Not exactly a genius plan.

Especially when you consider that at least 8 of those people are, even now, driving up from New York City to spend the night. I’ve rented an airbnb to house them, but they’re going to want dinner. What on earth am I going to feed them?

In my panic, I pulled out this old article about a very strange party from my past. I learned a lot that evening….

By eight o’clock we were out of wine, and our hostess took up a collection so we could send Hollywood’s most famous set designer around the corner to the liquor store for more. By nine we were ravenous, but signs that dinner was imminent had yet to appear.

Curious, I ventured into the kitchen to see if I could hurry it along by offering my assistance.

“Help?” said the hostess. “I’d love it.” Glancing around I noticed that the onions on the counter were still in their skins, the lettuce was still in its plastic bag and the oven had yet to be turned on. The lady of the house pointed to a pearly pile of naked chicken breasts and some stacked logs of zucchini. “I was thinking of doing something with those,” she said breezily. “Do you have any ideas? In fact, maybe you could cook dinner?” Throwing me an apron she waltzed happily out the door.

Looking back, what surprises me is not the sheer audacity of inviting ten people to dinner and then asking them to cook it, but the fact that I remember it as one of the best dinner parties I’ve ever attended. The gathering included not only the set designer but a news director, a restaurant critic and the heir to one of America’s great family fortunes. We were strangers when the evening began, but as we crowded into the kitchen to figure out what to make from the available ingredients, we moved beyond small talk. We were still cooking at eleven -chicken Milanese, a faux risotto and sautéed zucchini and onions - when the heiress discovered that her ring was missing. She’d removed it to wash lettuce for the salad, and we found that uproariously as we upended the garbage can. Happily, the ring was found and at midnight when we finally sat down to eat, we’d become intimate friends.

To someone who likes to have dinner in the oven, clean counters and an empty dishwasher when my guests walk in the door, this was a serious lesson in the mechanics of entertaining. Although I’ve never plucked up the courage to let my guests fend for themselves, I now know that there is nothing quite like cooking together to break the ice. I suspect that one of the reasons we’re so fond of Thanksgiving isn’t our abiding love of turkey and stuffing, but the fact that it is one major meal where everyone’s expected to pitch in. These days when I entertain, I try to leave something for the guests to do, even if it’s just washing lettuce, slicing tomatoes or stirring mushrooms in the pan.

So if you’re the kind of cook who likes to have everything finished before your guests arrive, maybe rethink it. Get out the glasses, chill the wine… and be sure to leave a little work for them to do. I can’t guarantee that you’ll make lifelong friends out of strangers, but I can promise that you will end up with a very fun party.

Reading that helped. I’ve decided what I’m going to cook tonight - and what I’m going to ask my guests to do.

If I were a griller I’d just get some steaks, throw them on the fire, steam some corn and make a salad. But the grill was Michael’s domain- he was very proud of his high-fire technique - and he guarded it jealously. I haven’t a clue. One of my goals for this summer is to master that skill.

Instead I’m going to make the easiest and most foolproof meal I know.

Menu
Cheese and crackers
Prosciutto and Melon
Rack of Lamb
Baked Potatoes
Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing
Blueberry-Apricot Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream

Rack of Lamb
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons minced parsley
1 tablespoon minced rosemary
2 tablespoons kosher salt
3/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (not the good stuff)
3 racks of lamb with Frenched bones

Put the garlic, parsley, rosemary and salt into a bullet or food processor and whir until they’re almost a paste. Add the mustard and balsamic and process until well mixed.

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Coat the racks of lamb with the mustard-herb mixture and set on the baking sheet, bones curved down. Hold at room temperature for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Roast the lamb for 20 minutes for rare meat, 5 minutes more if you prefer medium (although at 20 minutes the outside chops will be medium). Take the lamb out of the oven, cover with aluminum foil and allow to rest for 15 minutes before cutting the rack into individual chops and serving.

Serves 8 -10

This really is the easiest dessert I know. I love roasting fresh apricots; usually the ones we find in the market tend to be uninteresting eaten raw but roast into a fascinatingly tart sweetness. And they’re so easy: you don’t even need to cut them, just pull them apart.

Apricot-Blueberry Crisp
1 stick butter, melted
2 pounds apricots
1 pint blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
dash of salt
splash of vanilla
fresh nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375.

Break the apricots apart with your fingers; do not peel them, but remove the pits. Put them into a deep dish pie plate, casserole or Dutch oven along with the berries.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Remove from heat. Stir in the sugars, then the flour and salt. Add the vanilla and grate in a bit of nutmeg. Cover the fruit with the sugar mixture and put the crisp into the oven. Bake for about an hour until the top is crusty and golden and the fruit well cooked.

Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream.

Lately I’ve been thinking about San Francisco. When Michael and I started living together we shared a magical old house on Russian Hill that we were told had been the first fisherman’s cottage in the area. Lying in bed at night we could see the distant bay from our bedroom window.

So when I found this old menu, I was ecstatic.

Please excuse the quality of the reproduction: this is a forty year old Xerox of a menu that was already forty years old when I copied it. But there’s a lot to look at here, from the fact that abalone was pretty inexpensive, that Olympia oysters were still available (they all but disappeared for many years), and that a child’s plate consisted of filet of sole or lamb chop (one). Not exactly what we’d consider kid food today.

It is interesting to remember that although Joltin’ Joe was a national hero his father Giuseppe, a lifelong fisherman, was not allowed to fish during World War II because he was Italian, and considered an alien risk. He was not, in fact, even allowed to visit the family restaurant: as an enemy alien, he was prohibited from traveling more than five miles without permission. (Italians in San Francisco also had a curfew, and many of their homes were seized by the government.)

For more information on the family, this article is instructive.

A chef friend and his wife spent the weekend with me, and on Saturday night Robert offered to make dinner. It gave me great pleasure to watch this practiced man cooking in my kitchen. But then he started mincing a mountain of garlic on my wooden chopping board….

“Stop!” I wanted to call out.

But it was too late.

I never chop garlic on my large wooden chopping board because the scent lingers, perfuming everything it touches. And there is nothing pleasant about biting into a fruit pie and having the first flavor be garlic.

When I chop garlic - or onions or chiles - I pull out my Material Kitchen chopping board. It’s made of plant-based materials, it doesn’t dull your knives and it goes happily into the dishwasher.

This is from their website: Chef’s Tip: Have a slippery counter? We’re looking at you quartz and marble! Slip a damp cloth beneath your cutting board to lock it in place.

But if you buy their mini-board - also indispensable - it comes with “grippy corners” so it doesn’t slip.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Bill Sertl, Gourmet’s last Travel Editor, has a delightful new Substack called Kick the Bucket List. This week he reprises the trip he and I took for Gourmet’s last Paris issue. We had so much fun! It comes complete with old photographs and current recommendations for Paris hotels and restaurants.

So I decided to look at what I said the last time I spoke at a memorial for someone who was very important to me. I thought you might like to read what I said at Jonathan Gold’s memorial in 2018.

It’s been a horrible week. But the one thing that has given me comfort is the huge, international outpouring of grief and love for Jonathan. I knew he was famous and beloved in Los Angeles, but I had no idea how much he meant to so many people all over the world.

A few days ago I was in Italy speaking at a conference on social gastronomy. We were talking about how food can change the world. But when I stood up in front of all those chefs, academics and journalists who had come from every continent, all I could talk about was Jonathan. I worried that the people from Asia, Australia, South America, Africa and Europe might not know who he was, but the minute I mentioned Jonathan’s name, a huge wave of applause erupted in the room, and people burst into tears.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. This year, as I was sifting through the articles for Best American Food Writing, one theme kept recurring. Over and over young writers began their pieces by saying, “I want to be the next Jonathan Gold.”

And no wonder; nobody ever loved language more or had a better way with words. He even spoke carefully, choosing each separate word as if he were tasting it. And so instead of telling you about the rich, strange, and often maddening relationship I had with Jonathan, I want to talk about him as a writer.

All the articles have spoken of the enormous impact Jonathan’s unique brand of cultural anthropology had on Los Angeles. As the proprietor of a small restaurant wrote: “He treated us and our food with respect and love. And saw us as equals. Our food trucks, our holes in the walls, Mom and Pops – that was the true identity of Los Angeles. He saw it, he loved it, and he wanted us to succeed. He believed in us when many did not.”

And yesterday I got a note from a young woman who has nothing to do with food and never met Jonathan. She said she needed to tell someone how much he had meant to her. “Wherever he is now,” she wrote, “I know that if I ever end up there he’ll be the first person I ask to show me around, right after I thank him for teaching me how to live in this city I call home.”

But Jonathan did something much more important than offer us a new way to experience LA. And his legacy goes beyond expanding the borders of food writing. Jonathan proved that - even in this age of computers - words still have power.

We live in a time when we all spend far too much time worrying about the impact of the internet and the power of television. But Jonathan didn’t have a tv show. He wrote nothing that was clickbait. He did not indulge in any of the stupid antics that most food people participate in. And sadly he never wrote that book he kept promising to write. But he was a bold, ferocious, generous, passionate writer – and he made every word count. He proved, beyond any doubt, that those little black characters on paper can still change the world.

And here’s the thing: Jonathan never thought he was good enough. Even winning the Pulitzer didn’t quell the little voice inside his head that was constantly doubting what he wrote. His overwhelming desire to make every word perfect kept him from meeting deadlines or writing for the publications he most admired. He never sent in the articles the New Yorker had commissioned, because they didn’t meet his own stringent standards.

But Jonathan, you won! It kills me that you’re not here to see it. Because I don’t think you could ever have imagined how many people would mourn not only you, but your words. You made us all see that in the hands of a great writer even the smallest stories can make a huge impact.

A few years before he died, I mentioned that Jonathan’s words had inspired me to cook.

Reading Jonathan Gold’s description of a Sichuan dish in today’s LA Times made me really hungry. Partly because it’s such a lovely description; partly because he was writing about yama imo - Japanese mountain potato - which is one of my favorite foods.

Yama imo looks like daikon, and it begins with a crunch. But it quickly transforms itself into a creamy paste and as you chew it keeps changing - a little circus of the mouth - until it has become liquid. It’s a transformation that always delights me. I often eat it for breakfast, rolled up in sheets of nori with a bit of umeboshi, the pickled plum-like apricots of Japan.

But I don’t have any yama imo on hand at the moment, and I’m now desperate for some Asian flavors. A quick search through the refrigerator reveals the squid I bought yesterday, some chiles, a bottle of Shaoxing wine and a package of Chinese noodles; that, I decided will be lunch.

This recipe is based on the one in Bruce Cost’s Big Bowl Cookbook.

Slightly Spicy Chinese Noodles with Squid
1 pound cleaned squid
8 ounces Chinese noodles
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon neutral oil
2 tablespoons shredded ginger
5 scallions, sliced
1 jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, smashed or minced
2 teaspoons Chinese black beans, rinsed
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine

Bring a pot of water to a boil.

Cut the squid into 1/2 inch wide strips, and if the tentacles are very large, cut them in half. Throw the squid into the boiling water, let it come back to a boil and cook for about half a minute. Drain and immediately run under cold water to stop the cooking. Set aside.

Cook the noodles according to package directions; Chinese noodles take about 3 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water and toss with the sesame oil to keep them from sticking together. Set aside.

Prep the other ingredients: shred the ginger, slice the scallions, slice the jalapeño, mince the garlic and rinse the black beans.

Mix the chicken stock with the sugar, oyster sauce and soy sauce.

Heat a wok or heavy skillet over high heat. When it’s hot, add the neutral oil, allow it to get hot and add the ginger, scallions, jalapeno, garlic and black beans; toss and stir until the aroma floats over the pan. Add the chicken stock and cook for a minute or so, until it boils. Add the cooked noodles and toss for another minute. Add the squid and the wine and cook for another minute or two, until it’s all heated through.

Serves 2-3 people.

(I wrote this when it was much more difficult to find good Chinese ingredients than it is today. I now source most of my ingredients at Ma La Market. )

The Chinese black beans are really necessary for this; they cost very little, you can get them at any Chinese grocery store and they last virtually forever. They’re a classic umami ingredient, and a great pantry item.

Shaoxing is harder to find, but it’s flavor adds a lot to Chinese dishes. In a pinch, substitute dry sherry.

