I “can Toulouse”

One summer in Toronto I began a campaign to “Bring Paris to me”. I couldn’t travel to France and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to. I just wanted to go about my days eating croissants, sipping café au lait and experiencing joie de vivre instead of job dissatisfaction and career anxiety. For the most part, the plan worked. I got a bike with a nice big basket on the front to fill with green beans and baguettes from the St. Lawrence Market. I quit the job that was giving me grief and started a lovely new one at Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. I let the cool summer breezes off Lake Ontario transport me to the banks of the Seine….

I still think about the Parisian lifestyle pretty regularly and I wouldn’t say I even have an accurate picture of it. My version is probably more Clermont-Ferrand. Either way, I still enjoy going from shop to shop adding my groceries to a canvas bag and coming home to try French dishes. “Barefoot in Paris” has been behind many of the delicious meals of 2010 so I only have Ina Garten (and Clarkson Potter/Random House Inc.) to thank.

On Tuesday I decided to attempt her vegetable tian, partly because I had all of the ingredients already – tomatoes, zucchini, potatoes, onions, thyme, garlic and gruyere – and partly because it sounded really delicious.

It was simple enough to put together. First you cook two chopped yellow onions on the stove until translucent, add them to your baking dish and then layer ¼ inch thick slices of potato, tomato and zucchini on top.

The whole thing bakes, covered in foil, for 40 minutes. Then you take it out, remove the foil, add on the cheese and bake it again for another 30 minutes or so.

I thought it tasted good but lacked the wow factor. It kind of reminded me of a dough-less pizza. My favorite part was layering my circles and, of course, eating the grated Gruyere before adding it to the dish.

Last night’s dish was salmon with lentils. I urge you to try this recipe! The aim is to get a nice crispy crust on the salmon and although we were nervous about the directions, following them exactly yielded a near-perfect result. It helped that we started with a really nice piece of wild salmon.

Preparing the lentils was a bit of a labor of love. It felt like I had quadrupled the recipe there were so many, so consider halving it if you don’t want to end up with a ton of cooked lentils.

The fish is so quick and easy to cook that I would definitely be comfortable serving this to dinner guests. I’d make the lentils in advance because they took a long time to prep and cook. Or maybe it just seemed like they took a long time because I was hungry and tired from walking 17 km around Manhattan (Yup, I mapped my run).

Salmon with lentils was as easy on the eyes as it was on the palate. Even in Tupperware I dare say it looks magnificent.