Plucking the fleshy seeds from a pomegranate can leave you looking like you toured a slaughterhouse. Crimson juice spurts in every direction as you pry the kernels apart, surgically dismantling the fruit’s honeycomb structure.

A simple dish—a salad topped with persimmon slices and pomegranate seeds—can turn into a forty-five minute project. This can feel like more trouble than it’s worth.

A new method I just learned changed all of that.

I’d read about creative techniques to avoid the carnage: pluck the seeds out underwater; perform the operation in an elaborate get-up of plastic bags. But nothing seemed to make the process any less time-consuming or onerous—just less messy. Impatience usually gets the better of me and I end up eating the seeds at the counter with blood-red hands. Still, when pomegranates make their brief appearance every fall, I succumb. This new method gave me every reason to.

The process is simple. Cut the pomegranate in half horizontally, so the stem end forms a North pole and the cut runs along the equator. Then—and this is the fun part—invert one hemisphere so the cut side faces down, grab a wooden spoon, and give it some good, strong whacks. The kernels shower down, intact. No pools of juice. No mess. It’s magic.

My favorite thing to do with pomegranate seeds right now is sprinkle them on yogurt. My work with local, artisan goat-cheese makers has me more hooked on goat products than ever before. I’ve always been obsessed with goat cheese. Now I’m discovering the wonders of goat milk, goat yogurt . . .

I’ve also been doing research for a piece on Moroccan food for the Town Crier, which has me adding exotic touches of orange flower water and cardamom to little mezze-style side dishes of fruits and vegetables. And, since I finally learned how to properly suprème oranges, I’ve become somewhat suprème-happy. I’ve been slicing juicy little suprème segments out of oranges every chance I get, leaving that spherical sculpture of pocket-book folds behind.

This fruit salad that I’ve been making is the happy confluence of all my recent fixations.

It consists of orange segments and pomegranate seeds, with a lovely yogurt sauce made from goat yogurt into which I stir cardamom, orange flower water and a touch of brown sugar. I love the contrast of textures—crunchy, juicy, creamy—and flavors—warm spices, tangy tartness, and a touch of sweetness.

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Spiced orange-pomegranate salad

1 large orange

1/4 cup pomegranate seeds

1/4 cup yogurt (goat milk or cow’s milk)

1/4 teaspoon orange flower water

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

Peel the orange and cut into cross-sections or suprèmes. Extract the pomegranate seeds from the fruit and arrange on a plate with the orange.

In a separate bowl, combine the other ingredients. Chill all before serving.

To serve, dollop the yogurt mixture onto the fruit and garnish with a sprig of mint if desired.

(Thank you to the team at Bon Appetit for sharing this new pomegranate-seed-extraction technique in their latest issue.)

Visiting my family in Paris over Christmas, I knew I would eat bûche de Noël, the elaborate Yule log cake that French patissiers invented centuries ago and that has become the quintessential French Christmas pastry, iconic as the British plum pudding Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol. What I discovered, though, was a changing tradition, one that’s evolving in reaction to changing tastes. Today’s bûche de Noël is going light, airy, slick, modern.

The traditional bûche is made of genoise sponge cake spread with butter cream, rolled into a log shape, and then covered with more butter cream that is scored to look like the craggy bark of a tree. Decorated with tiny, cocoa-dusted mushrooms made of piped meringue and a light snowfall of powdered sugar, the bûche looks like something foraged from the forest. But all that butter cream makes it a rich end to a Christmas meal. This is, apparently, the current complaint—one which French patissiers are addressing by making lighter, mousse-based bûches.

I set out to investigate the bûche scene in Paris.

 Already, I knew there had been a revolution in flavors. It’s taken me a while to get used to the idea. I grew up with bûches with traditional flavor profiles: chocolate, coffee, hazelnut nougatine, maybe raspberry. Last year, I wrote in half dismay when my Parisian family told me over the phone that they were eating a yuzu-flavored bûche de Noël. Yuzu?! What was the world coming to?! But why not? I no longer flinch when I see the pineapple or mango-passion-fruit bûche exotique. Not even raspberry-acai surprises me. The real revolution isn’t in flavors—but in texture and form. And evidence of this revolution was everywhere.

