When I was little, when my sister and I felt desultory and bored, my mother would sometimes make us a batch of salt dough for modelling. We would sit at the small folding table in the kitchen and squeeze and roll and pinch to our hearts’ content. And although my sister’s creations were invariably more delicate and life-like than my own, I remember I once proudly produced a full range of miniature fruits and vegetables that tasted shockingly salty when you applied your tongue on them (it was irresistible).

In retrospect, I am quite impressed by my mother’s ability to whip up a perfectly pliable pâte à sel in what felt like minutes, then bake our figurines in the oven without them burning or cracking, at a time when there was, naturally, no Internet to turn to for guidance*. I don’t remember there being a book of “fun stuff to keep the kids out of your hair” lying around either, so I chalk it up to motherly magic.

In any case, the memory of these childhood episodes was awakened when I first tried my hand at homemade pasta sometime last year, using a newly acquired pasta roller accessory for my stand mixer.

Pasta dough is the most pleasant dough the cook is ever given to handle, silky smooth and wonderfully cooperative, and letting it glide through the cylinders of the pasta roller and onto the palm of your flattened hand, to be folded and fondled and cut into any number of pasta shapes truly feels like child’s play.

The pasta dough recipe I use is based on the formula Michael Ruhlman shares in his Ratio book, a title you should definitely add to your wish list if it’s not already standing on your kitchen bookshelf. He gives a ratio of 2 parts egg to 3 parts flour for his pasta dough, and I’ve used it with good success. I like to substitute fine semolina flour for part of the flour, to give the pasta a little more substance and chew, and I add some salt as well, for a more even seasoning in the finished dish.

Although you can play around with this recipe and add flavoring or colorings to the dough — squid ink makes for a fetching presentation — I concur with Michael Ruhlman when he writes that “unlike flavored breads, which we eat with little adornment, pasta is usually dressed somehow, so you should have a good reason for flavoring your pasta dough, rather than adding the flavor after you’ve cooked it.”

I mentioned above that I invested in a (second-hand) stand mixer accessory to support my pasta-making ambitions, but a hand-cranked one works well too, though most people find it necessary to have someone land a third hand, at least when they’re starting out. Either one of these tools would make a generous gift idea for the culinary-oriented on your list.

What you can do without, however, is a drying rack: I’ve learned from my friends at Hidden Kitchen that wooden clothes hangers do the trick just as nicely — just remember to wipe off the flour before you put your black suit pants back on them.

* I imagine in the near future such a statement will elicit disbelief in young children, who will ask, “Really? There was no Internet when you were growing up?” and I will feel a million years old.

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Granola is my safety blanket snack. I keep a big jar of it on the counter at all times, and if I run out and don’t have the time or the ingredients to bake a new batch within the next few days, I don’t feel quite myself.

There are very many granola recipes out there, and over the years I’ve tried a number of them — you can check the raw buckwheat granola I wrote about last summer — but when it comes to oven-baked granola, I find that what one needs isn’t really a recipe, but rather a formula.

Now that I have stabilized my granola formula, I rarely make the same one twice, but it is always just the way I like it: nut-rich, easy on the spices, and very moderately sweet.

The basic components of granola — rolled grains, nuts and seeds, oil, spices, sweetener — are in fact large families of ingredients that offer a myriad of options, and creating your own blend is just a matter of combining the members of those families you like and have on hand.

A homemade granola formula open to variations!

In fact, now that I have stabilized my granola formula, I rarely make the same one twice, but it is always just the way I like it: nut-rich, easy on the spices, and very moderately sweet.

One notable thing I do differently from what most recipes instruct is that I start the granola in a cold oven: no sense in wasting the energy of the oven while it preheats, and granola doesn’t care whether or not it is seized by heat. Your only responsibility then is to watch it closely, and stir it every ten minutes so it is roasted to your preferred shade of brown.

