Sesame Recipes
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Who says winter food has to be colorless and drab?
I first put together this beet hummus just before the holidays, on a day we'd been invited to dinner by one of my dearest friends (I've told you about her before), who was days away from delivering her first child.
When I offered to contribute to the dinner, I was entrusted with the mission of bringing something to nibble on for the apéro, to...
For the past three years now, I've been writing a column in ELLE Ã table, a French bimonthly cooking magazine. This column spans two pages, and I generally devote one to an ingredient (cardamom! buckwheat! white chocolate!) and what you can do with it, the other to a food experience or trend (superfoods! Japanese pastries! mushroom picking!) and why you should care about it.
In the next instal...
I first learned about dukkah three years ago, when I had the incredible good fortune of traveling to Australia for a writers' festival. I spotted that Egyptian mix of nuts and spices again and again, in fine foods stores and on restaurant menus, and naturally, I was intrigued.
Dukkah -- also spelled duqqa or dukka -- is made with nuts (most commonly hazelnuts, sometimes pistachios or almonds) a...
Because summers in Japan are hot and humid, Japanese cooks know a thing or two about the refreshing dishes such sultry days call for.
Gomadofu falls into that category: a concoction of sesame paste cooked with a thickening agent until set, it resembles tofu in color and texture, hence the name (goma = sesame), and is served chilled.
I first came across it when Maxence and I traveled to Japan l...
Green Tea Buckwheat Noodles with Cucumber and Tofu
[Green Tea Buckwheat Noodles with Cucumber and Tofu]
So verdant is this dish that it could have been my contribution to Saint Patrick's Day. But because the French don't really celebrate it (unless they happen to find themselves at one of the Irish pubs on boulevard de Clichy) and because my father's name is Patrick, March 17th is simply that: my father's fête. He usually receives a gift of pÃ...
I realize the world has not been holding its breath waiting for me to share my recipe for hummus.
But it does seem like the world, or at least a portion of its inhabitants, could use a friendly reminder about homemade hummus: how good it is, how easy, and how cheap, too.
Just out of curiosity, I've calculated the approximate cost of my hummus, which I make from dried chickpeas, and with organi...
One of the challenges of writing a cookbook is that, for the duration of the project, most of one's cooking energies are channeled into the book -- to develop the recipes initially, and then to re-test them as often as needed to refine them.
This means that, for months and months, one's kitchen activities are largely governed by a spreadsheet -- glamorous, no? -- and any tempting recipe that ma...
If you've been on the fence about getting a pasta roller -- either an attachment for your stand mixer or a hand-cranked one for your biceps -- I may be able to offer the justification you were hoping for: a pasta roller proves handy for homemade crackers, too.
You see, to make good crackers, you need to roll the dough out thinly, for optimal snap, and evenly, so that they'll bake in a uniform f...
Two years ago, I met a young British woman named Poppy -- that alone made my day -- who introduced herself as a raw chocolatier.
I had a taste of her heart-shaped raw chocolates, assembled from raw Arriba cacao and a bunch of raw superfoods, and liked them so much I devoted one of my ELLE Ã table columns to them.
And when we met one day for her to demonstrate her chocolate-making prowess, she...
Have you ever tried soaking flax seeds? If not, know that something eerie transpires as soon as your back is turned: while the seeds swell and absorb the water, they release a gel-like substance (called mucilage) so that next time you look, your bowl is filled with a kind of jiggly aspic in which the seeds are suspended.
This little trick makes flax seeds (also called linseeds, or graines de li...
While in New York last month, Maxence and I had lunch at Ippudo, a ramen place that's the first American outpost of a popular Japanese chain. The decor was super sleek and the ramen excellent, but what really got me excited was the sesame mill that was propped on our table, keeping the shôyu company.
It was a simple thing, really: a plastic see-through container filled with toasted sesame seed...
[Sesame Zucchini Soup]
Oh, did I mention I am in full soup-making mode these days? It could be the grey and chilly days we have to plow through, or the vague feeling that my body could use a little detoxifying after the holiday scrumpadillies, but all I can think about is soup soup soup. When the idea of lacing zucchini soup with tahini (the sesame paste used in hummus) came to me out of the bl...
Ever since I received an electric steamer for my birthday last summer, I have been steaming vegetables with abandon.
Before that, I used a set of those bamboo baskets that you nest in a wok if you have one (I don't) or place on a saucepan that's never quite the correct size for optimal steam circulation. That thing sputtered and leaked and drove me a little crazier every time I used it, so this...
[Spirulina Gomasio]
I'm always happy to try new and intriguing food. It's a hit-or-miss kind of habit and I have on occasion bought things that turned out to be nasty (in that ugh-nasty-nasty-bleh-spit-spit kind of way), but it's all in the name of science and research, yes?
My organic grocery store in particular seems very much aware of that penchant of mine, and regularly puts out displays ...
[Triple Sesame Snow Pea Salad]
In French, snow peas (or sugar snap peas, apparently the difference is that snow peas are a lighter green) are called Pois Gourmands (Gourmand Peas) or Haricots Mangetout (Eat-Everything Beans). The reason for that, I just found out, is that unlike regular peas, you eat the pod as well, so you "eat everything". And eating everything makes you a qualified gourmand,...
Our neighbor-friends Stéphan and Patricia have been busy repainting their living-room these past few weeks. On Sunday they were finally done, so they rearranged the furniture, knocked on our kitchen window with the Ceremonial Wooden Spoon, and invited us over for a little newly-repainted-house-warming drink.
You just don't go to a house-warming party -- however improvized -- empty-handed, so w...
Yellow Zucchini Tarte Fine on a Yogurt-Based Crust
The football* world cup has just ended (congratulations, Spain!), and although I haven't breathed a word about it until now -- there is such a media overload during the event, you don't need me adding to it -- we followed the competition with an enthusiasm that wasn't dampened by the magnitude of the French fiasco.
Some games we watched from bars, others from home, and it was our great pleasure...
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