Certainly, you can still find traditional bûches de Noël. But even neighborhood patisseries’ displays reflect the changing times.

Here we have the classic exercises in holiday indulgence. There’s a line of classic log-like bûches in the center. On the bottom left, a chestnut bûche covered with thick squiggles of crème de marron, a rich, extremely sweet chestnut puree. Next to it, a chocolate bûche smothered in gaudy chocolate flowers (dusted with “snow,” of course). But the raspberry and vanilla bûches towards the back are from the new school of bûches. Their interior is airy mousse over a light biscuit (cake) base. The finishing touch is a glistening transparent glaze. Gone are the layers of genoise and buttercream. They’re not trying to look like something from a forest.

Outside the humblest neighborhood pastry-shop window, in fact, there’s not a log-like bûche to be found. The most elegant venues all offer the new, light, ethereal creations. Like these, from the pastry case at Le Bon Marche, the oldest and most elegant department store in Paris.

And then there are whimsical creations like the ones I saw in the window of a fancy, boutique-type patisserie in the Marais. (See also the top photo.)

They look like high-end landscape art: the shrubbery; the English garden, the Sahara . . . These represent a new art of bûche.

And there are other evolutions. I love the little bûchettes most patisseries have started making—miniature bûches that are just right for one or two people. Christmas isn’t necessarily celebrated en famille anymore, with eight or ten people crowding around the dessert platter. A bûchette has all the qualities of a bûche, and you don’t have to be eating it until New Years Day.

(The clementine segments and chocolate-covered coffee beans give a sense of the size scale.)

The Christmas-Eve bûche I ordered for my family from the patisserie around the corner was a blend of the old and the new. My own nostalgia required some traditional elements. And so the flavor was chestnut. But the snow-drifts were of chestnut mousse, not buttercream. With its fragments of marron glacé inside, it was heaven–light and decadent at the same time.

For more bûche-oggling, the Paris food blog Paris by Mouth has a round-up of the city’s most outrageous, artful 2011 bûches  here.

They’re also easier to find in the US. You can order them from Whole Foods, Williams Sonoma, or Harry and David.

Yesterday, I tasted a cheese that doesn’t yet have a name. I was visiting Dave Eagle at his Eagle Mountain Farmhouse Cheese shop in Granbury, TX.

The cheese was one of those “experiments,” Dave said. He called over his son, Matt, who was washing the Dutch molds in which they make their Gouda and Trappist cheeses.

“Where are those basket-cheese experiments?” he asked. “Can you get one out?”

Matt went back into their aging room with its racks of wheels and its smells of ripening cheese. (“Do you smell apple?” Dave asked me later when we went inside ourselves. I did, now that he mentioned it. The smell reminded me of my great-aunt’s cider cellar when I was growing up in France and we gathered as a family for cider-bottling.)

Out came Matt with a small, palm-sized puck, rough and speckled like a mountain rock. Ridges were still visible from the basket into which the curds had been ladled and left to drain rather than being pressed, like the other cheeses, under the disk-shaped weights of the old-fashioned Dutch press that dominates one side of Dave’s cheese room. (“If you went into an old Dutch cheesemaker’s shop, you would probably see a press like this,” Dave told me.)

The flavor of this aged basket-cheese was unexpected. The interior was firm, dry and crumbly, with a yellow hue. It tasted cheddar-like. The mold on the rind, though, had a flavor that reminded me of the flavors in the bloomy rind of Camembert, sweet and nutty. It was such an unusual and intriguing combination, not quite like anything I’d tasted before. Dave and I shared another slice while I pondered this no-name creation.

Like any cheesemaker, Dave has stories about experiments—the ones, for example, that leave you with 40 pounds of “something you can never make again,” a product of whim or circumstance or forgetfulness.