Try to get a brand of oyster sauce that is actually made from oysters; Ma La Market has two excellent brands.

If you don’t have fresh chiles, you can substitute dried chile flakes. Or a dollop of Chile Crisp. Or simply forego the bite of heat.

If you don’t have scallions, a small diced onion will do.

And if you don’t have Chinese noodles, you can substitute any other kind of noodle.

I just found this menu from La Broche, which was at the time the most avant garde restaurant in Miami. I loved the food at this outpost of Sergi Arola’s two Michelin star Madrid restaurant, but Miami was not impressed with molecular gastronomy and the restaurant had a very short run in the early 2000’s. (The Madrid restaurant closed in 2010.) The chef was Angel Palacios, who is now at Curate making tapas in Asheville…

Gaetano Arnoni has quite a pedigree; he was chef de cuisine at Babbo, worked with Dario Cecchini in Panzano Italy and then cooked in Tuscany for 4 years. Now he and his wife Meigan have Via Cassia, their own small (15 tables) restaurant in Hudson.

I’ll be eating there often. I loved this huge black kale salad with its sheaves of ricotta salata (despite the fact that there is honey in the dressing). The pastas are homemade, mostly classic, always excellent.

And this monkfish picatta was a textbook version: the sturdy fish with its gentle flavor snuggled happily into that buttery citrus sauce.

The service has a lovely small town quality, with Gaetano and Meigan stopping to say hello to every table. Via Cassia is a serious addition to the neighborhood.

(If you’re going to be in the area, you should know that the much-loved Lil Deb’s Oasis plans to close in October, so go now while you still can. The equally beloved Cafe Mutton now serves dinner Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. And Efren Hernandez, who has another beloved restaurant, Cafe Susanna across the river, is transforming Rivertown Lodge Tavern into a Mexican fish restaurant called Pez. It is slated to open late next week.

And speaking of Hudson… I am always charmed by the artistry of the seed packets from Hudson Valley Seed Company. (They open up into a flowery shape, perfect to hang on your walls.) This is, notably, the one place where you can buy the seeds to grow my favorite sauce tomatoes, Cesare’s Canestrino di Lucca.

The most remarkable was surely dinner at Corima, where the talented Fidel Caballero is cooking food that will challenge all of your notions of what Mexican food might be. Caballero hails from the northern part of the country, and he is determined to use the ingredients he grew up with in new and startling ways. Every dish in a long tasting menu was as original, personal, beautiful and delicious as the dish above: ruby red shrimp from Montauk served in potato foam with charred potato flakes and apple blossoms.

Our meal began with this little tart filled with English peas that had been peeled before cooking then laced with tiny bits of chopped surf clam creating the most intriguing textures. It was crowned with golden osetra. When chefs use caviar as a garnish I almost always wish they’d just given me the caviar and left the other stuff out. Not this time: everything about this little tidbit was perfect. Who knew that peas and caviar have secretly been longing to dance together?

I loved every one of the 13 courses ($140), but I’m going to limit myself to the ones I found most astonishing. There was, for instance, this little bit of branzino collar covered in chintextle, a wildly delicious Oaxcan smoked paste traditionally made by grinding dried chiles with dried shrimp, garlic, pumpkin seeds and avocado leaves. The flavor is intoxicating; the scallion-topped tidbits were like elegant hot chicken wings with serious character.

This remarkable combination of squid, oyster mushrooms and knotweed aquachile came topped in a flurry of grated macadamia nuts. The flavors were gentle but the textures were so unexpected and surprising that I found myself eating in utter silence.

Texture again: a giant morel stuffed with lamb and artichoke, topped with purslane and folded into one of Caballero’s remarkable tacos. (The warm, feathery tortillas are also not to be missed.)

Caballero is clearly seduced by color, as you can see from this little medley of squab, rhubarb and amaranth. I loved the look of this beautiful dish, but I liked the flavor even more.

This wasn’t my first experience of Corima; I visited the small, casual restaurant in January and wrote about the wonderful food and comfortable service here. (Scroll down to the bottom of the post.) But I was in a different mood then, and it was wonderful to return and rediscover how comforting it can be to put yourself in the hands of people who practice their art with so much passion and talent. The word corima comes from the Tarahumara language; it means “circle of sharing.” I found that sitting around this table with friends was exactly that: wonderfully heartening.

In another mood….
I was lucky enough to score a table at the new Cote 550. It is pure, unadulterated fun. You walk down the stairs into a steamy red room reverberating with disco music. But you soon leave this behind, walk down a long mysterious hall and end up in an underground forest with a pool at its center.

And then the show begins…

Like the original Cote (I wrote about it here when it first opened in 2018), if you stick with the Butcher’s Feast at $115 it’s an enormous amount of delicious food at a very fair price. You begin with a small cup of bone broth and a stunning little cube of toro.

Followed by an array of lovely banchan and a heap of scallion salad.

Then the cooking of the meat begins, an endlessly interactive exercise. It is so much meat that I found myself surreptitiously putting bits aside. (I took my little pile of steak home and enjoyed a second feast the following day).

After the meat there are a couple of delicious stews, an egg soufflé and finally soft serve for dessert.

There is also a fantastically tempting wine list and all kinds of ways to spend a lot more money on fancy cuts of meat. But really, you’re here for the theatrical fun of this lively restaurant. It’s a place that was created to make you forget all your troubles. And for the time that you spend here, it does.

And in yet another mood….

Chef Jae Jung grew up in Seoul but began her serious cooking career in New Orleans where she worked with everyone who matters, including the great Leah Chase. Her Kjun is an homage to both parts of her background: her food is a combination of the two cuisines. Where else are you going to get kalbi brisket over cheesy grits?

The atmosphere, on the other hand is pure New Orleans. This is a jazzy, vibrant place with young servers whose mission in life seems to be making sure that you have a good time. So just relax and enjoy the party.

Hard not to when you’re crunching into fried chicken bites or indulging in this good gumbo.

Two month fermented okra kimchi. Let the good times roll!

Forgive me: I’ve spent the last couple of weeks doing the kind of mindless chores you think will distract you. They don’t. But as I was cleaning out a bunch of old papers I came upon this article, and it somehow seemed appropriate.

Since Dad was on my mind, I went looking for the article I wrote the only time he was ever in a hospital. At the time I was living in Berkeley, but as I was heading to the airport to visit him I picked up the menus of the two restaurants I was currently reviewing. “Look at the typography,” I said. “What do these menus reveal about the restaurants?”

As it turned out, quite a lot.

I’m headed to Chicago in a couple weeks to give a speech at the Arts Club of Chicago. That has made me think about Charlie Trotter. (If you haven’t seen the movie, Love Charlie, it’s streaming on Netflix.) So I went looking for a menu.

I wish I remember this meal because although I find many of these dishes intriguing I have trouble imagining how the ingredients go together. And now, looking at that wild mushroom cappuccino I can’t help wondering if Charlie was the one who invented the dish? It was, in that moment, ubiquitous.

My friends have been wonderful too. When food people grieve they do it over food and I have not had a solitary meal in two weeks.

It is, I suppose, a prolonged wake. We go out to eat and tell each other tales of the person who is no longer at the table. We talk about him. We toast him. And while we’re doing that we are reminding ourselves that life can still be good.

Sometimes, however, it’s just too soon. We were headed out to dinner when we realized that nobody had the energy for that. So we did what my family has been doing for many years: we ordered in from Sushi Yasaka. For upper west siders, this is the go-to spot: it is the most reliable, affordable sushi in the city. I’m always amazed that it gets delivered with such speed that the sushi rice is still warm on arrival.

I should note that if I were going out to dinner I would choose Sushi Kaito just across the street; the12-seat bar looks like it was lifted, complete with Maneki-neko (the beckoning cat with raised paw), straight out of a Tokyo subway station. For $115 you get a truly beautiful 17-course omakase of pristine fish.

On the hottest day of the year a group of Gourmet friends took me to lunch at Rocco DiSpirito’s new Bar Rocco. I have always loved Rocco’s food, and I eyed the meatballs, the pasta and the arancini nero. But it was just too hot. So we indulged in his wonderful take on oysters Rockefeller and a grand seafood platter. The oysters were crisp, cool, briny, the shrimp and lobster perfectly cooked, and the tuna tartare hiding in the back was laced with surprising little bursts of salmon roe.

I have not stopped lamenting the loss of Honmura-An, the soba-ya which was, for many years, our family’s favorite New York restaurant. We were not alone; it was a very special place to many people. So I was overjoyed to discover that Soba Ulala has come along; this small calm restaurant is superbly Japanese in its simplicity and perfectionism. The zaru soba is exactly right, the chawan mushi with lobster and uni a little bite of heaven. The service is gentle and the sake list superb. I will definitely be back.

Lunch with a friend at Uncle Ray’s Chicken Rice. I fell in love with the classic Singapore dish on my first visit to that city in 1980, and I’ve been longing for a great version to arrive in New York. The chicken broth here is rich with pandan leaf and lemongrass, each grain of rice is plump, the chicken smooth and silken. (Both the poached and roasted versions are wonderful; I’m less fond of the char siu.) It’s a little feast for $18; no wonder the owner is now looking for a larger venue.

Look at the marbling on this meat: that is the reason you go to Yoon Haeundae Galbi, the New York outpost of a venerable restaurant in Busan, Korea that is famous for its short rib. There are other delicious dishes on the menu; the jeons (eggy Korean pancakes) are excellent and the fat, puffy meat-filled galbi dumplings are juicy. The banchan are admirable. But what you really want is that short rib, either fresh or marinated. You want to order a plate of greens to wrap around the meat - and some noodles to go on the griddle at the end of your meal to soak up the last delicious bits of charred meat.

Lunch with a good friend at the remarkable Rezdora began with gnocco fritto. The joy of this classic Modenese dish is feeling your mouth explode with flavor as the hot, airy puffs of bread melt the prosciutto and guancialle.

Nobody in New York makes better pasta than Stefano Secchi, but when he sent out these little pockets filled with ramps, chives & squacquerone cheese I gave an inward groan. Everyone seems to be enamored of ramps but to me they are flavor bullies, overwhelming everything they touch. Not here. The creamy cheese tamed the ramps into something that was both polite, restrained and utterly fascinating.

These little tomato tortelli topped with parmesan cream were a little dance of texture: toothsome, then soft and finally creamy. They are savory, but as I ate I kept remembering that tomatoes are fruits.

The people at the next table ordered the regional pasta tasting, and every pasta looked so delicious that I can’t wait to go back and try them all.

And finally, dinner at Cafe Luxembourg. (Someone told Michael that Keith McNally meant to name the restaurant for Rosa Luxemburg but misspelled her name. He instantly insisted that we go.) We have been eating at the restaurant since it opened in 1983. There is something soothing about sitting in that unchanging space surrounded by the ghosts of the people we used to be.

I ordered the Michael meal: Caesar salad, burger, fries. All excellent. And although I haven’t had a martini in years tonight I had one just for Michael.

Gin.

Extra olives.

Ice on the side.

How amazing that, just as I headed out to dinner at Cafe Luxembourg this menu from 1984 floated to the top of the pile.

In the same folder as the menu was this card from the late Patrick Clark, the original chef at both Odeon and Cafe Luxembourg. He was a rock star chef with enormous talent who died of a rare blood disease in 1998. The card was his response to my review of his food at Tavern on the Green,

Somehow, this piece seems appropriate right now.

Nancy reserved a ticket on the redeye.

Meanwhile my New York friends hit the subway so speedily they beat the undertakers to our place.

In a moment of crisis my friends show up. I am deeply grateful.

The last week has been both terribly sad and strangely joyful. Friends I haven’t heard from for years have been sending memories of Michael, and after the agony of watching his decline they have given me back the fierce, honorable, wonderful man I married.

It is the greatest gift.

Almost everyone has written about Michael’s bullshit radar - he had no tolerance for pretension. Nobody knows this better than I do. When people ask how I could have married a man who had very little interest in food this is my answer: he kept me honest.

As you can see from this excerpt from Garlic and Sapphires.

I still cringe when I read that. But it was what I loved about Michael. He told you the truth - even when it hurt.

So what, I wondered, as Nancy, Laurie, Robin and I set off for Le Bernardin to toast Michael’s memory, would he have thought about this?

