Yesterday was Jeudi noir, or Black Thursday, where pretty much everyone who works in the public sector, and many others, took to the streets across France.

It was a general strike, not just for one issue in particular, and reflected the frustration that people are feeling about their country and their President, Mr. Sarkozy, who is proposing (and implementing) the dismantling of a lot of programs that are a part of French society. True, there are certainly a few things around here that could be tightened up a bit. And cutting teachers in schools and reducing health benefits you may or may not agree with (I don't), but I give the French credit for taking to the streets when they feel their rights are abridged.

Due to a quirk in the way my website was initially set up, a short list of recipes on my Recipes page are in a format that I can't alter. A friend suggested I get an intern to re-do the recipes, but I looked at the list and scoffed—heck, I want to remake everything there! So I'm going to be re-presenting some of the recipes from the archives, updating them over the next few months or so.

One of the first recipes I put up on the site was a hot chocolate recipe from Wittamer, one of the best chocolate shops in Brussels. And let me tell you, there's plenty of competition in that town.

The pastry department is always the most popular part of the kitchen amongst the rest of the staff. (Unless I'm in it, though. Then that's debatable.) For one thing, anytime there's a staff birthday, you're called into service to make the cake. And since everyone has a birthday, folks are usually nice to you the other 364 days of the year. Another thing is that regular cooks like...no, love to snack on anything sweet.

Whenever I made biscotti, the ends and broken bits would end up on a plate in the pastry department, and almost immediately the staff would swoop down for the kill the moment the rounded end hit the plate.

After chewing for a moment, invariably, someone would always say, "You know...(pause)...I like biscotti better only once-baked."

I'm sure they were certain I was hanging on to their every word, and how I managed to resist the urge to say, "So what?"—I'll never know...

I'm not sure if there's a French term that's the equivalent of "phone tag." I'm pretty sure there isn't one for "internet tag", but I can say with relative certainty that there isn't one in English. At least I think there isn't.

I'd met Frédéric Chambeau's father about five years ago and he graciously invited me to visit their laboratoire in Paris, but hadn't heard back after our last bout of telephone messages. Then I got an e-mail from Frédéric, who'd taken over Fouquet, and after a few months of back-and forth messages, we finally kicked it into gear and made a date.

I don't think there's a comparable expression for "kick into gear", but it wouldn't be the first time I got something wrong in French. Or in English, if you want to get picky about it.

Fouquet is one of the oldest confectioners in Paris, and one of the last remaining who makes their candies and chocolates in their own shop, which is tucked away on a sidestreet near Drouot, the main auction house of Paris. Speaking of terms, when I asked him what "fouquet" meant, he told me it's an old French term for squirrels, but didn't know how the business took the name. (There's a fancy-schmancy restaurant on the Champs-Elysées with the same name, but there's no connection to them.)

When I visited Fouquet, it was just before the Christmas crush and the staff was in full swing, wrapping boxes of all sorts of treats, including colorful pâtes de fruits, orangettes (candied orange strips dipped in dark chocolate), and hand-wrapped squares of buttery salted caramel.

When I was a newbie, someone in the cookbook biz once told me that if a cookbook has one great recipe in it, it's totally worth it. And I agree with that. I have a mountain of cookbooks, and most have plenty of tempting recipes but I've only made one thing from many of them. But those that do make the cut become standards—or what we call "go to" recipes.

One such cookbook was the Joy of Cooking, which was re-published with great fanfare (and some undeserved derision) in 1997. I remember a blurb on the book jacket from a previous edition, by a bride who swore she toted the book along when she moved abroad. Which I didn't, although I was hardly a blushing bride. So at least I have an excuse.

The yogurt aisle in any French supermarket is the largest, longest, most well-stocked aisle in the store. (Wine, I think, runs a close second.) While there's a disconcerting number of dubious treats there (coconut macaron or lemon madeleine-flavored yogurt anyone?) the simplest varieties are wonderful.

I'm hopelessly boring, but I like whole milk plain yogurt, which is my afternoon snack. I eat it with dried fruits, a tipple of berry syrup, or just slicked with honey. Luckily yogurt here comes in handy 4-ounce portions, the perfect size, and I don't miss those hefty pots of purple, super sweet, gelatin-thickened gloop, which barely resembles what yogurt even is.

