a scarf turban-style on my hair so none would fall into the signature “veggie stew.”

Also: water kefir grains.

What’s water kefir?

I was already familiar with milk kefir, a fermented milk beverage that is greatly popular in Central and Eastern Europe, and which I adore.

However, I had yet to be introduced to water kefir (also known as tibi or tibicos, and kéfir de fruits in French), a water-based fermented drink that is lightly effervescent, sweet and sour, and particularly refreshing.

The team at Bob’s Kitchen made regular batches of it to offer on the drinks menu, and this gave me a chance to taste (and fall under the spell of) it.

The key ingredient in the making of water kefir is a small quantity of water kefir grains, sometimes called Japanese water crystals. These bouncy and translucent pebbles are home to a culture of yeasts and friendly bacteria that thrive and multiply in sugared water: these symbiotic microorganisms essentially “digest” the sugar in the water, producing alcohol*, lactic acid and carbon dioxide, which results in a probiotic (and therefore health-promoting), delicious drink.

Marc, the co-founder of Bob’s Kitchen, offered to give me some of the grains to make my own kefir, and I could not have accepted with more enthusiasm. I figure one cannot have too many microorganisms proliferating in one’s kitchen, as long as they’re the friendly kind.

How to make water kefir

I follow the general instructions my coworker Anna gave me, but in researching other “recipes” online, I’ve noticed the method, and the proportions of grains to water to sugar vary to some extent from one source to the next, so the overall process is fairly forgiving.

But the idea is always this: you combine the kefir grains with sugar, filtered water, an organic lemon (or some other citrus, for acidity), dried fruits (for sugar and flavor; these must also be organic), and possibly spices, and let this mixture ferment at room temperature for a day or two before filtering, bottling, and starting over with a new batch.

It really is very simple and low-commitment, and you can experiment with different kinds of citrus and dried fruits (though lemon and fig are traditional), as well as spices, or try adding fresh fruit and herbs to the mix, too. I hear fresh cherries or strawberries give the kefir a rosy hue.

We have been drinking a glass every day at breakfast, and occasionally another one later in the day, especially when I get home on my bike and the uphill ride has made me thirsty, but I’m seeing the distinct possibility of using it in cocktails.

Unlike a natural starter for bread, it’s not possible to create your own kefir grains from scratch at home, so you have to obtain them from someone else. Traditionally, you would get them from a friend or relative or neighbor who would give them to you for free, but nowadays you can order them online in exchange for a small fee to cover shipping and handling (which is only fair). You can also check your local classifieds, or ask around — at your local health food store, for instance — as someone may know someone who can provide them.

* The resulting drink is therefore very faintly alcoholic, usually less than 1% by volume. Many sources indicate that it is fine for children or pregnant women to drink in moderation, but naturally you should decide for yourself.

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In the very early days of this year, I was invited to lunch by a blogger-friend*. In preparation for the meal, she said two promising things: “I hope you like Chinese food” and “Come hungry.”

In her pretty apartment filled with lovely things to look at — postcards and drawings and old vinyls and slim books with soft covers — she treated me to a cornucopian spread of Chinese dishes, all of them family recipes from her mother’s kitchen.

Among these were her Cantonese-style marinated pork ribs (siu pai gwat), sticky and lightly sweet in their caramelized protein crust, and marvelously soft underneath, so soft you could pull the bones out of your mouth neatly, with nary a shred of meat left on them. Paired with a bowl of steamed white rice from her adorable rice cooker — a doll-sized version I have not been able to shoo out of my covetous mind — it was an absolute delight.

Sticky and lightly sweet in their caramelized protein crust, the ribs were marvelously soft underneath, so soft you could pull the bones out of your mouth neatly, with nary a shred of meat on them.

The wonderful thing about being a guest at a blogger’s table is that there is a good chance that whatever you’ve eaten and loved has been featured on their site, or will soon be, so you don’t even have to badger them for a recipe.

And indeed, this one had.

