Lately I've had an insuppressible urge to declutter. I would chalk it up to the advent of spring if it hadn't been so stubbornly cold, and if I didn't find myself in that state of I-can't-bear-to-live-with-this-stuff-for-a-minute-longer several times a year.

Actually, one of my resolutions for 2010 is to take on at least one decluttering project every weekend. It can be something quick, like sorting through the restaurant business cards we've accumulated over the years and removing the ones we'll likely never visit again (done), or something ambitious, like reorganizing our overstuffed basement, recycling/tossing/giving old things away (check).

It's not that we buy that much stuff to begin with, but clutter seems to build up out of nowhere; perhaps a good theoretical physicist will one day study the phenomenon. In any case, I find it relaxing to know I have a counter-strategy in place, and it's easy to tailor the size of the endeavor to the time and energy I have, yet still get a nice feeling of accomplishment. I even write down what I've done each weekend, to keep track; I don't go so far as to award myself little congratulatory stickers, but I'm this close*.

The approach applies to the kitchen, too, and I try to go through my cabinets and drawers with as unsentimental an eye as I can summon, and prune, prune, prune. What I no longer need I sell or give away. There is a special shelf in the lobby of my apartment building, and the unspoken rule is that one can leave objects, books, and magazines there for others to take. They're unfailingly snatched up in a matter of hours, and it's fun to think that some of my unneeded utensils simply live on another floor now.

And of course, my pantry also needs to undergo that treatment on a regular basis, to refresh my memory as to what it contains (the cabinet is so ill-conceived I have to take everything out to get a good look), group ingredients together with a semblance of logic, and identify those that need to be used up soon.

Unfailingly, I turn up small leftover amounts of dried fruit and nuts I want to use before they have a chance to shrivel up entirely or go rancid**, and these chocolate clusters are a delicious way to do so: they're simply made by combining your choice of nuts, dried fruit and puffed grain with melted chocolate, and letting the clusters set.

(And by a happy coincidence, they're also a perfect use for the box of 1,000 mini paper cups I've been working my way through for the past, um, six years.)

The chocolate cluster is a classic confection, but I only started making them after buying some at a chocolate shop in Barcelona a few years ago. Their version was called Trencadent and I couldn't stop eating them; I tried making them after coming home to Paris, and it turned out to be the easiest thing ever.

My rule of thumb is to use 1 cup of dried fruits and nuts plus 1 cup of puffed grain for each 250 grams (9 ounces) of chocolate; this creates an ideal crisp/crunchy/chewy texture and chocolate-to-filling ratio.

The puffed grain is there mostly for texture; the flavor is brought on by the nuts and the dried fruits. The following pairings I've tried and liked:
- almonds + candied ginger (as below),
- pistachios + dried apricots,
- peanuts + dried cherries,
- Brazil nuts + dried figs,
- almonds + candied orange rind,
- hazelnuts + raisins.

But really, you can make up your own combos depending on what you have on hand, or visit Sara or Dorie for more suggestions.

You could certainly add some spice or a touch of ground chili, but neither is necessary. Just remember to toast the nuts, so their flavor will be at its maximum.

