I also feel some sort of kinship with him when he spends a paragraph or so ranting about the way things are done in France. Anyone living in a foreign country ends up having more than a rant or two about the iniquities imposed on them by these bloody people they're living with. It's how we seem to deal with cultural difference.
I mean, you're totally surrounded by people who have different childhood references than you do, eat different things, speak differently, and often have different values. The frustration has to go somewhere, and so I also bitch occasionally. What to do?
However, when it comes to my favorite American in Paris' recipes, there is no complaining from anyone. I take this poor man's instructions and twist them to fit my meagre kitchen equipment and lack of experience, and still the end result is always wonderful.
I made his jam tart recipe as dessert for a friend's barbecue.
I used a glass pie dish (horrors!) of the wrong size, but it still turned out well, just stayed quite a while longer in the oven. It also wasn't quite as pretty as his, but I decided that my tart was "elegantly rustic" and it still managed to elicit a few oohs and aahs from half drunken twenty-something year olds.
As noted in his post, you can use just about any jam you want. I used an old jar of pumpkin butter from Trader Joe's. With a little vanilla icecream on top, it was amazing. I'm yet to try this with a fruitier jam, but I think it would work, probably a little like dressed up Nutri-Grain bars I'm thinking.
Just try it. It's really easy, and absolutely unscrewuppable. What more can you ask for?
