When the writter Marcel Proust was a little boy, he played a game with Jeanne Weil, his mother. She would read one line from her favorite play, Esther by Racine, and Marcel would read the next. In the play, the Jewess Esther marries Ahasuerus, the good king of Persia. Proust’s mother also married a non-Jew, a Catholic doctor named Achille Proust. Madame Proust’s love of Esther may have extended beyond the text— a favorite sweet was these doughnuts from her childhood, eaten by Jews at Purim, which celebrates Queen Esther. The doughnuts are the same as the beignets de Carnaval eaten by Catholics around the same time of year, just before Lent. These doughnuts and Butterkuchen (see page 351) probably evoked more memories for Proust than did the madeleine dunked in tea in the fictional Swann’s Way. Curiously enough, in an early version of the opening pages of the manuscript, the madeleines were biscottes (dry toast, zwieback, or rusks). The change to madeleines was made later by Proust.
This classic 15-minute sauce is your secret weapon for homemade mac and cheese, chowder, lasagna, and more.
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The silky French vanilla sauce that goes with everything.
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This pasta has some really big energy about it. It’s so extra, it’s the type of thing you should be eating in your bikini while drinking a magnum of rosé, not in Hebden Bridge (or wherever you live), but on a beach on Mykonos.
Crispy tots topped with savory-sweet sauce, mayonnaise, furikake, scallion, and katsuobushi.