Petit Riz

These past few months, I’ve been thinking about my mother’s cooking—how in some ways her flavors and techniques have stayed the same, are so recognizable to me, and how in other ways, they have dramatically changed over the years. Something strange happens when we seek out the flavors from our childhood and realize they’re no longer quite there. That dissonance is a bit jarring, but isn’t it natural that my mother’s cooking would change over time? I see it with my own cooking and how it’s evolved since my early twenties. I use the oven much more, out of convenience but also because our current kitchen has no ventilation. I’m a more adventurous cook with a wider repertoire. I’m also lazier now that I find myself preparing lunch and dinner for two on most days, and it can be hard to remain inspired. How easy it is to eat a bowl of fried rice with eggs, or a salad.

We traveled to Japan last November for our honeymoon. We’ve often described the trip as a “once in a lifetime experience,” and now that we’re confined to our home in Brooklyn, those three weeks in Japan have taken on a mythical quality. The ease and lightness with which we journeyed around the country, from Tokyo to Kamakura to Kanazawa, feels far away. This morning it was announced that the Tokyo Olympics will be postponed until 2021. Every day, like everyone else, I wake up to a shifted landscape, and I can’t help but be reminded of the morning after the 2016 election, the reconfiguration of our lives so sudden and strange.

Recently I came across an old recipe in my mother’s notebook for a lentil terrine. I had forgotten all about this dish until now, and it’s still just beyond my grasp. I remember a firm log of brown lentils with the texture of pâté, sliced into thick rectangles. What stayed with me is the earthy flavor of lentils, mashed together into a greyish brown paste. It sounds unappetizing, and yet I’m certain I liked it, loved it even, just as I loved everything my mother cooked and put on our table.

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I’ve always had a soft spot for teachers who bring food to their class. It reveals something about them, a glimpse into their intimate life: the flavors they enjoy, whether they cook at all—like discovering a signature scent.

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These past few months I’ve been busy in the Marley Spoon test kitchen, and along the way, even though I was still cooking in my own kitchen, I lost the habit of writing recipes at home. So attuned was my culinary mind to 30-minute dinner meals that I almost forgot one could cook something as audacious as a cake with more than half a pound of butter.

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Until recently our summer in New York has been gentle and mild, while across the Atlantic, Europe wilts under a ferocious heat wave. I haven’t been as afraid to fire my oven, and it’s been a summer of baking, or more precisely, of galettes.

My love affair with galettes began late. I’ve always had a soft spot for quiches. The quiche Lorraine was one of the first recipes I mastered in high school: it came together so easily with supermarket all-butter crust, cream, eggs, and lardons (bacon pieces), and it always looked beautiful. It was easily transportable, could be eaten as a snack, and was even good at room temperature. When I arrived here eight years ago, I was dissatisfied with store-bought piecrust. I started making my own from scratch and was stunned by how quickly I could make the flakiest crust. After reading this wonderful article on how to make a galette without a recipe, I started experimenting with different fillings, and so I was lured into the camp of galette-makers. Here is why:

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My last year of high school in France, a girl brought a quatre quart in which she had forgotten the flour. A quatre quart is a simple recipe of only four ingredients, and without the flour, hers was a crystalized lump of sugar, butter and eggs. We dug into the golden mound with plastic spoons, more out of curiosity than appetite.

I’m weary of improvising when it comes to baking, afraid I’ll disturb the delicate balance between ingredients that provide texture and lightness. I use a scale religiously and it has taken years to feel comfortable adapting famed recipes, to play with seasonal fruits, darkness of chocolate and sweeteners, and ratio of butter and sugar. If I improvise, it is often in the safest ways, with one hand still flicking through a cookbook.

One morning in March I woke up very early to bake a rhubarb cake for a potluck. I’ve always loved rhubarb. I don’t like it raw, but stewed on its own with honey or cooked in a cake or pie, the celery-like stalk softens into silky threads that provide just the right touch of tartness to counter sweetness. I love rhubarb’s sour bite, the strange, earthy smell it releases when cooked, how despite being ubiquitous today, it’s still mysterious and odd enough of a fruit (or sweet vegetable) to be quite prized and special. Baking rhubarb cake was a slow process as I needed to pulse almonds, beat butter and sugar until white and puffed with air, chop rhubarb, arrange long stalks over the surface, and cook the cake in a hot oven for over an hour. I alternated between my kitchen and lesson planning. As the cake cooled on my stovetop, I scrolled through my emails and realized the potluck was the following week. I had miscalculated. The cake stared back at me, menacingly, telling me to not leave it alone.

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I have terrible memories from my childhood of fish terrines: cold and gritty mousse, a brown gelatin that wobbled around the edges. I doubt these terrines were bad, but they were always served as an appetizer during Christmas Eve, and only delayed the excitement of a tender chicken stuffed with roasted chestnuts and stewed prunes. I would smother my half-slice with a rich sauce until I was eating what tasted like pure mayonnaise. No wonder my stomach churned when I saw the white and orange terrine at the center of our table.

I’ve always loved a meat terrine where its irregular, rust-colored surface is almost like mountain terrain, and its moist interior is best sliced onto bread and eaten with cornichons. And slowly I’ve come to appreciate fish terrines, with much less sauce, and not when I’m hungering for a whole chicken.

But this month of May, the vegetable terrine has caught my attention. The one I’ve made a few times these past weeks is delicate and creamy. It is a cross between a terrine and a savory clafoutis, with a silky custard that barely binds the vegetables together.

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text by Sanaë, photos and words of advice by Geoffroy 

La Chaya Maya 

Izamal, early morning

Merida, market

Heladeria El Colón, Merida

Cancún, arrival

We only catch glimpses of Cancún, from where we fly in and out.

We arrive at our first airbnb past midnight, in a leafy neighborhood, and we don’t see what the building looks like until the morning. The building is tall, a small castle with colorful walls and a kitchen where hallways and stairs converge, like arteries to a heart. The kitchen, crescent shaped, is home to a gigantic stove with many stovetop coffee makers. We have no food, so we walk down a curved road to a nearby cafe. The neighborhood is quiet and sunlit with palm trees and sand colored roads. We enter the spacious, air-conditioned cafe. Large barrels of coffee beans line the counter. Our coffees arrive, lightly spiced with cinnamon. I order toasts (an airy, pale imitation baguette called “pan francés”) smothered in beans and melted cheese, and a warm sandwich with ham and cheese.

Sak Nah guest house is a great value if you’re looking to stay in the pueblo of Cancun, away from the expensive beachfront hotels. The room is spacious and clean, and Benoit is a kind host. For breakfast, we enjoyed La Nevera, just around the corner.

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I ate the best gyoza on the top floor of a shopping mall in Fukuoka this summer. My mother and I were traveling around the island of Kyushu and ended our trip with dinner in Fukuoka. She was taking the Shinkansen to Osaka and flying back to DC whereas I was continuing on alone to Tokyo to stay with an aunt I hadn’t seen in ten years. Japanese fancy shopping malls are famous for their food courts and selection of fairly expensive and well-regarded restaurants. We were tired from the many trains we rode to castaway villages where we discovered our ancestral lands, ate sashimi, and looked at pottery.

That evening we rode the elevator to the top and circled the floor, unable to choose from the colorful plastic displays of food. We settled on a ramen restaurant. My mother didn’t want ramen, so she ordered rice and gyoza. The gyoza arrived glistening and fat, the skin a rust brown, the inside squirting with hot pork juices. We swallowed them and ordered a second serving.

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