At the beginning of every month in 2009, I am offering C&Z readers a new desktop calendar, i.e. a wallpaper to apply on the desktop of your computer, with a food-related picture and a calendar of the current month.

Our desktop calendar for July is a picture of a fish taco made from scratch (including the tortilla but excluding the umbrella) by our friends Braden and Laura, of Hidden Kitchen.

Instructions to get your calendar are below.

Two years ago, I received a sweet email from a Canadian woman named Delphine. She explained that she and her French boyfriend run a farm in the Aube, about two and a half hours to the Southeast of Paris, on which they grow -- among other things -- Saskatoon berries*. Did I know this North American fruit? Did I want to try it?

A new fruit! One I'd never even heard of! Of course I wanted to taste it!

Because Saskatoon berries are only in season for a short period of time in late June (this explains why they're also called Juneberries), the window in which to obtain fresh berries was rather narrow, and we couldn't make it work that year, or the next. But Delphine is nothing if not persistent, and the third time was a charm: this year, her younger sister, who lives in Paris, was able to drop by my apartment and kindly deliver a few baskets of the dark purple beauties.

Although the looks and common names of the amelanchier alnifolia make it seem a berry**, botanists will tell you that it is in fact a pome, like the apple and the pear. It grows in clumps on tall shrubs, in the wild or in orchards. It is native to Alaska, Western Canada (like Delphine, who is from Calgary), and to the Northwestern to North Central states of the United States, but it is little known beyond those areas.

Flavorwise, I find it to be a cross between the blueberry and the blackberry: not quite as sweet and a little more mealy, but fragrant, with a lingering hint of almond. They are said to be full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, so they may very well be the next superfood everyone goes crazy over.

We ate some of ours raw -- on their own or with yogurt -- and because it seemed the Saskatoon berry would thrive wherever the blueberry does, I decided to make a tart inspired by my mother's blueberry tart, and serve it to friends we'd invited over for a SingStar party.

I used my mother's easy pâte sablée, which blessedly requires no rolling, only I added a teaspoon of white vinegar to the mix, having recently read that the acid helps make tart crusts flakier by weakening the gluten network. This was confirmed by Harold McGee's indispensable On Food and Cooking***, and by the delicate texture of my tart crust.

I had a handful of fresh black currants to use so I threw them in with the berries, and I also decided to add almond meal to the filling, to accent that side of the berries' personality, and to absorb excess juice should they render any. As it turns out, Saskatoon berries don't lose their shape in the baking -- their skin is somewhat thicker than that of blueberries and it doesn't seem to rupture as easily -- but the powdered almonds turned to golden toasty crumbs in the oven that complemented the berries very well.

My friends were suitably tickled to discover a new fruit, and the tart was promptly devoured, in between Don McLean's American Pie (what else?) and a very impressive solo version of Naughty by Nature's O.P.P..

Because Delphine's berry delivery had been generous, I still had some berries to use after that, so I made a fine clafoutis -- roughly using this recipe but with a bit of levain -- and froze the rest.