And let me remind you that Easter comes early this year -- Easter Sunday is on April 4 -- so if you're in the market for an easy giftable chocolate idea, this may be it!

~~~

* Need help decluttering? Take a look at the Apartment Therapy Home Cures, which offer helpful weekly assignments, advice, and support. The spring home cure has just started, and the kitchen cure is under way.

** My freezer is too small and too humid to keep nuts safely, but if you have room in yours, it is said to be a good way to ward off rancidity.

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 y aller avec le dos de la cuiller."

Literally translated as, "not going at it with the back of the spoon," it is a colloquial expression that means acting bluntly and deliberately, without restraint or moderation. It is often used in the context of interpersonal relationships, and especially when someone is particularly plain-spoken about an issue (equivalent then to "not mincing one's words").

Note: the French word for spoon can be spelled cuiller or cuillère; both spellings are correct. One should probably choose a spelling and stick to it for the sake of consistency, and when I stop to think about it I prefer the former, but I seem to go back and forth between the two in my writing.

Example: "Tu as lu sa critique du dernier film des frères Coen ? Il n'y va pas avec le dos de la cuiller !" "Did you read his review of the latest Coen brothers movie? He doesn't go at it with the back of the spoon!"

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

Once you have a natural starter alive and kicking on your counter, stealing the occasional banana from the fruit bowl, it's hard to go back to baking bread with commercial yeast.

Not only would that feel like a bit of a betrayal (though you can always blindfold the jar of starter or work under the cover of night) but every loaf is an opportunity to strengthen your starter as well as your skills. And frankly, you've gotten used to the vivid flavor and lasting freshness of sourdough-powered bread, so you're a bit spoiled.

That's not to say you want to limit yourself to those recipes written with a starter in mind: even though baking with a natural starter has the ancestral high ground and is regaining considerable popularity of late, it is still practiced by a minority of home bakers, and most of the bread recipes out there call for commercial yeast.

But of course, most breads (see caveats below) leavened with commercial yeast can be leavened with a natural starter. It is just a matter of converting the recipe; all you need is a calculator and a play-it-by-ear disposition.

So, how do you go about it? There is no single method* but I have had good success with mine, so I wanted to share it with you below. If you want to chime in with your own method and experience, I'll be most interested to hear them.

I hardly ever eat meat or fish when I'm alone. I may have a bit of ham or chicken on occasion if there is some left over from another meal, but other than that, my solo appetite favors a plant-based diet, with a few dairy products (yogurt, cheese) and eggs thrown in.

And because I eat most of my weekday lunches at home, in my own company (I admit I've become frightfully attached to the quiet and solitude of my workdays) and as an accidental vegetarian, I started to worry about protein: was I getting enough?

It's hard to say, since I'm not so worried as to weigh my food and tally up the grams of protein, but I thought it couldn't hurt to be a little more diligent about my grain-and-legume combos.

A quick reminder to those of you who don't spend their lives reading nutrition articles: most animal products provide what's called complete proteins, meaning they contain optimal proportions of all the essential amino acids (= the smaller units that constitute proteins) the human body can't manufacture, and therefore needs to obtain from its diet. Plant products, on the other hand, don't provide that same balance in essential amino acids, offering good amounts of some and low amounts of others. But as Mother Nature would have it, the amino acids found in grains and those found in legumes are complementary*, so that combining the two essentially results in a complete protein. Ha!

You don't have to eat the two at the same time -- you could eat a grain at one meal and a legume at the next, as the amino acids are said to remain available for a possible hookup for twelve hours -- but they happen to go really well together, as illustrated in many culinary cultures**: think couscous and chickpeas, pita and hummus, baked beans on toast, rice and lentils, corn and beans, rice and beans, pasta and beans...

And so I resolved to cook a batch of some type of grain and some sort of legume at the beginning of every other week or so, and incorporate it into my lunches on subsequent days. It's also a big time saver, naturally, because a minimal effort on Monday promises near-instant lunches after that: all I need to do then is add a form of fresh vegetable to the mix, raw or cooked, and we're in business.

Today's salad is an example of one such preparation: it uses a mix of beans and other legumes I bought on sale at the organic store -- it was marketed as a soup helper -- and an organic, fair-trade brown rice from Thailand I really like (it is fragrant and not too chewy, and it cooks quickly). The legumes and rice are soaked and cooked separately, then tossed with fresh herbs (chervil, in this case) and a mustardy vinaigrette.

I eat it slightly warm the first day, then cold or at room temperature. It works well over a bed of mixed greens, as a wrap in lettuce leaves or rice paper, plopped in a bowl of soup, or "refried" in a skillet and eaten in a tortilla. In all cases, it is wonderfully filling, improves as it sits, and can be easily transported for lunch at the office, where I hope you're able to find a little quiet and solitude from time to time.

~~~

* You can get similar results by combining seeds, nuts, and protein-rich vegetables (such as leafy greens or broccoli) with grains and/or legumes.

