Fava bean gnocchi

There hasn't been much time for experiments in my kitchen lately. That doesn't mean that I haven't been cooking, just that for the past couple of weeks most meals have consisted of leftovers from my cooking classes or the handful of dishes that I can make again and again without anyone in the house tiring of them.
This week, leftover monkfish from bourride - fish stew with aïoli - and its accompanying new potatoes came back as Thai yellow curry thanks to a tub of spice paste at the back of the refrigerator and a can of coconut milk. For lunch every day I ate a big plate of mesclun with buttery local avocados and the juiciest lemons from the organic shop across the street. With Georges' goat's cheese grilled on pain tonique - sourdough bread with sultanas, pistachios and hazelnuts - from the Moulin du Païou bakery, the meal was complete. Last night I fell back on spicy herbed meatballs served with instant couscous, cinnamon and raisins, my favorite use for the steak haché that is ground in front of me at my local butcher's. It's even better if you replace the couscous with cooked bulgur and whip up some hummus to serve with it.
Today being a holiday in France, I was in the mood to try something new and went looking for inspiration on the astounding blog B comme Bon (never mind if you can't read French, just admire the pictures). Her idea of making gnocchi with leftover fava bean purée appealed to me, even if I can't imagine ever shelling enough fava beans to have leftover purée. The instructions were charmingly vague, which made me a bit nervous as I've had some disasters in the past with non-potato gnocchi. Still, the knowledge that gnocchi and fèves are Sam's two favorite foods in the world - after chocolate, of course - gave me the incentive to try my luck.
For this recipe I looked for fully grown fèves rather than the smaller févettes, which are delicious raw but too tiny to consider using for purée. I came back with what looked like a big bag of the long, knobbly pods, but experience has taught me that no matter how many fava beans you shell, there are never enough. I ended up with about 2 cups of beans, which thanks to Sam's expert help became 1 cup of peeled beans and (sigh) about 1/2 cup of emerald green purée.



To this I added a beaten egg and a pinch of salt, as instructed by B comme Bon, then just enough flour to form the dough into long sausages. I kept in on the very soft side, for fear of producing tough little dumplings. At this stage, Sam got involved again in rolling and shaping the gnocchi. I resisted the urge to demand that they all be the same size and shape, concentrating instead on sautéeing thin strips of smoked duck breast to use as a garnish. I also mixed some chopped chives with crème fraîche, which I dolloped on top of the cooked gnocchi.
The verdict? "Génial," said Sam, who didn't mind that they were firm compared to the fluffy potato gnocchi we usually buy. I enjoyed them too, but wasn't sure that they made of the most of market-fresh broad beans. So please don't feel in the least bit guilty if you are tempted to use the frozen kind - I won't tell.


Fava bean gnocchi
Serves 2 as a main course, 3 as a starter

2 cups shelled fava beans (broad beans), unpeeled (I started with 1.2 kg of beans in their shells)
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
1 egg
A pinch of salt
About 1 1/4 cups flour (I used Italian 00 flour but all-purpose will do)
Good-quality olive oil

Garnishes:
Crème fraîche or fromage blanc mixed with chives
Smoked duck breast or bacon, cut into matchsticks and fried until golden

Blanch the shelled broad beans in boiling water for 1 min, then drain and rinse with cold water. Pop each broad bean out of its skin, making a small slit in the opposite side from the pointy tip. You should have about 1 cup of peeled beans.

In a small pan, cook the beans with the olive oil and water until very soft, then purée in a food processor or put through a food mill. (I cooked them in the Thermomix for 5 mins at 100 C and puréed them on Turbo for 30 secs).

Transfer the beans to a bowl and add the egg, salt and 1 cup of flour. Mix well to form a dough using a rounded pastry scraper or wooden spoon, then add a little more flour bit by bit until the dough is sticky but workable.

Divide it into three and roll it as best you can on a heavily floured board into long sausages. Cut into short lengths and place on a floured plate. (My gnocchi could have been smaller, as they swelled up in the water.)

Meanwhile, heat a large pot of boiling water. Add 1 tbsp of coarse salt, gently add the gnocchi and cook for about 2 mins, until the gnocchi have been floating at the surface for about 30 secs.

Drain, toss with a little olive oil and top with the garnishes.

Three nights in Rosà... and four hours in Venice

We had been driving for eight hours in pounding rain and fog only slightly less puddinglike than riz au lait. Finally, after many wrong turns and some predictable griping about Italian road signs, we arrived in the little-known town of Rosà (nice, name, don't you think?). Our great friends from Canada were staying in Cittadella, just a few kilometers away, but suddenly the distance seemed insurmountable. "We'll just eat at the agriturismo tonight," we told our friends.
I should have known that there is no such thing as "just eating" at an agriturismo, a farmhouse that doubles as a restaurant and often as a bed and breakfast. La Dolfinella's owners cheerfully told us to come to the dining room no later than 8.30pm - what they didn't say is that we would be polishing off the crumbs of our ricotta torte three hours later. Before that torte (which would make a second appearance at breakfast) came a meal that could be described with many adjectives, none of them a synonym of "balanced."
There was polenta topped with chunks of meat, grilled white asparagus and a lot of melted butter. There was crespelle, a kind of crepe, with a mascarpone, ricotta and herb filling. There was the creamiest risotto made with more white asparagus, which was at its peak when we visited. I was starting to think that I might have eaten enough when the main course came: thin slices of roast pork from the farm with sautéed potatoes and salad. Oh, and with each course there were earnest offers of seconds.
When I complimented the signora the next day on the quality of her husband's cooking, she shrugged matter-of-factly. "It's Italian cuisine," she said.
I hardly need to explain why I had soon forgotten our ordeals on the road. As for Rosà, it's one of the few places in Italy that I would not describe as pretty. The Veneto has a lot going for it - the Dolomites, half of Lake Garda, cities like Verona and Venice - but the downside of its wealth is the thousands of trucks and hundreds of warehouse-style outlets that we passed on the way to our destination. That said, the medieval towns of Cittadella and Castelfranco are beautiful, friendly and a lot easier on the nerves than nearby Venice.
Once in the area it seemed silly not to see Venice, and the rain politely stopped for the duration of our whirlwind visit. I can't pretend to have formed any original thoughts about the city in four hours, but I did see enough to convince me that there is much to discover beyond its sometimes gaudy surface. I even spotted a restaurant where I would have liked to eat, though we contented ourselves with inoffensive panini this time (not a tragedy considering what we had consumed the night before, and what we would eat the next day).


We strolled through the Rialto market at closing time, and I marvelled at the sight of trimmed raw artichoke hearts floating in lemon water. What a brilliant idea! Why has nobody thought of this in France?


