Lunch in Paris Read Free

the ninety-nine-cent pot came a dessert fit for Louis XIV, a perfectly
     molded apricot charlotte, each ladyfinger standing at attention, held together by a layer of cream and studded with slices
     of fruit. Did he always prepare this way for lady visitors? He seemed the very opposite of a cad. Surely, cooking for a woman
     you hardly knew, on the off chance that she might find herself naked and hungry in your apartment, was sweet rather than predatory.
    Gwendal lifted a thick slice onto my plate. He couldn’t possibly have known why I was smiling. When I was a kid, my mother
     and I had a tradition called “backwards breakfast.” To keep me from playing sick during the winter, each year I got to choosemy own snow day. She would take the day off from work and we would sleep late, eat ice cream for breakfast or pancakes for
     dinner—you get the idea. In my real life I’ve spent a lot of time keeping things in line; I’m a stickler for form. But today
     felt like a snow day… dessert before dinner, sex before coffee. Things were so marvelously, exhilaratingly out of order.
    We devoured the entire charlotte in fifteen minutes. I was ready for more. When I looked in the fridge I saw nothing, just
     leftover odds and ends. Gwendal saw dinner. This was to be the way with so many exchanges in our relationship. Our blind spots
     were different. Where one saw a gaping void, the other saw possibilities.
    He took out a carrot and the onion half. I’m not sure I’d ever seen anyone use half an onion. Or rather, I’d never seen anyone
     save half an onion he hadn’t used. The real secret ingredient, however, was the package of
lardons fumés—
plump little Legos of pork—deep pink and marbled with fat. He dumped them into a pan with the chopped vegetables (he may have
     washed the pan from the charlotte), and the mixture began sizzling away. A box of tagliatelle, the pasta spooled like birds’
     nests, completed the meal.
    Maybe it was the sex, or the bacon—or both—but it was without a doubt the best thing I’d ever tasted. “This is amazing,” I
     said, twirling another noodle around my fork. “You have to give me the recipe.”
    “There is no recipe,” he said, smiling. “I use whatever I have. It never tastes the same way twice.”
    I had no way of knowing, that first damp evening in Paris, how much this man, and his non-recipes, would change my life.

Recipes for Seduction
    FRESH MINT TEA
Thé à la Menthe
    2 teaspoons loose gunpowder green tea
    1 bunch of mint on the stem (at least 7 or 8 sprigs)
    4–5 sugar cubes, or more to taste
    2 cups boiling water plus more for rinsing the tea and wilting the mint
    Pine nuts to serve
    A few drops of orange flower water (optional)
    Place the loose tea in the bottom of a teapot. Add a bit of boiling water and swish the pot around to rinse the tea. Drain
     out the water.
    Wash the mint thoroughly. Holding it over the sink by the stems, pour some boiling water over the leaves. Place the mint in
     the teapot, along with 4 or 5 sugar cubes. Fill the pot with the 2 cups boiling water and let steep for 5 minutes. Taste a
     bit to see if you want more sugar; it should be sweet but not overwhelmingly so.
    Sprinkle a few pine nuts in the bottom of a skinny glass teacup. A large shot glass would also do nicely. Add a drop or two
     of orange flower water if you like—but only a drop; it’s very strong.
    Pouring from high above the glass is not, it turns out, simply a foolish trick to impress girls. It aerates the tea, cooling
     it down and releasing the sweetly spiked scent of the mint. Virtuosos line up several glasses edge to edge and pour without
     stopping.
    This tea is the perfect finish after couscous or a
tagine
.
    Yield: Serves 2
    “STUDENT” CHARLOTTE
Charlotte aux Abricots
    A real charlotte is a ritzy affair, made with
crème pâtissière
and ladyfingers soaked in alcohol. To this day, I prefer the student version,
fromage blanc
or Greek yogurt and canned apricots