As a white, umpteenth-generation American whose grandparents were all born in New England, I didn’t have much experience cooking Mexican food until recently. I grew up eating ground beef tacos in hard shells with chopped iceberg and jarred salsa (and thanks Mom, it was delicious!) But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a nasty of habit of bringing cans of tomatillos, chipotles in adobo, and jalapeños back every time I go to the states. I hoard them in the cellar and curse myself when the expiration dates glide past unnoticed. I ask traveling friends to sneak packages of dried Ancho peppers in their suitcases, and for a while I ordered delicious homemade tortillas from a little output in the 11^th but then they closed. (If anyone has recommendations for a replacement supplier, please, tell me!)

When you live alone it feels silly to make a fuss opening a smuggled can of tomatillos to make homemade green enchiladas for yourself, but since I’ve had a life-mate, I’ve been experimenting more and more with my little Parisian American version of Tex-Mex to rave reviews.

Taco leftover lunch

To celebrate my most recent revolution around the sun, I decided to orchestrate a taco fiesta for a considerable portion of my social circle. We attacked the buffet like a pack of wolves and the only photo I took of any of this food was of my leftover lunch the following day. NB: the only reason there was any pork leftover is because we ran out of tortillas. I also got a sweet battle wound (oven burn) throwing tortillas out of the oven and onto the table with the help of said life-mate and Ms. Tangerine.

We were thirty people. Everyone was satisfied, but I think everyone could have had one more taco (they were so good!) I planned an average of 3 tacos/person, plus corn chips with guacamole and salsa, and an array of desserts.

What follows here is my game plan.

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Shiraz hostel

When we were in Shiraz, we languished in the afternoons underneath the persimmon tree in the hostel courtyard. They looked like little orange crowns soaking up the sunshine and synthesizing it into sugar. The persimmons weren’t ripe yet while we were in Shiraz, but no bother – the hostel grandfather Ali came around all afternoon offering tea and fruit to everyone. One day, sweet yellow melons, another day, pomegranates and apples. Late one evening, we were reading the guidebook and writing in journals, and Ali came around with more tea. We talked about people, and cultures, via the instant magic of the Google translate app. He told us Israel was “very, very bad,” and China was “very, very good.” Unsure how to answer, and especially explain that one of us had an entire family in Israel, he quickly typed away and thrust the phone back in our hands. “All people are good, just governments are bad.”

Last weekend at the market, amid the last ruby red tomatoes and shining dark eggplants, the shift in squash proportions like the arms on a clock signaling that zucchini time is finishing and pumpkin time is rolling in, I spied these sweet little trays of deep orange persimmons at the fruit stand. They were almost the same size and shape of those ones in Shiraz – little gems shining under a screen of plastic. They’re from Spain, the seller said, they’re the REAL ones – not those crisp bitter ones you can bite into. They’re really, really ripe – but they’ll last all week in the fridge.

The persimmon tree

I arrived home to another pile of figs on the dining room table and realized I would probably need to do something with the persimmons, rather than just eat them along with all the other fruit I’d been stockpiling. What follows is a lovely tea cake – or breakfast loaf, or dessert – as you wish! Freeze thick slices of it and defrost them overnight in the fridge for months to come.

Perfect Persimmon Cake
Inspired by Rachel Roddy

250 grams white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
150 grams white sugar
200 grams full-fat Greek yogurt
200 ml olive oil
3 eggs
zest of one lemon
a good dusting of freshly grated nutmeg
pinch salt
250 grams of very ripe Persimmon flesh

Perfect persimmon cake

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and white sugar. Add yogurt, mix partially until you have a lumpy wet batter. Pour in olive oil, beat thoroughly with a metal fork until mixed through. Crack eggs into one side of the bowl, whisk roughly to break up the yolks, then mix well with the rest of the batter. Add the lemon zest, nutmeg, salt, and persimmon, mixing well until batter is homogenous.