Anne Jones of Latte Da Dairy told us a similar story that morning as we chatted together at her goat cheese stand at Fort Worth’s Cowtown Farmers Market. The experiment in question was a Cotswold she accidentally “aged” like an expert affineur simply by forgetting it. It was her first attempt, made with some leftover milk. Some time later, she pulled the forgotten package out of her fridge, wondering “What’s this moldy thing?” The “moldy thing” turned out to be a Cotswold whose deliciousness she’s now afraid she won’t be able to reproduce. It might be like those childhood flavors you can never recapture, she said, laughing.

The rest of my hockey-puck no-name cheese is waiting in my fridge. I will savor every bite, knowing it may go down in the annals of history as “that really good random basket-cheese experiment.” On the other hand, this is how new cheeses are born.

It’s inevitable. The first annual American Cheese Month is announced and hard cheeses start flexing their muscles. Soft cheeses get to limbering up. Bloomy-rind cheeses fluff their delicate white fuzz. They know it’s only a matter of time before people start sizing them up, recruiting the American All-Star team. After all, this will be a month of cheese tastings, and cheesemongers are picking their line-ups. So who makes the team? To scope out the stars of the American cheese scene, find shops or restaurants holding cheese tastings in your area this month.

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Here’s a case study:

At the Scardello Artisan Cheese shop in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, owner Rich Rogers held a “10 for $10 American Cheese Celebration” today, where customers paid $10 to sample a selection of what he considers “the 10 best American-produced cheeses now.”

What counts as “best” for Rich? (See the list below.)

Like a good cheese patriot and representative of his métier, he first made sure his selection covered the major cheese categories: washed-rind, soft, hard, blue. He also showcased all three dairy queens: the cow, the goat, the sheep.

From there, he assumed his own idiosyncratic role as taste guide.

A few selections were “perennial favorites” from the more than 500 cheeses that have come through his shop in the last three years—the ones that might cause riots if they disappeared from the case.

Like “Divine” Plain Chèvre from On Pure Ground Dairy in Bonham, TX, one of the local artisan cheesemakers he staunchly supports. The name is no exaggeration, according to Rich.

“I think Cheryl [of On Pure Ground] makes the best chèvre I’ve ever tasted. . . . So it’s not just local, but best-in-show.”

Rogue River Blue from Rogue Creamery in Oregon wasn’t just the token blue on the list, either: this much-acclaimed cheese won Best in Show in the 2011 American Cheese Society competition.

“So it would be horribly sad not to include that in the tasting,” Rich said.

And then there were the personal favorites. A lover of washed-rind cheeses myself, I immediately noted the three in his line-up. These are the cheeses with tacky, orange-tinged rinds that often top people’s list of “stinky” cheeses. Think Munster and Epoisses. But there’s a great range, each often sounding a subtle flavor note that comes from a particular alcohol with which it’s been washed.

“I love washed-rind cheeses,” Rich said. And there’s one he was particularly keen to showcase.

It isn’t just the bark wrapper that makes Harbison special. Rich described Harbison, from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, as “a cross between Camembert and a washed-rind cheese . . . the kind of cheese where you cut the top off and scoop it out with a spoon and it’s gooey and delicious.”

Not an easy specimen to get your hands on, but for people who are intimidated by the pungency of washed-rind cheeses, Harbison is a good place to start, according to Rich: “It’s a lighter style, so more approachable.”

So progresses our cheese education. With Rich, we’re in good hands.

And he’s not the only one out there waiting to let you sample American cheese all-stars.

“Given that it’s the first go-round . . . I don’t know that the general public is completely aware of [American Cheese Month] to the extent that the American Cheese Society would like it to be,” Rich said.

But it’s the perfect chance for us all to think about which American cheeses constitute our personal dream team.

