I recently remarked to a sympathetic friend how difficult it is to buy fresh sage around here. There aren’t many sage recipes in French cuisine, so it’s not part of the classic range of fresh herbs sold at produce shops or at the green market. But I enjoy its flavor very much, so I decided I would try and find seeds to grow my own.

Only days later, I walked past the sidewalk display of Etablissements Lion on my way home, and noticed that they sold potted sage plants that looked exceptionally healthy. I couldn’t resist; I chose the most beautiful one and adopted it.

It now rooms with our blooming strawberry plants on the bathroom window sill, but it is so bushy I thought I’d better start thinking of ideas to put it to good use. And I did what any modern person would do: I turned to twitter and asked, “What do you like to do with sage?”

The response was multicolored and inspired, and I thought it would be a pity not to share it with you. Surely there are other owners of expansive sage plants who would benefit. So here’s a compilation of the suggestions I collected — my sincere thanks go to the twitterers who kindly contributed their ideas.

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We had our first taste of warabi mochi on the basement floor of the Tokyu department store in Shibuya, Tokyo. Amid the extraordinary spread of edible goods — sweet, savory and in between, fresh, dried, hot, cold — was a little stand from which a lady was offering samples of soft, bite-size morsels dusted with a light brown powder.

We each took a wooden pick, lifted a piece to our mouth, and started chewing. It was amazing: the coating was fine-grained and nutty — I recognized it as being kinako, toasted soybeans ground to a fine powder — and the fleshy inside was cool on the tongue, offering a slight chew then quickly dissolving into a delicate sweetness.

We were moved to purchase some right on the spot, but the lady took the time to explain that these had to be eaten fresh that very day, and we felt the box was too big for us to make that commitment.

Later, when our travels took us to the Kansai region, we started seeing that same mochi-like confection everywhere, shaped as small cubes, flat little bricks, or oval balls, slumped against each other. We bought some here, some there, and loved it every time, though we had no idea what it was, or what it was called.

Eventually, we got a small box at the Nishiki-dori market in Kyoto, and the top had a beautiful label on which I was able to decipher the hiragana characters like a six-year-old: wa-ra-bi-mo-chi. Aha!

I looked it up online that night, and found out that it is indeed a Kansai specialty, and a particularly popular treat during the summer months. Although it is called mochi, it is a different kind of mochi made not with glutinous rice flour (mochiko or shiratamako), but with warabiko, bracken starch painstakingly ground from the root of the plant.

In my bulging travel notebook, to the list of things to bring back from Japan I added: warabiko.

On another visit to the Nishiko-dori market, I spotted a stand that sold little bags of assorted flours and powders. We walked up to it and asked if they had any warabiko. They did, but the lady, aided by her daughter who in fact didn’t speak much more English than we did Japanese, managed to convey to us that pure warabiko was very pricey (~¥30,000 — $320 — for a 300-gram pouch). She could, however, offer a more economical substitute called warabimochiko, a blend of sweet potato starch and tapioca starch with a small percentage of bracken starch mixed in (~¥300 for the same amount). When I asked if my warabi mochi would still be oishii (delicious), they nodded forcefully.

Considering the price we’d paid for the different warabi mochi we’d tasted, it was clear they had not been made with the expensive stuff, so I got a bag of the low-cost warabimochiko, and the lady sweetly slipped us a little bag of kinako as a gift. A great many arigatos and small bows later, we walked away, hovering slightly above ground from the pleasure such small encounters provide.

About a week after we’d returned home, I took out the packets and got to work. To complement the little instruction sheet (in Japanese) the lady had included, I’d searched for recipes online and though there weren’t many in English or French, I’d found enough helpful ressources to feel prepared.

The process is really quite straightforward: you mix the starch with water and sugar, sieve the mixture into a saucepan, and cook until it thickens and becomes translucent. Then you simply dump it on a work surface dusted with kinako, cut it into pieces and coat them some more, or chill the mixture in ice water first for a more refreshing mouthfeel.

Within minutes my warabi mochi was ready, and all we had to do was wait for it to cool. Armed with toothpicks, we tasted one, then two, then a couple more, and smiled broadly: this was it! Part of me had not quite believed the warabi mochi experience could be reproduced in my Paris kitchen, but there was no doubt about it now: my batch had very precisely the same taste and texture as the ones we’d eaten on our trip. It was delicious.

Of course, the Japanese backdrop was sorely missing, but we chose not to dwell on that, and focus on the mochi instead. And now that I’ve found a Parisian source for warabimochiko (see ingredient note at bottom of recipe), I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t fall prey to the too good to use syndrome, and I’ll be making warabi mochi with abandon every time nostalgia strikes.

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I used to be someone who liked the white meat best in a roast chicken.

This worked out nicely at dinner with my parents when I was growing up, as they would each get a chicken leg while we girls ate the breast happily: it was mild in flavor, there were no bones to wrestle with, and it came with plenty of pan juices that our mother spooned on after we’d cut criss-cross indentations in the meat for optimal absorption.

My preference made for a uniform chicken distribution with Maxence, too, as he’s always been a dark-meat, bone-gnawing kind of guy: we could therefore buy a whole roast chicken and work our way through it, symmetrically, over the next two or three meals.

But lately I’ve flipped my jacket* and crossed over to the Dark Side of the meat: after years of denial, I’ve finally come to admit that it’s just, well, tastier.

