A Trio of Soups
My college-aged children arrive home for the holidays like most people’s: mere shadows of themselves, survivors of the semester, starving for mom’s cooking. I am all too ready to comply as I’ve been in the seasonal spirit for weeks. The French build up to the holidays with lovely dinners beginning in early December, […]
Beets – the Least Loved Vegetable
I can’t count the number of times I’ve presented a menu to a cooking class with a beet recipe in it, and gotten looks like I was proposing a final walk to the gallows. I proceed with a lightness of being, however, because I know what will ensue, which involves almost heavenly transformation. That’s because […]
Chicken Pot Pie a la Francaise
I heard whispers of desire emanating from the kitchen, as my children were discussing what they wanted for dinner. Tart came out on top. Since neither yearns to cook, they turned to me, plaintive looks in their eyes. I live to please, and what could satisfy this particular desire better than Chicken Pot Pie? […]
A Night of Wine Tasting
There were seven red wines to taste last night, which might seem a daunting task to some. But not to the twelve people assembled at On Rue Tatin, the lion’s share of a group of friends that meets monthly for what is, each time, an extraordinary experience. Our wine guru is Hervé Lestage, oenologue and […]
Miche’s Two Ingredient French Apricot Jam – ’tis the Season
Evreux, June 3, 2017 – Miche lived to be 101 years old. Right up until she left us she was talking about her amazing two-ingredient apricot jam, among other things, and the tricks she used to make it. She also wanted to point out the bird on the steeple outside her window and remind a visitor […]
Cooking and Teaching with a Social Purpose
Last week was extraordinary It began ten years ago, when Evelyn Isaia and her daughter, Camilla, came to a week-long cooking class I was teaching in Paris. By weeks’ end we were friends and over the years we’ve kept in close touch; I taught a class at her home in Miami, and when she and her […]
Grilled Chicken with Spicy Rhubarb
Naturally, the French cook has a way with this fleeting gift of spring. Typically, it is wrapped in buttery pastry, pureed and put under a meringue, atop ice cream, blended with cream, cooked in syrup. Here, I’m inspired by the French fascination with sugar syrup to turn rhubarb into a sweet, zesty sauce for […]
Eight Minute Salmon
I eat salmon very occasionally because I’m a salmon snob. Anyone from the Pacific Northwest is because to us, our wild Pacific salmon is mother’s milk, the essence of life. From the noble Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) to the humble humpie (Oncorhynchus gorbuschaa) we grow up eating it the way other people eat chicken, fiercely loyal to its […]
Flourless Chocolate Cake from the Grill
Baking a cake over the coals? Quelle idée. But pizza bakes perfectly over blazing charcoal, so why not biscuits, or rhubarb pie, or even a flourless chocolate cake? As any good French chef would do, I headed straight for the flourless chocolate cake, set it over the coals, closed the cover and held my breath. When I […]
Bear Garlic
Some years ago, I snitched a couple of l’ail des ours (bear garlic – allium ursinum) plants from the woods and planted them in my garden. They’ve got delicate, deep-green leaves and sweet, starburst-white flowers and they smell headily of garlic, making them lovely additions. More importantly, though, they’re “witness” plants, telling me that soon the forest […]
