Spring

The saffron does all the work for you in this dish—you’ll freak out when you take your first bite and actually taste how easy this was to make. Since you now have saffron on hand, next time you’re making regular old rice, add a pinch of saffron and your rice will taste extraordinary.

Feel free to make this dish in all four seasons. I just call it “Spring Chicken” because it tastes light and crisp, like spring air, and because “Spring Chicken” sounds more appetizing than “Leeky Chicken,” which was what I called an earlier version of this recipe.

This preparation takes fresh strawberries to another level. Paired with whipped or sweet cream, these berries are pure indulgence. They can be served over pancakes, waffles, or French toast for brunch, spooned over pound cake, or paired with biscuits for shortcake. They can even make a relatively healthy dessert spooned over nonfat Greek yogurt with a grating of fresh cinnamon or nutmeg to liven things up.

We like these artichokes both cold and hot. The green olive brine adds a wonderful flavor. Even better, it comes free in your jar of olives. Alternatively, olive brine is now sold as its own ingredient for mixing cocktails. The artichokes are great with potato gnocchi or on top of pizza. They can be sautéed in butter or lightly breaded and deep-fried. They are delicious wrapped in pieces of prosciutto or served as a salad with sliced tomatoes and a simple lemon vinaigrette. If you don’t want the flavor of lemon in your artichokes, you can add citric acid at a ratio of 0.5 percent to your water instead to prevent oxidation.

The sweet-tart flavor of these pink ribbons makes them a wonderful accent. They are fun with cheese courses where their crunch is a nice contrast to the creamy texture of the dairy. Their lightly tangy flavor is delicious with sweetbreads and game. They also make a beautiful garnish for a panna cotta, rice pudding, or slice of cheesecake. Sprinkle them with a little togarishi (a Japanese spice blend) before drying and use them to garnish crab salad. A hint of Old Bay seasoning can make them the perfect accompaniment for bay scallop risotto or fish cakes. Sprinkle them with sparkling sugar and they can become gorgeous tuiles to be eaten alone or perched on top of a sweet lemon tartlet.

In Jewish homes in France and all around the world, recipes for macaroons have been handed down from mother to daughter for centuries. Jewish macaroons are descended from the Ladino marunchinos and almendredas, both terms for almond cookies. In fact, during the Inquisition, historian David Gitlitz told me, crypto-Jews were accused of having bought almond cookies from the Jewish quarter in Barbastro, in Aragón. The modern Jewish macaroon is specifically associated with Boulay, a town about twenty-five miles north of Nancy. It seems that a Jewish wine salesman named Bines Lazard opened in 1854 Maison Lazard, along with his wife, Françoise, and their son Léopold, where they sold macaroons, matzo, and wholesale wine. In 1898, the folklorist Auricoste de Lazarque tasted their macaroons, and proclaimed them the best in France, making the company enormously successful. During World War I, the Lazard family sold the wine business, and in 1932, they abandoned the matzo trade. Some thirty years later, the business, which included its secret recipe for macaroons, was sold to Jean Alexandre, who opened a shop in Boulay where macarons de Boulay are baked and sold to this day. Made from the traditional mixture of almonds, sugar, and egg whites, they are slightly robust, a departure from the flat and shiny French macaroons that are so popular today. Although the Alexandres would not give me their secret recipe, Yves Alexandre (no relation), from Strasbourg, had me taste his, which are very similar but made by hand, rather than machine.

“I’m not much of a cook,” Michèle Weil told me as she ushered me into her charming kitchen in a residential section of Strasbourg. Fresh basil was growing on her kitchen windowsill, and paintings from the Jewish School of Paris adorned the walls. “But,” she continued, “I have to cook. All French women cook.” A full-time pediatrician and the mother of three boys, Michèle is smart enough to know she can’t do it all. On medical call before we arrived for dinner, she quickly pulled from the freezer a package of hunks of frozen salmon and cod, bought at Picard Surgelés. Then she boiled some potatoes, put the fish in the oven, and opened a carton of prepared Hollandaise sauce, which she microwaved and poured over the baked fish. Putting this together with a green salad with tomatoes and her homemade vinaigrette, she had made a quick and balanced dinner. Like all working women, Michèle has to make compromises. “My mother would never have given you frozen food,” she apologized. “But, no matter how busy I am, I would never buy desserts. I always make them,” she told me as she presented a free-form rhubarb tart that she had made before going to work. It seemed that every Jewish cook I visited in Alsace served me rhubarb, the sour-tasting sign of spring. Unlike Americans, who almost always marry tart rhubarb with strawberries and lace the two with large quantities of sugar, French cooks make a less sweet tart using only rhubarb. They peel the stalks first, which I do not. I think it might be one of those French fetishes, like always serving radishes with butter, or tomato juice with celery salt. Alsatian home cooks also serve their tart with a delicious custard topping made from cream and eggs.

I used to think that this dish, called carciofi alla giudea, originated in Rome. But now I am not so sure. When I was visiting Barcelona last spring, it seemed as if every restaurant, every bar, every street vendor was selling this crispy delicacy of deep-fried artichoke flavored with herbs and garlic and served cold. I love it. This is a recipe that has come down in the family of Violette Corcos Abulafia Tapiero Budestchu of Paris.

This couscous dish, originally made especially by Moroccans at the Maimouna, a post-Passover celebration, has become pan–North African in France now that Tunisians and Algerians are preparing it. They also make this dish, using butter and accompanying it with yogurt, at Shavuot, a late-spring holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and the abundance of milk in the springtime. Sweet couscous can be made with either couscous or rice, although I prefer the texture of the couscous with the raisins and nuts.

“To be Jewish is to be conscious of what one says and what one does,” Jacqueline Meyer-Benichou, who cooks some of Paris’s most elegant kosher food, told me. The head of a real-estate company, with a degree from Les Beaux Arts in architecture, Jacqueline treats cooking as her avocation and considers the presentation of food to be as important as the menu. Living near branches of great gourmet stores in Paris, such as Lenôtre, she window-shops, looking at their food preparations and presentations, and tries to replicate the recipes for kosher dinners at her home. For dessert, she often fills little golden cups with soy-based iced soufflés, as Lenôtre does. “I love perfection,” she said. At Passover, Jacqueline makes beef cheeks or even veal shanks seasoned the Algerian way, with hot pepper and cilantro, and serves them as a main course, accompanied by her Algerian take on cabbage with cilantro and hot pepper. If you can’t find beef cheeks, use veal shanks, stew meat, or flanken—any slightly fatty cut will do. Slow cooking makes the meat tender and delicious. Since it tastes even better prepared a day in advance, reheat just before serving.

Like many other communities in France, the town of Annecy had few Jews living there until the late 1950s. Then, one day, the town’s mayor assembled the Catholic archbishop, the head of the Protestants, and the leader of the tiny Jewish community, who happened to be my relative Rudi Moos (see page 3), and asked them to welcome emigrants from North Africa. Rudi sponsored about forty Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian Jewish families and built a synagogue in this town that had none. Cécile Zana and her husband were one of these families. They left Tunisia and went first to the Congo, and then, in 1968, to Annecy, where they live today. And, perhaps not surprisingly in this small Jewish world, Cécile’s daughter married Rudi’s grandson. Cécile showed me how to make this delicious spring dish with lots of parsley and peas.