Any suggestions on what to do with the frozen berries?

~~~

* To Delphine's knowledge, theirs is the only farm in France that grows Saskatoon berries. You can buy some directly from them during picking season, for about three weeks in late June. Ferme Moonriver, 1 rue de la Croix, 10140 Unienville (map it!), +33 (0)3 25 92 07 79. (Note that they also raise fowl.)

** In truth, once you start looking into the ins and outs of the term berry and how it's used in common speech vs. from a botanical point of view, you realize you pretty much get it wrong all the time.

*** On Controlling Gluten Strength (pages 523-525), McGee writes, "There are a number of ingredients and techniques by which the baker controls the gluten strength and consistency of doughs and batters." And he proceeds to list them, ending with, "Acidity in the dough (...), which weakens the gluten network by increasing the number of positively charged amino acids along the protein chains, and increasing the repulsive forces between chains."

Photo by Delphine Bouvry.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week's idiom is, "Ce n'est pas de la tarte."

Approximately translated as, "it's not pie*," it means that something is tricky, difficult to do or to handle. Because it is a colloquial expression that is mostly spoken, it is usually elided to, "C'est pas de la tarte."

Example: "J'essaye de lui faire faire une sieste, mais c'est pas de la tarte !" "I'm trying to put him down for a nap, but it's not pie!"

* Une tarte should really be translated as a tart, i.e. a pie with no top crust, but then the translated phrase, "it's not tart," sounded too ambiguous for quick understanding (tart=pie or tart=sour?).

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

As promised when we talked about potato gnocchi earlier this month, here is my recipe for gratin dauphinois, the king of potato side dishes, named after the former French province whence it originates.

Before we begin, it is my duty to draw your attention to the fact that a proper gratin dauphinois does not involve cheese. No. It is a gloriously simple dish of sliced potatoes baked in milk and/or cream -- we'll get to that in a second -- that develops a browned crusty top simply from its starch content, and without the crutch of cheese. If you decide to make it with cheese, no hobgoblin will come and get you, but thou shalt forfeit the right to call it a gratin dauphinois.

And really, gratin dauphinois is all about the flavor of the potatoes, and the creaminess that binds the slices together. Some recipes call for cooking the potatoes in 100% cream, but the result is a bit over the top (oh, really?) and I find one gets excellent results using mostly milk, and just a little cream. The trick is to start by pre-cooking the potatoes on the stove, just until the milk thickens enough to coat them well, and then finish cooking and browning the gratin in the oven: this shortens the overall cooking time, and it ensures that the potatoes are cooked thoroughly, from top to bottom.

A murmur of nutmeg is traditional, and with good reason. I don't add black pepper to the dish, because I prefer to grind it fresh at the table, but if I have chives (ciboulette) on hand, I'll snip and sprinkle some amid the potatoes.

Depending on the weather situation where you live, this may or may feel seasonal, but we've had sunny days followed by chilly nights in Paris lately, and we are absolutely in the mood for gratin dauphinois. The one that's pictured here was made for friends who came to dinner last week. I served it as a side dish to duck filets that I'd rubbed with spices and roasted, but it could also occupy the center of the stage, served with mixed salad greens and optional slices of ham.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to the culinary world. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week's idiom is, "Mettre son grain de sel."

Literally translated as, "putting in one's grain of salt," it means interfering with a conversation or situation with an unsollicited comment or opinion. It is a colloquial expression that is somewhat similar to the American English idiom, "adding one's two cents." Depending on the context, a person's urge to slip in his grain of salt can be seen in a positive light (outspoken/endearing) or a negative one (meddlesome/annoying*).

Example: "Ils avaient choisi le menu, mais le père de la mariée a mis son grain de sel, et il a fallu tout changer." "They had chosen the menu, but the bride's father put in his grain of salt, and the whole thing had to be changed."

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

[Gâteau roulé matcha et azuki]

The thing that happens when you buy a big pouch of anko (Japanese sweetened red bean paste) to make strawberry daifuku is that you're likely to run out of rice flour long before you use up all the azuki paste.

I assume it keeps for weeks if well wrapped, but I didn't want to let it sit in the fridge for too long (shelf space is in short supply), so I tried to think up ways to use it. A quick brainstorm led me to the gâteaux roulés (cake rolls, a.k.a. jelly rolls or Swiss rolls) that my mother makes and sometimes garnishes with crème de marron, sweetened chestnut paste, which I've always felt is a close cousin to anko, texture- and flavor-wise. And since the pairing of green tea and red bean is always successful, perhaps I could flavor the cake with a little matcha*?

