Boxcar Kitchen

Well, it certainly has been awhile. I swear, I really I have been cooking - and eating for that matter. But free time has been spare and I've had quite a few fish to fry. Between work and getting ready for the addition of the "Bean", I just didn't have the energy to produce anything that I thought worth sharing. But now that Bean is here and his internship in "learning to sleep through the night or the better part of it" is nearing its end, I've got a little more time and energy. Still, everything I make is really simple. Basically, if I can't whip it up during nap time or it takes more than 20 minutes to get it from the fridge to the plate, I'm not going to bother.

Fennel, in all its forms, has been a diet staple since bringing Bean home. I was betting on its calming properties to help sooth the little man's colic. The colic was short lived but not the vegetable! Fennel was always one of those things that I love and enjoyed but never prepared. Now, most of the time I just chop it up, throw it in a pot with a big hunk of butter, let it get all brown and caramelized, and then cook it down his a little bit of water until it was melt in your mouth tender. Its warm and comforting and a nice change of pace from all the winter root vegetables we've been eating. Delicious - caramel and anise - almost like dessert for dinner.

In October, to celebrate my 30th birthday, some friends gifted me with a baking class at the Ecole Ritz Escoffier. The hub was perfect in choosing a 4 hour-long Saturday afternoon class dedicated to chocolate. (Yeah!) The combination of spending an afternoon with a real-life pastry chef in a veritable professional pastry kitchen at on of the most prestigious palaces in the city was enough to make me swoon. The only hitch was the wait. The class was scheduled for January which meant three long months of perusing their website and obsessing about what we might bake.

The day finally arrived and it it was one of those unseasonable warm days that have made up the majority of this winter season. With just a light jacket and the sun on my shoulders, I took the bus along the Seine to the Concorde and then walked up rue St. Honoré. I cut through a marbled shopping gallery that spills out on the Place Vendôme and came face to face with the Ritz. As I crossed the threshold of the main entrance I couldn't help but have one of those "I can't belive I'm here" blasts of happiness.

There were 10 of us in the class and we were split up into two groups which meant that we really were able to be hands on and not just silent observers. Each armed with a plethora of utensils and crisp white aprons we got down to business. Our chef was relaxed, easy-going and really interested in answering questions and teaching us just as much about technique as about the recipe we were preparing. The dessert in question was Le Délice or The Delight: a Sacher spongecake layered with chocolate mousse (saturated with a simple syrup) and a pistachio crème, covered in a chocolate ganache and painted with cocoa butter.

The best part though was all the little "pro" hints that make baking at home so much more interesting. For example, instead of using cake pans you can use rings which de-mold a million times easier. If your cake bakes in the shape of a volcano it means that you've overmixed. Although I'm sure that never happens to anyone. You can use a pair of square dowels set on either side of your cake to act as a guide when cutting it into cross sections. When making chocolate mousse, you can add your sugar as a boiling simple syrup to your egg yolks which gives your dessert a longer lifespan. When making a dessert like The Délice, which has a caramelized cream center, you freeze it before assembly. Cool, right?

Now, the only thing I need besides a kitchen torch, a 10 pound bag of Valrhona 70% chocolate, and an airless paint sprayer for the cocoa butter finish is a spot in the Ecole's 6 week-long pastry program this summer followed by a champagne toast at the hotel bar!

...are two things that I have started waking up to on a regular basis.

Raspberry current jelly is a family favorite. It was always the first flavor opened and very often the last one hoared in the back of the pantry to be opened only in the throws of winter. The combination of the sweet tart fruit on warm toast was enough to blow away any February storm.The soft pop of the lid was a reminder of warmer days, grass growing between your toes and the hours spent crouched on the ground scouring for fruit that always seemed to multiply by the minute.

Although I adore almost everything current, I do not have a passion for picking them. Tedious, is how I would describe a current harvest and little green worms always seem to make their way into my picking bowl. Currents are best when they are shiny red in the sunshine in a bowl, already removed from the bush. So when my dad called me to tell me that he had sacrificed his Saturday afternoon in the yard picking currents for the Greater Raspberry Current Jelly Good, I was excited and relieved.

Since I wasn't going to be back for a few more weeks, my parents cooked the berries down , pressed them and froze the juice. The actually jelly process was like the passing of the family torch. Prior to this, I had only been on the eating end of things but this time, I was the one hunched over the stove in 80 degree weather - an alchemist of sorts- surveilling the rumbling red fruit under the watchful eye of my mother.

So how do you top off vacation in Corsica? A week in Nice is just about all you need to ease back into life on the continent. I'm spoiled; I know it.

Vieux Nice is one of my all time favorite places to go for a couple different reasons. First of all, it is one of the only places in France (other than Corsica) where you can pretty much be garanteed real summer weather and it is always relaxing - almost like vacation at home but better. Once you start visiting a place regularly, you really get to know it and then you're not hounded by the guilt of trying to get out to visit every single monument, park, or restaurant. I also love how 'floaty' (salty) the water is too. The Mediterranean makes me feel like an Olympic swimmer which is something that I am most definitely not.

I've got my Nice pattern down pat: pizza, ice cream, beach and scooter. It sounds like I could carry out this routine just about anywhere but it truly is all about location. The best thin crust or 'real' pizza, like we call it, can only be found at the Bar du Coin in Vieux Nice. Measuring in at three to four times the size of my head and boasting a crust only 1 milimeter thick, these pizzas are a feat of nature. Once the last bite is dutifully washed down with a final swig of rosé, the only thing left to do is to head to Fenocchio. The treck goes without saying. By the time you've finally decided which flavors you want (out of the gazillion that they offer), I often find myself renegociated for a third scoop. This year, lavender and dark chocolate was one of my best combinations.

And since it is the Côte d'Azur, the only way to prepare for the next day's food festivities is to hop on a scooter and tour around the coast trying to get a peek at the innumerable million dollar villas that you can only live in in your dreams. It doesn't really matter though; the beaches are better anyway.

Well, I thought that I was onto something with this one, but apparently my so called stroke of genius wasn't genius after all. So I guess that leaves me with just a stroke...whatever that means. It's somewhat deflating to come up with a really great recipe idea only to discover, after a two second Google search, that about 40 billion other people have had the same idea. I didn't do my research until after I made up this recipe so I might as well share it.

My very unique and personal inspiration for this mango tart tatin came from- yes, you guessed it- mangoes. Pretty creative, right? But these were not just any mangoes! I was hit by a stomach rumbling bolt of inspiration while I was riding home on the bus, munching away on a bag of dried mangoes. Sure there are lots of different kinds of dried mangoes, but after relentless testing, I can honestly say that N°12 Just Mango is by far the yummiest. They are my newest addiction and can be found at the Grande Epicerie or at my favorite lunch spot, Cojean.

What is so great about these particular dried mangoes? To start, they have the perfect consistency: leathery but not tough and plump without being gummy. Like the name indicates, it's just mango: no added sugar or strange crystallization. And because the drying process is natural, each piece is unique. My tatin idea came from one particular slice that happened to be more dried than the others. The sweet slightly burnt flavor immediately made me think of caramelized fruit which is the staple of the tarte tatin. The mango tatin is a funky take on the time-honored dessert that will convince even the most diehard traditionalist.

• The key to making these 'boxcarkitchen style' is to let your caramel go until it is really nice and dark. It's important to remove the caramel from the heat right before it is almost too dark, stir the butter in right away and then quickly pour it into the pans before it hardens.