In Castelfranco we hooked up with our old friend Fabio, who specializes in sniffing out extraordinary restaurants in unlikely locations. He took us to the out-of-the-way organic osteria Pironetomosca (Via Priuli, 17/C, Castelfranco), with quite a stylish decor compared to the farm kitsch at La Dolfinella. This didn't prevent the kitchen from turning out country-style food such as my white asparagus flan with creamy leek sauce, thick spaghetti (I've forgotten the exact name) laced with chunks of duck, and enormous slab of beef roasted all night long at a low temperature. This might sound like rather a lot, but I'm not joking when I say that it seemed relatively light compared to what we had eaten two nights before. We even headed straight for the gelateria in Castelfranco after this meal.
Probably my greatest discovery of this brief trip was the white asparagus from Bassano, just up the road from Rosà. Though we didn't make it to Bassano, along the strip-mall-like road between Cittadella and Rosà were stands selling its DOP asparagus, tied into fat bundles. In France I had already learned to appreciate the delicately bitter taste of white asparagus; these sweet ivory stalks that barely needed peeling were something else altogether. They were delicious boiled standing up or steamed with a lemon and hazelnut vinaigrette, but braising turned out to be the best method of all - thanks, Susan, for sending out this recipe at just the right moment.

* I know I've been promising to tell you about Liguria, but my Easter weekend in Finale Ligure has lost its immediacy. This is a place I plan to go back to again and again, so with luck you won't have to wait long to hear about the best places to eat spaghetti allo scoglio, pasta with pesto, and focaccia dressed with nothing more than olive oil and coarse salt.

Tackling the artichoke

With leaves like Cruella's spiky fingernails and a spirit just as malicious, this is not a vegetable to be taken lightly. The spiky Italian artichoke seems hell-bent on causing injury - but oh, what a reward once you conquer it.
When my wine merchant saw the vicious thorns poking out of my basket this morning, his eyes lit up. "Ce sont les meilleurs," he exclaimed. "Comme du beurre." They even got the attention of the normally reserved Jouni, who became positively enthused at the sight of my acquisition.
Spiky or not, the artichoke is not as scary a vegetable as it looks. A member of the thistle family, this flower bud varies in color from pale green-gray to deep purple and can be bigger than a grapefruit or as small as a lime. As the name suggests, it contains a hairy "choke" (known as the foin in French) that can be removed before or after cooking to reveal its well-concealed heart: the real prize for all that effort.
Big globe artichokes from Brittany are the best for steaming or boiling whole and eating leaf by leaf with vinaigrette or mayonnaise. But a more familiar sight in the south of France is the small violet-tinged artichoke known as the artichaut violet or poivrade. With barely developed chokes, these can be eaten raw, stewed with white wine, onion and carrot in a barigoule or poached just until tender in water, the juice of a lemon and a tablespoon of olive oil before being added to salads or pasta sauces.
We often cook artichauts à la barigoule in my classes as a way of introducing people to the small violet artichoke. Preparing them gets easier - and definitely faster - with practice, but requires no special skill other than a bit of patience.
Today I decided to try a recipe that I had been eyeing for a long time in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. She described it as a primitive barigoule, involving only a startling amount of olive oil, water and artichokes. The water-and-oil emulsion spits and sputters as the water evaporates leaving only oil, but it's all part of the fun (as is cleaning up afterwards).
The result reminded me of the Jewish fried artichokes I had eaten in Rome, complete with crisp outer leaves, making this recipe well worth the mess. In hindsight, I could have discarded fewer leaves than usual for this recipe as the crunchy fried leaves - like little artichoke chips - were probably the best part.

Before you start, prepare a bowl of water with the juice of a lemon. Add each trimmed artichoke to this water as quickly as possible to stop it from oxidizing (which turns it from a lovely pale yellow-green to gray).

Cut off the long stems, leaving about 5 cm (2 inches) of stem attached to the artichoke. The remaining stem can be peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces and cooked asparagus-style or made into soup.

Now cut about 3 cm (1 1/2 inches) off the top of the artichoke and discard the trimmings. You might like to keep a half-lemon nearby to rub the cut top of the artichoke before you continue.

Remove the hard outer leaves, starting at the stem and working your way up. Normally I discard at least three layers, until the leaves are pale yellow-green tinged with pink, but in this recipe you really only need to discard about two layers.
Now trim the stem using a small knife or vegetable peeler. The artichokes are ready to go into the lemon water.

When you've finished trimming all the artichokes, place them (without the lemon water) in a frying pan or saucepan that will hold them in one layer. Pour in olive oil to about halfway up the artichokes, then add water just to cover them.

Bring the water and oil to a boil over high heat. They should bubble vigorously and emulsify, creating a creamy liquid. Lower the heat only enough to minimize the spitting, but since the aim is to let all the water evaporate it has to boil hard.

When the water has evaporated and only oil is left, the spitting will calm and the oil will continue to bubble. Now keep a close eye on the artichokes. You might need to move them around a little, and I placed them stem side up towards the end to brown the leaves. It took longer than the recipe predicted, about 35-40 minutes rather than 15-20. This could be because I used a saucepan rather than a sauté pan.

Once the artichokes are golden, remove them with a slotted spoon, drain them on a paper towel and serve hot, sprinkled with fleur de sel.

Celeriac and kohlrabi rösti

With spring around the corner, the last thing I should be thinking about is knobbly, hairy vegetables that grow under the ground.
There are true wild asparagus at the market, which I've tossed with cappellini pasta, lemon zest and juice, cream and parmesan, and stirred into just-laid eggs with cubed potatoes for a frittata to be eaten on the beach (it has been that warm).

Finger-thin carrots taste sweet and delicate, even if they are just a tiny bit knobbly and hairy; I bite into them just as they are or glaze them in butter and honey with whole cumin seeds.
How do you like these violet artichokes? Trimming them is a fastidious task but the result is always worth the effort, whether I slice them raw, cook them quickly in lemony water or stew them for an hour in white wine and olive oil.

On Sunday, at the Libération market north of the train station in Nice, I spotted the season's first fava beans (also known as broad beans). They cost €8 a kilo, but I didn't hesitate for a second. "Une caprice," said the farmer, smiling knowingly. There is no better snack in spring than emerald fava beans straight from the pod, each one peeled of its bitter skin if you have the patience.
But, just as it's not quite time to put away my winter coat, I can still get excited about the earthy taste of celery root (or celeriac) and the turnipy crunch of purple-skinned kohlrabi. I picked up one of each from an organic producer at the market last weekend, not quite knowing what I would do with them. As I was idly flipping through a folder of clipped recipes, I came across a brilliant idea from Clare Ferguson in an old (2005) issue of Homes and Gardens magazine.
Her recipe called only for celeriac, but as my root was small kohlrabi seemed the obvious addition. The use of chickpea flour made these rösti slightly reminiscent of socca, that Niçois classic (note: these rösti are gluten-free). I was also delighted that the recipe called for parsley stems, something I throw away unless I'm planning to make vegetable stock.
The tomato sauce with sweet chili that Ferguson suggests would have been perfect, but as a light lunch with salad and nothing else they were very good too: sweet, slightly nutty and fresh-tasting all at once.
I seem not to be the only one who has celeriac on the brain: I was surprised to see, as I blog-hopped after that lunch, that aforkfulofspaghetti also has a post on celeriac fritters this week. They involve whole slices of celeriac, but look equally delicious.