Although the recipe is very simple — it’s just a matter of marinating and then roasting the meat in the oven — it took me a few weeks to muster the ingredients needed for the marinade. But when Maxence and I decided to trek over to the 13th arrondissement (where the largest Paris Chinatown is) for dim sum one Saturday, a quick dip inside Paris Store turned up the two missing ingredients.

A week later, having purchased some pork ribs — travers de porc in French — from my butcher**, I set out to follow the recipe. I lowered the oven temperature a bit, and found that it would have been good to cover the dish for the first half of the baking (as I recommend in the recipe below) to avoid excessive coloring, but aside from those details it was a smooth ride.

I cooked some short-grain white rice and made a spicy cucumber salad with rice vinegar, sesame oil and garlic, and we sat down to a felicitous lunch.

The next day, I used the leftover rice and meat to make (what else?) fried rice, with radish leaves stirred in. I also kept the bones in the freezer for my next tonkotsu ramen, happy as ever to be getting three different dishes out of one hunk of meat.

Fried Rice with Pork Rib Meat

* I’d brought her a round of starter bread slashed in her initial — or rather, the inital of her nom de plume — and a little jar of my starter. She later made a wonderful drawing of that loaf, and then embarked on her own bread-baking adventures with her freshly baptized starter, Anatole.

** I encourage you to seek out ethically raised pork meat from a provider who can answer your questions. The overwhelming majority of pork meat available in Western countries comes from concentrated animal feeding operations that have disastrous consequences on the environment, their workers, animal welfare and human health. To learn more, you can for instance read Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals.

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I have an ambivalent relationship to food memoirs.

On the one hand, a book that’s entirely devoted to food and food experiences should have my name all over it. On the other hand, I deal with food so exclusively and so intensely all day and all week long that when I sit down to read at night or on weekends, I sort of want to read about other lives entirely.

And this is one of the reasons why I so enjoyed Gabrielle Hamilton‘s memoir.

Blood, Bones & Butter is a food memoir in as much as the author is a food professional — she’s the chef and owner of Prune, a small and highly popular restaurant in NYC’s East Village* — but it is, in truth, a lot wider in scope than “the inadvertent education of a reluctant chef,” as the (somewhat clunky) subtitle reads.

I won’t reveal anything about the arc of her life story: I like to know as little as possible about books before I read them so I’m not about to spoil this one for you, but let’s just say (and I’ve provided links below if you want to know more) that it hasn’t been the smoothest of rides.

And the book she has drawn from it is the rawest, most plainspoken, no-holds-barred memoir I have ever read. It is marvelously engrossing, and it pulls you in with the author’s naked honesty and the way she looks back at her life, dark passages included, with no glossing over, retracing her steps without making excuses or trying to shed a flattering light on herself.

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Moss garden at Gio-ji temple in Arashiyama (Kyoto).

I seldom invite world events to appear on Chocolate & Zucchini, because we live in an age of such hyperinformation that we don’t need — and often don’t want — to see the same topics on the news and on the food blogs we read.

But in light of what has happened in Japan, what is still happening in Japan, and what I fear is going to happen next in Japan, I need a bit of time before we go back to our regular programming.

There is little we can do but despair over the nuclear crisis, but what we can do now is contribute however much or little we can to the emergency relief effort for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the earthquake and tsunami.

My friend Chika has set up a fundraising page to support the International Rescue Committee, and Tamami has created one in favor of Save the Children.

Beyond these initiatives, Elizabeth Andoh, who runs A Taste of Culture in Tokyo and Osaka, suggests making donations to Doctors without Borders, NetHope, or International Medical Corps.

Edited to add:
~ Reader Filicophyta sends a link to NPR’s list of organizations taking Japan tsunami donations,
~ Reader Eri sends a link to detailed list of organizations edited by Devex,
~ Reader Viviane has set up a fundraising page benefiting Red Cross Australia,
~ Reader Moonstruckinmt points to Jason Kelly’s Socks for Japan initiative,
~ Reader Stacey sends a link to a fundraising page in favor of ShelterBox.