In between all the yogurts here, you'll find a few oddities buried in there.

Because this comes up frequently, I'd like to take a moment to explain why and when one uses corn syrup in recipes. I use it judiciously, when I feel it will make a discernible difference in a recipe. For those of you who are regular readers of the site and my books, you'll notice almost all of the time, I hardly ever use pre-packaged or convenience foods in my baking. So when I do call for something, like corn syrup, it'll often be in amounts of one teaspoon or a tablespoon. And since most recipes feed eight-to-twelve people, proportionally, that's a pretty small amount.

For example, the recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies with Salted Butter Caramel has one tablespoon of corn syrup added to the caramel, to keep it smooth. Since the recipe makes fifty cookies, that means each cookie contains less than 1/16th of a teaspoon of corn syrup.

Yes, people who live in America probably do eat too much corn syrup.

On her last visit to Paris, I introduced my cousin who's a Franco-phile, to confit de canard, knowing that she'd love it. When I saw the rapture that took over when she put that first forkful in her mouth, I could see that she was hooked as I am.

I'd taken her to Chez Dumonet, which is reliably excellent. This time, though, I'd like to take her somewhere else. A lot of restaurants offer duck confit, occasionally, but it doesn't reliably appear on menus.

You notice I don't do standard restaurant "reviews" on the site. I think dining is a personal experience and while one person might find a dish excellent, it might not be to another person's liking. Some folks like loud, hip places, and I'm more inclined to hit the classics. Another thing is that when I go out, I don't always tote my camera or want to have to remember and recount every single thing I ate, or recall every vintage I sipped during the evening.

What I like to do is to point you in the direction of places that I think you might like here in Paris.

When I was writing and churning up recipes for my ice cream book, I heard through the transatlantic wind that another ice cream book was coming out. It's hard not to be influenced by others when writing and creating recipes, and even though I was sent a copy, I didn't want to look through it, so I gave it a cursory glance, then shelved it away.

Once my book was wrapped up, I pulled Emily Luchetti's A Passion for Ice Cream off the shelf (finally!) and was happy to find there wasn't any overlap; her book focuses on desserts made with ice cream, with recipes, and mine is a more how-to book for making ice cream and other frozen desserts. As a pastry-pal and ice cream-colleague, I was relieved.

When I lived in San Francisco, I used to stop at Whole Foods occasionally and frequent the salad bar. Because I'm a big fan of cookies, I'd usually grab a cookie for dessert. It seemed like a sensible solution, at least to me. One day I noticed big, cushy-looking gingersnaps amongst all the other cookies, and picked one out. After finishing my salad, I took the cookie out of the slender brown bag and took a bite.

The cookie was spicy, yet soft, but with a good, satisfying chew. It was incredible. And to top it all off, it was non-fat. I'm not one of those people that dances around the "fat is good!...fat is flavor!" flagpole, but I don't shy away from it either.

And anyone who says "fat is good" obviously isn't aware that I'm going to the beach next month and even though our group has agreed on a "no photo" policy of shooting anyone below the neck, I'm not an entirely trusting person. And after being wrapped up all winter, who knows what's lurking under all these layers of clothing? I shudder to think.

But the reality is, I didn't particularly care if they were fat-free or not—I wanted a recipe.

Les Cocottes often gets described as a local version of an American-style diner. I don't know if that's true. For one thing, everyone speaks French. And for another, there were no snappy apron-clad waitresses pouring bottomless cups of coffee, no trucks parked outside, and no plumber-cracks hanging over the backside of the stools. After all, this is Paris, ya' know.

In fact, Les Cocottes sits on a pretty prestigious piece of land, in the seventh arrondissement, not known for good-value restaurants, or truckers. But Les Cocottes is a good value, and what makes it even better, the food is worth every centime.

Links Page

There's a splashy new look to my Links page. Voted off the island is the long list of blogs with annotations, and now you'll find an ever-changing feed of blogs and websites I read and find interesting. It will change as the various sites update, all by its lonesome, so you can check in there as frequently as you can (well, when the boss isn't looking...) and see what I'm reading. And hopefully you'll find and discover more sites about food and Paris.