Celeriac and kohlrabi rösti
Serves 4-6 as a side dish, 2-3 as a light lunch with salad

1 small celeriac (about 325-350 g)
1/2 kohlrabi (about 100 g)
50 g chickpea flour
A handful of parsley, stems and leaves
1 egg
2 tbsp cold water
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cracked black peppercorns
Good quality olive oil, for frying

Scrub and peel the celeriac and peel the kohlrabi. Shred coarsely by hand or using the grating attachment of your food processor.
If using the food processor (I did), replace the shredding blade with the chopping blade.
Add the chickpea flour, thinly sliced parsley leaves and stems, beaten egg, water, and seasonings. Process, in brief bursts, until the contents are fairly evenly mixed. By hand, simply mix well.
Heat a good tablespoon of oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Drop tablespoons of this mixture into the hot oil and cook for 2-3 mins on each side, until browned and cooked through. Set aside in a warm oven until all the rösti are cooked (you may need to cook them in two batches).
Serve alongside meat or with a tomato-chili sauce as a snack or light lunch.

New olive oil and salade exotique

You could easily miss Claude's trestle table among the producers at the Cours Saleya market. Little pots of hand-labelled tapenade stand next to bottles of herb-infused red wine vinegar and deep golden oil, with a few jars of honey to one side and sometimes a long loaf of pain d'épice.
It might seem like a modest collection of goods, but if Claude sold nothing more than vinegar I would still be heartbroken if she stopped coming to the market on Saturday mornings*. Perfumed with basil or slightly peppery nasturtium, this pure ingredient goes into nearly every one of my twice-daily salads. Her deep amber honey is a revelation, tasting of the rosemary, thyme and other plants that grow wild on her unruly hillside, and her oil has the delicate almond taste, typical of this area, that I've come to love.
Modest and unassuming, Claude brightens visibly when anyone shows enthusiasm for her products. Her pain d'épice, made without eggs and spiced only with anise in the Provençal way, already has an avid following; for Christmas, she produced a sugar-free version to serve with foie gras. She is the only small farmer at the market who speaks English, and many a visitor has been won over by her tasting of olive paste and tapenade.
You can imagine my excitement when Claude invited me to see her transform freshly harvested olives into oil earlier this month. There are a few stone olive mills in the hills behind Nice, but they are rarely used these days and Claude is the only producer I know of who has her own old-fashioned mill. It's a legacy from her father who, amazingly, built the whole mechanism himself using a giant stone from a perfume factory and bits and pieces from other mills. In his day, the mill could produce oil on one level and flour up above; Claude uses it only for oil, making it two or three times a year.
February might seem late in the season to make olive oil: in many parts of the olive-producing world, the harvest begins in October or November. But the little black Niçois olive, officially called the Caillette, is traditionally left on the tree until most of the olives are purply-black. This results in a deep golden oil that might at first seem too subtle if you are used to a more peppery taste. I love its almost buttery character, particularly with fragile mesclun leaves and on white-fleshed fish.
Though Claude's farm is just 40 minutes from Nice, the countryside feels surprisingly remote. We followed Pierre's wife Anne in her bright orange car towards Contes, then to Coaraze where Claude lives next door to her 87-year-old mother Marguerite. It happened to be Marguerite's birthday, and her playful eyes as she offered us a glass (or three) of her own very quaffable wine told me immediately that she is a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, Marguerite kept an eagle eye on the olive oil making process all day, often pitching in to show how it's done.

First about 300 kilos of freshly picked olives went into the big stone mill, which efficiently ground the flesh and pits to a black paste. This so resembled tapenade that a couple of people, Philippe included, couldn't help dipping their fingers in. "Beurk!" Olives straight off the tree are horribly bitter.

Eventually the oil started to separate from the paste. This clear oil could be scooped out with a ladle, and tasted remarkably sweet and almondy.

Then Claude turned on a tap and nearly filled the big stone basin with lukewarm water, causing the oil to float to the top. While this was going on, a volunteer farm worker from Vermont (you too can work on an organic farm in exchange for room and board by visiting Wwoof) took us on a tour of the property. Taking care of nearly 300 olive trees and a few beehives too is a daunting task for Claude and her mother, and Claude has come to rely on her "wwoofers," volunteers from around the world who stay for a week or longer.

We said hello to the beautiful goats, who sadly no longer supply cheese for the market. Claude's goat cheese was legendary at the Cours Saleya, but European Union regulations forced her to stop her artisanal production and she didn't feel able to invest in the separate, surgically clean building that is now required. These regulations explain why there is now so little farmer's cheese to be found in this area. Luckily, the EU bent its rules for the olive mill thanks to its steel mechanism, which was considered nearly as hygienic as stainless steel.

Since Claude gave up making cheese she has taken up beekeeping, a project she originally intended to share with her sister. Unfortunately, her sister had a severe allergic reaction to her first bee sting and Claude is now on her own.

Sam had a go at beating the olives off the trees, which takes some strength.

Back at the mill, golden oil was floating on the water. We took turns scooping up the oil with a a holey frying pan intended for roasting chestnuts and transferring it to a bucket before filtering it. I wasn't entirely sure why we were using a pan with holes in it (and forgot to ask), but I think it allowed any water to run out before we poured the oil into the bucket. On either side of the mill, helpers used small brooms to sweep the oil towards the scooper. The most efficient helper was Marguerite, who can remember olive harvests year by year back to the 1940s.

Finally, Claude's sister toasted slices of baguette in the fire for the brissauda. We rubbed these with garlic, dipped them in the fresh oil and sprinkled them with oregano: heaven. I thought about how many people must have indulged in this ritual over thousands of years, and how lucky I was to be taking part.

By the time our potluck lunch was served we were a little less hungry, but all of us ate with gusto anyway: Claude with her mother, sister and nephew, Pierre, Anne and their two sons, Nadim, us, a few wwoofers and a couple of friends of Pierre. I contributed a bulgur and red pepper salad that Claude dubbed salade exotique, while Pierre brought fennel from his farm which, in Nadim's words, tasted as if they had been dipped in pastis. We simply cut the bulbs in half and bit straight into their white flesh, dipping them first in olive oil of course. Claude prepared a huge dish of pasta while her sister, who lived in Greece for 10 years, made a delicious Greek pea stew. Then there were several cakes, including a birthday one for Marguerite.

After lunch Claude got straight back to work, pressing the pulp to extract more oil (which she would use for her flavored oils) and then draining the water into a rectangular basin outside. My job was to gently rake the oil from the top of this basin while Philippe scooped it into a bucket.
Making oil this way is labor-intensive and Claude could easily save herself the trouble by taking her olives to a modern mill, which would turn them into oil with zero effort on her part in a couple of hours. But I got the feeling that keeping this mill running is an ongoing gesture of respect for her father's ingenuity and hard work.
We were the last to leave and, when we did, Claude presented us with a bottle of cloudy oil to take home. I'm tempted to treasure it, but I also know that oil this fresh is best savoured quickly.

* Claude is taking her annual break, but will be back at the market at the end of March.