Oddly, I’m sure he would have approved. Le Bernardin is the only fancy restaurant he ever enjoyed and we celebrated many important moments of our lives there. Michael would have liked knowing that when the time came, we were at Le Bernardin celebrating him.

Our meal began with a series of intricate jewel-like amuse-bouches. This tiny morsel, hamachi tartare with pea shoots in a crisp seaweed shell, was my favorite. All crackle, crunch and soft seductive textures. “Hello,” it whispered when you picked it up, “isn’t life wonderful?”

Tuna tartare topped with sweet, briny caviar surfing on a seaweed tuille. As the flavors went ricocheting through my mouth I began to cry: Michael would have loved everything about this extremely luxurious dish.

Filet of sole crowned with a diadem of tiny vegetables and slivered almonds. A gentle dish, a quiet pause after the introductory fireworks.

My favorite dessert: Strawberries reimagined as candy, as jelly, as a mousse. A parade of textures and temperatures, a celebration of creativity, proof that even great ingredients can be coaxed into something even better.

It was a wonderful meal. But it was the service as well as the food. We felt cosetted by everyone who came to the table, all trying to remind us that happiness is possible. A great meal at a terrible time can remind you, if only for a moment, how beautiful life can be.

Your friends, of course, do that too. When the meal ended, Nancy called an Uber and went back to the airport.

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

She had been in New York less than eight hours.

“I had to come,” she said simply.

And then - the final gift - Laurie wrote this beautiful piece about Michael, who she called “one of the world’s great curmudgeons.”

More tears.

The day after Michael died the food started to arrive. The first delivery, which came from Zabar’s, was labelled “the care and condolence collection.” Honestly. It was the perfect thing to have on hand when friends dropped in. As they did.

The next delivery was from Russ and Daughters. This one is called Russ and Fathers. More lox, cream cheese, bagels and babka. Not a crumb remains.

From now on the flavor of lox and bagels will be bittersweet to me.

And finally, this memory of what I’ve lost….

Early in our relationship I took Michael to meet M.F.K. Fisher and he drew her out on a subject she was reluctant to talk about. That was when I fell in love.

This is from Comfort Me with Apples.

Michael turned forty that year and threw himself a huge birthday party at the Savoy Tivoli, his local North Beach bar. He asked me to bake a cake. Of course I did.

It took four men to carry the thing in.

I thought I’d baked a cake, but actually I’d baked an enormous love letter that could feed three hundred people.

I eat a lot of wonderful food and it always makes me happy. But every once in a while I have a meal that does more than that: it reminds me of all the reasons I love restaurants and makes me forget, for a little while, all the terrible things that are happening in the real world.

I had a meal like that the other night at the brand new Oyatte. And it reminded me of how lucky I am to live in New York City. I’ll tell you all about the serene service, lovely ambiance and Hasung Lee’s remarkable food next week. Apologies for not doing it right now (and for being late today), but at the moment I’m in the midst of a serious family medical crisis and I don’t thing I can do it justice. What I can do is remind you of a few of the other reasons I feel so lucky to live in New York city.

Did this article ever get printed? I’m not sure. I don’t have a copy, just this version that the editor sent me, presumably right before it went to press. But it’s a very fun (and rather edgy) look at Manhattan’s restaurant scene in 1984.

The headline on it was: A California restaurant critic surveys New York’s trendy new eateries. She finds a homey cassoulet, a tender pink risotto and a lot of people in chic shock.

From that folder I pulled that article out of, the menu at Gotham Bar and Grill….

My friend Troy Chatterton has just opened Wild Sorrel, a cookbook shop dedicated to the home cook in the East Village. If you’re in New York stop by to say hello. And if you’re looking for a great mother’s day present, this would be a wonderful place to find it.

One thing you might buy at Wild Sorrel is the book I mention in this article. It’s a wonderful tale of a truly iconic New York restaurant of the sixties.

Forget Le Pavillon. The hardest reservation in the sixties in New York City might have been Little Kitchen, Princess Pamela’s soul food restaurant. The Princess moved around a lot; at one point her restaurant was in a walkup apartment in the East Village, but by the time I nervously rang her bell she’d moved to a narrow storefront on very east Tenth Street. Princess Pamela didn’t let just anybody in: she had to size you up first, and if you passed muster, she might open the door. That did not, however, mean you got to stay.

When I visited the Princess in the summer of 1971, I was already a fan. I’d found a used copy of her cookbook, Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Recipes, and practically memorized it. I was hoping for something exotic - chitlins maybe - but you pretty much ate what the Princess gave you. In our case, that meant nothing. One of my friends made a joke about “a soul food restaurant with no sweet potato pie.” He thought he was being charming; the Princess was not amused. “Out!” she shouted.

I’ve been thinking about Princess Pamela because I recently reread her cookbook. The Lee Brothers, who brought the book back, set out to find out as much as they could about Pamela Stroebel. It’s a melancholy tale. Orphaned at the age of ten, she wended her way up the East Coast, working in kitchens until she opened her own place. Then, somewhere around 1998, she simply disappeared. The Lees think she may have been interred at Hart Island, where the city buries unclaimed bodies.

Reading about the Princess in this great Food 52 piece by Mayukh Sen, it’s impossible not to mourn the untold numbers of Black chefs whose stories we’ll never fully know. It makes me doubly grateful that Princess Pamela’s book has been given a second chance.

One of the glories of New York is our cheesecake. Here’s my favorite recipe.

NEW YORK CHEESECAKE
Crust
1 1/2 cups chocolate wafer crumbs (about 6 ounces)
1/2 cup melted butter
1/4 cup sugar
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the graham crackers with 1/4 cup sugar and the melted butter and press into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Put into the freezer for fifteen minutes (it will keep here, covered, for a couple of months). Bake for 10 minutes, just to crisp the crust. Turn the oven down to 300 degrees.

Filling
1 1/2 pounds cream cheese, preferably without gum, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
Beat the cream cheese, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until smooth. Pour into crust and bake 50 minutes, or until the cheese is set on the edges, but still a bit wobbly in the middle. Remove from the oven (leave oven on) and cool for about 10 minutes on a wire rack.

Topping
2 cups sour cream
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir together the sour cream, sugar and vanilla and spread over cooled cake. Return to oven for 12 minutes until glossy and set.

Cool completely, cover, and chill at least 8 hours.

And finally, a little nod to the fact that New Yorkers are loyal people: I wrote this twelve years ago, and with the exception of The Breslin every one of the shops and restaurants mentioned is still alive and thriving.

Monday, May 5, 2014
James Beard Award weekend in New York is always exhilarating and exhausting. Endless parties lasting late into the night. Chefs filling up every restaurant. Too much food. Too much wine. I love it.

But the highlight of my weekend was a stroll around the lower east side, visiting my favorite food places with a group of new friends. We began at Katz's - of course - for some of their tender, spicy, irresistible pastrami. Just walking into that enormous room packed with raucous people makes me insanely happy. The walls throb with the intense scent of smoke, salt, pepper, garlic, spices and then, somewhere, like a reverberating backnote, the richness of beef.

Afterward we went down the street to Russ and Daughters, where we ate - what else? - some herring. Although they’re now famous for their lox, when Meyer Russ arrived from Poland he started it all by selling herring from barrels on the sidewalk. Meanwhile Niki Russ Federman told great stories about growing up in the shop she now runs.

Then it was on to Deluxe Foods, a fantastic Chinese market where we feasted on roast duck and the most delicious roasted pork belly. Not to mention tendon, with its wonderful texture, and scallion chicken so soft and silky it literally melted in our mouths. We ended with their spectacular just-made char shiu.

Onward to Di Palo's, where we drank wine and ate spectacular cheeses for a very long time. A new discovery for me: Camembert di Bufala - a rich, runny cheese that seemed less like its namesake and much more like the infinitely more delicious Epoisses.

By then it was late, and dark, and I said good-bye and walked up the street to Estella, where almost every table was occupied by someone who'd come to town for the Beard awards. (Restaurant people included Nick Kokonas (Alinea), Daniel Patterson (Coi), and Sean Brock (Husk).

We were all there because the food is so impressive. Fascinating flavor combinations and very precise and careful cooking. My pictures, I'm sorry to say, are terrible: this mussel escabeche is the best of the lot, which tells you something. This seemed more like a i made with mussels than a true escabeche, but it was wonderful.

So was beef tartare, studded with crisp little bits of pungent sunchoke, and kampachi tartare popping with tart tiny squares of apple and singing with yuzu. There was a wonderfully musky aroz negro, dense with squid ink, and this celery salad, dotted with mint and cave-aged cheese:

and these lamb ribs scented with charmoula

:

Lovely food. Lovely evening.

On Sunday, more food people gathered for a friends and family brunch at the new Russ and Daughters Cafe. It's a lovely place, respectful of its origins, lovingly put together (note the marble floors, the poppyseed wallpaper in the bathroom, the comfortable stools). The counter in front looks as innocent as an old-fashioned soda fountain, but it actually functions more like a bar where elaborate drinks are carefully concocted. This cherry shrub was shot through with hints of pepper:

The food is also very respectful of history. Lots of smoked salmon and herring. Some chopped liver. Matzo brei. Eggs. Not to mention the best rye bread I've ever eaten: dense with a deeply fermented flavor, this is bread that makes you understand why it's called the staff of life. Made from an 80 year old starter, it is, literally, the taste of tradition.

The bread is perfect with this rich, smoky, delicous whitefish chowder

Leaving, we walked across the island in sunshine. Then, in the middle of Chinatown, sun still shining bright in the sky, it suddenly started to rain. Everyone looked up, startled, and laughed. We were wet by the time we arrived at Barbuto, where chefs drank endless glasses of rosé, ate lovely little tidbits - and talked about where they were going to eat dinner.

Me? I ended up at The Breslin with these people - and 20 or so other friends - where April Bloomfield sent out this this crisp little roast piglet. (Alas The Breslin is no more. Happily, however, we now have Sailor where April is cooking the best food of her career.)

She is also causing me to consider, once again, the rather fraught notion of how to feed a child. Since she’s been born I’ve spent time looking at what I’ve written on the subject. This particular article from 2007 stuck a chord: it has been quoted more than anything else I’ve ever written.

I never gave much thought to what children eat until the mid-eighties, when I set off to write an article about Alice Waters. At the time Alice was completely obsessed with cooking for her 18-month old daughter, Fanny.

Fanny now has a daughter of her own, and she is equally obsessed. So obsessed that she coauthors The Green Spoon, a Substack about feeding children. If you have a young child I think you’ll find it extremely useful.

Since we’re talking about Alice Waters in the early eighties, let’s take a look at how she was feeding grownups back then. In those days I preferred the menus earlier in the week (they were usually the most adventurous), but that menu for Friday the thirteenth looks incredible to me.

People have a lot of preconceptions about what foods children like, but the truth is that if the dinner table isn’t a battle ground they will probably like what you do. I love spicy food, and my son followed right in my footsteps. This is a little excerpt from Save Me the Plums.

Nick was still awake, and I was absurdly happy to see him. A better mother, I thought, would be worried about his losing sleep, but just the sight of him made all the other stuff seem small.

“I’m hungry,” he said when the babysitter had gone.

“Didn’t Anisa make dinner for you?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t as good as the food you cook.” My son has always known exactly how to play me.

“It’s kind of late.”

“Please.” He looked up at me. “Please.”

What the hell, I thought; end the day on a high note. “How about spicy noodles?” They could be ready in a flash.

Nick nodded, happily following me into the kitchen, bare feet slapping against the floor. He hoisted himself onto the counter and, as the scent of ginger, scallions, and black beans rose around us, regaled me with tales of his day. I boiled the pasta and tossed it into the wok, swirling it with a flourish. As I ladled noodles into Nick’s bowl, I inhaled the scent, thinking how much better this was than anything the restaurant I’d reviewed earlier that evening had served us. I reached for another bowl, and we took them into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and slurped noodles together.

Spicy Chinese Noodles for Nick
1/2 pound Chinese noodles, dried egg noodles, or spaghetti
Peanut oil
1/2-inch-long piece of fresh ginger
2 scallions
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons Chinese black bean paste with garlic
1 tablespoon Chinese bean paste with chili
1/2 pound ground pork
Sesame oil

Cook the noodles in boiling water until al dente (the time will vary with the type of noodle). Drain, toss with a half tablespoon of peanut oil, and set aside.

