The word Mincemeat doesn’t quite inspire the same rapture that it does in England, most likely due to the name. Meat isn’t something normally associated with dessert in many places (although I had an interesting chocolate and beef pastry in Sicily), but traditional mincemeat is indeed, a wonderful addition to holiday desserts. To make it, one must get suet from a butcher, which posed a…
It’s that time of year again. And that only means one thing: time to start thinking about the holiday baking. In Paris, bakery windows fill up with Bûches de Noël (Yule log cakes) and bourriches (wooden crates) of oysters are piled up at the markets. The chocolate shops are crammed with people, buying multiple boxes as gifts, and people splurge on caviar and Champagne, one of the…
There are many types of kofta, and spellings, including (but not limited to), kofta, kafta, and kufta, cooked in various countries and regions around the world. An unverified report on Wikipedia stated that in Turkey alone, there are 291 different kinds of kefta, or kofta. I don’t know how many kinds or varieties are available in the United States, but I know that if something comes…
When I moved to Paris, I didn’t live far from the Marché d’Aligre. Not known for having a great sense of direction or distance, I didn’t know how close I was and would take the bus home, loaded down with my purchases from the market. There was a closer market in the Bastille, but the Aligre market was especially bustling, and had an energy and dynamic…
With some exceptions (white chocolate in fresh ginger ice cream, caramel corn, marshmallows, and candied peanuts, for example), I tend to like things that aren’t too sweet. That occasionally confounds people because I’m a baker and I am no stranger to sugar, honey, and maple syrup. But I tend to gravitate toward things that get their flavors courtesy of chunks of bittersweet chocolate, a swirl of dark…
Yes, it’s winter in Paris. And when the temperature drops, folks move inside the cafés to escape the cold, except for the fumeurs, who are remarkably hardy and seemingly immune to the chill outside, while they puff away on café terraces. We’re all bundled up, shivering on the sidewalks, lured into the cafés with chalkboards scrawled with the words, Vin chaud. Vin chaud (hot mulled…
Before I went to Israel, I was introduced by my friend Paule to some wonderful spices and seasoning mixtures, which a friend of hers who lives in Tel Aviv brought to her. When I popped the lid off the first one, I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming aromas, some familiar – dill and garlic, and others with unidentifiable seeds and spices. She shared some of…
There’s a pretty interesting Indian community in Paris and I’ve taken to walking around areas in Paris like La Chapelle and rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, poking my nose into noisy restaurants and trying to figure out what those colorful and oddly shaped fruits and vegetables at the produces stalls are. There are all sorts of stuff in those shops and I’m particularly taken with something…
I used to wait tables in a vegetarian restaurant many years ago and one of the items on the menu was Cashew Chili. I would say about one-third of the customers would look at the menu, then look up at me, and ask – “Are there really cashews in the Cashew Chili?” It was hard to respond to that. Although the answer “Yes” seemed pretty…
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