My bulgur and red pepper salad came from the Casa Moro book, though I found the recipe in my Books For Cooks 7 collection. Red peppers aren't exactly in season, but at this time of year I think it's OK to overlook that kind of thing occasionally. I found that I needed to soak the coarse bulgur for a lot longer than the recipe said, and I added the juice of a lemon to the dressing. Of course, I also doused the salad liberally with olive oil fresh from the mill.


Salade exotique
Serves 4-6
(adapted from Casa Moro)

3 red peppers
175 g (6 oz/1 cup) medium or coarse bulgur
6 spring onions, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp hot paprika (I used Espelette pepper)
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp each roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley and mint
1 tbsp roughly chopped fresh dill
Salt, black pepper

Grill the peppers either under a preheated overhead grill or over the naked flame of a gas hob, or on a barbecue and cook, turning, until evenly charred and blistered all over. Put the peppers in a bowl, cover with a plate, and leave for 10 mins while the trapped steam loosens the peppers skins so that they may be easily slipped off. Then peel, core and seed the peppers before very finely chopping to a semi-purée.

Soak the bulgur in warm water for 15-45 mins or until no longer hard in the center, then squeeze dry and put in a large mixing bowl with the chopped peppers, spring onions, garlic, paprika, tomato paste, olive oil, lemon juice and fresh herbs. Mix everything well together and add salt and pepper to taste.

La trouchia - Swiss chard omelette

Something I've learned over time at the Cours Saleya market is that things are not always as they appear.
So, with my heart set on trouchia for lunch, I didn't panic when I saw that the producer famed among local chefs for her Swiss chard had laid out nothing more than mixed salad leaves, a dozen lemons and a few cartons of eggs on her trestle table. Sneaking a discreet peek under the table, I asked her sweetly, "You wouldn't happen to have any blettes, would you?"
Her eyes narrowed. "How many bunches do you need?"
Triumph. The chard - or silverbeet, as it's sometimes called - had been set aside for those who could prove they wanted it badly enough. Happily I've shopped at this market long enough to know just who might be hiding what, and for whom (as I walked away with the chard I saw the chef who had no doubt reserved most of the day's harvest).
I've always had a fondness for chard's thick ribs and crinkly, spinach-like leaves, but only in Nice has this vegetable become something I couldn't possibly live without. Centuries before they tasted their first vine-ripened tomatoes, the farmers in the hills behind Nice made hardy Swiss chard their staple vegetable. It stretches small amounts of meat in Niçois ravioli and lentil-sausage stew and stars as the main ingredient in tians and tourtes, including a sweet variation with pine nuts, raisins and rum. Some producers sell a thin-ribbed local variety, which is perfect for recipes that call only for the leaves.
I love it that a chef like Franck, who goes through caviar and truffles by the case at the Louis XV in Monaco, can get so excited when instructing me on how to make la trouchia, a thick Swiss chard omelette with just enough egg to bind it together. They key is not to precook the chard but to get the temperature just right so that the leaves don't give off too much water as they cook. It's safest to cook it in a non-stick pan, though I've got away with using my well-seasoned cast iron pan.
If you find yourself with any leftovers (we never have), try them tucked into a sandwich, just as Franck's mother used to do - preferably standing on a mountainside with wild thyme and rosemary at your feet.

Because trouchia makes great picnic food and is vegetarian to boot, I'm submitting this recipe to Mansi's blogging event Game Night. Eat it hot, warm, cold, in a sandwich or cut into bite-sized pieces and served with toothpicks.


La trouchia
Serves 2-4

The quantities for this recipe aren't precise - just use enough egg so that the mixture doesn't seem too dry and don't skimp on the parmesan. Feel free to add chopped garlic and some mint or basil if it's in season.

1 bunch Swiss chard (silverbeet), leaves only
1/2 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
3-4 eggs, just enough to bind the mixture
50 g parmesan cheese (about 2 oz)
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
2-3 tbsp good quality olive oil

Wash and dry the chard leaves well (I often let them soak for about 30 mins in salted water to remove some of the bitterness). Slice them very thinly and place in a large bowl with the chopped parsley leaves. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and add to the chard, adding three eggs at first and a fourth (or even a fifth) if necessary. Grate the parmesan and stir it into the mixture along with the seasonings.

Warm the oil over medium heat in a heavy frying pan (24 cm seems to be an ideal size) with a tight-fitting lid. Add the chard and press down with a wooden spoon to flatten the mixture. Cover, lower the heat a little and cook for about 15 mins, until the base is browned. Keep an eye on it to be sure that it doesn't cook too quickly or slowly. Now place a large plate over the pan, put on some oven mitts and flip the omelette over onto the plate. Slide it back into the frying pan, cover again and cook for another 5-10 mins, until lightly browned on the other side. Serve hot, warm or cold.

Pumpkin pie with perfect pastry

Why pumpkin pie, you might ask, when Thanksgiving is over?
Well, for one thing, this pumpkin pie is good enough to make just for the pleasure of eating it, and not only as part of a harvest ritual that will leave you far to stuffed to appreciate it. And, for another, it gives me an excuse to talk about a method of making pastry that has changed my life - and just might do the same to yours.
I've published this pastry recipe before, as part of July's strawberry tart. But at the time I didn't realize quite how significant a revelation it was.
Over many years of making pastry, I'd come to accept that pâte sucrée, sweet pastry rich with butter and egg yolk, is tricky to work with. Unlike pâte sablée (short pastry), in which the butter is kept cold, pâte sucrée is usually made with butter at room temperature. This means that you have to chill the dough before you can work with it - at least for a couple of hours but preferably overnight. When you remove the dough from the refrigerator it is inevitably too hard to roll out right away, which calls for even more patience (or, in my case, some vigorous banging with a rolling pin to soften the dough). Once you finally roll it out, you have to let it rest again - preferably for an hour or two - so that it doesn't shrink when it bakes.
The soft-butter method, favored by star bakers such as Pierre Hermé and Eric Kayser, is ill-suited to the impulsive baker - what could be better, after all, than realizing that you have a couple of spare hours in front of you and deciding to treat your family and/or friends to a homemade tart? Enter this foolproof recipe, which I came across in the Books for Cooks no. 7 recipe compilation. This is the standard recipe in the Books for Cooks kitchen, which turns out beautiful cakes and tarts every day, and it has fast become my favorite too.
The ingredients are the same as for traditional pâte sucrée, but the butter comes straight out of the fridge and the water is ice-cold. You could make it by hand, but I've had the best results using the food processor, which keeps the ingredients cool. The magic part of the recipe is that once the dough comes together you roll it out right away, skipping a step that can take up to 12 hours in other recipes. Because the ingredients are cold, the dough is soft, silky and a joy to roll out.
You do need to let the rolled-out dough rest for at least an hour in the refrigerator, but that should be easy to do while you prepare the filling. For some recipes - such as my fig tart with almond cream and this pumpkin pie - I bake the pastry directly with the filling, but you can also bake it blind the standard way, by lining it with parchment paper filled with dried beans or rice. If you freeze the pastry before blind-baking it, you shouldn't need to weigh it down - just keep an eye on it and pop any bubbles with the tip of a knife.
Should you want to use this pastry for a savory tart, all you need to do is leave out the sugar. Try this recipe once and you'll wonder why you would ever go to the trouble of buying ready-made pastry.