Peel and mince the ginger (you should have about two tablespoons). Chop the white parts and slice the green parts of the scallions.

Mix the sugar and the two kinds of hot bean paste, and set aside.

Heat a wok until a drop of water skitters across the surface. Add a tablespoon of peanut oil, toss in the ginger, and stir-fry for about half a minute, until the fragrance is hovering over the wok.

Add the pork and white scallions and stir-fry until all traces of pink have disappeared. Add the bean sauce mixture and cook and stir for about 2 minutes.

Stir in the green scallions and noodles and quickly toss. Add a drop of sesame oil and turn into two small bowls. This makes a perfect snack for two.

This remarkable little book, The Gentle Art of Cookery, published in 1925, is a reminder that long before Elizabeth David weighed in the English were eating interesting food from all over the world. The author’s basic philosophy, laid out in the introduction, is that one should “shop first and then arrange the dinner according to what is most plentiful in the market.” She includes an entire chapter on The Arabian Nights, with recipes for dishes like imam bayaldi and chicken stuffed with pistachios.

The book’s author, Hilda Leyel, was a famous herbalist with a remarkably modern attitude (among other things, she agitated for the use of compost as opposed to synthetic fertilizers). The book is valuable for its vegetable recipes alone, and is best known for the chapter on cooking with flowers, which includes recipes for Dandelion Wine, Chrysanthemum Salad, Violet Marmalade and Rose Ice Cream.

But what I find most fascinating is Leyel’s ideas on cooking with children. A few of these recipes I’ve never seen before. I particularly like that “ostrich egg,” although I’m a little stumped as to where a modern cook would source the pig’s bladder.

Going through old files I came upon this speech I wrote in 1991 when I was the food editor of the Los Angeles Times. I’m not even sure where I gave the speech - it was obviously at some sort of conference - but from the vantage point of thirty-five years, it’s an interesting artifact.

Seems like such a long time ago. Looking at the paper it’s printed on - in those days we used a machine that printed on a continuous roll of paper with sprocketed edges - reminds me that I went down to the composing room every day just as the paper was about to go on press. Each page was pasted up so you could take one last look. If an article was too long the pressmen told you how many inches you needed to cut and you took an xacto knife and pared the piece down, then pasted it back together with rubber cement.

In those days the food section of the Los Angeles Times was huge - 2 full sections, often running to sixty or more pages. It was all about advertising, of course; supermarkets were still printing coupons in the paper for their customers to clip. Still, I find it fascinating that food sections have once again become financial engines for newspapers - just look at the New York Times. But there’s one big difference: back then the money came from advertisers. Today, it’s the consumers who pay. It is, in my opinion, a much more sensible model.

I can’t help noticing something else. Back then I was worrying about who was writing about food. I was right to be concerned. It’s taken too long, but it’s wonderful to see how many diverse voices have now been added to the food writing mix.

Best of all is the fact that food writing is no longer being sneered at. Food writers now win major awards for their reporting. It took 16 more years from the time I wrote this speech, but a food critic (Jonathan Gold), finally won the Pulitzer for criticism.

I certainly hope he’s not the last.

There is no more iconic Los Angeles restaurant of the eighties and nineties than Spago, which opened in 1982 and changed the city’s food landscape.

Here is the opening menu. That drawing on the cover? Take a look at the signature. Wolf couldn’t figure out what he wanted, so at the last minute he simply picked up some pencils and made a drawing.

While we’re being nostalgic…here’s the kind of article that was routinely printed in the “women’s section” of newspapers. I have to admit that although I tore this out of a magazine in 1975, I never actually made any of these recipes.

Carol Cutler was a prolific cookbook author and the queen of quick food. In addition to six minute soufflés she wrote books about fast breads, fast fish and low-calorie desserts. But my favorite of her books? Paté, The New Main Course for the 80’s.

It, in this case, being the world.

The Vilcek Foundation is dedicated to recognizing the contributions immigrants have made to our culture. In 2027 they are offering six $50,000 prizes for immigrants in the culinary arts. If you know someone who’s eligible urge them to apply. The prize is open to immigrants who are cooks, makers, writers, editors, scholars, bakers, photographers, content creators etc, age 38 and under. Applications close May 4. Apply here.

I am a big fan of the Vilcek Foundation, and I know how much good they can do. In 2010 I was on the committee that awarded the Vilcek prize to Jose Andres. I could not be more proud of what Jose did with the prize money. He was determined to use it for good, and when an earthquake ravaged Haiti he flew to the island and fed hungry people. It was the beginning of the organization that became World Central Kitchen, which has served more than 500 million meals to hungry people all over the world.

If you’re like most people, you’re eating a lot more beans than you used to. But do you know about the fantastic Judion butter beans of Spain? The lovely large beans come pre-cooked so that it is easy to add their soft creaminess to all manner of dishes. They are sold in many, many gourmet food shops (I’ve bought them at Rubiner’s in Great Barrington and Maison Marcel in Los Angeles), because I like having them on hand when I make this fast, easy lemony shrimp stew that everybody loves.

The other day somebody asked me to list my favorite cookbooks and I found myself going on about my battered old edition of Edna Lewis’ The Taste of Country Cooking. It turns out that, unbeknownst to me, the fiftieth anniversary edition of the book is about to be issued with a new introduction by my friend Toni Tipton-Martin. (The thirtieth anniversary edition had a preface by Judith Jones and an introduction by Alice Waters. )

I first met Edna Lewis in the early seventies, and like most people was immediately taken with her extraordinary beauty and straightforward intelligence. There really was no one like her - which is why one of the first things I did on becoming editor of Gourmet Magazine was ask one of my favorite writers, Chang-rae Lee, to profile her. You can find that here.

Seven years later, in 2008, editor Jane Lear was offered an unpublished Edna Lewis essay; thrilled, we decided to build an entire issue around it. Here’s what I wrote at the time.

After reading this you will, of course, want to read What is Southern. You will find it here. That issue is one I am very proud of; be sure to click on the recipes, because every one of them is a winner.

Sadly Miss Lewis is no longer with us. But her great friend - and the person she lived with during the last years of her life - Scott Peacock is very much alive. If you want to learn to make biscuits Miss Lewis would approve of, you must sign up for Scott’s biscuit experience.

Your life will never be the same.

This menu, from the seminal Oakland restaurant Bay Wolf, dates from sometime in the seventies, right around the time I first met Edna Lewis. (Bay Wolf closed in 2017 after a 40 year run.) It’s a great example of how excited food people were about regional American cuisines. After years of considering the hamburger to be America’s major contribution to the culinary canon we began seriously studying the local foods found in different parts of the country.

We had a lot to learn. First there was the excitement about California cuisine, followed very closely by Cajun (thank you Paul Prudhomme). Gradually we began to discover that, thanks to both the climate and the ethnic groups who settled the area, each American region has a different cuisine. But nowhere, in my opinion, is the food as exciting as it is in the south, because so many different cultures have left their mark upon it.

These waffles always make me think of Edna Lewis. They are so light they seem to float off the griddle and hover in the air. Then they dissolve the instant they hit the tongue.

Many thanks to Anson Mills, whose 13 colonies rice waffle flour is unlike anything I’ve used before. Like Sean Brock (with whom they’ve partnered), Anson Mills has embarked on a quest to bring back the heirloom crops of the antebellum Carolina rice kitchen. They’ve searched through seed libraries, looking for southern crops that disappeared with the industrialization of American farms, and brought them back. Take a look through their site; this is agricultural history at its most intriguing.

This rice flour is specifically intended for waffles, which were extremely popular in the old south, and often served at dinner with fried chicken. Personally, I prefer them in a starring role at breakfast. A perfect way to start the day.

Note: If you’re not using the Anson Mills rice flour, substitute 3/4 cup rice flour mixed with 3/4 cup pastry flour.

Rice Waffles
(adapted from Fannie Farmer and Anson Mills)
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon plus one tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups Anson Mills 13 colony rice flour (or 3/4 cup ordinary rice flour plus 3/4 cup pastry flour)
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup whole milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Dissolve 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast and 1/2 teaspoon sugar in 1/2 cup warm water (be sure the water is not too hot or it will kill the yeast). Set aside.

Whisk the flour, salt, and remaining tablespoon of sugar in a large bowl.

Slowly melt half a stick of butter, allowing it to turn a slight, nut-like brown. Remove from the heat and stir in the milk. When it’s cool enough to stick your finger in, add the yeast mixture.

Stir the liquids into the flour, mixing well. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave on the counter to rise overnight.

The next morning, stir in an egg and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. If the batter feels a bit thick, add up to 2 tablespoons more milk.

Pour batter into a hot waffle iron: how much batter you use will depend on the size of your iron, but in my old-fashioned cast iron waffle iron it makes about 7 waffles.

Eat with maple syrup, apple syrup or, in true southern fashion, sorghum. Or simply eat the waffles piping hot, unadorned, with your fingers.

A little lagniappe….

In 2009 Francis Lam wrote a wonderful story about a master roaster in a Toronto suburb at Ho Ho BBQ. Today he sent me a link to this amazing video of the same technique being practiced in Hong Kong.

If you’ve been reading La Briffe for a while you know that I’m a big fan of the glass Any Day containers which are some of the most useful tools in my kitchen. They go easily from refrigerator to freezer to oven - and they make attractive serving bowls as well.

Now the Anyday people have come up with a new tool: Anydeli. This is how they describe their latest product. Anydeli keeps everything people love about plastic deli containers — while making them microwave-safe, freezer-safe, and dishwasher-safe, too.

Use them to store leftovers, portion ingredients, freeze soups, pack lunches, and so much more.

And this is what I say: another great addition to my kitchen.

I had a long conversation with Chris Kimball about all manner of subjects, including the state of modern foodwriting. If you’re curious you can find it here.

You will note that in 1979 filmmaker Les Blank worried that he would never find the money to finish his film, Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers. Happily, he was wrong: the film, which is one of the few documentaries to be included in the National Film Registry, can be accessed here.

A few notes…
The Christopher Ranch is still going strong: it is the largest producer of organic garlic in the country.

Cheap Chinese garlic has flooded the market, but I find that it often has an unpleasant flavor that ruins whatever it touches. I try hard to avoid it.

How do you know if your garlic’s Chinese? Chinese garlic is very white and the roots are scooped out so the bottoms are smooth. (I’ve read this is because it removes clinging dirt and makes the garlic lighter for shipping.) If you don’t buy garlic at your farmers’ market, look for California garlic in the supermarket.

The Bruce Aidells who brought sausages to Truckee is, of course, the man who went on to found the Aidells Sausage Company and bring excellent sausages to everyone in America. (The company is now owned by Tysons.)

John Harris’ The Book of Garlic is still very much available. And if you want to know more about what Berkeley was like when the movie was being made, here’s John’s wonderfully nostalgic article about the era.

Before Robert Charles moved to Truckee to dedicate himself to the glory of garlic he had a Marin restaurant called Maurice et Charles Bistrot. Note that their saddle of lamb was served with “a light touch of garlic”.

Have a friend who’s fond of the stinking rose? This Garlic jewelry would make a wonderful gift. Necklaces and earrings in a variety of precious metals.

You could make your own. But why would you? This Toom is so delicious - and so widely available - that every garlic-lover should have some in their refrigerator. It contains three basic ingredients: garlic, canola oil and lemon.

I like to eat it simply scooped from the tub with crackers or pita. It’s wonderful on grilled or roasted chicken and adds zip to almost any vegetable. It makes a fantastic substitute for mayonnaise on the outside of a grilled cheese sandwich. Add some vinegar and a bit more oil and you have salad dressing. And for an almost instant dinner, toss Toom with hot pasta (add a bit of the starchy pasta water as well), along with grated Parmesan, a dash of dried hot pepper flakes, a bit of grated lemon peel and a little minced parsley.

A fragrant loaf of garlic bread is the best way I know to please a crowd. While it bakes it perfumes the neighborhood, broadcasting such deeply nostalgic signals that it can send the staidest grownup straight back to childhood.

It is both easier and harder to make memorable garlic bread than it once was. Easier because these days it is far easier to find a great loaf of bread, and harder because the influx of cheap, imported garlic has made finding good garlic increasingly difficult. Look for garlic that looks young and fresh, and squeeze it to make sure it isn’t shrinking inside its skin. (You don’t want old garlic because when it starts to sprout it gets nasty and very bitter, ruining everything with which it comes in contact. You know the terrible taste I’m talking about.) If you can’t get your hands on good garlic, the only remedy is to go through your garlic, clove by clove, removing the bitter green sprout in the center. It’s painstaking work, but it’s worth it.

