Quick Fixes

I'd been warned. Owning a house in Provence is akin to running the shabby chiciest, most disorganized bed and breakfast on the planet. On the 4th of February, friends and relations began calling, with an eye toward booking their train tickets for the end of June. I silently thanked my mother for the 3 extra sets of matching sheets I told her not to bring from NJ. I posted a calendar on the kitchen wall. There was a brief, guilty rush of relief when someone cancelled at the last minute (48 hours to hang my underwear on the line without anyone seeing!).



I genuinely love entertaining, but now I know why the locals savor the long, lonely winters. With Parisians in their white linen trounsers and expensive sunglasses parking every which where, it is easy to get curmudgeon-y (and easy to forget that a mere 12 months a go, we were those Parisians). We MUST get rid of our Paris license plates. We are still getting honked at.



I love cooking for guests, and there are a few culinary tricks I've learned a few tricks to make sure I still love them at end of their stay. With Labor Day weekend suddenly upon us (and if you're not expecting a hurriance, earthquake or other apocalyptic weather), I thought I'd share:







Let the ingredients do the work: Find an ingredient that shows off the best the season has to offer. I've had a plain tomato salad drizzled with olive oil and sea salt on the table at every meal for a month. Slice and serve. Melon with jambon cru is another trick. If you start with good things, dinner often makes itself.





Whole grains out of the bag: Even the French don't make everything from scratch. For light summer meals I'll often serve a relatively plain piece of protien: chicken breast, salmon, or lamb on the grill, with a whole grain salad. My new favorite is a quinoa, barley and kamut combo that I dress up with chickpeas, fresh parsley, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Here in France, I've found a brilliant brand (Bio Express) of organic pre-cooked whole grains. The packages are the perfect size for making salad for 4, and the extra 10 or 15 mintues it saves me makes a huge difference in my home-cooking motivation levels. Even Minute Rice and Uncle Ben's offer a product like this now.





Go-to veggie: Everyone should have one dish that is good hot or cold, day or night, grill or picnic. The ingredients should be easy to find. Easier to prepare. And of course, it should be utterly, knock-out delicious. The stuff the makes you believe in vegetables again. To meet those K2-like criteria, I always go back to haricots verts (thin green beans) in walnut oil. You can always find green beans, but the walnut oil makes it special enough for company. Take a 1l5 pounds of thin green beans, add 1 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp walnut oil, saute the beans uncovered for 3 minutes, moving them around, add a good sprinkle of sea salt, stir and cover for 5 more minutes, stirring every two minutes. If you are using large American style green beans instead of smaller, slimmer haricot vert, you might want to blanche the beans in boiling water for 30 seconds before you begin.



Tip: Don't be afraid to let your beans wilt and get a bit brown and burnt looking. We Americans have this chronic fear of overcooking our grean beans. You can add some toasted walnuts on top of the finished dish to dress things up a bit...

Chickpea and Whole Grain Salad with Parsley and Preserved Lemon Zest



1 can of chickpeas, well rinsed

2 cups of pre-cooked mixed whole grains

olive oil to taste

juice of one lemon

large handful of flatleaf parsley, chopped

sea salt

black pepper

1 tablespoon of diced preserved lemon rind. Look for preserved (pickled) lemons at a Middle Eastern grocery.



Rinse the chickpeas under hot water. Rub off the waxy skins outer skins and discard. Combine chickpeas, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice and a generous pinch of salt and pepper. If you can find preserved lemons, slice off the rind from roughly half the lemon. Unlike cutting off normal lemon zest, you can go a bit deeper into the lemon -about 1/4 inch - because the pickling process takes away the bitterness in the white pith just underneath the yellow skin. Dice the lemon rind and add to the warm mix at the same time as the grains.



Prpare the whole grains according to package directions. While still warm, combine the whole grains with other ingredients.



Serves 4-6 as a side dish.