Pumpkin pie
Serves 6

Canadian Thanksgiving comes several weeks before the American celebration, which means that I'm usually completely unaware of it. By the time American Thanksgiving rolls around, fall has really come to the Côte d'Azur and I'm in the mood to make this pie. It's a hit with the Niçois, who have been making sweet tarts with vegetables for centuries.

Pastry:
6 oz (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour (175 g)
5 tbsp confectioner's (icing) sugar (45 g)
Pinch of salt
3 oz very cold butter, in pieces (90 g)
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp ice water (30 ml)

Filling:
A piece of pumpkin or winter squash weighing a little more than 1 lb (500 g)
A little vegetable oil
2 oz Speculoos biscuits or other spice biscuits
3 eggs
1/2 cup whipping cream (double cream) (125 ml)
4 oz light brown sugar (110 g)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp dried ginger
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
A pinch of salt

For the pastry: Sift the flour and confectioner's sugar and place in the bowl of a food processor with the salt. Pulse once or twice to combine. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the egg yolk and water and process until the dough forms a loose ball. Be careful not to overmix, but do let the dough come together. Turn the dough out onto a board and form into a ball with your hands. Flatten with the heel of your hand.

Flour the board and roll the pastry out quickly, turning it now and then and lightly flouring the board and rolling pin as necessary. Line a tart tin with this pastry, pressing it well into the corners to prevent shrinkage. Let the excess hang over the sides. Trim the pastry or, if your tin has sharp metal edges, cut off the excess with a rolling pin. Then press the pastry a little above the edge of the tin all the way around. Place the pastry in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

For the filling: Lightly oil the pumpkin or squash and bake in the oven at 375 F (180 C) for about 1 hour, until soft. Peel it and purée in a food processor or, better, though a food mill (mouli-légumes) to remove the fibers. If it seems very wet, drain the purée in a fine strainer for a few minutes.

Blend the spice biscuits to coarse crumbs in a blender or food processor, or place them in a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.

In a bowl, beat the eggs. Add the pumpkin purée, cream, sugar, spices and salt. Sprinkle the spice biscuit crumbs over the uncooked, chilled pastry and top with the pumpkin filling. Bake at 375 F (180 C) for about 45-50 mins, until the filling is set and lightly browned.

This tart tastes best to me when it's cold, and the cream, although pretty, is a rather unnecessary flourish. If you do use cream, you might like to sweeten it with maple syrup.

Tian de courge

Sorry tomatoes, we had a great time this summer but you are already no more than a distant memory. Squash have caught my eye, their colors and shapes as varied and fascinating as autumn leaves.
The first to distract me from your plump sweetness was the courge de Nice, an astonishing vegetable (or, technically, fruit) which starts out as tender, deep green trompette zucchini before swelling to monster proportions and finally turning orange. To appreciate its subtle flavor I blend it into a smooth soup, thickening it at the end with a mixture of egg yolk, crème fraîche and olive oil.
Next came the potimarron, a round, pointy-tipped squash whose deep orange flesh is often flecked with green. Its name translates as "chestnut squash" because its dense, not-to-sweet flesh is reminiscent of roasted marrons. The potimarron is a challenge to prepare for a soup (though well worth the effort) but, once roasted, its peel becomes soft and edible.
This morning on the market stands, butternut squash jostled with the round, ridged courge musquée - a meatier French version of the American pumpkin - and beautiful pale blue-green squash from the potimarron family.
I'm never entirely sure when to use the word courge, potiron or citrouille, but it's some consolation that the market vendors seem similarly confused. Courge (winter squash in English) is a more general term that encompasses the potiron and citrouille - the latter of which seems to refer to American-style orange pumpkins.
I bought the pumpkin pictured here - a relative of the courge musquée, I think - to try a recipe for tian de courge. Tians are named after the round, double-handled earthenware dishes in which they are cooked, and I often make these vegetable bakes with Swiss chard, zucchini or tomato and eggplant in summer. Tian de courge is another Provençal classic that I hadn't explored in depth.
In the first recipe I tried, diced raw pumpkin was slowly baked with rice, herbs, garlic and a little flour. With its breadcrumb topping, I could imagine this dish being deliciously caramelized and indeed it did have some toothsome crunchy bits. But the rice and the mace I had used instead of nutmeg took over, leaving the pumpkin in the shadows, and the flour was unnecessary.
The remaining piece of pumpkin wasn't enough for a second attempt, which proved fortunate. When I picked up another chunk from Mme Luciano, a producer based near Villefranche sur Mer, she told me her secrets to making a great tian de courge.
"We produce a lot of squash," she says, "so I need to find many ways to use them. I always precook the squash in a frying pan, never in water, with a minimum of olive oil. Then I mix the cooked squash with rice, parmesan, nutmeg and eggs. You can add a little cream but it's really not necessary. Sometimes, for a change, I bake it in a pie crust."
Using these instructions it was easy to perfect my tian de courges. For extra flavor and color I topped it with Provençal breadcrumbs, which are one of the few things I keep in my freezer (along with a bag of blueberries, homemade chicken stock and little balls of leftover pastry that will probably end up in the bin). But ordinary breadcrumbs would be fine too. Feel free to vary the recipe by adding garlic, different herbs or little pieces of fried bacon.
Tomatoes, in case you think I've abandoned you for good, this pumpkin thing may be just a passing infatuation. I doubt that I'll resist your flamboyant charms next summer.

This is my first entry to Weekend Herb Blogging, an event that I'd heard and read so much about but never got my act together to enter. This week's host is Pille of the fascinating Estonian food blog Nami Nami.


Tian de courge
Serves 6

1 kg pumpkin or squash flesh, peeled and diced (about 2 lbs)
1 tbsp olive oil
50 g short-grain rice, such as arborio (2 oz, 1/4 cup)
50 g freshly grated parmesan cheese (2 oz)
2 large free-range eggs
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Freshly grated nutmeg
Provençal breadcrumbs (see recipe)
Olive oil, for drizzling

In a large frying pan, cook the pumpkin in the olive oil with a sprinkling of salt until it softens and starts to disintegrate, about 20-25 mins. If there is a lot of liquid left towards the end, raise the heat to let most of it evaporate, but the pumpkin doesn't need to be very dry.

Meanwhile, precook the rice for 10 mins in boiling salted water, drain and set aside. Whisk the eggs in a small bowl.

Place the cooked pumpkin in a large bowl and combine with the rice, parmesan and salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste. When it has cooled slighly, mix in the eggs quickly so that they don't scramble. The mixture might seem on the liquid side, but don't be alarmed. Pour it into an oiled gratin dish, top with the Provençal breadcrumbs and a generous drizzling of olive oil, and bake at 180 C (375 F), preferably on the convection setting, for 35 mins or until set. Serve warm, with a salad or as an accompaniment to meat.

Provencal breadcrumbs

I originally used these for breading rack of lamb, but soon found myself sprinkling the leftovers onto all sorts of baked and roasted vegetables.