I opted to make the cake component (la génoise) butterless, using almond butter instead, and I cut the red bean paste with about a third of its weight in yogurt, to make the filling easier to spread and less intensely sweet.

Alhough I have stood by my mother (and held my breath) as she deftly rolled up layers of sponge cake, this was my first time actually making a cake roll of my own, and I was rather pleased with how it turned out: I did bake my génoise a tad too long, which resulted in crisp edges that I should probably have trimmed, but the heart of the cake was moist and tender, and the balance of flavors was just right. Not to mention, I was tickled to notice that each cut slice drew the hiragana character の (no), a feature few cakes can boast.

Because this was just a trial run for private consumption, I didn't decorate the cake, but I think a light-handed dusting of confectioner's sugar and/or matcha would accent the color of the cake nicely -- I picture oblique lines sifted through a simple homemade stencil. Next time I may also try brushing the cake layer with a light green tea syrup (possibly made with genmaicha for the toasted note ?) before spreading the filling.

What about you, how do you like your cake rolls?

* A quick online search revealed -- as I suspected, really -- that others had had the same idea, not the least of whom is Sadaharu Aoki, a Japanese pastry chef I was lucky enough to meet two years ago.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to the culinary world. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week's idiom is, "Raisonner comme une casserole."

Literally translated as, "reasoning like a saucepan," it means demonstrating poor logic, formulating arguments that are evidently flawed. It is a colloquial expression that should only be used in informal conversation.

Example: "Ce n'est pas la peine d'essayer de discuter avec lui, il raisonne comme une casserole." "It's not worth trying to talk to him, he reasons like a saucepan."

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

I have recently found myself with a bit of a potato glut, a rather unusual state of affairs for me. It being spring, all the potatoes wanted to do was sprout, however careful I was to keep them in a cool, dark place. Unable to temper their enthusiasm, I did what any responsible cook would do: I embraced the potato theme and cooked them in all sorts of different ways over a few weeks.

With the baking potatoes (the floury ones that fall apart when cooked), I made baked potatoes (creative, I know), potato skins (with the leftover baked potatoes), home fries, and Jo Jo potatoes; with the waxy ones (the yellow-fleshed variety that retains its shape when cooked) I made sautéed potatoes in my new/old cast-iron skillet; with a mix of both, I baked a very simple, very good gratin dauphinois that I must make again, photograph, and tell you about.

I also took this potato manna as a sign that it was finally time to try my hand at potato gnocchi, an endeavor I had long itched to undertake: I had made ricotta gnocchi and speculoos gnocchi in the past, but had yet to attempt a potato-based version.

I used the basic proportions given in an article I'd clipped out of the British Olive magazine, and all went smoothly. At first, I feared I had not mashed the potatoes thoroughly enough, but I ignored the tiny lumps and forged ahead, experimenting with different shapes for the pillows of dough (ovals or corks, mostly), and trying to gain a semblance of dexterity through the process.

Most recipes I found have you roll the gnocchi against the tines of a fork to create the signature indentations that will help the sauce cling to them, but I'd read somewhere that you could also use the lower part of a wire whisk -- where the wires all gather and throw themselves into the handle -- and that method worked much better for me.

Maxence and I ate half of the batch that night -- I froze the rest for another day -- with white asparagus tips, lemon verbena butter, and a sprinkle of pecorino shavings. I was delighted with the outcome: the gnocchi turned out plump and tender, fluffy on the inside, with a hint of a blond crust from the pan-frying step.

The recipe produces plain potato gnocchi to dress with the sauce of your choice, but you can certainly play around with flavorings, incorporating herbs, dried or fresh, garlic, saffron, truffle juice... Any favorites to share?

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week's idiom is, "Le ver est dans le fruit."

Literally translated as, "the worm is in the fruit," it means that the damage is done, that a situation is inherently faulty, and that it's impossible or too late to do anything about it. It can also be used humorously, to comment with mock fatalism on the way a situation is turning, or is bound to turn.

Example: "Ils ont beau essayer de lutter contre la corruption, le ver est dans le fruit." "Try as they might to fight corruption, the worm is in the fruit."

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

A few weeks ago, my friend Estérelle and I attended a mochi cooking class held at La Cocotte, a lovely little cookbook shop in Paris.

Before we go any further, I think a semantics note is in order: strictly speaking, mochi is the name of a Japanese preparation of steamed glutinous rice that is pounded to form a sticky paste*. Mochi can be boiled, steamed, grilled, baked, or fried, and because it doesn't have much inherent flavor, it is usually eaten with sweet or savory accompaniments. Although mochi is traditionally pounded from freshly cooked rice, modern home cooks are more likely to buy it ready-made at the store, or make it from rice flour.

