Menu Fretin is a young French independent publishing house that specializes in culinary books*. Considering the teeny size of the organization, and how crazily difficult it is for an indie to carve a space for itself among the Goliaths of publishing, its book list is impressive, featuring daring projects that straddle the old and the new.

This, to me, is the perfect sablé: a crisp-then-crumbly cookie that tastes of vanilla and butter, with a touch of salt and a caramel undertone.

Menu Fretin has published such historical gems as an augmented edition of Alexandre Dumas’ Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, a biography of Grimod de la Reynière and other assorted texts of nineteenth-century food writing, but also new works by contemporary chefs Olivier Nasti in Kaysersberg, Juliette and Jean-Marie Baudic in Saint-Brieuc, or the twenty-six expatriated French chefs gathered in a collective called Village de chefs.

Late last year, three titles were added as part of a new collection called Menu Festin (small feast). [Update: the 11 slim volumes of the collection have now been reissued as a single book.] For each of these little books, the clever concept is to have a chef come up with a five-course menu (appetizer, first course, main course, dessert, mignardise or pre-dessert) around a particular theme, then lay out the full cooking timeline throughout the book, with a countdown from the first prep steps to the time of serving. Step-by-step pictures and check lists of tasks and ingredients round out the cook’s game plan.

One of these books is called Dimanche en famille and is authored by Yves Camdeborde, the famous Béarnais chef who’s often credited for fathering the neo-bistro trend in Paris, where he now runs the über-popular Comptoir du Relais and the hotel it’s attached to.

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Bread baking is one of those activities that can quickly become obsessive, like knitting or playing red dead redemption. It’s not really something you can remain casual about, not if you want to improve your skills, so you find yourself combing through forum discussions, bookmarking blogs and websites, buying books — anything to satisfy your thirst for knowledge and inspiration.

I say it’s fine to embrace such a harmless obsession — unless you start to ignore your infant’s cries because your loaf needs shaping — and I’d like to share two cool things to fuel it.

William Alexander’s 52 Loaves

Subtitled “One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust,” 52 Loaves is a memoir that tells the story of a middle-aged man who decides to bake a loaf a week during one year, to try and recreate the superlative loaf he’s once tasted.

I received it as a review copy, and I admit I was dubious at first — it had the potential of reading like a self-important, overblown tale — but that’s probably because I’d never read anything by William Alexander before: it turns out he’s a funny, relatable, and (sometimes painfully) honest writer.

Divided into 52 chapters, the book documents the baking and life lessons he learns over as many weeks, from his inaugural doorstop loaves to his first attempts at sourdough, from building his own wood-fire oven to growing his own wheat and milling his own flour (!), and finally to the apex of his story, an unexpectedly moving episode I’m not about to spoil for you.

It is an engaging and instructive read with great rhythm, and if you’ve been on your own quest for good home-baked bread, I think you’ll find it as engrossing as I did. It is the book I was reading in Japan and well, I blame William Alexander for making me miss Mount Fuji while riding the bullet train.

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I am rhubarb’s most adoring fan.

Throughout the season, in the spring and then in late summer, my weekly market run includes a big bunch of blushing stalks that I’ll cook promptly, once home, into a compote* I’ll eat for breakfast (with a gurgle of homemade kefir) throughout the week.

While compote is my standard use for rhubarb, I love it in a tart, too, and that’s what I decided to serve for dessert last week, when we had friends over for dinner.

My mother makes a fine one on the crisp pâte sablée I’ve shared in my book, with a thin layer of custard filling that is refered to as migaine, goumeau, or not at all, depending on the region. I walked in her footsteps for the most part, straying here and there to try a couple of new things.

In addition to the rhubarb stalks, I had a fresh bunch of lemon verbena that was looking at me with an expression like, “Um, hello?”

First of all, I recently received a copy of Catherine Kluger‘s little book on tarts, and I felt inspired to try her recipe for pâte sucrée (sweet tart dough).

The dough came together easily, and baked into quite the delicate crust, not too rich, not too sweet, and lightly crumbly in texture. I had major difficulties in rolling it out, but the recipe had nothing to do with it: it just happened to be a very warm day — we were going through a mini heatwave that would end in a thunderstorm later that night — and this is a notoriously bad state of affairs if your mission is to roll out pastry.**

Second, I wanted to add a flavoring of some sort to compliment the rhubarb: rhubarb + ginger is the pairing I had in mind originally (in the form of fresh and/or candied ginger, I hadn’t yet decided). But I also had a fresh bunch of lemon verbena on hand that was looking at me with an expression like, “Um, hello?” I didn’t approve of the attitude, but I had to agree their singing voices would harmonize perfectly.

I also applied two tricks I’d picked up while sifting through the comments below this post: 1- I macerated the rhubarb in sugar for a couple of hours so it would release some of its juices. These I reduced into a syrup and then infused with the lemon verbena.

And 2- I sprinkled the bottom of the par-baked crust with a little tapioca, to contain any excess juice from the rhubarb. Unless you’re looking really closely you can’t make them out in the finished product, but it contributes to the silkiness of the filling, and helps the crust retain its crispness. This trick can be applied to any tart in which the fruit might release too much juice during the baking (peaches, for instance) and it’s one I call upon for my savory vegetable tarts as well, though I’ll use orzo pasta (pâtes langue d’oiseau) or bulgur then.

The tart format really is a lovely foil for rhubarb; the best one, I would argue. It’s a humble, comforting dessert — there’s nothing intimidating about the rhubarb tart — that celebrates the complex tang of the fruit***, and in this version, the lemon verbena flavoring subtly accents its floral notes.

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* I enjoy the tartness of rhubarb, so I sweeten my compote very lightly, adding about 10% of the net weight of rhubarb in unrefined cane sugar. I combine the rhubarb chunks with the sugar in my cast-iron cocotte and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring once or twice during that time. Then I remove the pot from the heat and let it sit covered for a while to finish softening while we eat lunch.

** When I mentioned this painful situation, Rachel shared the following tip: place an ice-filled tray on your work surface for ten minutes beforehand. It will lower the temperature of the surface (provided it’s not wood) and help keep the dough cool enough to work with.

*** From a botanical perspective, rhubarb is actually a vegetable. Maybe it could switch seats with the fruit-as-a-vegetable eggplant or cucumber or avocado, and then the world would be a less confusing place?

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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, “Être serrés comme des sardines.”

Literally translated as, “being packed together like sardines,” it is a colloquial expression that’s used when people are squeezed into a very small space with absolutely no room to move. For some reason, I remember liking this expression a lot as a child.

Notice that serrés is in the plural form — the singular would be serré(e) — because this expression is always used to liken a group of people to a group of sardines, and never refers to a single individual, however sardine-packed he might feel.

Example: “Ils ont laissé trop de gens monter dans le bus ; on était serrés comme des sardines.” “They let too many people on the bus; we were packed together like sardines.”

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

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