** I thought about this for a while, but couldn't find a good grain-and-legume example in the French culinary repertoire, apart from a lentil soup one might eat with bread. Can you think of examples yourself? Update: A reader pointed out that the provençal soupe au pistou is an example, involving beans and pasta. Thanks Anaïk!

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

Our calendar for March is a picture that represents the old marble mortar my grandmother found at the bottom of her garden in Marseille in 1937, and one of the venerable cookbooks she entrusted me with; this particular one is called Mes Recettes pour votre ménage. I hope this photo reminds you of heirlooms of your own.

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, "Le gratin."

As cooks may already know, gratin* is the generic French term for preparations (often involving vegetables and some sort of binding sauce) cooked in a baking dish in the oven until the surface browns and becomes crusty.

But it is also a colloquial expression that refers to a social elite, an exclusive crowd who distinguish themselves by their social background, their wealth, their elegance, and/or the select field they work in. It is generally used with a subtle mix of contempt and envy by people who are not a part of that circle.

A close equivalent would be the English idiom the upper crust (before it became a popular name for pizzerias and bakeries).

Though it was originally a matter of social class only, usage of this expression now extends beyond that to consider one's connections, talent (perceived or real), and popularity: an up-and-coming artist, for instance, can belong to the gratin without being particularly wealthy (yet) or of noble origin. Because of this, the term is often qualified further to specify the traits of the group in question: le gratin du cinéma for the movie crowd, le gratin parisien for the Parisian high society, le gratin mondain for socialites, etc.

It is frequently used with tout (tout le gratin = all the gratin, the whole gratin), which serves to point out that these groups tend to adopt a herd behavior.

Example: "Je suis allée à son vernissage, tout le gratin de la presse était là." "I went to her vernissage, the whole gratin of the press was there."

Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:

Planning the menu for a dinner party is all about being realistic, balancing the different dishes not only in terms of flavor and style, but also in terms of workload. If I opt for a main course that's a bit elaborate, then I know I won't have much time or energy to devote to dessert, and the fruit crisp or crumble* is my wildcard choice. (The trifle, too, but we'll talk about that another day.)

A fruit crisp requires very little work (throw the topping together, cut up some fruit, sprinkle, bake), it is seasonally flexible (you can use whatever fruit is available locally), it is the least time-sensitive item on your list (you can make the topping a couple of days beforehand, bake the crisp on the day of, and reheat just before serving) and, more important, everybody loves a good crisp: it speaks of warmth, comfort and simplicity, and even those who never go for seconds may be caught red-handed, spooning out just a little more from the dish they're taking back to the kitchen.

This particular recipe is adapted from Claudia Fleming's dessert book The Last Course, which I mentioned in my Best of 2009 list and is, unfortunately, out of print**.

In the book, the recipe appears as a Spiced Italian Prune Plum Crisp, and I was intrigued by the spiced topping flavored with cinnamon and cardamom, the proportions for which are quite different from my usual crumble formula.

This topping calls for melted butter, rather than cold butter that you'd rub into the dry ingredients. And ever since we decided we didn't really need a microwave oven, I've used one of two methods in such situations: I'll either piggyback on the preheating oven, as described here, or just, you know, heat it in a saucepan on the stovetop. And when I use the latter method, a miniature knee jerks in my head: butter? melted? in a pan? why not go the extra mile and brown it?

Really, it takes just a few minutes to go from melted butter to beurre noisette, but the benefit is considerable in the depth of flavor it lends to baked goods. (I think of it as using just the right foundation for your skin: few people will be able to pinpoint the source, but everyone will notice the glow.)

I haven't owned the book long enough for us to have been through plum season together, but the brown-butterized crisp -- which I also altered by using hazelnut flour in place of ground walnuts, a bit less sugar, and adding salt and pepper -- was a delight on apples, and I think it would be a perfect fit for rhubarb, peaches, apricots and mangoes, in addition to the original plum idea.

