Meet my current favorite quick and easy dessert: a tapioca pudding made with oat milk and flavored with vanilla.

Tapioca pudding, for those not familiar with it, is not unlike rice pudding, except the texture of cooked pearl tapioca is estimated to be seven hundred and eighty three times more enjoyable than that of cooked rice, as each tiny pearl rolls off your tongue like the word “pearl” itself.

Pearl tapioca is made with the starch extracted from cassava roots (a.k.a. manioc or yuca). It’s a pre-cooked product that can also be used as a thickener in tart fillings, or to add textural variety to broths and soups. In France, Tipiak sells it under the name perles Japon — it’s anybody’s guess why they call it that — but actually offers two distinct varieties under that label: one made from potato starch, and one made from manioc starch, which is the one I use. I can’t recommend any particular brand outside of France, but you should be able to find pearl tapioca in the baking aisle of your grocery store, or at Asian markets.

For this recipe, you’ll want to use small pearl tapioca, which comes in miniature beads (do not, I repeat, do not, spill the contents of the package on the floor, or you’ll be finding them in absurd places for years to come), rather than the larger pearls, also called boba, that add chew to Taiwan-style bubble tea.

I first made tapioca pudding at the request of Maxence, who’s always a good customer for this kind of humble, comforting dessert, and who spent a happy childhood eating his grandmother’s. I myself am not normally drawn to soft, milk-based preparations, but this one quickly won me over with its delectable creamy-bouncy texture.

My recipe is completely effortless, and uses pantry ingredients only, making it a fine emergency dessert option. You simply heat oat milk (my non-dairy milk of choice) with a vanilla bean, simmer the pearl tapioca in it (mine cooks in fifteen minutes), before adding sugar and a bit of salt.

You then let it cool, and as the pearl tapioca continues to swell, it absorbs all the liquid and becomes all mochi–like and wonderful. (Wait, could this be why it’s called “Japan pearls” in France?)

You’ll perhaps notice that it is one of those handy ratio-based recipes (see Ruhlmann’s book on cooking ratios) that relies on a 10:1:1 ratio of milk, pearl tapioca and sugar (measured in weight). This means you can commit the recipe to memory easily and scale it up or down, as I often do when I have an open carton of milk that needs to be used pronto.

Tapioca pudding requires little embellishment, and we usually just lap it up from a little bowl with a spoon, but when I serve it to friends, I like to offer a side of crisp butter cookies, such as these or these, just to amp the sophistication a notch.

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Today’s salad could be seen as a winter alter ego to this tomato and einkorn wheat salad from half a year ago, and it is proof that my love story with einkorn wheat wasn’t just a summer crush.

Today’s salad mixes the ancient grain (see my previous post for more on the back story) with chunks of spiced and roasted potimarron (a.k.a. Hokkaido squash, my very favorite of all winter squashes), shallots, chopped fresh herbs, and walnuts.

It’s the kind of salad of both substance and grace with a good balance of textures that I am content to eat on its own for lunch, or serve as a side. It travels well, too, so it’s a fine option for a packed lunch, or when you have to take a dish somewhere.

In fact, I first made it to bring as my dinner contribution to our dear friends Derrick and Melissa’s apartment when they were visiting during the Paris snowpocalypse in early December, to go with the duck magrets that Derrick would be roasting.

Maxence liked it so much that when we got home that night — after a vivifying Velib’ ride across a snow-ridden city because we’d long missed the last métro — he specifically requested I write down how I’d made it, so I wouldn’t let it fall down the rabbit hole of good but forgotten ideas.

I followed his advice and scribbled the broad strokes of it in the little cooking notebook I keep, the cover of which makes me smile every time I pick it up. And I made the salad again with the next potimarron that came my way, and then with an unsuspecting butternut squash, and again with a potimarron for our New Year’s Eve party, where it did not quite outshine the guest magician who made our evening so special, but close.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed a warm and cheerful holiday season, that you’ve shared laughter and good meals with the people you care about, and that you’re feeling full of energy and dreams for 2011.

May this fresh new year bring you joy, serenity, fulfillment, and really good skin. I look forward to another year of meeting you here on Chocolate & Zucchini.

Before we kiss 2010 goodbye altogether, I don’t want to miss my chance to reminisce on what it has brought me, thereby establishing my traditional “best of” list*.

Most memorable trip

The most salient memory I will keep from 2010 is, without a doubt, the trip I took to Japan with Maxence. I can even say it was the best trip of my life, and I wish I could bottle up the euphoria I felt for two weeks straight — and also wrap up in a magic doggie bag every single bite we ate, so I could savor them over and over again.

Most rewarding baking project

For the first time ever, I baked a galette des rois to celebrate the Epiphany, the traditional January holiday I wrote about here and again here. It was a success that far outweighed the (moderate) work involved, and I encourage you to try your hand at it too: the official date is this Thursday, but l’Epiphanie is customarily celebrated anytime in January.

Favorite breads

Ever since I found James MacGuire’s instructions for pain au levain in an issue of Art of Eating, it has become our weekly loaf of bread, and I now make it (almost) with my eyes closed.

I also baked a number of batches of these tomato burger buns. They accompanied us through a fabulous summer of near-weekly cheeseburgers — many of them vegetarian, since I discovered with glee that they sell portobello mushrooms at the greenmarket.

Favorite new cooking utensils

My new/old pressure cooker is definitely getting some mileage on my stove: I use it several times a week to cook legumes, grains, soups, and stock.

I have also acquired a used electric coffee grinder (a model very much like this one) that I have repurposed as a spice/seed grinder, to whizz things like flax seeds, cardamom and lemon zest.

And although it isn’t a cooking utensil exactly, we are delighted with the sparkling water fountain that my sister and brother-in-law gave us for Christmas, which allows us to turn still water to sparkling at the push of a button (“abracadabra!” optional).

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Gorgeous braided shallots photographed by Denna Jones.

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, “La course à l’échalote.”

Literally translated as, “the shallot race,” it is used in situations of futile competition, when people strive to outdo one another for vain reasons, in a political context or otherwise. It is somewhat comparable to (though less openly vulgar than) the English expression a pissing contest (pardon my French).

Example: “C’est un peu ridicule, cette course à l’échalote pour savoir qui sera le plus rapide à chroniquer le dernier resto branché.” “It’s a bit ridiculous, this shallot race to see who’ll be the quickest to review the latest hip restaurant.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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