Newsletter #234: September 2022

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In this issue:

Start Planning for the Journées du Patrimoine

Journées Patrimoines

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Pommes au four

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One of the delights of autumn is the baked apple — pomme au four in French. Served with cream or without, it’s a classic dessert that’s both healthy and easy to make. But is it so totally basic that it doesn’t belong on a French cooking blog? I thought it over, called a couple of friends and, with their hearty encouragement, decided to go for it. I’ve been wanting to add pommes au four to the desserts on this site for a very long time. Et voilà . Pommes au four / Baked apples The impulse behind this week’s recipe was a recent visit to my cottage in Burgundy, where apples are particularly abundant this year. They were falling off the trees, in many varieties. However, as the summer was very hot and very dry, they were smaller than usual. Although in the past I’ve tended to use large apples for this dessert, I decided to give it a try with the small ones, serving two or three per portion, as shown above and, with caramelized sauce but no cream, here. There were a few big apples le...
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Penne au potiron et aux noix

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This dish gives an interesting twist to pumpkin that may be of interest as the holidays approach. Yes, I’m thinking Thanksgiving. The combination of pasta and pumpkin is popular in both France and Italy, and the walnuts add depth. This version also has a touch of Meg thanks to the spicing — not nutmeg, as my childhood friends delighted in calling me, but cumin which, combined with a spritz of lemon juice, adds a welcome zest. Penne au potiron et aux noix / Penne with pumpkin and walnuts Other squashes, like butternut, may be substituted for the pumpkin. In fact, in Italy, the word for pumpkin — zucca — covers a wide range of squashes. So you never know exactly what you’re getting when you order gnocchi with zucca, ravioli filled with zucca, etc. I chose pumpkin over butternut because I find it easier to handle — removing the peel from a butternut squash can be a bit of a bore. But butternut is sweeter, so you may prefer it. This recipe came my way via a favorite French cookbook, ...
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US can no longer use nuclear weapons to threaten or deter China from invading Taiwan, the report said

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A US attempt to win a nuclear arms race with China would be “an exercise in futility”, a think tank has said. A report from the Brookings Institution also warned that the US had lost its conventional military supremacy over China in East Asia, making it harder to deter any attack on Taiwan. Concern that Beijing will use force to bring the island under its control is growing in Washington with General Anthony Cotton, the nominee to head the Pentagon’s nuclear operations, telling a Senate committee that he agreed nuclear weapons could help deter such a move. The report published on Tuesday argued that the apparent pace of China’s nuclear expansion might make it more confident about using conventional force, but for the US, a war with China over Taiwan would “almost inevitably raise risks of both inadvertent and deliberate nuclear escalation”. Until recently China was believed to have around 200 to 300 deliverable nuclear warheads, compared with the more than 4,000 held by the US and...
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