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The Scardello Top 10

Seastack – WA (Soft Cow)

On Pure Ground “Divine” Plain Chevre – Bonham TX (Fresh Goat)

Brazos Valley Brie – Waco, TX (Soft Cow)

Pondhopper – OR (Hop-Washed Semi Soft Goat)

Cabot Clothbound – VT (Cheddar – Cow)

Pleasant Ridge Reserve – WI (Mountain Tomme – Cow)

Cave Aged Marissa – WI (Hard Sheep)

Harbison – VT (Bark-wrapped soft washed-rind cow)

Red Hawk – CA (Washed-rind triple-crème cow)

Rogue River Blue – OR (Leaf wrapped, pear brandy soaked, blue- Best in Show Winner ACS 2011)

Let’s celebrate North American cheese in all its glory, they say. Let’s recognize those who make it, age it, peddle it, eat it. Let’s celebrate the coastal-grazing goats that give us the chèvres of Northern California; the cheesemakers who wash and turn and coddle their cheeses—those who bring us classic Goudas and Cheddars and blues, and those who make new magic with ancho chile or hoja santa leaves or local pear brandy. Let’s savor the cheese names that take us places: Wabash Cannnonball, Rogue River Blue, San Juaquin Gold; and thank the cheesemongers who ply us with samples.

When I learned about American Cheese Month I was tickled. You might even say rapturous. But a few weeks ago, I was reminded that cheese can be, for some, an object of fear. Death. Heights. Clowns. Cheese. This may sound silly. What could be more innocuous than a floppy, tidy, cheerfully orange slice of “American” cheese? (Scary for other reasons.) But consider this:

American cheese tastes have expanded; your average cheese tray could include a hunk of something that smells like old socks; a squat fuzzy cylinder run through with ash; a mysterious bundle wrapped in dark green leaves. We’re way beyond the simplicity of “Swiss or Jack.”

At a wedding I attended a few weeks ago, a woman sidled up to me at the cheese table, which was beautifully spread with at least six different, unusual cheeses. She had been watching me for a few minutes. “You seem to know what you’re doing,” she said. “Will you help me?” She flushed slightly.

Cheese can leave people at a loss. Which rinds can you eat and which do you not? Will everyone laugh if I cut this wedge wrong? Eat a cheese past its prime, and a searing ammoniac flavor could take your breath away and leave you grimacing. So what’s the line between ambrosia and ammonia?

So, yes, cheese can be scary. All the more reason to spend time discovering its glories this October. I say, let this be a month of reveling in new tastes and new stories.

Bring on the cheese!

I love summer fruit. Heaping bowls of berries and cantaloupe, juicy peaches and plums—I’ve been eating my fill. But almost as though tuned to a seasonal clock, I’ve started thinking about apples, missing their crunch. I’ve started dreaming about spiced apple butter and apple pies. What I’m craving most as autumn approaches, though, is French apple tart—a refined twist on the comforting, classic apple pie.

The all-American apple pie is deep and wide, with a thick, dimpled crust that soaks up juices and spice. Maybe it’s topped with a buckling lattice or a crumbly streusel topping. With its generous wedges of fruit tossed in cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, it’s all about the pleasures of texture, the rich chaos of flavors. French apple tarts, in contrast, are exercises in understated refinement.

First, there’s the dough. The origins of our pie crusts lie in the hearty pies and pasties of England—hefty fare. French apple tarts use pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), one of the marvels that joined the French pantheon of patisserie in the 17^th century. While we were cutting suet and lard into pea-sized pieces for our short pastry, the French were beating and folding butter into paper-thin sheets that would puff dough up into crispy layers in the oven.

Pâte feuilletée means “leafed” dough. It’s closer to the phyllo used in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean desserts than it is to traditional pie dough. It makes possible the delicate layering of Napoleons and millefeuilles; it forms the flaky spirals of palmiers.

My ideal French apple tart starts with a thin disk of flaky puff pastry that gets crisp and brown in the oven. On top of this flat disk comes another study in horizontality: apples, sliced extremely thin, layered in concentric fans. No spices interfere with the apple flavor; just a touch of apricot jam for a glaze, or a splash of calvados (apple brandy). This is all about understatement.

Sometimes, though, there’s a secret deviation: Sometimes, a layer of frangipane (almond cream) hides between the crust and the fan of apples. This, to me is the ultimate apple tart. I love the silkiness of the frangipane, and the magical way apple, apricot and almond taste together.

A French apple tart may be a touch fancy, but it doesn’t have to be hard to make. Making the puff pastry would be time-consuming; picking it up frozen from the grocery store isn’t. And from there’s it’s just about showing off the simple elegance of apples.

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Tarte aux pommes with frangipane

Puff pastry crust (purchased)

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon apple brandy (optional)

2/3 cup ground almonds

2 tablespoons flour

4 apples, thinly sliced

¼ cup apricot jam, thinned slightly with water (optional)

Sugar for decoration

Preheat oven to 400°F.

For the frangipane, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.
Beat in the egg, egg yolk and apple brandy. Combine the almond meal and flour and add to the creamed butter mixture.

Place the puff pastry on a baking sheet, spoon in the frangipane, and arrange the sliced apples on top in concentric fans.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until the frangipane and pastry begin to brown. Reduce heat to 350°F,
sprinkle with sugar, and bake for another 15 minutes, until sugar is slightly caramelized.

Cool on a wire rack, then brush with the diluted apricot jelly, if desired.

 If you hold a buttercup just under someone’s chin, the petals reflect a yellow glow on their skin. If you’re a kid in France, this test, endlessly performed in parks and schoolyards, has only one conclusion: The person loves butter.

I was always suspicious of the test, which felt like a trap. I didn’t love butter. Not like my French cousins, who spread thick slabs of it on their tartines at breakfast. Maybe I wasn’t French enough. Even now, I cook with olive oil.

My first batch of homemade butter, though, made me love butter. And while I vaguely knew it was easy, I had no idea it would take less time than instant oatmeal.

I’m notoriously a “from scratch” person. My hallmark comment when debriefing any sample is “I’ll bet we could make this at home.” I can’t help it. Seeded flatbread with tapenade, pepper-crusted goat cheese, salted caramel sauce to pour over ice cream . . . . It’s great; I love it; I want to make it at home.

This is another way I’m different from my French cousins. Their mothers didn’t puree their baby food from scratch the way mine did. They found our Christmas cookie-making quaint. Very American. My aunts and grandmother brought home macarons and brioche sucrée from their favorite patisserie, instead. It wasn’t about making things from scratch, but finding the best producer. There might be a falling out with the patissière if she was rude beyond toleration, but if she made the best millefeuille, they would be back. Just as they might get off one Métro stop early so they could seek out the crémerie (dairy shop) with the best mottes of Normandy butter (huge slabs from which the crémier cuts slices with a wire, slaps them on wax paper and sells them by weight). I don’t think they’d ever consider making butter.

I would, though.

My inaugural butter-making started with the admission that I wasn’t going to get around to making that batch of rhubarb ice cream. The quart of heavy cream that had waited at the ready all week eyed me reproachfully. I couldn’t let it go to waste. I would make butter. And I did—in the ninety seconds it took to hold down the pulse button on my food processor. When I lifted the lid, a soft, ivory-cream mass had gathered around the blade. It was ridiculously, magically simple.

The last time I’d made butter was in third grade, when my class visited a historical homestead house. I loved the upright, cylindrical wooden butter churn we used, and the way you could measure progress by the change in resistance. I loved the worn wooden butter molds we scooped the butter into.

Making butter in my food processor had none of the same rustic charm. But when I tasted it, I was back at the farm. The butter tasted so sweetly and freshly of cream, I could almost picture a cow in the next room. It was like nothing I could get at the store. I didn’t exactly know what to do with it; but I had to admit that I loved it. I stood there admiring the way it reflected the light. (The business of the buttercup glow makes sense, after all.)

The next step, I suppose, is to get some radishes. If you haven’t tried radishes with fresh butter and salt, this is the summer to do it. It’s what I used to have in the summertime listening to the sheep bells in the French Alps near Briançon.

The sugar plums that ripen in late summer aren’t the ones that sweeten children’s dreams in Moore’s poem about the night before Christmas. Those sugar plums are candies made of dried fruit, sugar and spices–and for most people they’ve become mythical. 

What tantalizes me, though, is the European plums of the same name. These are no myth. Their oval shape and delicate flavor take me back to fruit-gathering expeditions in my French grandmother’s garden. And this summer, they’ve inspired Italian plum cake and visions of tarts.