1 small bunch flat leaf parsley, the leaves picked from the stalks
Leaves from 4 good size sprigs of thyme or rosemary
2 cloves garlic, peeled
100 g dried bread, such as baguette (3 1/2 oz)
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

For the breadcrumbs: In a food processor, blend together all the ingredients except the olive oil. Add the olive oil and blend until the breadcrumbs are soft and green, adding a little more oil if necessary. Season well with salt and pepper. Keep airtight in the refrigerator or freezer (in a plastic bag or jar) until you need them.

Domesticity

When I moved to France in my mid-20s I left a life of domesticity behind. I had been playing housewife since I was 19 and it was time to go off on my own, unburdened by the battery of kitchen equipment and glossy food magazines I had accumulated over seven years.
In Paris, it became a game to prove that no dish was unachievable with my minimalist equipment: two temperamental burners, a mini fridge and an oven just big enough to hold one small tin of brownies. I whipped egg whites by hand to make (mini) cheese soufflés and rustled up vegetarian lasagne with fresh artichokes, eggplants and mushrooms from the market when my friends came over. I no longer had a breadmaker or a pizza peel, but in my new location around the corner from some of the world's greatest bakeries, Poilâne among them, this wasn't an issue.
As my life has grown more domestic once again, the appliances have started creeping back into my kitchen: first a lime-green Magimix food processor, then (oh, joy!) a scarlet KitchenAid mixer, my sister's wedding gift to us. But I would still say I've been pretty restrained - until a few weeks ago, when I definitively crossed back into the camp of the appliance-crazed.
It all started with a search for the perfect blender. I was frustrated with the way my green food processor, pretty as it looks, couldn't make a satisfying smoothie or whiz a soup to a creamy purée. I started shopping around and saw that a powerful blender costs €150 and up. Around this time, Ximena wrote alluringly about making homemade Nutella in the Thermomix. The thought of a machine that could grind hazelnuts to a fine powder, melt chocolate without burning it and whip a few ingredients into a smooth paste piqued my interest. The machine's cultish side added a certain mystery: you either have to buy one from a representative, Tupperware-style, or take the risk of ordering an older, perhaps pieced-together model on eBay.
The price difference between the powerful blender and the Thermomix didn't seem that great, until I decided to go for the most recent model available on eBay, the TM21, rather than an orange model from the 1970s (Thermomixes are said to be indestructible, something that I sincerely hope is true). This machine is neither new nor fashionable, though it is catching on with chefs - Philippe grew up with one in his kitchen, and in Spain it's considered a kind of Valium substitute for housewives. My second-hand, 1998-vintage machine cost €415, about the same as a new KitchenAid. Do I regret it? Not for a moment.
It's not the prettiest appliance in my kitchen with its functional black, white and stainless steel design, but the Thermomix is probably the closest thing you could have to a friendly little robot that does the cooking for you. I had to get the Nutella recipe out of my system (total success) before I could start experimenting with the 1,000 or so recipes that came on a computer disk, which incidentally I couldn't open on my Macintosh.
The only disappointment has been smoothies, which were one of the reasons I wanted to buy a blender in the first place. Thrilling as it is to use, the turbo setting really works best with larger quantities of liquid - at least 1 litre (4 cups) is ideal. When I've tried to make smoothies for one or two people, I've ended up with frustrating lumps of fruit.
But the Thermomix's many qualities compensate for this. I know that its possibilities are almost endless - crumbles, stews, cookies, bread, granite - but so far I haven't got much beyond playing with different soups. I love it that I can let the machine do the chopping, heating and stirring, only intervening to press the Turbo button at the end (or not if I want a chunkier texture).
I want to reassure you that I don't plan to dedicate this blog to the Thermomix - devoted as I am to it, I still consider it just one of many tools in my kitchen, the most important of which are my hands. Once in a while, I will include Thermomix instructions alongside the conventional recipe if I think they might be helpful, though most recipes are easy to adapt once you know how to use the machine.
If you don't have a Thermomix - and chances are you don't, as they are really a European phenomenon - don't let that stop you from making this cream-free soup with a vegetable that people, for some reason, don't often think of pureeing. To make it, I used some wonderful young broad beans that one producer at the market had planted late, resulting in spring-like vegetables in early October. You could also use green beans, being sure to remove any strings.

Broad bean soup with bacon and sage
Serves 2-3

2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
13 oz broad beans or green beans (350 g)
1 medium potato
2 cups vegetable stock (I used Marigold bouillon powder)
4 oz bacon (100 g)
A few fresh sage leaves

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the finely diced onion and a pinch of salt, and stir over medium-low heat for a few minutes until the onions become translucent.

Top and tail the broad beans and chop them quite small. Peel the potato and cut it into small dice. Add the beans and potatoes to the onions, stir well, then add the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for about 10 mins, or until the beans and potato are tender. Purée the soup in a powerful blender and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cut the bacon into small pieces and fry until golden (if using French lardons, I think it's worth blanching them for 1 minute first to remove some of the salt). Remove the cooked bacon from the fat with a slotted spoon and fry the sage leaves in the bacon fat until crisp. Top the soup with the bacon and a couple of sage leaves before serving.



Thermomix instructions: Heat the oil for 3 mins at 100 C, speed 2. On speed 6, add the quartered and peeled onion through the hole in the lid and chop for 10 seconds, or until there are no big lumps. Heat for 3 mins at 90C, speed 2. Add the whole, trimmed beans and chop on speed 6 for 10-15 secs. Add the vegetable stock and peeled and diced potato and cook for 10 mins at 100 C, speed 2. Purée on Turbo for 1 min and season to taste with salt and pepper.

For the garnishes, proceed as in the recipe above.

Perugina sausages

As I wander through the streets of the Old Town in Nice I try to imagine what they must have looked like 50, 100, 200 or 400 years ago (my building, a former monastery, dates from the early 1600s). The street names recall that these narrow lanes were once devoted to food: rue de la Poissonnerie (fish market street), rue de la Boucherie (butcher street), place de la Halle aux Herbes (herb market square). I can just picture the chaos of colors and sounds, the animals dangling from hooks and the fish still squirming in their baskets, like in the fish market on the Vieux Port in Marseille.
Traditional food shops are becoming increasingly scarce in the Old Town, and it was with a sinking feeling that I saw Boucherie Agu, a landmark butcher on the Cours Saleya, and Biscuiterie Toretti, a back street bakery that in the mornings only turned out the butteriest croissants and the best pissaladière from its wood fired oven, close for good within a few months of each other. Thankfully some wonderful food shops remain, among them Barale, a fresh pasta shop founded in 1892; Boucherie Viale, the smallest and friendliest butcher in the Old Town; Fenocchio, with its display of 96 ice cream flavors including tourte de blettes (a sweet Swiss chard tart); and Charcuterie Ghibaudo.