A note on cardamom: the recipe as published calls for 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom, but I prefer to keep whole pods (in a submarine-airtight container, their smell is so pervasive) and grind the seeds as needed in a teeny mortar and pestle I got at a garage sale in my California days.

~~~

Do you know what formspring is? It's a simple site that allows you to set up a Q&A page for yourself. I've enjoyed following Grace Bonney's (she's the delightful creator of Design Sponge), and I thought it might be fun to create one as well. So, if you have questions to ask me that are not related to a particular post, I invite you to submit them here!

~~~

* Some say a crisp becomes a crumble when the topping includes rolled oats; some use the two terms interchangeably. To me, "crisp" has a slightly more elegant ring to it, so I use it when the dessert feels a bit more sophisticated that a good old crumble.

** However much I like the book, I am in no way encouraging you to pay absurd amounts of money for it. You can always look for it at the library, ask around to see if a friend or coworker has a copy, keep an eye out for it when you visit used book shops, and -- it's worth a try -- contact the publisher to express your interest in a reprinting.

[Baguettes au levain]

When I started to bake bread on a weekly basis, I thought of baguettes as out-of-reach territory: I would bake the kind of loaves I love -- a hearty crust (but not too dark at the bottom), an open crumb (but one that's still tight enough to withstand a good spread of dairy or almond butter), great flavor from a slow fermentation, and a nutritious blend of organic flours -- but I would always go and get my Piccola baguette from the Coquelicot bakery on place des Abbesses.

After a while though, having baked enough boules (round loaves) in a closed vessel (a pyrex cocotte in my case) to become really good friends with my starter, I decided to graduate to baking bread on a stone.

A baking stone is fantastic for bread-baking: it absorbs heat as the oven preheats and retains it even as you open and close the oven door, which prevents the temperature in the oven from dropping dramatically when you put in the loaves. Additionally, bread dough that is plopped on a very hot surface rises beautifully: instead of spreading out first, then rising up, it seems a lot more motivated to rise upward from the moment it hits the blazing hot stone (I would too).

My first loaves on the baking stone were free-form bâtards -- elongated oval loaves -- because it was easier to fit two of those on my square baking stone, and I noticed that the crumb was more open than what I got when baking boules. I made a few more of those, and then I thought, what are baguettes if not thin bâtards? And why didn't I just make baguettes?

The baguettes one buys in French bakeries are rarely leavened with a natural starter, and when they are (baguette au levain), the starter is generally coupled with commercial yeast (it is worth asking). The flour that is used is a white wheat flour that often contains additives, and both of these characteristics account for their particularly light, aerated crumb.

What I wanted, on the other hand, was a baguette leavened with natural starter only, made with a blend of organic flours that included some partially whole wheat, so I knew I wouldn't get quite the same texture, but it would be a baguette in its own right.

After reading the reports of fellow starter enthusiasts for tips, and watching a few shaping videos, I felt about ready.

And indeed, from the very first attempt, the result was squeal-worthy: a good oven spring had pulled the slashed slits wide open, the tips and crust were crunchy enough that, when squeezed, the baguettes let out that delightful crackling sound, the crumb felt springy and alive, it was full of holes of various sizes and, more important, fragrant and flavorful.

I have baked a number of batches since that day, and if I could bottle the feeling I get when I watch my baguettes rise through the oven door, then super-peel them out and listen to them chirp as they cool, I would pose a major threat to antidepressant manufacturers.

We do, however, continue to go out and buy baguettes from Coquelicot on a regular basis, especially when we have friends over: as tickling as it would be to serve a meal that's homemade right down to the baguettes, it's just not realistic for me to cook dinner and bake bread on the same day -- not if I want to stay awake throughout the evening anyway. But home-baked bread makes quite an impression as a host(ess) gift, I've noticed, so that's my favored way of sharing.

I should note that my baguettes are, in fact, demi-baguettes (half-baguettes), due to the limited width of my home oven. You can make them slimmer and call them ficelles or flûtes (literally, strings or flutes), if you prefer, dividing the dough into six rather than four pieces, but then you'll have to bake them in batches, otherwise they won't have enough elbow room for optimal air circulation. Conversely, you can divide the dough into just two pieces to make bâtards. In all cases, remember to adjust the baking time to the size of the loaves.