Grease a nonstick loaf pan with a bit of olive oil, then pour batter and bake on the middle rack of the oven. Begin checking for doneness after 45 minutes, covering with foil once the top begins to turn crispy dark brown. Cake is done once a toothpick comes out clean – mine took two hours.

Best enjoyed once cooled, cut into thick slices and adorned with crème fraîche or ricotta. Perfect for afternoon tea, or even breakfast.

Christmas Cheese Plate, 2007

When I was still somewhat ‘new’ to France, in 2007, I ate a meal at a restaurant along a medium sized port city in Normandy that concluded with an impressive cheese plate. The waiter hauled the thick wooden board over his shoulder and told us what all the different cheeses were, and allowed us to choose.

In awe, I had to discreetly ask my dining partners to repeat the names of some of the cheeses. I had assumed they were all from Normandy, since the French are so attached to their regional cuisine (after all, this was following a meal of fish dishes in cream sauce served with rice and boiled potatoes…) To my surprise the cheeses came from all over the country, although the majority of them were from that dairy-farm-rich state along the sea.

The fact that my dining partners could remember them all was just as impressive as the spread of cheeses itself. The round orange one wrapped in twine? Livarot. The whiter, square one that was being cut into elegant triangles? Pont l’Eveque. And the whitest creamy one that stood higher and firmer than the rest? Coulommiers.

I couldn’t believe they remembered them all. But how? De Gaulle once famously remarked that it was impossible to govern a country with 365 different kinds of cheese, but how did everyone remember their names?

I made a silent vow to myself to start to remember those cheeses, to know what kinds of milk they were made from and whether or not it was common to find raw-milk varieties. The fat contents were less important – except for the triple-cream beauties from Burgandy, like Brillat-Savarin, but the regions were vital in understanding the family tree of French cheeses. Some regions are more famous for their semi-mature aged cheeses with thick crusts that (most people) don’t eat, while others age their cheeses in beer or nut liquor.

There was no clear-cut etiquette about how many cheeses one was expected to ask for off the board at a medium-range restaurant. Weight-minding women took one or two, most people took three, and burly men who had nothing to fear took four. I don’t think anyone had the gall to ask for five. The waiter expertly cut each sliver of cheese in whatever way was custom for that cheese, with whichever shape of knife was most appropriate.

A year later, I celebrated Christmas with the same Norman family. Three days worth of hand-written dinner menus were displayed on the piano downstairs as folks arrived from all over northern France for an extended eating celebration.

By day three, the cheese plate had finally dwindled itself down to one board, having been two fully packed boards on the first night.

These days, the cheese plate in my apartment in Paris is just as much a staple as the board was at those meals. The cheese plate waxes and wanes as the weeks go by – the bag the cheeses are kept in will rotate depending on what cheese shop we went to last, whether or not we (or a friend) brought something creamy and delicious back for us from another region (the best Beaufort from the Alps, 36 month old Comté from the Jura, or ash-coated Sainte Maure de Touraine – which costs half the price in Tours as it does in Paris.) The cheeses shrink and grow, multiply, and sometimes, completely disappear – requiring a total refresh of the cheese plate.

While I have my favorites close to home, sometimes when I’m in a neighborhood I don’t usually frequent, I’ll stop at one of my (other) favorite cheese shops to stock up on something I know they’ll have plenty of. Here below are a list of some favorites, and other Parisian noteworthy fromageries:

La Fermette, rue Montorgueil : specialties from Burgundy like Délice de Bourgogne, Soumaintrain, Brillat Savarin, Ami de Chambertin, and the dried figs stuffed with foie gras in December.

Au Coeur du Marché, rue d’Aligre: the “hall of horrors” with very dried goat cheeses, specialties from various French regions such as that long chevre whose name I always forget, the lightly smoked brebis, and various English and Spanish cheeses.

Autour du Fromage, rue de Charonne: for a St Félicien that is always perfectly ripe.