Dinna and Laurent, the young couple who run Charcuterie Ghibaudo, are the kind of people who give me hope for the future of the Old Town. Interestingly, they are not from here: Dinna, to my initial astonishment, is from Florida and Laurent is from northern France. They met in Florida, where Laurent was working as a chef, and moved to France to train at a charcuterie in suburb of Paris, then with another pork specialist in Savoie. When they found a narrow little boutique for rent in rue Pairolière that had been a charcuterie since 1870, they knew that they would settle in Nice.
For Laurent this was not a big leap - his family was in the business - but imagine the change for Dinna, who had been a beautician in Florida. She has adapted beautifully, with perfect French and a complexion to rival Marie Quatrehomme's. When customers accuse her of being an outsider (the Niçois are inclined to do that sort of thing), she retorts with the words, "I'm half Greek and half Italian, so my ancestors were probably here before yours." This is just the kind of feistiness that is required to run a business in Nice, though Dinna is also unfailingly cheerful and clearly loves her new life.
Even if Dinna and Laurent are relative newcomers to Nice, they have mastered all the local specialties: trulle (blood sausage with Swiss chard and rice), les petits farcis (stuffed vegetables) in summer, porchetta (pork stuffed with its meat, tripe and liver), and my all-time favorite sausage, the Perugina. It's safe to assume that these plump and meaty little sausage originally came from Perugia, one of many Italian traditions that took root in Nice. It can be eaten fresh, semi-dried or cured, and gets its zing from coarsely ground pepper. Laurent - who makes everything in the shop himself from whole pigs except the Parma ham and mortadella - flavors the Perugina with garlic or fennel, and I always choose fennel.

For the Niçois there is really only one way to cook Perugina sausages: with lentils. Yes, you can grill them or roast them in the oven (I've done this with strips of red pepper), but lentils are their most natural, and best, partner. I make this hearty dish no matter what the season, and feel justified in doing so since it is currently on the menu at La Merenda. Last time I was there for dinner, I sat next to a table of Italians who all ordered this dish - and they had been there for lunch the same day and ordered the same thing.
Last night's lentils with Perugina sausages were a simplified version of my usual recipe - I didn't have any celery to sauté with the carrots and onion, and my fridge was strangely bereft of flat parsley leaves for adding a splash of color at the end. I also like to add a couple of handfuls of slivered Swiss chard leaves a few minutes before the end of the cooking time. But there are times when you have to make do with what's in your fridge, especially when preparing peasant food. That said, it's important to use Puy lentils from the Auvergne or good quality green lentils, which hold their shape when cooked.
Sam, who has taken to assigning points for good parenting (did I mention that he is cheeky?), awarded me 97 points for this dish - and this is a boy who just a few months ago used to spit out lentils. Persistence really does pay off when it comes to kids and food.

Lentils with Perugina sausages
Serves 2-3

1 small red onion
1 medium carrot
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove
1 cup Puy lentils
3 cups water
2 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
6 Perugina sausages or your favorite Italian sausages
Salt and pepper, to taste
A handful of flat parsley leaves (if you have them!)
Your best olive oil, for drizzling

Dice the onion finely and thinly slice the carrot. Crush the garlic clove and remove the skin. Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and crushed garlic and sauté over medium-low heat until they are soft and just starting to turn golden.

Add the lentils, water, thyme and bay leaf. Partially cover the saucepan and cook for 10 minutes at a gentle bubble. Add the sausages and seasonings to taste, partially cover and cook for another 10-15 mins. The stew is done when the liquid starts to thicken - if this doesn't happen after 25 mins, remove the lid and let it reduce slightly at a gentle boil. To serve, remove the thyme and bay leaf. Cut the sausages in half lengthwise or into slices and arrange over the lentils. Sprinkle with chopped flat-leaf parsley (I used finely diced red onion and red pepper, since I had no parsley) and drizzle with your best olive oil.

Haricots magiques

One of the things I love about shopping at the Cours Saleya market is that everything I prepare has significance. Producers want to know how I made use of their freshly picked vegetables and will tell me off for any lapses in judgement. Other shoppers listen in critically, throwing in their own remarks on how best to stuff les petits farcis (little stuffed vegetables) or fry zucchini flowers (the batter should be made with water, not milk, or frankly you don't deserve to frequent this market).
Producer Loulou was particularly proud of his ratte potatoes this year, which he sold at the market for two Saturdays running before there were none left. The ratte is a small, yellow-fleshed waxy potato, similar to what's called a fingerling in the United States. A similar tuber also goes by the name banana potato. When Philippe bought a large bag of these potatoes in my absence, Loulou wouldn't sell them to him until he promised that they would all be cooked within two days.
The next week, I duly reported that I had made roast potatoes, sautéed potatoes and potato salad. (Philippe, as you might have gathered, does not do most of the cooking in our house, though he makes up for it by washing dishes with boundless patience.) "How did you make your potato salad?" he retorted. "With green beans I hope? In Provence we say that's how a woman holds on to her man."
I would have thought that cooking potatoes three ways would be enough, especially for a man as easy-going as Philippe, but I've spent too much time in the south of France to discount the local lore entirely. Each time I have made potato salad since then, I've thrown in beans almost superstitiously. It helps that I have plenty of beans to choose from: yellow wax beans, purple beans that turn deep green when cooked, and the pelandron, a local variety with a mottled green-and-purple skin (again, it loses its color in contact with water, but it's a particularly tender and fast-cooking bean).
Yesterday I found myself with potatoes barely bigger than marbles from producer Dominique and the skinniest green beans with their flowers still attached, scoped out by Franck who never misses a thing at the market. Such tender little vegetables deserved careful treatment, so I forgot about my usual punchy mustard and red wine vinegar dressing and opted for simple lemon and olive oil instead. I cooked the potatoes in boiling salted water (nothing revolutionary there) and steamed the green beans lightly before tossing them with olive oil and juicy sliced garlic from organic producer Joël in a sauté pan. The green beans were piled on top of the potatoes, with some snipped chives courtesy of Sam and his scissors. Served with the crunchy, Romaine-like lettuce called sucrine and generously drizzled with the lemon dressing, this made a light Sunday night meal with George's exceptional goat cheese.
I don't know about Philippe, but I for one was happy to have my first tomato-less meal in weeks.

I'm off to Bergamo, Italy on Wednesday for two days! I'll be back to tell you about my latest adventures in one of my favorite Italian towns.

Fregola sarda

I had great plans for my bag of fregola sarda, which I bought at the Italie à Table show on the Promenade des Anglais back in early June. I meant to thoroughly research this Sardinian pasta, which looks like overgrown couscous grains or coarsely ground almonds that have been toasted until golden.
But then I was hungry, I had some diced raw eggplant leftover from the previous day's ratatouille and Sam was starting to get restless. I reached for the bag of penne but the fregola sarda was calling out to me, full of mystery and promise.
I remembered the woman who sold them to me saying something about tomatoes, which was all I understood of her rapid-fire instructions in Italian. Even at the height of tomato season my cupboard is never without a can of Mutti* crushed tomatoes, which I decided on impulse to combine with flavors that seemed to me vaguely Sardinian. There was time only for the briefest internet search to see how long to cook these little toasted pasta bobbles (about 12-15 minutes, or until just tender).
The result was a hugely satisfying dish thanks to the texture contrasts: the firm bite of the toasted pasta, the crunch of the walnuts, the silkiness of the eggplant and the dry crumbliness of the 40-month-old parmesan, which I also bought at the Italian show. Next time I would add chili pepper, as it seemed the pasta could take quite a bit of seasoning. I held back this time because of Sam, who reacts as if I've tried to kill him if I add the tiniest pinch of chili pepper to a dish: he grabs his throat, turns a dramatic shade of purple and spits out the offending mouthful. I at least had the satisfaction of seeing him gobble up the pasta, which looked to him like tiny gnocchi.
Note: I've just discovered that fregola sarda can be cooked like rice, by letting the cooking water evaporate. Luckily I still have half a bag left.