Because the dough needs to rest in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours, it means you can really make it work within your own schedule: I generally feed my starter in the morning on day 1, make the dough in the afternoon when the starter is ripe, then bake the baguettes in the morning or in the afternoon on day 2.

I spent a few days in New York City in early December to promote* my latest book project, and I happened to stay at a hotel that was very near the Chelsea Market.

I had very little free time in my schedule, but the proximity allowed me to do a little personal shopping (books, utensils, magazines), buy a few things to improvise breakfast in my room** and, moments before I was to catch a ride back to the airport, get a sandwich and a treat to eat on the plane.

The sandwich was a B.L.A.T. on sourdough from Friedmans Lunch; the treat a giant mudslide cookie from the tiny Jacques Torres stand.

What I really meant to get was a chocolate chip cookie, because Torres is one of the experts David Leite consulted for his perfect chocolate chip cookie article, and the devil on my left shoulder was hoping to persuade the angel on the right that it was all in the name of research. But they were out of those, so I simply got the other kind on offer. (As it turns out, my shoulder angel has a weakness for chocolate so he's a bit lax when it comes to that kind of decision.)

I ended up not eating the cookie on the plane but simply brought it home, where it fed Maxence and me over the next couple of days; it was that big.

This cookie was so good, so chocolate-intense, that I credit it for helping me recover from the jetlag and travel fatigue. And because I felt I needed further assistance in that department, I looked for a recipe online. I easily found one in the New York Times archives, and it came with a leetle veedeo in which Jacques himself walks you through the process -- always a bonus.

I two-fifthed the recipe, scaling it down to use 2 instead of 5 eggs, and modified it to use bittersweet chocolate only (unsweetened chocolate is not a staple of the French baker's pantry), a little less sugar, and pecans in place of walnuts. And instead of making eight jumbo cookies, as the recipe scaling would have me do, I made sixteen of a size that is still plenty satisfying, but seemed as if it would go down better with the angel.

The trick to getting these (and many other) cookies right is to time the baking precisely so that the core of the cookie remains fudge-like, in ideal contrast with the crisper edges, the pecan pieces, and the chocolate chunks. The timing I'm giving below is perfect for my own oven, but yours is probably different, so start with a trial batch, watch the cookies closely, and make a note of the baking time that works for you.

At this point, I think I should stress how insanely chocolatey these mudslide cookies are -- after all, they are more than 50% chocolate in weight. This is what makes them spectacular, but it also means that you should think carefully about the chocolate you use in them, because it will have a majority vote in the final flavor. (In Paris, affordable couverture chocolate can be obtained from G. Detou.)