There are four other tricks to making great garlic bread.
1.Use a lot of garlic, but cook it for a while so it’s not raw and biting.

2.Melt the butter — don’t just soften it — and brush it liberally across the bread. When you think you’ve used enough, use more.

3.Bake it twice: Once to get the bread warm and completely infused with the garlic butter. And again, at a higher temperature, to toast it to a crisp, golden, crunch.

4.Garlic bread should taste most of garlic and butter, but I love the complex flavors you get by adding lemon zest, parsley, or chives. But my favorite addition is a quarter cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese, added just before it goes under the broiler, which makes this truly, decadently, delicious.

Recipe
1 loaf sturdy French or Italian bread
1 stick sweet butter
1 head garlic
Zest from 1 lemon (optional)
¼ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese (optional)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley or chives (optional)

Begin by cutting the bread in half, lengthwise (a serrated knife helps). Preheat oven to 350⁰ F.

Peel and finely chop the garlic. Melt a stick of sweet butter, and add the garlic.

Slather the garlic butter onto the bread, cut side up, with a brush. Let it soak in. Use it all, and evenly spread the bits of garlic all over. Now is the time to salt it if you want to, and to sprinkle on the zest.

Bake the loaf, cut sides up, 15 minutes. Remove the bread from the oven and wait to take the final step just before serving.

Turn the heat up to broil. Add cheese, if using. Broil for about 2 minutes, watching carefully to make sure it doesn’t burn. Sprinkle with herbs just as it comes out of the broiler and serve immediately.

I’ll start off with this. When I read that RFK has done something I actually applaud - insist that medical schools start including nutrition as part of the curriculum - I went back to see if I’d written anything on the subject.

I came up with this article from 1977. I’m sad to say that in the fifty years that have passed since then, not much has improved. Well, there is one thing. Careful readers will note the mention of growing your own vegetables… Back then that was what people who wanted fresh produce were forced to do: there were no farmers markets.

I haven’t had much of an appetite, but these cantuccini are what I’ve been craving. The Tuscan version of biscotti, they’re crunchy twice-baked biscuits based on almonds. (The difference between traditional biscotti and cantuccini is that the latter contain no fat.)

Beware - these dry Deseo cantuccini studded with nuts, candied orange peel and chocolate may look humble but they are utterly addictive.

This morning I read that the always wonderful Nigella Lawson is returning to The Financial Times where her career began. Her debut article (not behind a paywall) makes the case for food writing and offers a down to earth recipe for rice pudding.

Nigella, inexplicably, thinks raisins have no business being in rice pudding. I beg to differ, so I’m offering you my favorite version of the dish.

Longchamps Rice Pudding with Raisins
¾ cup long grain basmati rice, washed and drained
½ cup raisins
1 quart whole milk
¾ cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
4 egg yolks
1 cup heavy cream, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of 1 lemon
sprinkling of ground cinnamon

Preheat over to 425 degrees.

Wash the rice in a bowl filled with water. Stir the rice with your fingers then pour out the water and repeat the process until the water runs clear.

Bring the rice to a boil with 3 cups of water, lower to a simmer, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Drain

Meanwhile, cover the raisins with water in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain and set aside.

Stir the milk, sugar, and salt into the drained rice. Bring to a boil then reduce to a gentle simmer, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon for 25 minutes until the mixture is the consistency of a thick porridge. Remove from the heat.

Whisk the egg yolks with ½ cup cream. Temper the eggs by stirring 1 cup of the rice mixture into the egg mixture, then pouring it slowly back into the saucepan with the rice, stirring, until the mixture is thoroughly blended.

Add the lemon zest, raisins, and vanilla, blending thoroughly. Pour the pudding into an 8”x 8” baking pan and let cool for 5 minutes until the top is firm.

Whip the remaining ½ cup cream until stiff and spread it evenly over the top of the rice pudding. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Bake for 10 minutes until the cinnamon browns slightly and the pudding is bubbling around the edges.

Still in an English mood, I started reading Elizabeth David’s An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, just to cheer myself up. This particular sentence always thrills me:
“I can only say that there are times when one positively craves for something totally unsensational; the meals in which every dish is an attempted or even a successful tour de force are always a bit of a trial.”

I turned a few pages and came upon this recipe for an extremely unsensational chick pea salad. Intriguing: it’s basically hummus without the tahini, and without being pureed. (And I’m curious about that tablespoon of flour. What’s that doing there?)

Elizabeth David’s Salade de Pois Chiches
Soak 1/2 pound of chick peas overnight in plenty of cold water into which you stir a tablespoon of flour. Next day put them in a saucepan with the same water, plus a half teaspoon of baking soda. Simmer them for an hour. Skim and strain.

Rinse out the saucepan, fill it with 3 pints fresh water, bring to the boil, add a tablespoon of salt, put in the chick peas and simmer another 1 to 2 hours until the peas are perfectly tender and the skins beginning to break.

Strain them (keep the liquid - it will make a good basis for a vegetable soup), put them in a bowl and while still hot stir in plenty of olive oil, sliced onion, garlic, parsley and a little vinegar.

While riffling through old folders, I came upon this from 1999. I thought it might entertain you

Speaking of disguises… my friend Pat Oleszko, who currently has a one-woman show at The Sculpture Center and is part of this year’s Whitney Biennial, will be showing a group of her films at The Whitney tomorrow afternoon. Information is here.

Pat, who’s been a close friend for most of my life, will gladly tell you that she’s responsible for my career. In 1970, when we were sharing a loft on Rivington Street, she finished dinner one night, looked at me and said, “You’re such a good cook you ought to write a cookbook.”

I knew then - as I know now - that arguing with Pat is never a good idea. The result was MMMMM: A Feastiary - and every chapter opens with a picture of Pat (including the one above). She’s original, provocative and endlessly entertaining, so if you’re in town tomorrow, don’t miss Pat’s show.

Finally - and very sadly - I learned yesterday that one of the chefs I most admire, Tom Valenti, has passed away. It makes me very sad.

I first encountered Tom at Alison on Dominick, so I’m posting that menu here. (His signature dish was braised lamb shank and there are many of us who never cook a shank without thinking of him.) Tom went on to open restaurants on the Upper West Side - Ouest and Oxbow Tavern. But what I will never forget is his calling me a couple of days after September 11 to say that he was worried about the families of the people who had perished at Windows on the World.

“So many of them were undocumented,” he said, “and their widows and children are going to be in terrible straits. We need to do something.” He did more than something: Tom was the driving force behind The Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund, which ended up gaining an international following and raising millions of dollars to help those families. It has raised far more money than anyone imagined possible. Tom Valenti was not just a terrific chef; he was a very good man.

If you are the one person on the planet who has not read Julia Moskin’s startling story, it is here. It is, all by itself, an argument for food writing. Because the truth is that the allegations of abuse are not new: as far back as 2015 Redzepi was accusing himself of bad behavior. What is so powerful about the NY Times piece is the sheer force of Julia’s writing; you simply can’t look away. There’s been a lot of moral outrage (see this piece by Laurie Ochoa and this piece by Mike Lee). And some pushback as well (see this interesting piece by Helen Rosner, and this review of the Los Angeles Noma meal by Tom Sietsema).

Pete Wells wrote this very useful article about Escoffier’s brigade system, which is often blamed for the abusive behavior in professional kitchens. Many big name chefs insist that the only way to run a large kitchen is to turn it into a factory, and that the factory system is the root cause of abuse. If you want my take on that, I absolutely reject the notion that it is impossible to run a great restaurant without making people miserable.

It’s a lot to think about, and with all this in mind I went back to look at a piece I wrote when I was the restaurant critic of the New York Times. (I posted it about a year ago, and if you read it then, apologies.)

Things have changed since I wrote this piece in 1996. Thirty years ago I wrote, “…there are still restaurants where the rich go to prove that they are different from you and me. But there are fewer and fewer of them.” Because in this newly gilded age of ours, that is no longer true. Tickets to that Noma dinner in Los Angeles sold for $1500 a person - and sold out in sixty seconds.

These days, if I were writing this piece, I’d certainly be talking about working conditions for the people who raise our food and those who cook and serve it. And I would definitely add something to that last line: “What it takes to be a restaurant critic is a good appetite and a moral compass.” Because no matter where you fall on these questions, it is never a bad idea to think about them.

This menu dates from around the time I wrote the article above. It’s from Union Pacific, Rocco DiSpirito’s wonderful restaurant. (My review, which begins “The woman at the next table is moaning…” is here. At the time I thought it was a very exciting restaurant, and looking back at this menu I would happily eat every single dish.

Nancy Silverton was standing in one of those beautiful Paris bakeries where the wares look more like jewelry than anything you can actually eat, admiring the perfection of a poundcake.

“Look at the shape!” Nancy was saying just as the baker sauntered past. “See how straight the crack down the middle is?” She looked at the baker and said, “You slit it with a knife while it’s in the oven, right?”

The baker shook his head. “Oh no, Madam,” he said, “the perfect crack? That is my secret.”

Nancy laughed. “I guess he used a different implement,” she said. “But he had to use something to get the line to stay that straight. I learned that at Lenotre.”

I’ve always admired the simplicity of poundcake, whose name comes from the recipe: it was originally a pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of sugar and a pound of eggs. It’s a versatile cake that is not only delicate and richly delicious, but also easily adaptable. You can serve it with berries and cream, you can make it into trifle, you can toast it and serve it with jam. On top of that, poundcake improves with age.

Perfect Poundcake
8 ounces sweet butter
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt

Preheat your oven to 350. Butter a 9x5 loaf pan.

Beat the butter at high speed in a stand mixture until it’s fluffy and starting to look white, about 5 minutes. Slowly add the sugar, a bit at a time, and keep beating, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula from time to time. Add the first egg and beat for a couple of minutes. Add the next egg, beat, and then the next until all the eggs are mixed in. Scrape down the bowl often. Add the vanilla.

Remove from the stand mixture. In a separate bowl whisk the dry ingredients together, and then quickly fold them into the butter mixture.

Pour into the loaf pan and smooth the top. Put into the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Remove, butter a sharp knife, and use it to draw a line lengthwise down the middle of the top of the cake.

Bake for about an hour more. A toothpick should come out clean.

Let rest on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out of the pan and allowing to completely cool on a rack.

If you’re going to keep it overnight, wrap well in plastic or foil.

A Few Pointers
Have all your ingredients at room temperature; cold ingredients do not blend evenly.

Use good sweet butter with a high butterfat content. I also prefer cultured butter (like Echirré or Plugra), which impart a wonderful complexity of flavor.

Beat the butter very well in a stand mixer- at least five minutes - and add the sugar slowly. Then beat some more. Keep scraping the bowl down.

Add the eggs one at a time. These are your major leavening, so you want to incorporate as much air as possible. I like to beat each egg for two minutes before adding the next one.

Use cake flour - it will make your cake more tender.

When it’s time to add the flour, remove the bowl from the mixer and do it by hand, gently folding the flour in. Stop as soon as the flour is incorporated into the butter and egg mixture; at this point you don’t want to overmix.

If you want a beautiful crack down the middle you must not wait too long. When the cake has been in the oven for 10 minutes and the top is just starting to form a crust, dip a sharp knife into melted butter and quickly draw it lengthwise down the middle of the cake. It will form a perfectly picturesque crack.

And here’s a recipe I’m guessing you are not going to cook.

When I wrote about eating this Sicilian timballo at Planeta winery last week, I mentioned that the recipe is in Elisia Menduni’s cookbook, Sicilia unaware that the book is out of print and not easy to find.

Many people wrote to ask for the recipe. And here it is.

A few notes of my own.
This is very much a chef’s dish; it dates back to the eighteenth century when the French Bourbon monarchs ruled the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. The chefs of aristocratic families created an entirely new cuisine which was called Monsu cooking. (The name comes from the local pronunciation of the french word Monsieur.)

Good luck finding coxcombs. In the early eighties, when Alain Chapel came to cook a meal in California, I spent an entire afternoon visiting every farmer in the Napa Valley searching for the rooster crests he required. We barely managed a handful. Although D’Artagnan once sold them, at the moment I cannot find a single online source.