* I've just visited the Mutti website and discovered that Mutti claims to have INVENTED tomato pulp in 1971. I wonder how Italians made tomato sauce before then?

Fregola sarda with eggplant and walnuts
Serves 2

9 oz fregola sarda (250 g)
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
1 small eggplant, cut into 1/2-inch (1 cm) dice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can crushed Italian tomatoes
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
A handful of shelled walnuts
A handful of flat (Italian) parsley leaves
A sprig of mint, leaves only
Fresh parmesan
Your best olive oil

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the coarse salt and throw in the fregola sarda. Cook for 12-15 mins, checking for tenderness now and then after about 10 mins. Drain in a fine strainer.

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large frying pan. Add the eggplant and toss to coat with the oil, then cook, stirring occasionally, until soft. Add the canned tomatoes, rosemary and salt and pepper to taste. Cook over medium-high heat until thickened.

Meanwhile, toast the walnuts on a baking dish in the oven at 375 F (180 C) until fragrant and lightly browned. Chop coarsely.

Chop the parsley and mint leaves.

Toss the pasta with the tomato-eggplant sauce and divide between two serving bowls. Top with the walnuts, herbs and shaved parmesan (use a vegetable peeler for this). Drizzle with your best olive oil.

Ratatouille

Living in the home of ratatouille, this is not a recipe that I take lightly. I make it only in the height of summer with eggplant whose skin is as flawless as a baby's, tomatoes that have basked luxuriantly in the sun, pale green zucchini so fresh that their yellow flowers are still open, and peppers whose skin gleams red or yellow.
The US release of the Disney film Ratatouille - which comes to French theaters on August 1st - smack in the middle of ratatouille season has brought this dish to the forefront of my mind. Writing an article for Agence France-Presse on the origins of this humble stew gave me an excuse to delve into my Provençal cookbooks, have a food chat with Franck Cerutti and eat dinner at the quirky Niçois bistro La Merenda, where I always take my visiting foodie friends (even if they do kick us out rather unceremoniously to make room for the next sitting).
The name, in case you're wondering, comes from the French word touiller, meaning to stir. According to the Larousse Gastronomique ratatouille once referred to "an unappetizing stew," which is exactly what happens when ratatouille is assembled hastily and cooked for too long. It's unlikely ever to taste bad if you make it with summer vegetables, but the better Provençal cooks aim for clarity in this dish, with each vegetable preserving its taste, color and texture.
I long resisted buying Jacques Médecin's cookbook because he was one of Nice's most corrupt mayors ever (and that's saying a lot), but I eventually had to admit that he could be relied on for good recipes if not wise politics. In Cuisine Niçoise: Recipes from a Mediterranean Kitchen, he advises using 1.5 kg (3 lbs 5 oz) tomatoes to 1 kg (2 lbs 4 oz) of each of the other vegetables, and here he hits upon one of the great truths about ratatouille: tomato is the main ingredient. Not that the vegetables should be drowning in tomato sauce, but there should be enough tomato to bind it all together effortlessly.
You might think that the chef of the Louis XV in Monaco would be above peasant cooking but nothing makes Franck more excited than the food of his childhood on a farm in the mountains above Nice. In an ideal ratatouille, he says, each vegetable would be cooked separately in olive oil and drained of any excess fat in a colander before joining the tomatoes in a pot. "I like it when it's served at room temperature, not hot or chilled. That might even be the best way to eat it. I also like to reheat ratatouille and poach eggs in the mixture."
Typically, his restaurant take on ratatouille involves lobster and only the most colorful parts of each vegetable, which are arranged into beautiful stripes.
Perhaps most intriguingly of all, Franck said that Niçois cooks prefer yellow peppers to green or even red because they are sweeter and not as strong. If these peppers happen to come from Piedmont, so much the better.
My ratatouille research wouldn't have been complete without a visit to La Merenda, where former Negresco chef Dominic Le Stanc seems to have found the ultimate recipe for every Niçois dish. Presented on a plain white plate, his ratatouille is surprisingly garlicky - my friend Louisa and I concluded that he added chopped garlic towards the end of the cooking time. I also noted that he hadn't bothered to peel the tomatoes, which will come as good news to lazy cooks.
Slightly intimidated by all this knowledge, I set about fine-tuning my own version of ratatouille. I've always liked to cut the vegetables very small, which allows me to use ratatouille not just as a side dish but as a stuffing for zucchini flowers or vegetables. By remembering the tomato-as-main-ingredient principle, substituting yellow peppers for green and adding some chopped garlic at the end of the cooking time, I took my recipe to a new level. I don't drain off the oil, but use the minimum I need to cook each vegetable, drizzling my best Baux de Provence olive oil over top when I serve the ratatouille.
Recognize the little squash in the picture? It's the mysterious vegetable that Pierre was holding the other day.

Courgettes rondes farcies à la ratatouille
(Round zucchini stuffed with ratatouille)

Serves 6 as a starter

6 small round zucchini
1 yellow pepper
1/2 large red pepper
1 small eggplant
2 medium zucchini
4 tomatoes
1 large shallot
2 sprigs thyme, leaves only
1 small dried chili pepper
1-2 cloves garlic
5 or 6 sprigs basil
Olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add a teaspoon of salt and plunge the zucchini into the water. Boil for 10 mins, until they are lightly cooked but still firm.

Cut the top off each zucchini and hollow out the inside, discarding the pulp or saving it for another purpose.

Cut the yellow and red peppers, eggplant and zucchini into very small dice and sweat them one at a time on medium heat with a little salt in about 1 tbsp olive oil for each different type of vegetable (a little more for the eggplant, which should be cooked on medium-high heat). When the vegetables start to soften, set them aside in a large bowl (they can be combined at this point).

Meanwhile, peel the tomatoes. I use my Zyliss tomato peeler but you can also dip them in boiling water for a few seconds. Cut the tomatoes in half and squeeze out the seeds, then chop them finely. Finely mince the shallots and garlic.

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a sauté pan, sweat the shallots over medium heat for 2 minutes and add the tomatoes, thyme and whole chili pepper. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until the sauce is starting to thicken. Add all the vegetables, chopped garlic and slivered basil and stew gently for 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Let the mixture cool and, using a small spoon, stuff the zucchini and place them on a baking tray. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Bake for 15 mins at 375 F (180 C), until heated through. Serve warm or at room temperature to best appreciate the flavors.