David Lebovitz's Blog, page 10

Tuna Melt

It’s funny some of the dos and don’ts that people have come up with around food. Things like that you shouldn’t wash button mushrooms, that you should drink red wine with cheese, and that you shouldn’t let soap anywhere near your cast iron skillet. Nope, nope, and nope. Not sure where these things get started, but people grab the ball and run with it without turning around to realize they are completely off the field.

Another thing you hear a lot is that fish doesn’t go with cheese. In addition to Moules au Roquefort (mussels with Roquefort) in France, Shrimp Saganaki (with feta) from Greece, and Machas a la parmesana (clams with Parmesan) from Chile, the Tuna Melt is a popular sandwich in the States. However, I do draw the line at les sushis restaurants and decline the bœuf fromage brochette that comes with yakitori assortment plates in France, and ask if they can swap it for a second roasted duck. I love melted cheese, and I like sushi. I’m not sure I want them in the same meal, but à chacun son goût…to each their own taste.

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Brined, Roast Pork

I’m often asked what my favorite cookbooks are and invariably I pull out a copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers. It’s one of those rare books where you learn something from every sentence on every page, and in every recipe that you make from it. Judy was an amazing cook and whatever she made was unusually good, in spite of its (seemingly) relative simplicity, ranging from the lightest ricotta gnocchi you’ll ever have to the legendary Zuni roast chicken, which was worth the one-hour wait after you ordered it at the restaurant. It gave you plenty of time to have a margarita, a pile of shoestring fries, and a classic Caesar Salad. (Fun fact: I worked at Zuni Cafe when I first moved to San Francisco and made a lot of Caesar Salads, which, if I may be so bold, were excellent and the recipe is in the book.)

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Oatmeal and Pecan Brittle Cookies

This year was a good year for baking books. I didn’t get to see them all, or bake from them, but one that I got a preview of before it was released was Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz. She may be familiar to you because of her tenure in the test kitchen at Bon Appétit and more recently, her very popular online videos, but reading through the book, I learned that she just happened to have gone to Harvard, was a graduate student in French food history in Montreal, studied pastry at Ecole Ferrandi in Paris, and worked at the now-closed Spring restaurant, which jolted me back that era in Paris when a younger generation of chefs was opening restaurants and changing the game in France (sometimes, controversially), focusing on fresh ingredients and putting their own mark on French cuisine.

That’s how I feel about her book. Claire pretty much changes the pastry game. Preserved lemons are added to a glorious-looking Lemon Meringue Cake, chocolate and hazelnuts enrich a Galette des Rois, and coffee finds its way into a Coffee-flavored Coffee Cake. (How come no one’s thought of that before?) But these Oatmeal and Pecan Praline Brittle Cookies sounded so good to me that I decided to start off with them.

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Romance in Paris

Hello – Emily here! 

Whether single or in a relationship, I’ve always loved Valentine’s Day. My favorite color is pink, it reminds me my birthday is around the corner and if nothing else, chocolates and champagne will soon be on sale.  I was single on Valentine’s Day every year until I turned 29, however I never felt alone and I never failed to celebrate in my own small way, usually with pink champagne and heart-shaped Neufchatel cheese. 

The first year I was in a relationship on February 14th, instead of a romantic dinner-a-deux I decided to spread the love and organized (and cooked) a pop-up dinner for 47 guests. It was a huge success, measured by the flurry of new relationships which started that night, in a utilitarian warehouse in East London. My boyfriend on the other hand was no help, though; he got drunk and threw little potatoes at the guests as they left. 

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The Jaguar Cocktail

This quirky cocktail brings together three disparate ingredients; tequila, Chartreuse, and Amer Picon, to create the Jaguar, a drink that hews on the bitter side, with a bit of intrigue from the tequila, and the herbal punch of Chartreuse.

I couldn’t find much intel on the origin of this cocktail*, and how these three ingredients found their way into the same glass. Some information on the internet led me to a Jaquar-named energy drink that had the distinction of being “widely popular and commonly available in many post-Soviet countries.” But since two of the spirits are decidedly French, I decided to give it a go.

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Coffee Caramel Panna Cotta

Two of my favorite flavors come together right here, in this Coffee Caramel Panna Cotta, which offers up the rich flavor of caramel with a few strong shots of espresso. I seem to have good caramel karma and when I baked professionally, the executive pastry chef at one restaurant told me that I was the one she wanted to make the caramel desserts since I had a knack for getting caramel just right.

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Apple Crunch Tart

One of the things I keep vowing to do is to read more books. It’s hard when I’m at home, where there are many other things beckoning for my attention. But when I go on vacation, I bring a few books along and find a good chair to park myself in as much as possible. It helps that internet is either non-existent, or the connection to it is poor, out in the countryside, where some of my friends don’t even have WiFi at home. It drives me nuts for the first few hours, then I ease into it and relax knowing that the rest of the world can wait, while I envelope myself in a good read.

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Clover Club Cocktail

I’ll admit to being the kind of guy that likes a pink drink every now and then, but I don’t like to admit that I’m the kind of guy that buys raspberries in the winter. Writing cookbooks with deadlines that don’t always flow with the seasons, if I need a few cherries in the winter to test a recipe or a few cups of blueberries, I’ll resort to frozen or, uh…”fresh” if I really have to get the job done. I used to look down on people that bought out-of-season fruit at the markets or grocery stores, or the ones who inspected every single piece of fruit on offer like it was a rare gem, until I realized they were all recipe developers or food stylists and they were just doing their jobs.

I’ll also admit after making this Clover Club cocktail, which has a dash of raspberry syrup added for color and flavor, perked me up this winter. Although vacation is off the table for a while, I felt like I was taking a little trip to somewhere exotic when I took that first ruby-color, raspberry-flavored sip. To be honest, it felt a bit illicit. And I loved it.

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Bostock

One of the lesser-known French pastries is Bostock. Perhaps it’s the funny name that doesn’t sound very French, as pain au chocolat or chausson aux pommes do, that’s been keeping it out of the spotlight. True, the name does sound like a Swiss bouillon mix and although I’ve read it’s from Normandy, I haven’t found any conclusive evidence of that. But wherever it’s from, the good thing about Bostock is that it’s one of the easiest desserts to make and doesn’t require rolling out any pastry, spending a day making brioche, or rely on any fancy techniques. It’s one of my very favorite things to eat.

Bostock was likely invented to use up leftover brioche that bakeries had on hand after they closed their doors. Bakers everywhere are naturally thrifty and this is a clever way to use up leftover bread, whether it be brioche, challah, or any firm-textured white bread, such as pain de mie.

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownie Bars

Welcome to 2021. We had sort of, um…an abrupt beginning to the New Year. After a punishing 2020 where the pandemic pretty much upended everything in our lives, a lot of us were looking forward to some stability, seasoned with some optimism about the virus, but things took a decidedly different turn in a direction not many of us could imagine. I stepped away from a few things which allowed me a little time to get my mojo back and regroup.

The lockdowns (plural) and the pause for the holidays allowed me to sort through stuff in my kitchen drawers and clear a path to sanity in my office to face-down that pesky end-of-the-year paperwork. I organized the desktop on my computer (a task I highly recommend tackling), changed my newsletter service, deleted a passive-aggressive comment (still not sure I understand the point of those…) that was taking up precious space in my head, retreated from the online world, lost a loved one, took a step toward overcoming yet another leak as the plumber assured me the plumbing store would have toilets back in stock by the end of January (I hope he was talking about 2021), and emotionally regrouped to begin what I’m sure will be a fabulous new year.

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