So that's what mochi is, but it seems that many people outside of Japan use this term when they really mean daifuku mochi (or daifuku for short), which are soft mochi dumplings stuffed with a sweet filling, such as red bean paste (anko) or white bean paste (shiroan), served at room temperature and enjoyed as an afternoon treat (rather than a dessert).

I myself only recently learned the difference. When I first tasted (and took a shine to) daifuku in California years ago -- we got them from our local Nijiya market -- I thought of them as mochi, and kept calling them that until the afore-mentioned cooking class taught me otherwise.

Our teacher was Chihiro Tokioka, a Kyoto-born woman who now works as a cook and journalist in Paris. She first had us make dango, little balls of mochi skewered together and served warm, with a sauce or topping that can be sweet, savory, or both. We tasted ours with anko, with a sesame sauce, with a caramelized soy sauce, and with toasted soybean powder (kinako).

We then moved on to daifuku, of which we made two fruit-based kinds: some we filled with a chunk of kiwi wrapped in a layer of anko, others with a similarly anko-sheathed strawberry.

The latter kind, called ichigo daifuku in Japanese, was a revelation: I'd always had daifuku stuffed with a quite sweet, paste-like filling, and this variation took the concept to new heights: underneath the soft, powder-dusted exterior, the chewy-gooey layer of mochi, and the velvet of the anko, lay a juicy surprise that added freshness and a delicate floral flavor to the confection, making it easier on the sweet-o-meter, too.

At the first chance I got, I went out and bought the ingredients to repeat the experience in my own kitchen -- whenever I take a cooking class, I try to make the recipes again shortly after, while the memory is still fresh -- and on Saturday, I made my very first homemade batch of strawberry daifuku.

When I was researching all things mochi online, I read a few comments written by people who didn't see the point of making their own daifuku when they could just buy them at the store. I obviously don't know which store they go to, and how fresh those store-bought daifuku might be, but I'm here to tell you that the glow and bounce of a just-made daifuku is nothing if not worth the trouble.

I still need to work on my daifuku-shaping skills, but the process is a lot of fun and the outcome makes me and the other daifuku-lover in my household very happy, so I will be glad to practice. I might try to make the more classic anko-filled daifuku next time (I understand those can be made in larger batches and frozen, which isn't true of the strawberry ones), and I may flavor/color the dough with green tea powder. I also read that chunks of mango work very well; any other stuffing suggestions to share?

* So sticky in fact that people die every year in Japan from choking on a mouthful of mochi too large to swallow.

At the beginning of every month in 2009, I am offering C&Z readers a new desktop calendar, i.e. a wallpaper to apply on the desktop of your computer, with a food-related picture and a calendar of the current month.

Our desktop calendar for June is a picture of gariguette strawberries taken at the Anvers greenmarket.

Maxence is in fact growing strawberry plants in one of our window boxes this year, and like the wild strawberries of a few summers ago, they are in great shape. Of course each of our two little plants is delivering its fruits sparingly, making us extra grateful for each of the delicious berries they yield, but also making it necessary to turn to the pros for the rest of my needs -- I have my mother's strawberry tart and ichigo daifuku to make!

What about you -- care to share your favorite ways to use fresh strawberries?

Instructions to get your calendar are below.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week's idiom is, "Ne pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes."

Literally translated as, "not mixing dishtowels with napkins," it means treating things or people differently according to their perceived value or class, but also, more generally, not mixing things of different kinds, with the implication that some of those things are superior to the others.

It is a colloquial expression that usually appears as "Il ne faut pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes" or "On ne mélange pas les torchons et les serviettes" (one mustn't/doesn't mix dishtowels with napkins). It can be delivered either earnestly or ironically, to deride a person's or an institution's narrowmindedness.

Example: "Pierre Bergé a refusé que les portraits d'Yves Saint Laurent figurent aux côtés d'autres portraits de couturiers dans l'exposition d'Andy Warhol au Grand Palais. « Il ne faut pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes » a-t-il déclaré avant de demander que les tableaux soient déplacés dans la section des artistes."

(Pierre Bergé refused to have Yves Saint Laurent's portraits appear side by side with other fashion designers in the Warhol exhibition at the Grand Palais. "One mustn't mix dishtowels with napkins," he said, before asking to have the paintings moved to the artists section.) [This example is slightly rephrased from a recent article in L'Express Styles.]