The main plum varieties in America are descendants of an Asian species. The classic American plum has maroon skin so dark it’s almost black. But cousins of the same plum can look like an autumn leaf caught in slow motion: pale yellow, orangy-red, deep ruby. Pluots, plum-apricot hybrids, add even more color variations, including the speckled pink and white of a Dappled Dandy. All of these plums share one thing in common, though: their cute, round shape.

Not so in Europe. Yes, there are round yellow mirabelles, so tiny they look like toy fruit. And there are round green Reine Claudes. But the most common plums of the European species are oval. Their skin is deep purple, their flesh pale lime-yellow.

In America, we call them sugar plums, or Italian plums, and they’re grown primarily to dry into prunes. (In France, the word for plum is actually “prune.”) Their high sugar content makes them ideal for drying and preserving. But you can also find them at farmers markets and grocery stores that have interesting produce departments.

They’re worth tracking down. I love to eat them plain. In fact, it’s my sense of their specialness and rarity here that has made me shy about baking with them. I know tarte aux quetsches is an Alsatian classic, made with what we would call sugar plums. And I’ve been eyeing the tarte aux quetsche recipe in Andre Soltner’s Lutece cookbook ever since it joined the pile of treasures I’ve amassed as part of the research for my book.  (“The Alsatian,” Jacques Pepin declared as he introduced me to Andre at the French Culinary Institute in June.) But it’s an Italian plum cake recipe that made me discover how wonderful sugar plums are for baking.

The following cake was an adamant July birthday request. Halved sugar plums are pressed into the batter of an Italian-style cake made with almond flour and egg whites, and then baked until they’re meltingly tender. The almond and plum flavors complement each other beautifully. Dusted with powdered sugar, the cake is both rustic and elegant. It’s just the sort of thing you might eat on a piazza in Italy.

Still, I feel the pull of the French plum tart. For me, it is still mythical. So I have to act before summer’s end. The Lutece cookbook will introduce me to a classic. Then there is Clothilde Dusoulier’s intriguing Plum Tart with Walnut Cream on her Chocolate & Zucchini blog. Based on her mother’s recipe, it combines the Alsatian quetsche tart with a walnut-creme-fraiche filling that is typical of the Perigord region’s walnut tarts. The combination has me dreaming.

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 Plum Almond Cake, Italian-style

(adapted from Elaine McCardel’s The Italian Dish blog)

5 egg whites

1/2 cup sugar

2/3 cup almond flour

1/2 cup flour

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

6 Italian/sugar plums, halved, pits removed

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round or square baking pan.

Beat the egg whites and sugar in a large bowl until billowy (a few minutes). Fold in the flours. In a separate bowl, combine the melted butter, milk, almond extract and lemon zest. Slowly incorporate into the egg white mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Arrance the plum halves on top, pressing them into the batter a bit. You can arrange them cut-side up or cut-side down.

Bake 25-30 minutes, until golden brown.  Allow to cool, then dust with powdered sugar before serving.

 All alone at home last night, I steamed a lobster at 11pm. It’s the kind of thing you do when lobster is on sale for $6.99 a pound for one day only and you realize this just before closing time. I’d never brought home a lobster before, skittering in its paper bag on the back seat of the car. I’ve plunged handfuls of lobsters into boiling water as a cooking-class assistant. But never cooked one like this—just me and the lobster in the nighttime. I could feel the faint stirrings of a detective novel.

There is a bit of a mystery tied to the creature. I discovered this while doing research for my book on French cuisine in America. The case in question involves lobster à l’americaine.

Things aren’t quite what they seem with this dish. With its tomato-based sauce infused with shallots, tarragon and cream and then flamed with cognac, the dish, in its flavors and ingredients, would seem impeccably and unmistakably French. But then why the name?

