It’s summer! Whether you’re in or outdoors, hopefully for all of you there are beautiful summer fruits and berries to be had, and I hope that you’re able to get your hands on as many of them as you can. I am loading (actually, overloading…) myself up at the market. While a good portion on the fresh fruit gets eaten just as-is, some of it…
I think I have something wrong with me. I seem to be afflicted with a particular malady that forces me to buy way too many summer fruits when they’re in season. It gets particularly dire when faced with apricots and cherries, two fruits whose seasons are much shorter than the others. The first fresh apricots I saw were back in upstate New York, around the…
This is one of the simplest fruit tarts to make. Juicy fruits are embedded in a rich almond frangipane, making it easy to slice, and it keeps well, too. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about nectarines. Peaches get a lot of press. Yes, they’re juicy and yes they’re sweet. But honestly, I prefer the more assertive flavor of nectarines,…
Being a baker, summer is my favorite time of year. Not only are peaches, nectarines, cherries and plums abundant at the market, but as the seasons progress, the volume of fruits lowers the price, and I stock up on whatever I can, whenever I can. At Paris markets, I try to search out producteurs, the vendors who grow the food they sell, and every summer, one in…
One of the first books that made me fall in love with France and French cuisine was Roger Vergé’s Entertaining in the French Style. Vergé was the chef and owner of Moulin de Mougins, his world-famous restaurant on the Côte d’Azur, near Cannes. I never went, but used to page through the book, admiring the relaxed, friendly lifestyle that always seemed to revolve around a table,…
Years ago, at a flea market in Paris I pickup up some old metal letters from a bakery in France that spelled out PATISSERIE. Being a baker, of course I was thrilled (although still despondent that someone else snatched up the matching BOULANGERIE letters…) and proudly displayed them on the shelf of my apartment. Since my apartment at the time was so small, shelf space…
My Netflix queue has gotten out of control and is entirely too long. And to make matters worse, I keep adding to it. Being out of the U.S. for so long, I missed watching binge-worthy, must-watch classics like The Wire and Breaking Bad when they came out, and I’d love to sit down on the sofa for another few months and watch them now that…
‘Tis the season for holiday baking and I’ll admit to being on a little bit of a fruitcake bender, recently giving a Black Fruitcake a go and revisiting one of my all-time favorite recipes, Fruitcake Bars which won accolades from several French friends. (They were also surprised at how easy there were to make, too.) A while back, I gave the much-maligned fruitcake a makeover,…
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…
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