The recipe neglects to tell you what to do with the pasta. You cook it, very al dente, and then mix it with the other filling ingredients.

The ricotta crust is extremely delicate and very tricky - more soufflé than pasta - and I’d suggest adding extra flour. Otherwise you risk a collapse when you unmold the timballo.

I was lucky enough to have the famous mutton chop at Keens Steakhouse this week, and it really is as good as its reputation. If the word “mutton” scares you, this is the place to get past that.

I should also note that the service was remarkably good: professional, welcoming and very kind. Keen’s is an admirably friendly restaurant, but I can’t help mentioning that I was seated right across from the lobster tank, staring at the saddest lobsters I have ever encountered.

I’m in Sicily as I write this attending Corriere della Sera’s Women in Food symposium.

Corriere is Italy’s most-read newspapers, one of its oldest - and the one that pays the most serious attention to food. Angela Frenda, the force of nature who edits the monthly Cook section, runs the symposium. Here’s how she describes it:
Women in Food, an event conceived in 2021 by the Cook editorial team and Corriere della Sera, stems from this reflection: the kitchen, once a place of domestic confinement for women, has transformed into a space for self-expression, freedom, career opportunities, and even power. WiF is the symposium that annually brings together the most inspiring Italian and international professionals in food, wine, and hospitality—women who have built successful careers, turning the gastronomy and hospitality sectors into avenues for female empowerment. Join us!

It has been a halcyon few days. Angela always assembles an awesome group, and I’ve been spending time with old friends like Bee Wilson and Anissa Helou while getting to know at least a dozen inspiring new ones. (You can see who they are here.) We’ve attended demos and presentations… but mostly we’ve gathered around various tables, talking, drinking and eating beautiful food.

Yesterday morning a group of us went foraging across the grounds of Verdura, the dreamy Rocco Forte resort where we’ve been staying. Chef Aneliese Gregory from Tasmania was with us; once head forager at Michel Bras, she kept looking down at the ground and spotting herbs no one else could see. And here’s Roberta Corradin - writer, translator and chef, who’s just discovered a Sicilian variety of wild arugula growing under the olive trees.

The conversations cover every subject under the sun. We’ve heard from women who run large family businesses and women who left their native countries to be able to express themselves. We’ve discussed the difference between male and female chefs, the importance of eating local - and the huge elephant in the room, the toxic work environment of so many restaurants. This morning at breakfast the philosopher Francesca Romana Recchia Luciani and I began a discussion of Dolores Huerta’s startling late-life confession while drinking juice squeezed from just-picked oranges and eating the classic Sicilian breakfast, brioche and lemon gelato.

The food has been fantastic. The chef in charge of Verdura’s food is the man behind the legendary Gambero Rosso, Fulvio Pierangelini : here he is with Anissa Helou.

He served us truly amazing salads - there have been dozens every day - made with produce from their own gardens….

and fish like this raw tuna from the surrounding sea.

And one night for dessert we had the first fragolini of the season !

The symposium ended at Planeta Winery. I’m a longtime fan of Planeta wines, but spending time with this large, loving extended family (there are 50 of them when they all sit down to eat together), was wonderful. After walking through the fields with cousins Alessio and Francesca Planeta….

we sat down to an incredible lunch featuring this classic Sicilian timballo - a rich and elegant meat and pasta torta that takes 3 days to make. (If you want the recipe, you can find it in Sicilia by Elisa Menduni. )

As I was packing my bag for Sicily I remembered a piece I wrote about my first trip to Italy in 1970. Full disclosure: it wasn’t really my first visit. But it was the first time I’d been in love in Italy.

Although certainly not the last.

I don’t seem to have any Italian menus old enough to be called vintage, so I’ll offer up a few Italian wine memories from Kermit Lynch instead. This is from 1982, but Kermit is still importing these wines. You can read about Clos Nicrosi, which he calls “the Chablis of Corsica,” here.

Last year I spent a week at a writing workshop with Michael Cunningham in a magical chateau in the south of France. I wrote about that here.

As you can tell, I was utterly enchanted by everything that happened during that remarkable week; it was a stimulating sojourn filled with great talks and endlessly delicious meals. More than that, the sheer warmth of the experience gave me hope for the future. And we could certainly use some of that right now.

I wanted to spend more time in that very special corner of the world, so early next fall I’ll be going back to La Gonette for a culinary week. We’ll talk about food and food writing, visit local farmers and winemaker, spend afternoons wandering through small town markets (and a great antique market), and stay up late eating extraordinary meals. We will be a small group, and if you’d like to join us you can find the details here.

When I unearthed that piece about my honeymoon, this was hiding in the folder right behind it. It reminded me of how much I loved the book, so I put it in my suitcase to read on the plane. It would make a thoughtful (and unusual) gift for a literary soul who’s heading off to Italy or France.

It made me consider the state of food journalism when I started out. And that made me pull out an angry speech I wrote in the early nineties when I was asked if food writers ought to be tackling environmental issues.

Speeches like this, incidentally, were instrumental in getting me hired as the Editor in Chief of Gourmet six years later.

If you want to read a couple of the stories mentioned in the speech, here’s the one on Cathy Sneed’s prison garden project.

And here’s Dan Puzo’s review of significant food safety issues of 1990

Two commonsense articles from two different Substacks struck a chord with me this week. I thought you might also appreciate them; these are the kinds of articles that change the way we cook.

Here is Matt Rodbard on using Better Than Bouillon. His point is that if you’re making soup or risotto you want homemade stock. But if stock is simply one of the building blocks for a stew or braise you’re better off saving your hard-earned homemade stock. Bouillon products are getting better all the time - and making good stock is both time-consuming and expensive (although nothing makes a house smell better).

And here’s Terrence Brennan, a chef I have long admired, In Defense of Canned Tomatoes. His point? If it’s not tomato season you’re better off opening a can.

While we’re on the subject of Substacks… Vittles has a very heartening piece about The Food in Print Magazine Fair taking place in London on April 11. So many new to me magazines are included, and it makes me very happy.

Last week at the Ojai Wine and Food Festival Nancy Silverton served Burnt Basque Cheesecake for dessert.

I was surprised. I have always thought of this dessert as a wonderful cheap trick: it’s a stupidly simple recipe made with supermarket ingredients that can be baked in almost any vessel (in a pinch I’ve used Pyrex bowls and flowerpots). And it’s an absolute crowdpleaser: everybody loves it.

I’ve been making Burnt Basque Cheesecake for years from a recipe I got from the people who invented it, La Vina in San Sebastian (they sell dozens every day). Nancy’s, however, was a revelation. It was, far and away the best I’ve ever had. Memorable.

“I know!” she said, “but it’s not my recipe. I was eating at Dave Beran’s place and when I tasted his version I immediately asked for the recipe.”

Dave has made a few brilliant tweaks to the original. He adds egg yolks instead of whole eggs and crème fraîche instead of cream. He uses a food processor instead of a stand mixer, which makes it smoother. Also, unlike so many of the recipes out there, his contains no flour or cornstarch. Most importantly, Dave refrigerates the cake so that when it is sliced and plated it changes, melting right before your eyes. “It took a solid 3 months to figure it out,” he told The Los Angeles Times.

The recipe is all over the internet. Here it is, with a few of my own notes.

Dave Beran’s Burnt Basque Cheesecake
2 pounds of Philadelphia cream cheese at room temperature
1 1/3 cups sugar
9 large egg yolks
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 ¼ cups crème fraîche

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a rack near the bottom.

Butter a 9-inch springform pan. Overlap two long strips of parchment paper, pressing them into the pan so that they cover it completely and it extends over the top of the pan. Don’t worry about creases and folds; they will make the cake look more interesting. Butter the parchment paper.

Unwrap the cream cheese (which is the most difficult step in this recipe). Cut it into chunks.

Put the cream cheese, sugar, egg yolks and salt in a food processor. Pulse until very smooth, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl from time to time. You want it to be extremely smooth with no lumps. Add the crème fraîche and pulse again until it is even smoother.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, then tap the pan against a work surface a few times to eliminate air bubbles. Put it on a sheet pan and then into the oven.

Bake about 20 to 25 minutes until the top is dark brown and the edges are set and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. Do not open the oven door for the first 20 minutes. The center should still be quite jiggly: that is what you’re looking for.

Put it on a rack and allow it to cool. When it is room temperature put it in the refrigerator. That’s it!

Serve the cake by removing the side of the pan and putting the cake onto a plate. Use a sharp knife to cut; you’ll need to wipe the blade after each cut.

The cheesecake can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Since I mentioned that Nancy served a Dave Beran recipe last week in Ojai, I thought I’d show you the menu for the meal. It was a collaboration by former winners of Food & Wine’s Best New Chef. Here’s Dave shaving truffles over Josiah Citrin and Raffael Lunetta’s lovely green pea agnolotti in brown butter.

Every dish on this menu was a treat: it was one of the most exciting meals I’ve had in a very long time.

I should mention that while we were in Ojai - and all in the same place, Nancy, Laurie and I recorded a new episode of Three Ingredients.

Not a menu, but one of my favorite articles from the newsletter Kermit Lynch used to mail out on a monthly basis. This article from April 1981 tells you a great deal about Chablis, about the wine business and about Kermit himself. It also introduces you to Francois Raveneau, who passed away in 2000. Happily his children continue the tradition, and Kermit continues to import the great Raveneau Chablis (although the production is so small it sells out quickly.)

In 2004, when Lutece ended its long run, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed piece about the restaurant. I ended up focusing on its remarkable owner/chefAndre Soltner. He was the soul of hospitality.

It seems Briffauds cannot get enough of Danny Kaye… Many people have reached out to ask what other dishes Danny served with the lemon pasta I wrote about a few weeks ago, and I was sorry to admit that I couldn’t remember. But a friend has just reminded me that I wrote about Danny after he passed away in 1987. I’d forgotten that - or that I’d included the entire menu. Here’s the end of the article. (If you want to read the entire piece, you’ll find it here. )

That first meal began with an extraordinarily simple soup, a broth really, intensely flavored with lemon grass. It was followed by hand-made noodles so light that if you blew across your plate they would have danced in the air. These were lightly flavored with lemon. Then there was liver (“You slice it diagonally,” said Danny), wok-fried with onions and dashed to the table. “Eat it now ,” said Danny, “it won’t be any good in a few minutes.” Finally there was a lemon soufflé, snatched from the oven at exactly the right moment. It was, to my mind, a perfect meal. And a daring one. There was not a single step in the choreography of this particular repast that would have tolerated a small slip; the tiniest mistake would have turned into a major tumble. But Danny Kaye, of course, never stumbled.

“I think it’s the best meal I’ve ever eaten,” I said. And I meant it. Danny just smiled. And asked me back.

A few months ago, Danny called on the spur of the moment. He was cooking and he wanted me to come for dinner. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I’ve got other plans.”

“Cancel them,” he insisted. I told him not to behave like a star. “OK, babe,” he said finally. “There will be other dinners.”

I wish I’d gone.

I’ve been invited to a party celebrating Craft’s 25th anniversary next Monday. Thinking about that milestone made me nostalgic for my favorite of Tom Colicchio’s enterprises, Tom’s Tuesday Dinners. They were always a thrill. I remember this particular one with great fondness. That grouse!

I’m a longtime fan of Eat Drink Lucky’s beautiful tea towels, so when I got a notice that they’re celebrating maple syrup season with these Maine Maple Truffles, I was instantly hooked. To me maple sugar is the taste of childhood - but wrapped up in chocolate it’s especially sweet.

There are many reasons to visit Bar Kabawa. You could go for the excellent cocktails or the awesomely original patties (one contains foie gras, short rib and conch, another has curried crab). Or you could go for the pleasure of seeing Chef Paul Carmichael’s incandescent smile. But it is the memory of the dish called Solomon Gundy that will stay with you long after you’ve left. The smoky, spicy fish paté is topped with a sweet bruléed crust and served with shatteringly crisp casava crackers. Each bite is a delightful shock, a sensory whirlwind that makes you glad to be alive.

It made me recall a column I wrote early in the eighties that I was convinced was about to end my career. Yesterday, purely by coincidence, I came upon this article in my files.

I wish I could tell you it was the last time something like this happened…..