And if you celebrate Valentine's Day -- I belong to category #2 so I don't -- these would certainly make your special someone feel very special.

~~~

* This involved a brief "cooking" segment on CBS's Early Show, if you're interested.

** I broke my own no-hotel-breakfast rule on my first morning there and ordered a so-called "seasonal fruit bowl," only to discover that, in their world, this meant melon and berries. In December. Sheesh.

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

Our calendar for February is a picture of a diminutive winter squash poetically named pomme d'or (golden apple) in French; I thought its glow might bring a bit of sunshine to your desktop. (And here are a few winter squash recipes if you need inspiration.)

Instructions to get your calendar are below.

I have been wanting to make my own crumpets for about eight years. I can tell you this because that's when I remember placing, in my bulging clipping file, a mauve scrap of paper on which I'd copied a crumpet recipe from one of the ladies' magazines my grandmother used to subscribe to.

But the recipe involved yeast, and back then I hadn't yet conquered my fear of it, so the recipe hibernated in the "miscellaneous" section for years, until it eventually got the ax during a perhaps overzealous pruning campaign.

The project resurfaced in my mind a few months ago, when I learned from the King Arthur Flour website that you could make sourdough crumpets with natural starter.

Better yet, the recipe is the kind that every natural starter enthusiast dreams of: one that offers to use up the excess starter that the natural feeding cycle leaves you with*. All you need to do is store that extra starter in a container in the fridge -- I've recycled an empty tub of yogurt for that purpose -- until it amounts to roughly a cup (270 grams), which, in my case, takes about three feedings. You mix that with a bit of sugar, salt, and baking soda, and cook the foamy batter like pancakes in a skillet.

It took me a couple of tries to get them right -- I had to figure out how hot the skillet needed to be, how much of the batter I should use for each crumpet, and that the crumpet rings needed to be well greased and well preheated to prevent sticking -- but now I can count on fantastic crumpets every time: nicely bubbly at the top, to catch the drippings of whatever you spread them with, crisp around the edges, and lightly doughy on the inside, with a subtle tang to the palate.

I decided to equip myself with proper crumpet rings, which produce straight sides and a neat, stackable shape, but you can do without, or use, as I've seen suggested here and there, empty cans of tuna from which you'll remove the top and bottom with a can opener (make sure you get cans that can be opened on both sides; it's not always the case).

Crumpets are a teatime staple in the UK, served warm and spread with butter, but we also enjoy ours at breakfast, with almond butter and a sliced pear. And because they are, in fact, neither sweet nor savory, I've eaten them with a chunk of fruity comté cheese and a bowl of soup to particularly satisfying results.

In all cases, toasting the crumpet is a must. And because they freeze so well, you can cook a big batch and stash them away for an impromptu crumpet fest.

[Note: crumpets can also be made without a starter, as instructed in the following recipes (untested by me but seemingly reliable). This one is also from the King Arthur Flour website, with step-by-step pictures also, and this one appeared recently in The Guardian.]

* A sourdough starter needs to be fed its own weight in flour and its own weight in water at every feeding -- daily or twice daily if it's kept at room temperature, weekly if it lives in the fridge. If you were to keep all of the "old" starter, it would triple at every feeding and build up to an exponentially large quantity: you would gradually need more and more flour to keep it happy, which would be costly and impractical. The solution then is to remove a portion of the starter before each feeding, keeping just a couple of tablespoons. Some people throw out that extra starter, but many prefer to keep it in the fridge and work it into crêpe, cake, or clafoutis batters, in pizza doughs, in this crumpet recipe, etc. This extra starter can also be given away to another baker. Read more about natural starter bread.

The winners of the Menu for Hope fundraiser/raffle have been announced. Thank you all for your generous participation!

Alice Boussicaut, Tamsin Ballard, Katarina Tierer and Leah Bevington, please get in touch with me to collect your prizes!

If you've ever been in France during the month of January, surely you've noticed the blossoming of galettes des rois in the window of every bakery and pastry shop. A puff pastry pie garnished with a buttery almond filling, it is the traditional confection with which the Epiphany is celebrated*; I have written in more detail about this tradition in this post and later in this one, so I invite you to go and read them first. I'll wait right here.

La galette, and the fun ritual to determine who will be king or queen for the day (allow me to insist you read this post if you don't yet know about the fève thing), bring back many a happy childhood memory for me, and aside from the two years I spent in California, I have partaken of at least one galette a year for as long as I've had the requisite number of teeth.

