We focused on eggplant for this first video of the week because they are still so beautiful AND I made a discovery. Find the long, snaky purple eggplant often referred to as Chinese or Japanese or Asian eggplant (Solanum melangena) and follow the video to make this amazing appetizer. You’ll be amazed. Go to Recipe …
Go to Recipe Go to Video Unhealthy? In Italian, the eggplant is called “melanzana,” which was incorrectly translated in France on its arrival from the Middle East as early as the 8th century to “mal saine” which means, literally, “unhealthy”. This evoked suspicion in the French cook and eater, which wasn’t helped by the eggplant’s …
The apéritif hour is one of the best, the transition from whatever the day has entailed to whatever the evening will bring. Glasses are raised, snacks are nibbled, cares are washed away, and a fine meal begins. To Open This wasn’t always the case. Apéritif, which comes from the Latin “aperitivus,” to open, referred to …
Go to Recipe Go to Video The notion of “cake” (pronounced “kek”) in France is a many splendored thing. It can as easily refer to a savory bread like the one here, or a sweet confection studded with candied fruits, drowned in sugar syrup, injected with rum. The word itself simply refers to whatever is …
Go to Recipe Go to Video The avocado. Is there another fruit so versatile it shines as a spread on a newly toasted slice of bread, smashed up with big, bold flavors like cayenne, lime juice, cilantro and garlic, puréed with sugar and vanilla and turned into ice cream or, even better, pie filling? As …
Go to Recipe Go to Video I love appetizers, …because I love the moment of the day they fit into. For me, that is evening before dinner, long after the sun has set in the winter; as shadows lengthen in the summer. The workday is done, I’ve been preparing a meal and all the while …
The Best Appetizer You Can Make, with Piment d’Espelette Read More »
Go to Recipe Go to Video It’s olive season!! Not here north of the Rhône, but south, YES! There, the olive oil mills are creaking open, those with olive trees are sitting at the edge of their chairs. Just waiting for the word. For it’s the mills that determine the appropriate moment to get out …
Some Do Like It Hot – Everyone’s Favorite Amuse-Bouche Read More »
Go to Video When I moved to France to really settle here thirty years ago, I lived in Louviers, a bustling town an hour outside Paris, in Normandy. I reveled in the discoveries we made, the adventures we had, the joys and frustrations of adapting to a culture that wasn’t our own. Lush Ingredients Five …
Go to Video Pesto, or Pistou? They’re almost, but not quite, the same,. To Pound Pesto, the green sauce we all know and love, originated in Genoa, in the seaside region of Italy’s Liguria. There, basil grows with abandon, and it is said that cooks in the Middle Ages were the first to grind it …
Go to Video I have a large hazelnut tree in my back courtyard, it’s tender leaves turning what would be an unbearable hotspot into an oasis. We have had countless meals under its branches, my children climbed up its smooth, bent trunk for years, my daughter’s best treasure hunt was collecting hazelnuts, prying them out …