This marvellously creamy dressing matches the chicken and radishes perfectly, but I’ll also keep it in mind for crisp greens, raw endives, asparagus spears, and artichoke hearts.

This is a problem. However fabulous our fabulous rôtisserie is, they haven’t figured out how to sell four-legged, breastless chickens (let’s not even try to imagine what such a creature might look like), so I’ve started collecting ideas to use chicken breasts in manners more titillating than just plopping them on a plate with a side of something.

Today’s salad is a good spring-like one: the breast meat is cubed and combined with sliced multicolored radishes in a bright dressing of mashed avocado, yogurt and mixed herbs. The tender meat, the crunchy radishes and the creamy dressing make for a particularly rewarding textural landscape.

This dressing is in fact inspired by a recipe that caught my eye in Alice Waters’ latest book project, In the Green Kitchen, of which I received a review copy. Subtitled “Techniques to learn by heart,” it is a collection of simple techniques and recipes shared by some of the chefs and cooks she most admires.

Covering a range of topics from simmering stock to pickling vegetables or baking fruit, each of the twenty-seven sections comes with a short profile of that person (with portraits that jump out at you in all their smiling warmth; I am particularly taken with Claire Ptak‘s), a breakdown of the technique he/she is contributing, and a few recipes to put it into practice — 56 of them in total.

At first glance, you might think it’s the sort of book that’s mostly targeted at beginners, and indeed it would make a lovely, encouraging gift for a budding cook. But as I’ve written before, I believe in striving to master simple dishes, and I think even experienced cooks benefit from reading books about basic techniques, comparing them to their own way of doing things.

I myself have picked up some tips, tagged a few recipes for later consideration (the cornbread, the braised pork shoulder, the apple galette…), and was immediately moved to try the green goddess dressing featured on page 14, served with hearts of romaine. A mayo-less version of the famous dressing, this one relies on mashed avocado, whipping cream and olive oil for creaminess. I kept the overall idea but substituted fromage blanc (a French dairy product that’s similar to yogurt) for the whipping cream, and found it unnecessary to add any oil.

It matched the chicken and radishes perfectly (you know what I think of the radish + avocado pairing), but I’ll also keep it in mind for crisp greens, raw endives, asparagus spears, and artichoke hearts.

Whatever you use it with, one thing to keep in mind about this dressing is that it needs to be assembled just before serving: if you leave it hanging, the avocado will get all upset and gray.

And if you want to share your favorites uses for leftover chicken breasts, I am standing by, notebook and pen at the ready!

* Pardon the literal translation of the French idiom retourner sa veste (flipping one’s jacket), used for people who chose to rally one side or the other based on personal gain rather than conviction.

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I first heard about Rene Redzepi’s Copenhagen restaurant Noma when I attended the 2008 edition of the Omnivore Food Festival in Deauville, a gastronomic event during which high-profile chefs from France and beyond are invited to cook live on stage.

He has since received many more accolades as the herald of a refreshing and talented new wave of Scandinavian chefs. His forager’s approach seems to celebrate nature at its most generous, yes, but also at its roughest, revealing its beauty even when rocks and roots and wind are all it has to offer*.

Among the dishes Redzepi presented that day was a trompe l’oeil vegetable field: served on a warmed slab of stone, baby root vegetables were planted in a layer of mashed potatoes, then topped with a soil-like layer of malt and hazelnut flour crumbs.

Radishes in soil have become a signature amuse-bouche at Noma: radishes with their leaves on are served in a terracotta pot that contains a creamy herbed dip at the bottom, and malt and hazelnut crumbs on top.

I later heard about a variation on this idea that’s become a signature amuse-bouche at Noma: radiser, jord og urteemulsion (radishes, soil and herb emulsion) involves radishes with their leaves on, served in a terracotta pot that contains a creamy herbed dip at the bottom, and the same crumbs on top.

I located an Observer article in which Redzepi gave a recipe for his vegetable field, including directions to make his dehydrated “maltsoil.” But then I also found a few blog references to a recipe that was published in the Figaro Madame late last year and drawn from Trish Deseine’s book Comme au resto, wherein the soil is made, more simply, from slices of dark bread.

It is the route I opted for, grinding dried-up slices of my sourdough chocolate bread, which is not sweetened at all, and using a mix of fresh cheese and yogurt for the herbed layer.

I’m always looking for novel ways to serve radishes** beyond the classic radish/butter/salt trio, and these radishes in soil are a whimsical and tasty one. I had fun assembling the containers — two small bowls and one square little dish like a gardening box — and served them at apéritif time, as a light companion to pre-dinner drinks. Once all the radishes had been consumed, there was some herbed cheese leftover in the bowls, so I cut thin slices of fresh baguette to scoop it up.

I dream of organizing a Danish getaway around a Noma reservation — Copenhaguen is just a two-hour flight from Paris after all — and some day I will, but in the meantime I’ll just munch on my radishes in soil, and dive into the book Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine.

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* Learn more about new Scandinavian cuisine by reading the Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen. And if you’re curious about Redzepi’s cuisine, a few bloggers have posted pictures of their meals at Noma: see the appetite-whetting reports on Chuckeats, A Life Worth Eating, Gourmet Traveller and Food Snob.

** For more radish inspiration, take a look at these avocado and radish canapés with smoked salt, this chicken and radish salad with avocado green goddess dressing, my radish leaf pesto, or Sonia Ezgulian’s tarte aux radis.

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