But the big novelty this year, is that I finally made my own.

My deep attachment to this confection should have compelled me to do so years earlier, but the Epiphany is theoretically celebrated on January 6 -- though this is extended to the whole month of January nowadays -- and I always felt a bit too tuckered out after the holidays to tackle the project.

This year was different: we were celebrating my parents' 40th wedding anniversary on Saturday, my sister, brother-in-law and nephew were visiting from London for the occasion, and my mother had asked if I could bring the dessert for our celebratory lunch. It seemed the perfect opportunity to share a galette with my family, and I had just enough time to make it myself.

My initial intention was to make my own puff pastry, following Mercotte's instructions for feuilletage inversé (inverted puff pastry), a variation on the more common technique that consists -- in a nutshell -- in wrapping the butter around the dough instead of wrapping the dough around the butter, and is said to produce an exceptional texture.

But I couldn't find beurre de tourage in time -- the high-butterfat, low-humidity butter that Mercotte recommends -- so I decided to use store-bought puff pastry. Not just any store-bought puff pastry, mind you, but Madame François' puff pastry, which is produced in Sologne with butter from the Charentes, farine de gruau (fine wheat flour) and zero additives. I got it from G. Detou, where it is sold in slabs of 3 kilos, ready to be divided, shared and/or frozen; it can also be ordered on their website**.

The stuffing was going to be crème d'amande, not frangipane. There is a lot of confusion between the two, so here's the difference: crème d'amande (almond cream) is a simple mix of butter, sugar, ground almonds, and eggs, more or less in equal parts. Frangipane, on the other hand, is a blend of crème d'amande and crème pâtissière (pastry cream), which is made with eggs, milk, sugar, and flour or cornstarch.

Most galettes sold out there are filled with frangipane rather than crème d'amande -- the production cost of frangipane is a lot lower, since the almonds are the most expensive ingredient in there -- but my preference goes to crème d'amande, which makes a more delicate, less eggy, more flavorful filling.

As for the all-important fève (read here to know what that is), I had wisely saved the one Maxence got when we ate a galette des rois at my cousin's a week before: it is a little porcelain tower of some sort that seems like the tip might pierce the roof of your mouth if you're really out of luck, but this is France, and we haven't really gotten into the whole lawsuit thing so far, so that's the sort of thing we do***.

I consulted countless recipes, watched numerous videos, and merged all the things I'd learned into my own version, with a little hazelnut flour in the stuffing.

The making of the galette itself really wasn't difficult at all, at least for someone with a minimum of baking experience: you spread the puff pastry into two circles, spread crème d'amande on the first, cover it with the second, score, eggwash, and bake. The only slightly tricky steps are: 1- not forgetting to place the fève in the filling (a horrifying prospect), 2- placing the top circle precisely over the first, 3- sealing it properly so the filling won't escape, and 4- making sure the eggwash doesn't drip over the edges of the puff pastry, otherwise it might not rise to its full potential.

I did get some guidance from my personal galette hotline, i.e. my friend Pascale, whom I called to ask if she thought I could prepare everything a day in advance and bake the galette on the day of: her response was that I could freeze it overnight, and bake it straight from the freezer in the morning. She even mentioned that puff pastry rises higher if it's been frozen at some point.

It worked perfectly: I woke up, preheated the oven, slipped the frozen galette inside, and tried my best to occupy myself with other things -- watched puff pastry never rises -- until it was ready, golden brown, puffy, and gorgeous.

The bonus challenge I faced was transporting the galette to my parents' apartment -- on Maxence's scooter. I improvised a cake carrier out of two cereal boxes, inserted it in the compartment under the seat, and hoped for the best. Maxence was very careful to avoid bumps and ruts, and although we were practically run down by our squealing nephew upon arrival, the galette made it safely to my mother's kitchen, then to our table, where it was received with enthusiasm and wonderful compliments. My father even declared he'd never eaten such a flavorful galette des rois, and he'd said that about Pierre Hermé's before (I realize he would say that because he's my father, but still).

And as luck (and possibly karma) would have it, I got the fève, which means I can save it for next year, when I make another galette: now that I know how rewarding and fun it is to make my own, there's no turning back, I'm afraid.

Feeling up for the project yourself? You have until the end of January to do so -- at least that's when the French stop eating galettes (and stop wishing those they haven't yet seen or talked to a happy new year). And if it feels too tight, well, the recipe will be right here waiting for you next year!

* Except in the south of France, where the gâteau des rois -- a ring-shaped brioche studded with candied fruit -- takes its place.

