Thankfully, we are over that brief period of the year when the only fruits at the market are apples and pears, with a few persimmons and quince thrown in for good measure. I like those fruits very much but as winter descends and the skies turn grey (and stay that way) for the next few months, nothing brightens things up like a bowl of tangerines…
Come fall, you’ll see tartes fines aux pommes in bakeries across France. In contrast to fancy pastries many pastry shops are known for, these thin apple tarts are French baking at its most basic, and at its best. A thin crust of buttery, crackly puff pastry with a fan of baked apples on top, then glazed, these simple tarts are normally served without any accompaniment,…
When the very first Ottolenghi book came out, I had no idea what this mysterious restaurant, or person, was. But I was immediately captivated by the spectacular salads, cakes, vegetables, flatbreads, and more piled up on tables at Ottolenghi. The pictures in the book had a vibrancy that I’d not seen in any other cookbook before; mounds of vibrant-green fresh herbs piled atop salads, charred…
The Rob Roy cocktail was said to be invented at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, named after a Scottish outlaw in the 1700s, who later became a folk hero. The drink named for him is the drier cousin to the Manhattan, using blended Scotch whisky in place of the rye or bourbon. Unlike single-malt scotch, blended scotch is made from barley as…
I’ll have to admit that I love peanuts, especially when they are candied with a touch of sea salt added. For years I’ve been making all sorts of candied nuts, including these candied peanuts, but this was one of the first candied nut recipes I ever came up with and I’ve been making them ever since.
It amuses me when people talk about snooty people sitting around, leisurely eating pâté, because pâté is rustic, country fare, not considered fancy in France. While pâté can have a pastry-type crust (pâté en croûte) and some are a little fancier than others, the cousins of pâté, terrines, are truly down-to-earth. They can be baked in a special mold (you can come across them at…
I thought I’d share this recipe for Dulce de Leche Brownies from The Sweet Life in Paris because I had several jars of what the French call Confiture de lait in my refrigerator from another project. Since I happened to love the combination of caramelized milk and dark chocolate, I thought – Why not combine the two in brownies?
This rosy coup holds a drink from Cocktails de Paris, a book of cocktail recipes from Paris, published in 1929. (It’s available to download* for free here.) I was attracted to it because it called for Cherry Rocher, a French liqueur produced by a distillery that was founded in 1704 and is still making it today. Coup de roulis translates to “strong blow,” referring to…
One of my very favorite salads is Fattoush. There are various versions of the salad, whose name comes from fatta, which refers to the crumbled or torn pieces of flatbread in the salad. But I’ve never had Fattoush with buttermilk dressing, so was intrigued when I saw a recipe for it in Falastin: A Cookbook by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley, a book which eloquently…
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