Sourdough Bagels
When Maxence and I were in San Francisco late last summer, we had bagels for breakfast every single day. There were a couple of bagel shops not far from where we were staying, so we alternated between the two, and on those mornings that we went for a run through the Golden Gate Park, bagels awaited at a busy coffee shop by the ocean. I like mine dotted with poppy seeds or sesame seeds, and spread with cream cheese and a juicy slice of tomato. And thanks to a reader who recently suggested the pairing, I've also taken to toppi

November 2009 Desktop Calendar
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 November is a picture of what I call a Parisian tartine, an open-face sandwich made on naturally leavened bread (here, a slice of pain des amis from the bakery Du Pain et des Idées), lightly spread with semi-salted butter then topped with artisanal ham, thick

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Bacon
[Velouté de topinambours au bacon] It has been a while -- five years, to be exact -- since we last discussed Jerusalem artichokes around here, but they do belong to my regular winter vegetable rotation so I thought I'd bring them up again. The tubers have just started to appear and will stick around until March or April, so you can start looking fo

Apple Slices with Frozen Sheep's Milk Yogurt
Maxence and I like to spend a weekend in Amsterdam every once in a while: we love the atmosphere of the city in any season, and we usually stay in a neighborhood called Nieuwmarkt that is both lively (plenty of shops and restaurants) and residential (real people live there), the ideal mix if you want to pretend you're an Amsterdammer (only with terrible language skills) for a few days. It doesn't hurt that it is also the nei

[Edible Idiom] Long comme un jour sans pain
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, "Long comme un jour sans pain." A literal translation would be, "as long as a day without bread," and it is used to express that something is very long -- in reference to physical length (a