** If that's not an option, just use the best quality puff pastry you can find and afford. Ideally, it will be made with just flour, butter, water, and salt (no other type of fat, and no preservatives or additives); in France, the one that is sold by Picard is said to be the best option in its range.

*** I've read that some French-style bakeries established in the US simply place a whole almond instead of a trinket in their galettes, to avoid any choking hazard.

I believe in striving to master simple dishes. I don't aspire to be a person of whom one says, "what an ambitious cook!" or "she should really open her own restaurant!" First and foremost, I want to be someone who can be trusted to prepare a good, well-rounded, home-cooked meal. A meal that has personality, yes, but one that doesn't try too hard, and relies chiefly on good taste and good technique.

This is why I've always been frustrated by my limited potato roasting skills. Oh, I've roasted my share of potatoes, but I was never able to strike the balance I was after: golden and generously crusty on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. By the time the chunks had developed enough of a crust, the flesh had begun to dry up inside, and I was left with something that was more cardboardy than I would have liked. Not inedible by any means -- it takes considerable effort to render a potato inedible in my book -- but not my platonic image of the roasted potato, either.

And then a few weeks ago, my friend Pascale shared the recipe she uses for pommes de terre rôties, which was in fact taught to her by her British mother-in-law. I have absolute kitchen faith in Pascale -- she has never steered me wrong -- and I was very excited about her technique, which involved a trick I'd never seen before.

Pascale's roasted potato magic unfolds thusly: the potatoes are parboiled for five minutes first, drained, and returned to the saucepan. At this point -- and this is the crucial step, so pay attention -- you grab the lidded pan and shake it vigorously, which not only is fun, but also serves to make the surface of the potato pieces fuzzy from rubbing their hips one against the other.

And wouldn't you know it, it is this very fuzz that fosters the formation of a splendid crust when you then bake the potatoes, while the parboiling step reduces the baking time and ensures that the flesh inside stays moist.

Pascale posted this recipe in late afternoon on a Sunday in December. I read it in early evening, and immediately felt compelled to try it: an hour later, the roasted potatoes were gracing our table, making this a personal TTK (time-to-kitchen) record. The only modifications I made were to reduce the amount of fat used, and to leave a little skin on the potatoes, peeling them in alternative stripes to retain more of the nutrients, and because I like the look and texture this creates.

Barely a month has gone by since that inaugural batch, and I must have made that recipe half a dozen times now, using oil or duck fat and different potato varieties (ratte, roseval, charlotte, vitelotte...) to stupendous results, every time.

It is a company-friendly side, too, since you can parboil and bruise the potatoes before your guests arrive, then slip them in the preheated oven as everyone's settling in. I've served them with Muriel's chicken, with whiskey-flambéed veal paupiettes, and with seared duck breasts, but I think my favorite pairing was with the quails I stuffed and roasted, loosely following a recipe in Thomas Keller's Bouchon.

Among them, and in no particular order, I would list the release of a French classic I helped edit, a Best Culinary Travel Guide award for my Paris book, a trip to San Francisco and our first-ever apartment swap, my thirtieth birthday, and a few other noteworthy things, listed below.

Favorite new kitchen pet

Last spring I started keeping a sourdough starter, which I named Philémon, and this has been the most gratifying, wonder-filled project I have ever undertaken: each starter bread I bake seems an opportunity to learn something new and improve my skills, and the results delight us every time.

In addition to simple loaves, English muffins, and bagels, I have just started making sourdough baguettes and you should hear about these very soon.

Favorite new appliance

After a maddeningly frustrating few months trying to work with an oven that refused to cooperate, I finally threw in the towel and invested in a shiny new one that has (knock on wood) served me really, really well so far.

The contender in this category is the electric steamer I got for my birthday, which opened me to a whole new world of steamy dishes. In 2010, I ambition to use it for homemade dim sum.

Favorite new cookbook

This is not at all a newly published book, but I recently acquired Claudia Fleming's dessert book The Last Course after hearing glowing reviews from several trusted sources. And indeed, it is a beautiful and inspiring book, full of seasonally-sound ideas and useful tips. (The book is out of print and its market value has shot up to absurd heights, but it can be ordered for a more reasonable price through the North Fork Table & Inn, where Fleming works now. Update: the book is now sold out at the North Fork Table & Inn.)

A contender in this category is Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery, a book about baking with a natural starter, which is, as I think we've established, my current passion.