Beillevaire, various locations around Paris: the Machcoulais, and other house-made productions from their dairy plant in the Vendée.

Laurent Dubois, place Maubert: well known for the fact that he doesn’t only sell the cheeses, but ages them too, in the cellars below Paris’ 5th arrondissement.

“Do you need some help?” Susanne yelled down to the man in uniform (white pants, green polo shirt embellished with what must have been a company logo.)

She spoke bits of Italian, leftover from her years at a Swiss boarding school, but most of the time we simply got by with hand motions and speaking slowly (and loudly) in English.

The next thing I knew, she’d hopped over the guardrail, just as the worker had, and she was climbing down a ladder into what appeared to be an orchard carved into the hillside outside Amalfi. She later laughed about how he must have been peeking up her skirt as he helped her down the ladder.

I hurried towards the ladder. “Come down! C’mon!” she cried.

I laughed. “No way! I’m not getting my skirt dirty!”

Susanne stomped around the lemon grove for a while with this mysterious semi-urban farmer, who was tending to the trees and would presumably walk down the hill towards another grove once he was done. These “fields” of lemon trees were perched along hilltop plateaus between houses with breathtaking views over the Tyrrhenian Sea. We’d simply stopped to take a photo of the coastline.

The majestic Amalfi coast

She came back towards the ladder. “Do you want some lemons?” The worker was motioning to me with that classic Italian sign language that meant eating: fingers all pressed together and hand pointing to mouth.

A little while later, she climbed back up the ladder with two huge bags of lemons, two varieties, around a kilo each.

The worker asked me things in Italian that I understood, even though I don’t speak it.

“Do you know how to prepare them?”

“No, what should we do?”

“The small ones are for juice. The big ones you can eat- cold, thinly sliced, with salt and oil.”

Sir, yessir. We thanked him and dropped the lemon bags in the trunk of the car, and carried on with the harrowing drive through the Amalfi coast towards Agerola, for the mozzarella festival. The lemons would make for our youth hostel dinner the following night, along with a big ball of smoked mozzarella, some bread, cherry tomatoes, and salad.

—–

In Rome a couple of weekends ago, I spied some large Amalfi lemons at the Mercado Trionfale. They maybe weren’t as big as the ones we’d been given that day on the coast, but they were sizable and would fit in my carryon suitcase. I decided to grill them and toss them with fava beans and fresh herbs, and serve them today for lunch alongside some expertly roasted dorade (sea bass) and rice.

To make this more of a main, you could add feta and thick bread for sopping, or bulgur, or you could toss it with pasta.

Fava bean and grilled lemon salad

First, find the best lemon you possibly can. It should be untreated (organic). Its skin should be thick, and its flesh should be light yellow and meaty.

You should remove the zest first and do something else with it – freeze it for a later use, chop it up for vinaigrette, or put it in a small bottle with some olive oil to make lemon-flavored oil.

Amalfi lemons

Other ingredients as follows:

400 grams fava or broad beans, frozen with skins
20 stems of fresh oregano
Handful fresh parsley, cleaned and lightly chopped
Flaky sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Best-quality olive oil (Provençal in my case)
Additional lemon juice

Fresh oregano

Blanch the fava beans: toss them into a pot of boiling salted water and let them sit, stirring occasionally, until the water comes back to a boil. Then drain and run under cold water.

Skin the fava beans and put them into a pretty salad bowl.

Meanwhile, heat a grill or a cast-iron grill pan until just beginning to smoke. Grill the lemon, sliced about ½ inch thick, brushed with oil and salt, about 2-3 minutes on each side.

Drizzle a bit of lemon juice (from the ends of the sliced lemon) over the fava beans. Pick the oregano leaves off their stems and add them to the beans. Add the parsley, sea salt, pepper, and some olive oil. Toss by hand, taste and correct seasoning.

Fava bean and grilled lemon salad