That is an excerpt from Comfort Me with Apples which, I am happy to say, is about to have a wonderful new cover. It’s by Caitlin McGauley, the artist who created the cover for The Paris Novel,

I wish I still had the menu from Perino’s, but alas I do not. My Los Angeles garage was filled with boxes of menus organized by alphabet, but when we were moving to New York the van ran out of room. In a moment I now regret I abandoned all the boxes that had not yet been loaded on the truck. I’m afraid the box of P menus was among them.

In its place I offer this menu from the M box: Philip Chiang’s Mandarette. Long before Philip went on to fast food fame by co-founding PF Chang’s he opened a revolutionary little restaurant on Beverly Boulevard. His aim, he told me, was to serve “the food the staff eats in the kitchen at The Mandarin.”

When it opened in 1984 Mandarette instantly became one of my favorite places. Because this wasn’t quite what the press release below calls “home cooking.” Philip grew up in Tokyo, and the food he served was filtered through a Japanese lens giving it a clean simplicity I found very appealing.

If you’re wondering what I was looking for when I came upon the article above, it was a recipe I clipped out of the paper when I was in college. It might be the richest dessert I’ve ever encountered.

Every year Nancy Silverton, Laurie Ochoa, Alec Lobrano and I take a group of people to some corner of the world we all love.

The trips are always great fun, but this year’s Dinner with Friends Abroad is going to be the best yet. Nancy spends part of every year in a medieval walled village high in the Umbrian hills, and over the years she’s made many food friends. We’ll spend eight days visiting them.

It’s an intimate tour that begins with a party at Nancy’s home in Panicale (Laurie and I are going early to help with the cooking), followed by days visiting cheesemakers, olive growers, farmers, salumi artisans, chefs and truffle hunters. Along the way we’ll cook with local chefs and dine in both formal and rustic restaurants. We’ll shop in local markets and explore Renaissance masterpieces in Arezzo, Orvieto and Assisi.

Be warned; the group is small and space is limited. You can click here to reserve a spot, or call this this number: 1-877 298 9677.

These are the cracked conch tacos at DJ’s Clam Shack in Key West. If you like chewy food (I do), conch is for you. But if you’re going to eat conch, you want to do it in a restaurant whose kitchen knows how to cook them.

DJ’s doesn’t look much different than the other Key West dive joints, but everything from the crisp coleslaw to the excellent onion rings is cooked with care. One caveat: if you eat on the patio you’re going to have to fight off the birds who consider your food fair game.

I think of The Ojai Food and Wine Festival as summer camp for food people. Chefs - more than a hundred of them - come from all over the country to spend a few days in a breathtakingly beautiful corner of the world. No wonder nobody wants to leave.

There are talks, tastings, wine events, cooking classes… I’m so happy to be a part of it that I’d gladly do anything they ask. (Last year I had the onerous task of interviewing Phil Rosenthal.) Still, when I saw that my assignment this year was a talk with Will Guidara, I groaned. I hadn’t read his book, Unreasonable Hospitality, The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect and I had no desire to do so.

Will, of course, was the inspiration for the best episode of The Bear, “Forks” in season two when Richie learned that restaurants are as much about feeding people’s souls as their stomachs. But much as I loved that episode, Will’s book is all about leadership and motivation, and I have no interest in business, don’t want to learn about management and have always loathed self-help books.

But you can’t interview an author without reading their book, so I dutifully bought a copy - and devoured it in a single sitting.

The book is ostensibly about running a restaurant, but what it is actually about is the generosity of paying attention to people. In the end it’s mostly about kindness. The book chronicles how Will’s ideas transformed his restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, but it’s so much more than that. I find myself thinking about the book all the time, and I’m very excited that I’m going to have a chance to sit down and talk with Will. If you’re planning to be in Ojai please join us.

It seems fitting that I’ll also be introducing Gramercy Tavern’s Saturday lunch. The restaurant’s owner, Danny Meyer was one of Will’s mentors, and this is the restaurant where he pioneered a truly American idea of hospitality. I was startled to read the review I wrote when Gramercy Tavern opened in 1994 and see that I said, “It is service that sets Gramercy Tavern apart from other new American restaurants….” After reading Will’s book that sounded very familiar.

This is how I ended the review: “At the moment, eating at Gramercy Tavern is a bit like drinking a great wine when it is still in the barrel. You can almost taste the future, and it appears extremely promising…..Gramercy Tavern has everything it takes to make a great restaurant. Except maturity.”

That was 31 years ago. It has certainly grown up; chef Michael Anthony is in the kitchen and the restaurant has never been better.

A friend recently sent me some cane syrup from Erikson Farms in Minnesota, which I liked so much that I tried to buy it. Alas, it seems their production goes exclusively to localfs. Then I found this Lavington Farms Cane Syrup, an excellent product which is available online.

But the arrival of this jar of cane syrup made me consider how alternate sugars might improve my baking. I’ve always kept a variety of vinegars on hand; why not collect an equally eclectic wardrobe of sugars? Here are a few of my favorites.

Sorghum Syrup
I had my first taste of this American classic in Kentucky, and found myself so fascinated I came home laden with jars of the stuff. At first I was just looking for an organic ingredient to replace the nasty corn syrup that goes into recipes like hot fudge and pecan pie, but once I began tasting the syrups made by different producers, I was hooked. True sorghum is an artisanal product with a distinct taste of terroir and it changes enormously from one producer to the next.

Since then I’ve experimented with recipes: it did wonders for the pecan pie at Thanksgiving. Mixed with butter (1/4 cup sorghum syrup blended into a stick of unsalted butter), it makes a spectacular spread for a warm biscuit. Sorghum’s great on pancakes, it makes very fine caramels, and it lends a whole new flavor to coffee or tea. (If you want to read more, Rona Robert’s book Sweet, Sweet Sorghum is a good source of both information and recipes.)

I’m a fan of the sorghum made by the Holbrook Brothers in West Liberty Kentucky (they make an intriguing orange variation), but it seems you have to go to the farm to buy it. Two others I’d recommend are the Townsend Sorghum Mill’s clean, straightforward product, and the exotic vanilla and bourbon laced sorghum from Bourbon Barrel Foods (and while you’re on that website, check out the terrific Bluegrass Soy Sauce).

Apple Cider Syrup
I’ve written about the fantastic apple cider syrup from Carr’s Ciderhouse before; it’s one of my favorite ingredients. Forgive me if you’ve already read this, but I’m enthralled by the story behind this very American product.

The early settlers brought apples to America, wading ashore in Jamestown carrying pots of apple saplings; by 1900 there were 17,000 varieties of apples growing in this country. John Chapman – a Swedenborgian missionary and entrepreneur known as Johnny Appleseed - devoted himself to spreading the apple gospel. But he wasn’t planting apples for pies and sauce; his apples were destined for the cider press.

For much of American history, hard cider was our most important beverage. Water was considered so unsafe that few people indulged; some drank beer, but most people, relied on cider.

Cider had other uses as well. Pilgrims rarely used cane sugar; their sweetener of choice was “apple molasses,” made by boiling cider until it turned into a deep, dark, rich syrup that was perfect for pies, cakes, baked beans, and classic desserts like Indian pudding and mincemeat.

Cider syrup became even more important during the Revolution. Sugar and molasses were imported from British plantations in the West Indies, which meant that patriotic Americans stuck with their home-brewed sweetener.

Then the Civil War came along and no serious Northerner used that product of the slave system, cane sugar. The production of cider syrup soared until Prohibition when sober citizens gleefully burned down every apple tree they could get their hands on to make sure that nobody could produce demon hard cider.

That is definitely our loss. Cider syrup is far more appealing than molasses, agave syrup or maple syrup. Put a drop on your tongue and you taste apple blossoms, honey, and citrus. Simultaneously sweet and tart, it has a slight caramel edge and just a touch of smoke. A drop makes vegetables sing, turns ordinary applesauce into something extraordinary, tastes great on pancakes and gives the dullest ham real character.

Pomegranate Molasses
I had my first encounter with pomegranate molasses when I fell in love with muhammara, a Middle Easter cousin of baba ganouj at Carousel restaurant in Los Angeles. Entranced by the flavor and color, I decided to make some for myself.

The recipe required red peppers, walnuts and and ingredient that was new to me, pomegranate molasses. Since then I have never been without it. The various supermarket brands are delicious, but I’ve just discovered Mymouné pomegranate molasses, whose tart sweet flavor is even more irresistible.

Dates are the sweetener of choice across the Middle East, where date syrup is commonplace. Date Lady date syrup is an organic American product. You can use it as syrup, but it adds real complexity as a sugar substitute in baking.

Lyle’s Golden Syrup has been made in London since 1881 when Abram Lyle sold one of his sugar refinery’s byproducts to his workers. They called the thick syrup with its nutty caramel flavor “Goldy” and it soon became so popular that the company started selling Lyle’s Golden Syrup to the public. We have nothing quite like it in this country, and it makes a great substitute for honey or maple syrup and is absolutely necessary for sticky toffee pudding and treacle tarts.

Since we’re discussing sweets, let me offer you one of my favorite desserts. It is the must-have finale to dinner at L’Ami Jean, one of my favorite Paris restaurants. (When I wrote the scene below in Save Me the Plums I did not yet know that I would go on to build an entire novel around the mysterious stranger at the next table.)

We plunged into a crowded, boisterous dining room, making our way through an aromatic swirl of wine, butter, and onions. Voices eddied around us in a happy babble. A jolt of laughter rocketed out of the kitchen.

We sat at a table the size of a postage stamp, neighbors tightly packed on either side, studying the menu. I wanted everything: soupe de poisson a l’ancienne, rabbit cooked in its own blood, or perhaps those langoustines at the next table, shimmering beneath a translucent sheet of pig skin.

My eyes went up to the man who had ordered it. He was sitting alone. Skin the color of porcelain. Silver hair, a little too long. Pale blue eyes and that long, disdainful nose. It had been nine years but he had not aged. Even his clothes, threadbare and elegant, seemed the same.

“You remember me!” He emitted a little cry of delight and I noticed, again, how sensual his lips were. He lifted the bottle sitting on his table. “Ce n’est pas le Krug ’66, mais ce n’est pas mal.” As he began to fill our glasses a waiter hurried over, reproachfully seizing the bottle from his hand.

“Have the duck,” my friend whispered as I studied the menu. “You have no such birds in America.”

“Et mon ami?”

“The scallops are superb.”

The food was extraordinary, the duck a mineral slab of meat, blood rare, with the wild taste of lakes and forests. Bill’s scallops—still in their pretty pink shells—sizzled with butter, sending delicious little whiffs of bacon, garlic, and thyme shooting across the table. As the meal progressed in a blur of flavor I found myself eating with joyful abandon. The old gentleman’s eyes were on me, and I remembered him saying he liked watching me eat because I reminded him of his wife, who had eaten as if she were “a guest to herself.”

For one brief moment I imagined that Severine was sitting across from him. The room would be less frantic in that other time, and the scent of cigars would fill the air. He’d be watching his wife as he was watching me, appreciating her appetite.

“You must have the rice pudding.” He pointed; it was on every table. Rich, creamy, scattered with dried apricots and raisins, it was an extraordinary concoction, a dish more of yesterday than today. As I scooped up a dollop of crème anglaise I said, “I am so happy to see you again. But surprised to find you here.”

His eyebrow lifted in a question. I gestured around the raucous room. “This is hardly Caviar Kaspia.”

“Ah.” He steepled his hands. “How young you are.” He stared at the pot of rice pudding, considering his words. “When you attain my age you will understand one of life’s great secrets: luxury is best appreciated in small portions. When it becomes routine it loses its allure.”

I remember his face as he said those words, and the heady scent of almonds and cherries. I remember the musical French voices that surrounded us. And each time I am grateful to my mysterious friend, for he’d put everything I’d discovered on this trip into a few simple words.

L’Ami Jean’s Riz au Lait
This is my adaptation. Chef Stéphane Jego serves it with a nut brittle but I don’t bother making brittle; I serve it with dried apricots and almonds (or sometimes with chopped up Littlejohn’s English Toffee).

