So in a way, this was a two birds, one stone kind of job. I wanted to bake something for a friend’s last day, and I realized at the last minute that it was time to check whether my blog was burning. Laura of Cucina Testa Rossa came up with France as a theme, or, more specifically, “a regional French dish with a glass of wine.” Easy enough, I thought. Wine won’t be possible, but I’ll just pull out my Julia Child and find a French dessert that is portable and regional and tasty and simple and . . .

So maybe not so easy.

Most of the desserts in Mastering the Art of French Cooking are puddings or custards or soufflés, things that need to be unmolded or served immediately. In the back, however, are a series of five cakes, one of which is an orange sponge cake. Sponge cakes sound difficult, but are actually incredibly easy, as I found out. The cake was neither too delicate to spring back from the touch, nor tough to the taste.

Unfortunately, the cake is not especially regional either. Part of the IMBB assignment was finding out a bit about the region from whence the food came and its place in its culture and history. I thought this would be the easy part, but information was difficult to find, perhaps because of the cake’s lack of specificity. Julia is not very forthcoming, and every google search I ran on “cake” “history” “gâteau” “sponge” “origin” and the like got me nowhere. Or rather, I learned two things: gâteau is French for cake, and Marie Antoinette reportedly suggested that some peasants eat it instead of bread (although I have also heard that she did no such thing and the famous story is but a propagandist rumor). I pass those jewels of wisdom on to you.

Julia offered a couple different ways to serve the gâteau, the simplest of which is simply sprinkling it with powdered sugar. She also suggested slicing the cake in half horizontally and sandwiching orange filling between it. The same orange filling can be made into a buttercream icing with the addition of a stick of butter, which is what I chose to do. The cake has a light texture, so contrast of the rich icing complements it nicely.

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I am not an omelet maker. I am a maker of many things, several of them culinary, but omelets are not among them. I’m not even an egg person, really, unless said eggs are benedict, hard-boiled, or embedded in a cake. So I want to make it very clear that I was out of my depth here.

That said, it turned out pretty tasty, if not pretty. “It” was vegetable tortilla. Tortilla can refer to a kind of thin Mexican bread, usually made from cornmeal, but Spanish tortilla is something else entirely. Tortilla is served as a tapa or a part of a meal. The most common version is tortilla de patatas, also called tortilla española, which is made with potatoes. I had it a couple times in Madrid, and although it sounds plain, it is delicious.

Unfortunately, potatoes are the enemy of the diet and vegetables are its friends. Luckily, I had come across Victoria Amory’s recipe in Food & Wine that was vegetable-based rather than starch-centered. I’m not usually a fan of making recipes lighter and usually feel that if you’re going to do the thing you might as well do it properly. On the other hand, I don’t see the point in using a full tablespoon of oil to cook spinach, which does well enough with almost none. I also decided, since I don’t care terribly for eggs, that it wouldn’t hurt to cut out some egg yolks. In a tortilla of six eggs, I left three whole and substituted egg whites for the rest. In this substitution, I doubled the number of egg whites to make up for the missing volume of egg yolks. If you’ve followed along and done the math, you’ll know that I now have eighteen separated egg yolks sitting in the fridge, awaiting their uncertain fate.

As for the tortillas, their fates were, for a time, also uncertain. I must stress again that I am not an omelet person. I must also stress the importance of a nonstick pan. We have not had a nonstick pan since our last one was burned and ruined, and so I used a stainless steel one. Perhaps it was the reduced oil; perhaps it was the lack of fat in the egg whites; perhaps it was even that the pan knew that I was not an omelet person. Whatever the reason, the pan did not want to cooperate. My first tortilla stuck hopelessly to the pan and it was clear that I could not go on this way. Closing in on midnight, I was already ridiculously behind with dinner. I told my parents it was time to find other sustenance for the night, covered everything, and stuck it in the fridge.

The next morning, I awoke to the most glorious of gifts: a brand spanking new nonstick pan. It was glorious.

From then on, the tortilla was like a dream. The zucchini and eggplant layers slid smoothly, if not attractively, out of the pan. Still, the tortilla was not an attractive thing, and I don’t honestly think that it could have been. Witness the hideousity:

Ah, but cut it open:

A beautiful strata of colors and tastes! The truth is, it was yummy, which held true despite its looking like a gravy-covered curling stone.

The recipe below reflects my having multiplied the original by one and a half, to fit the amount of vegetables I had. It would work well if reduced, and the tortillas might in fact be easier to wield. Also, I used what my mother called yellow zucchini, but it bore more than a passing resemblence to yellow squash. It made a nice contrast to the green of the spinach, but it is fundamentally a matter of personal preference.

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After last posting about a column from Food & Wine, I realized that it had been a while since I had used one of the magazine’s recipes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when my mom brought home a school of tilapia fillets, I turned first to my list of recipes to try that I had culled from all my back issues.

The idea behind this recipe is that the fish and vegetables are wrapped in parchment paper, then roasted in the oven. There are a couple tricky bits involved. The first is in the wrapping. André Soltner, in the Food & Wine recipe from which this one is adapted, gives instructions to “seal” the sides with nary a hint as to how this was to be done. Because broth is added to the packet, the seal is meant to be somewhat watertight. I considered using tape, but didn’t know how the adhesive would react to the moisture from the food and the heat of the oven. Glue, of course, is not at all practical and staples . . . didn’t occur to me until just now. In the end, I just tucked the ends underneath, which worked well enough.

The second tricky bit is figuring out when the fish was done. I’ve increased the time in my adaptation to reflect what happened in my oven, but the original suggested a nine minute baking time. I don’t know if that time is ridiculous or if my oven needs some calibration and a thermometer, but it didn’t get it done. Usually I can check the food while it’s cooking to estimate how much time it has left, but with the fish all wrapped up in paper, it’s more difficult. I had the fish, vegetables, and potatoes plated before I realized that the bottom fillet was solid rather than flaky. Luckily, the plates are ovenproof, so I stuck them back in, under a loose piece of aluminum foil to prevent browning, and let them cook until done.

I think this is a pretty easy recipe to make substitutions, since that’s what I did. The original fish was halibut, and rather than green beans and peppers, it had asparagus and sugar snap peas. Also, the onions were cooked with mushrooms, the vegetable broth was originally chicken stock, and the vermouth is a substitution for dry sherry.

The potatoes are an original recipe and really pretty much common sense. The potatoes are like a less greasy version of home fries. They get nice and crisp, and you don’t even miss the frying.

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