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

As much as I love a good short crust pastry and as simple as it is to make (really, it is, try it sometime), I have recently become enamored with another way to make savory tart crusts, one that relies on whole wheat flour and olive oil.

This dough is even easier to live with: it comes together by hand in minutes, calls for pantry ingredients I always have available, and lets itself be rolled out amenably, thanks to its flexible yet cohesive consistency. It then bakes into a lightly crunchy, flavorsome crust that is much less susceptible to soaking if your filling is on the wet side, and keeps very well -- improves, even -- from one day to the next.

I realize I am starting to sound like an infomercial, but that is how enthusiastic I am about this crust, which I've been making on a weekly basis and raving about to anyone who'll half-listen (my mother is a recent convert).

I have been using it to make countless Swiss chard tarts since the beginning of the season, with a flavor boost kindly provided by the radish leaf pesto I recently wrote about. Here's the mini-recipe: I cook the Swiss chard in a skillet first as in this gratin recipe, and blind-bake the crust for ten minutes. I then garnish the crust with pesto, a sprinkle of rolled oats (a simple trick to absorb any excess moisture from the vegetables), and the well-drained chard, to which I've added a beaten egg. This goes back into the oven for another twelve to fifteen minutes, and makes a fine dinner we don't seem to tire of, served with thin slices of dry-cured ham.

And although I have yet to try it, I am fairly certain this crust recipe could be used successfully for rustic fruit tarts, using half of the salt, no herbs, and a tablespoon or two of unrefined cane sugar.

Last time I was in London, my primary objective may have been to snuggle up with my nephew, but I still brought a list of food places I wanted to check out, for, you know, research purposes. One of them was Ottolenghi, a deli that offers a daily selection of colorful dishes -- with an emphasis on fresh produce -- and dazzling pastries.

I had received a review copy of their seductive cookbook a couple of months before, and had quickly stopped tagging the recipes that appealed to me when I realized I was placing a sticker on every page. This was my kind of food, and I was eager to taste it at the source.

I visited the Kensington location, which happens to be around the block from the large Whole Foods store that was also on my list. I ogled the spectacular lineup of cakes, but decided instead on an assortment of salads to eat on the Eurostar that evening. They were delicious, though it dawned on me halfway through that the reason why these salads seemed so pleasing was that most of them were on the sweet side, incorporating dried fruits or candied nuts or a sweetish dressing. Is it always so, or was it just an oddity on that particular day? A repeat visit is in order to find out, but I thought I'd keep that penchant in mind for when I tried savory recipes from the book.

As it turns out, the recipe I tried first was for a cake -- and now that I think about it, I reduced the amount of sugar in that one, too. The recipe in question is the sticky chocolate loaf on page 219: it tugged at the strings of my heart because of the happy qualifier "sticky" -- always a good omen when attached to a cake name -- and because it was a chocolate cake that involved prunes, which I am fond of, and always keen to rehabilitate.

I made a few further modifications to the recipe, baking it in a cake pan rather than two mini loaf pans, substituting yogurt for the oil (the original called for yogurt and oil; I used yogurt only), and using maple syrup rather than treacle.

I hope the apparent length of the recipe below won't scare you off; this is not a complicated cake to assemble at all. Half of the prunes are blended into the batter, in which they act as a sweetener and moisture booster, while the other half is soaked in brandy and pressed into the batter. After baking, the cake is further stickified by a generous brushing of brandy syrup, and left to cool. This produces a voluptuous cake that is moist-crumbed and deeply aromatic (but not at all boozy), and one I plan to make again soon, possibly in cupcake form.

~~~

If you'd like to read more about Ottolenghi, check their blog, which features some recipes, and read Yotam Ottolenghi's weekly column in the Guardian, The New Vegetarian.

This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.

This week's idiom is, "La fin des haricots."

Literally translated as, "the end of the beans," it means that the situation is disastrous, that it's all over, and that all hope is gone.

Sounds depressing? Wait! It is in fact a colloquial expression that is most often used humorously, with a measure of irony. It may refer to 1) a situation that really is serious, but of which the speaker is trying to make light, 2) a situation that seems terrible in the heat of the moment, but isn't that significant in the grand scheme of things, or 3) a trivial situation, the importance of which the speaker wants to exaggerate for comic effect.

Example: "Si on perd ce client, c'est la fin des haricots !" "If we lose this client, it's the end of the beans!" (This exemplifies usage 1 or 2, depending on how much you depend on the client.)

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud: