Put the Lime in the Coconut Muffins

Sometimes, when I’m juggling eight tasks at once and feeling like a chicken sans tête, cooking needs to be simple to compensate. These muffins are simple. They take an hour to make from start to finish, and then you have breakfast and snacks for the better part of the week. Take half to work with you for instant office popularity.

There’s nothing complicated about this recipe, and nothing onerous about these ingredients. There is only the happy marriage of coconut, lime, and banana, each flavor in a supporting role. If you live somewhere as cold and gray as New York is right now, I hope these muffins will put you in mind of a beachy, tropical cocktail.

So take a minute to yourself. Enjoy one (or a few, who’s counting?) with tea or coffee. You deserve it. Read more »

Lentil Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette

I’ve been thinking a lot about tone and voice, and how they pertain to this blog. Although I’ve never been one for diary writing, for straightforward personal confession, I admit this is a journal of sorts. It details what I am cooking in a particular moment, as well as selected events around each recipe. I suppose creative writing of any stripe is its own kind of confession.

After a year plus of writing this blog, I’m sure my recipe-developing skills have improved. (I need only look to the archives to know this.) Part of me wants to scurry back and tweak what I know can be bettered, while another part of me is comforted by the fact that I can trace the changes. (I’m sure I’ve read similar sentiments voiced by Emma at Poires au Chocolat, but I can’t find where.) My photography skills have progressed too, as I’ve slowly learned the manual functions on my camera. Post recent birthday, I have loftier hopes still, thanks to a new lens (merci, darling Frenchman), a better editing system, and my first tripod (thanks, Mom).

But what about the other portion of the blog? The essay, the headnote, the this. When I read advice from successful bloggers, the same opinion is often echoed: “find your personal voice”, or “be yourself”. But how does one consciously follow this advice? If the hallmark of a successful blog is the convergence of skilled writing and a defined, likable personality, what qualifies the personality? From the writer’s perspective, where is the demarcating line, the happy medium, between inviting a reader into your life, and giving away the store? Read more »

Pearl Couscous with Roasty Roots, Chickpeas, and Pepitas

Ce soir, the Frenchman and I depart for a nine-day visit to France.

We haven’t been to Angoulins since the summer. Then, we swam at high tide, ate every meal outside, and padded barefoot around the porch. In winter, his seaside home is no less beautiful, although obviously much colder. This time, we will curl up in front of the fire, eat foie gras on toast (it’s Christmas, in France, after all), and meander to the beach with a bottle of Champagne on Christmas Day (avec shoes, thankfully).

I am looking forward to the trip, and to the break. I just have one quibble: if it were up to me, we’d teleport directly from our living room, straight into the Frenchman’s living room. (I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve asked the Frenchman to invent teleportation. Then, he could sleep at home every night, even during business trips. He assures me he’s on top of it, although I have yet to see results.)

The trouble is, I am terrified of flying. I know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, plane-safety statistics being what they are, and considering how often I fly. Still, I am thrown into a tizzy every time I board a plane. It’s not great. To make matters worse, the Air France terminal at JFK is just the pits. (I know, my life is terrible!) Unless you enjoy rubbery chicken with sprayed-on grill marks, or Chinese food languishing under a heat lamp, you’re out of luck. Read more »

Oven-Soft Apples and Pears

Dilemma: I made these apples and pears expressly for an ice cream I plan to churn up over the weekend (vanilla, bourbon, crème fraîche… you’ll likely read more about it soon), but then they turned out so unexpectedly delicious on their own, I can’t stop devouring them right off the baking sheet.

These fruit slices, baked with just a suggestion of butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg, are cooked low and slow until they’re only partially dried. The results are soft bursts of concentrated flavor, and the occasional crunch from bits of caramelized brown sugar.

It doesn’t matter too much which varieties of apple or pear you use; I tried Bartlett, D’Anjou, and Bosc pears, and all came out well. Do use firm fruit though.

I promise, if you set out a bowl of these at your next holiday party, or bring a tin for the host or hostess, they will disappear quickly. You can also eat them with ice cream or yogurt, with oatmeal or waffles, or as a decorative top to a cake. Read more »

Chocolate Shortbread with Crushed Pistachios

I originally indented these cookies as an adult alternative to cloying Halloween candy–a sweet with sophistication, if you will–but considering the hurricane that ripped through New York (among other locales) last night, I think perhaps we should rebrand these cookies.

If you are lucky enough to have power, please consider an afternoon of baking. It’s an activity to occupy adults and children alike, a survival tool to get you through through yet another day cloistered with your nearest and dearest. And as these cookies are made in stages, baking them will carry you through the better part of an afternoon.

In fact, I think I will enlist the Frenchman’s help. He is currently watching local news, reading French news, asking me what changes he can make to the website, and making fun of the blanket I have draped around my shoulders. (Apparently, dear readers, I look like a grandmother.) What this boils down to is that two days home from work gives my French Fry de se sentir comme un lion en cage.

(As it transpires, Monsieur French Dressing doesn’t appreciate being dubbed a French Fry. But as he is currently playing TV replete with shaky camera-post hurricane footage, listening to an electro pop track, all the while streaming piston noises from his mouth–after promising “not to be distracting”–I will desist pas.) Read more »

Strawberry-Kissed Walnut Sablés

Butter, sugar, salt. When balanced properly, is there a happier confluence of ingredients? (The answer is no, unless you’d like to discuss the merits of cream, yolks, and sugar.)

My goal for this batch of cookies was to bridge the transition weeks from warm to colder weather. Toasted walnuts and notes of nutmeg tackle the ‘oh my, it’s quite nippy, I think I’d like something conforming’ aspects of fall, while drops of strawberry jam brighten each sablé and remind of sunny afternoons.

I decided these sablés (a word that means “sand” in French, in reference to both the cookie’s color and texture) should be pop-able, but ample enough so that a few would satisfy. Read more »

Radish and Green Gem Couscous

As summertime approaches, I’m thinking more and more about deviating from my standard winter plate paradigm: protein, veg, veg. (That second veg is often a potato in some form, but I digress.) Like most people, I tend to reach for lighter options when it’s warm outside, and this dovetails nicely with the lovely herbs and vegetables available at the market these days.

I’m currently entertaining an enduring knackering for little green gems in all forms–favas beans, English peas, snap peas, etc. I’m also eating radishes with almost every meal; as a sliver of color and bite in salads, stirred into scrambled eggs and mellowed by heat, or simply with butter and flaky salt on hot toast. Combine this with my relatively new discovery of Israeli (or pearl) couscous, and you have the inspiration for this recipe. Read more »

Madeleines

For Christmas this year, Paul’s grandparents gave me a book called La Cuisine Authentique de nos Grand-mères (translation: The Authentic Cooking of our Grandmothers). It is easily one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. I am currently working my way through all 400 butcher-paper pages, albeit slowly; there is only so much français a girl can read at a time, even when it pertains to la cuisine.

The book is full of the kind of French home cooking that made me fall in love with spending time in the kitchen in the first place. Best-quality ingredients are emphasized, and the recipes encourage slowing down for a minute. You simply cannot flambée les bananes au rhum with your mind on other things. (Well, I suppose you could, but in that I case I suggest you keep a fire extinguisher on hand.) Read more »

The Roaming Kitchen

Original Recipes and Culinary Yarns

Picnic