(Thanks to Elise of Simply Recipes for the idea, and her tutorial. And to my web designer, Jesse, who did in probably ten minutes what would've taken a tech knucklehead like me ten hours.)

Sharing is Caring

You might, or might not, notice that at the end of each post is a little green zig-zaggy Share This icon. If you want to share a post on any of your favorite social networking sites, such as Stumbleupon, Digg, and Facebook, or email a post to someone, you can do it with a single click. Ok, I think it may be two clicks. But still, that's not too much to do. Is it?

I'm not only a fan of doing this, but I'm the President (at least around here) and do this frequently with sites I like, sharing them on my Facebook page, so I practice what I preach, spreading the seeds of link love far and wide.

This probably isn't the kind of bread that visitors come to Paris to experience, and while I like baguettes, I really, really crave breads loaded with grains. So when I was recently in Bazin to pick up my usual Bazinette aux Graines (seeded baguette), I noted a rack of these loaves lined up in the corner.

As usual, I was waited on by my favorite saleswomen. And I have to admit that her and I have a certifiable crush on each other and we always find more things to talk about than bread. When it's my turn, we make googly-eyes at each other and engage in small talk like teenagers in love, oblivious to the long line of customers growing behind me.

Tomorrow is the official start at les Soldes, the twice-annual period when the French government allows stores to discount merchandise. It usually last four weeks, although for the past couple of months, a few scofflaws have been marking things down discreetly anyways, flaunting the law in these cash-strapped times.

The area I live in is the Bastille, and it was once known as a hub of activity for furniture makers and interior designers. During the past few years, the Gap, Levis, and Nike, have muscled their way into the neighborhood as well. Unlike their American counterparts, they have to wait for the sale period as well.

I don't know when it took hold, it was well before I got here, but le Brunch is somewhat popular with a certain segment of the population in Paris. Unlike the Bloody Mary and Mimosa-fueled repasts I have fond memories of back in San Francisco, here, I don't know if the concept really works. For one thing, Sundays are blissfully "sacred" and no one seems to want to wake up and go anywhere until—well, Monday. And the places that do serve brunch are pretty crowded with misfits who probably didn't get to bed the previous evening, as well as the clad-in-black, chain-smoking bobo crowd.

I don't know about you, but the last thing I want to do on Sunday morning is wait outside in the freezing cold, breathing second-hand smoke from a bunch of bleary party-goers, both of us desperate for coffee, while waiting for a table.

I thought I'd better get this one out of the way right off the bat, at the start of the year. This recipe was languishing on my kitchen counter, resisting publication until I could resist no more. (And if you saw my kitchen counter, you'd know a piece of paper takes up about 25% of it, so I'm especially eager to get it out of the way.) I wasn't sure if it was up to snuff since I can't claim exactly 100% success, although the end result was pretty darned good.

But Carol warned me I'd better write it up, and I'm a bit scared of her after what she did to that pig's head. Although truth be told, she can blame any failures on Tom or Grant. Here, it's just me, myself, and moi.

Plus I needed the counter space.

1. The Good

I've been meaning to mix up a batch of gnocchi for a while, since I don't think there's any better way to fight off the chill of winter than a big bowl of carbohydrates swimming in melted butter.

One thing I learned during the last few days of the past year could be summed up in four words: Don't ever turn fifty.

Do whatever you can do to avoid it. I'm still reeling from the trifecta, the one-two-three punch of Christmas, my Birthday, then New Year's Eve, the last of which put me way over the top. And now that I'm in my declining years, recovery is much harder than it was just a mere week ago. I'm going downhill, fast, my friends.

The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning, my head clouded by a combination of Krug champagne, Château Lafite Rothchild 1964 and 1969 (not that I know the difference, but since the '69 was in a 4-bottle, a gigantic double magnum with a funky-looking label...I knew we were drinking something special) was right from the "What on earth was I thinking?" file.

I was wondering why I invited five people over for dinner and drinks tonight.