Granola makes a fine edible gift, and I mention this in case you’re already plotting your gift-making campaign for the holidays: the ingredients don’t cost a lot, you can make big batches at a time, and it keeps quite well. And if you can find attractive jars and pretty ribbons and tack on personalized labels — you know the drill — it’ll make a lovely impression.

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Digestive biscuit photographed by Qiao-Da-Ye.

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, “Ne pas digérer quelque chose.”

Literally translated as, “not digesting something,” it means holding a grudge about something, being unhappy about a past situation, and not being able to let it go.

Example: “Il n’a toujours pas digéré ce qu’il considère comme une erreur d’arbitrage.” “He still hasn’t digested what he considers to be a referee error.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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You may remember from my posts about the quince and almond cake and the quince jelly that I have a friend with a house in the country and a generous disposition.

On a Sunday night a couple of weeks ago, she was driving back to Paris after spending a weekend there, and she announced she had more quinces and also some walnuts for me. The bag is quite heavy, she said, did I want her to drop them off? That would be perfect, I replied, and we agreed to meet in a spot that wouldn’t take her too far out of her way, and where she could double-park for a minute without incurring the wrath of other drivers.

Still, we had to be quick: she pulled the bag she had prepared for me out of the passenger’s seat and plopped it on the sidewalk. It’s heavy, she repeated, is it going to be okay? I lifted the bag. Oof, it was heavy — a large canvas bag filled with about twelve kilos of in-shell walnuts and maybe six of quinces — but it didn’t feel impossible to carry. You know, I do yoga, and I beat my egg whites by hand, that sort of thing. I assured her I would be fine and thanked her before she drove away.

Crunchy on the rims and tender in the middle, these cookies are altogether satisfying on a dark fall afternoon, when it feels like the sky has dropped several floors.

And now it was just me and the bulging bag, a few blocks — uphill blocks, naturally — from my apartment. It was quite late, the bag was heavier with every step, the handles coarser on my bare palms, and as I stopped and started, shifting the weight onto one leg or the other, I also had more of an audience that I would have preferred. (Have you noticed how much harder hard things seem when someone is watching mirthfully?)

But I made it home with both arms still plugged into their shoulder sockets, and now I get to doubly enjoy this incredible profusion of fresh walnuts.

I have given some to neighbors and visiting friends, and we’ve been working our way through the rest of them with dedication — eating them straight, on their own or with fruit and cheese, in grated carrot salads, sprinkled on Hokkaido squash soups, slipped into pizzas and gratins, whizzed to make dips and spreads, added to granola… Walnuts are said to be the ultimate brain food, and if that is the case, I fully expect to be on a Nobel prize shortlist sometime soon.

I’m not sure if the selection jury will think this is relevant, but I have become pretty good at shelling walnuts in a speedy fashion, and my technique is a simple but efficient self-taylorization of the process: I start by cracking all the walnuts (crack crack crack), then I pry all the shells open to extract the nugget of walnut meat (pry pry pry), and finally I split the walnut halves delicately to remove the bark-like partition in the middle (split split split).

In addition to the uses listed above, I have also been baking with them, as for these wholesome cookies, chunky with walnuts and dates.

The recipe is based on one for chocolate and orange cookies published by Nolwenn in the very good L’Atelier Bio cookbook, and written up praisingly by Clea some months ago.

I’ve taken Nolwenn’s basic recipe, which happens to be dairy-free and gluten-free, and played with it: I’ve replaced the chocolate chips and candied orange rind with walnuts and diced date paste, I’ve added soaked flax seeds as a binding agent, substituted rolled spelt for the rolled quinoa (which means they’re no longer gluten-free), added some roasted grain “coffee” as a spice to amp up the flavor of the walnuts and dates, and sprinkled salt flakes on each cookie, which provides delicious salty jolts when you eat them.

These cookies bake into a wonderful texture, crunchy on the rims, tender in the middle, and altogether satisfying on a dark fall afternoon, when it feels like the sky has dropped several floors.

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