The classical French repertoire is full of dishes named à la something-or-other. There’s a logic to this naming. A dish à la lyonnaise, for example, will involves onions, a Lyons staple; something à la bourguinonne will be cooked in red wine, Burgundy’s prize; à la forestière means with mushrooms, like the ones you might discover on a walk through the woods; something “Parmentier” means with potatoes, in honor of Antoine-Auguste Parmentier, who introduced potatoes to France in the late 18^th century and campaigned tirelessly to raise their public image. (The Métro stop near where I grew up in Paris is named Parmentier, and the station platforms have display cases explaining the potato’s botany and history.)

The seemingly misnamed lobster à l’americaine is more puzzling. How exactly is it American? What is it borrowing from, or reflecting of, America? Is this some kind of joke?

The problem has led to much speculation. Is it true that a chef invented the dish last-minute for late-dining transatlantic guests at his Paris restaurant (version 1)? Was it invented by a chef who had studied in America (version 2)? Was it first created in a restaurant named l’Americaine in Paris (even more apocryphal version 3)? There are those who resolve the question by suggesting that the whole thing is a mistake: The name is really a perversion of à l’armoricaine (Armorica is another name for Brittany) and that the dish is actually Breton. My Larousse Gastronomique, for example, finds this version most likely. (Though why a dish with Provencal flavors would be named after Brittany is another puzzle.)

The fact that people have gone to so much trouble to trace its roots is part of what I’m interested in. But I will not be making lobster à l’americaine just yet. My lobster adventure was enough for one night.

Yes, the spelling is a little tricky (“tabbouleh,” “tabouli”); and, yes, bulgur sounds like one of those esoteric grains that are impossible to track down. But no one cares about the spelling, bulgur is just wheat, and tabbouli is an ideal summer salad. Easy to make, full of freshness and flavor, tabbouli comes out of a tradition of simple, tapas-like dishes meant to be shared with family and friends—perfect picnic food.

Tabbouli belongs to the ancient tradition of mezze dishes that spread throughout the Near East and North Africa as morsels to accompany wine and everyday gossip. The word mezze comes from the Persian maza, meaning “taste” or “relish”; the first mezze were fruits served as a counterpoint to the slightly bitter taste of young wine. Over time, the range of mezze expanded.

The summer star in tabbouli is tomato, so it’s worth finding the season’s best. For the most flavor, choose tomatoes by their aroma, a better indicator of ripeness than color. Tomatoes are in the category of fruit (like peaches, mangoes and avocados) that can be picked mature-green and continue ripening on your counter. Just don’t put them in the fridge: Cold destroys their delicate flavor compounds.

Cucumber plays a refreshing side-kick to tomato; but parsley gives tabbouli its character. Some versions of the dish are emerald-green with it. I like about equal proportions of tomato, cucumber and parsley, with a touch of mint. Also, I don’t use so much bulgur that it feels predominantly like a grain salad. But all the proportions are up to you.

Bulgur, the salad’s base, is wheat prepared via an ancient method. The wheat berries are parboiled, dried, cracked, moistened, and ground to remove the outer bran. The result is a grain that cooks quickly and has an almost creamy texture and a deep, nutty taste from the inner bran that’s left intact. Bulgur’s subtle nuttiness and creamy texture are brought out when you dress the tabbouli with good quality olive oil. Some recipes round out the flavors with the warmer notes of cinnamon. I like the simple brightness of lemon juice.

Like other classic picnic salads, tabbouli travels well and is best made in advance so the flavors can blend. The parsley in tabbouli is actually a cousin to the celery we often use in potato and egg salads. The Romans used a single word to refer to them interchangeably.

If you want to play up tabbouli’s roots in the Near Eastern mezze tradition, you can assemble an entire picnic from mezze staples: olives, cheese (feta in oil, or fresh mozzarella); dips like hummus, baba ghanoush (roasted eggplant), and tsatsiki (yogurt and cucumber); and even dolma (stuffed grape leaves), falafel, and kebab.

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Tabbouli

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup bulgur

2 cups chopped tomatoes

1 1/2 cups chopped cucumber (about one large)

1 cup chopped parsley

Two sprigs mint, chopped

2 scallions, chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Bring the water to boil in a saucepan. Add the bulgur, return to a simmer, and cook until liquid is absorbed, about 20 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and toss.

Refrigerate at least one hour before serving.