Rice Pudding
1⁄2 vanilla bean
2 generous cups whole milk
1⁄3 cup bomba rice or sushi rice
3 tablespoons sugar
1 cup heavy cream

Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put the seeds and pod in a medium pot. Add the milk and bring it to a simmer. Stir in the rice and simmer, stirring occasionally, until it has become a porridge (about 25 minutes). Stir in the sugar. Cool to room temperature, then put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour to chill.

Whip the cream to stiff peaks and fold it into the rice, little by little, until it is fluffy and light.

Serve in individual bowls with confiture de lait, creme anglaise and dried fruit and nuts on the side.

Confiture de lait
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Pour the condensed milk into a deep glass pie pan or shallow baking dish. Add a pinch of salt and cover tightly with foil. Set the pie pan in a roasting pan and pour boiling water around it (into the roasting pan, not into the condensed milk) until the water rises halfway up the sides of the pie pan.

Bake about an hour until the milk turns deep golden brown. Keep checking the water, adding more as the level goes down. Remove from the oven and cool. (If the caramel has grown lumpy, you can whisk it or strain it to make it smooth.)

Creme Anglaise
1/2 vanilla bean
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
salt
6 tablespoons sugar, divided
3 egg yolks

Split the half vanilla bean open, scrape out the seeds and put both the seeds and the pod in a small pot. Add the cream, milk, a dash of salt and 3 tablespoons of sugar and slowly heat it just until bubbles form around the outside of the pot.

In a bowl whisk the the egg yolks with the remaining sugar until fluffy. Whisk just enough of the scalded cream mixture into the eggs to temper them, then whisk slowly into the cream mixture. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon over low heat until it coats the back of the spoon. Pass through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl set over an ice bath. Cool completely, then refrigerate.
Serves 6 to 8.

And since I mentioned Muhammara above, the least I can do is offer you a recipe. Muhammara
1 red bell pepper
3/4 cups walnuts
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon Aleppo, Marash or other red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs

Roast the red pepper by holding it over a flame on your stove until the skin is totally charred. One of the things I like best about this recipe is the wonderful scent that fills the kitchen as you roast the pepper. (If you have a gas stove, use the broiler.) When it’s totally charred put it in a plastic or paper bag for a few minutes, and then gently peel off the skin and remove the seeds. This is easiest under running water.

Gently toast the walnuts.

Put all the ingredients except the bread crumbs into a food processor and whirl into a smooth paste. Add the bread crumbs, a tablespoon at a time, until you get the desired thickness.

Spoon into a small bowl, make a dent on the top, fill it with another tablespoon of pomegranate molasses and serve with pita or crudites (or both).

This will keep in the refrigerator for 5 days, and it freezes well.

Had lunch at Gramercy Tavern a couple of days ago and was absolutely mesmerized by this citrus salad with chicories and Romano cheese in a remarkable peanut dressing. We scooped up every bit of dressing with our spoons and then wiped the plate clean with our bread.

But if you’re going to stay home you must have something wonderful to eat. Otherwise you’ll end up feeling sorry for yourself.

My solution is a big bowl of onion soup made by slowly cooking a mountain of onions until they’re nothing but a small puddle, mixing in some substantial stock and allowing it to cook some more. Do this early and you will have that fine, friendly aroma to keep you company all day.

When you’re ready to eat, pour the soup into ovenproof bowls and slice a loaf of good French bread into thick slabs. Cover the bread with grated Gruyere, slip it onto the soup and set it beneath the broiler until it melts into a wonderful crust. Thus fortified you are prepared to welcome the holiday.

A great soup offers more than comfort; it is positive proof that no matter what may happen in the months to come, no matter how dark the days may be, there will be moments of warmth and goodness.

That is certainly worth remembering during this cold, dark, dispiriting month.

On the other hand… you could order something rare and wonderful to share with your loved one. It’s too late to order this sterlet caviar for Valentine’s Day, but it’s worth keeping in mind. I was enchanted when an ad for yellow caviar appeared in my inbox; just knowing it exists makes me happy.

Sterlet are a rare and endangered species of sturgeon which were apparently prized by royalty. These golden eggs are from the even rarer albino sterlet, and they come to market in extremely limited quantities. It’s a crazy extravagance, but it was on sale and I couldn’t resist ordering some just to find out what the fuss is about.

The caviar is, indeed, bright yellow with eggs that are small but extremely delicious. The flavor - simultaneously briny and sweet - keeps echoing through your body long after you’ve swallowed the last little egg. But at this price it was, for me at least, a once in a lifetime treat.

In case you want a formal recipe for onion soup….

Beef stock is traditional for this soup, but I rarely make beef stock, have yet to find a pre-made beef stock worth eating, and always have homemade chicken stock in my freezer. It has always seemed sensible to make my onion soup with chicken stock and no one has ever complained.

As for the onions… you can use pretty much any combination you have on hand - yellow, white, red, Vidalia - you could even throw in some shallots. But know that the Vidalias will add extra sweetness and red onions tend to go gray when you caramelize them.

Onion Soup Gratinée
4 tablespoons butter
2 pounds onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons cognac, armagnac, calvados or dry sherry
1/2 cup dry Vermouth or dry white wine
6 cups beef or chicken stock
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
12 slices baguette or other sturdy bread cut 3/4 inch thick
4 tablespoons butter, melted
5 ounces Gruyere grated

Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a casserole, Dutch oven or other pot with a heavy bottom over low heat. Add onions and salt and pepper and cook, covered for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft. Remove the lid, add the pinch of sugar and cook, stirring from time to time until the onions are caramelized and golden. Over low heat this could take up to an hour, but it will smell wonderful. (Although many recipes tell you to let the onions get very dark, I find that makes the soup bitter; what you’re looking for is a rich gold color.)

Add flour and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Add the alcohol, bring to a boil, then add the stock and bring back to a boil, stirring. Reduce the heat, partially cover and cook for 30 minutes. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce.

Preheat the oven to 350, arrange the sliced bread on a baking sheet, brush both sides with butter and toast, turning once, for about 15 minutes.

Turn the oven to broil, divide the soup into 4 oven-proof bowls, cover the top of each one with the toasted bread and sprinkle the cheese on top. Broil soup for about a minute, 4 to 6 inches from the broiler, until cheese is melted.

Serves 4

And now, a few responses to previous posts.

A couple of weeks ago readers Cyn Harris and Judy Lieberman, began a discussion in the notes section about Paprikas Weiss, a beloved New York institution that delighted those of us who live here for almost 100 years. Three generations of the Weiss family ran the shop, and although it closed in 1995, anyone who ever entered the door will have an instant sense memory of the rich, spicy aroma that greeted you as you walked in.

I’ve just unearthed this catalogue from 1951: it is 64 pages of food, drink, kitchenware, records, clothing - even an entire page of pipes! Here are just a few.

Looking at these drawings of Trianon pots made me go scrambling through my cupboard to find what I had always assumed was a Le Creuset I inherited from my mother. No such thing; it’s a Trianon, which I would bet Mom bought at Paprikas Weiss before I was even born.

And finally… so many people reached out to ask if I had more Danny Kaye memories… and of course I do.

Danny invited me to dinner many times, eventually becoming such a good friend that I invited him to my wedding. It was a very modest affair, held at our house in Los Feliz. When Danny walked through the door he encountered my mother who looked at him suspiciously and asked, “Bride or groom?”

“Groom,” he replied. “I’m Ruth’s cousin.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Danny Kaminsky.”

“Out!” she roared. “We have no Kaminsky cousins.”

Well, you know Danny was never one to take no for an answer. He stayed. And since I’ve mentioned the wedding, here’s the menu Bruce Cost created for the event. (I should note that we did not serve a Chinese feast to please Danny, but he seemed to appreciate every bite. Still, looking back I cringe when I think of how casual our celebration was. Did we even have chairs?)

It’s so cold that I planned to make boeuf bourguignon for dinner tonight, but I began leafing through the February, 1978 issue of Gourmet and came upon this recipe. I love the name - it’s so evocative - and I realized it’s been a long time since I made a beef carbonnade. So I’ve changed my mind; today’s stew will be made with beer, not wine. I can hardly wait to start.

Flipping through the pages of the issue, I came upon this anchovy soufflé, which also piqued my interest. I love the idea of that smoked cod roe sauce, and I just happen to have some Japanese mentaiko in the freezer. And of course, bottarga. They’re not smoked, but either should work perfectly well.

And then there’s this fascinating soup; don’t you love the idea of adding that split of Champagne?

Finally, because the issue is almost fifty years old, I couldn’t resist this ad. Paprikas Weiss is long gone, but it’s nice to know that some things don’t change. This “Food Preparer” looks exactly like the one sitting on my kitchen counter right this minute.

Many people (myself included) are obsessed with the sweet, crunchy cruschi peppers from Basilicata. I wrote about them here.

Burlap and Barrel has just introduced an intriguing American substitute. Their Sweetest Italian Pepper is dried but not fried like cruschi, and they come crumbled into fairly small pieces so you can’t bite into a whole pepper. Still, they’re sweet as candy and absolutely irresistible. I ate half a jar the moment it arrived, but now I’m planning to add them to every vegetable dish I cook, and I doubt I’ll ever serve another red pasta sauce without sprinkling some of these peppers on top.

The Gemelli Mazinna peppers were bred by Cornell breeders Michael Mazourek and Gregor Inzinna who were inspired by the popularity of Jimmy Nardellos. They bred the peppers for exceptional sweetness, durability and resilience to the New York climate. I think East Coasters can expect to find fresh ones at local farmers’ markets within the year. How long until someone dries them in the sunshine, fries them in olive oil and sells them like cruschi?

Can’t wait!

Lemons kept floating into my life this week, as if intent on making me write about them. Never a difficult thing to do; lemons are one of the foods I can’t live without.

I was browsing through a bookshop when I happened upon this gorgeous book. My heart stopped: it was as if it had been written just for me.

Squeeze Me has art by one of my favorite artists, Ed Ruscha, and recipes by one of my favorite cooks, Ruthie Rogers. And it’s all about my favorite food. How could I fail to give it a home? Fifty lemon recipes. Wonderful art. Everything about this book is pure pleasure.

The next day I walked into Citarella and discovered real Sorrento lemons from Italy. If you’re accustomed to the nasty, seedy little lemons you usually find in supermarkets, you’re in for a treat. These lemons from the Amalfi coast have unwaxed peels so filled with oil they perfume your fingers each time you pick them up. Slice one open, give it a squeeze and what you have is the platonic ideal of lemons: abundant juice with perfectly balanced tartness.

Then a friend introduced me to this lemon squeezer. “The woman in the store told me this would change my life,” she said, handing me the dream farm lemon squeezer. “It folds flat so it doesn’t taking up all that space in the drawer.”

But it would take more than the ability to fold itself into a small space to impress me. As far as I’m concerned lemons - and the tools dedicated to them - are welcome to all the space they need. But this turns out to be an impressive tool: easy to use, it extracts the maximum amount of juice and filters out the seeds.

My lemon obsession goes way back. When I wrote my first cookbook, A Feastiary, in 1971, I devoted an entire chapter to lemons. Here’s the opening to that chapter.

I wrote about lemons in Comfort Me with Apples too…..

At first the thought of going to Danny Kaye’s house was thrilling. But at the last minute Michael couldn’t come; three gunman had held up a bank in Santa Monica, and he was needed at the station. As I drove through Beverly Hills, alone, looking for San Ysidro Drive, I began to have doubts. What on earth were we going to talk about? By the time I found the house and walked up the path I was so nervous that I panicked as I was about to ring the bell. I stood there for a second, then ran back to the car.

“You’re late,” Danny said when I’d finally composed myself for a second attempt. He glanced at his watch. “Six minutes. You could have ruined dinner.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I heard myself say. He let out bark of laughter, shook my hand, and led me into the house.

He looked just as he had in all the movies of my childhood; his face was not so much older as more wrinkled, like laundry that not been ironed. His blondish hair was a little too long and fluffed around his face, and his lean body no longer moved with the boneless grace of an acrobat, but otherwise he seemed unchanged.

We seemed to be alone as we walked through one silent decorator-designed room after another, and I began to hate those gunmen who had sent Michael back to work. It was a relief when we reached a cheerful sitting room and found it filled with other guests.

“Don’t get comfortable,” said Danny as he introduced me to his friends, “because I want to show you my kitchen.” He rushed through the introductions as if they were an irritating chore and led me out the door. I felt like a very special guest of honor. For the first time since I had been in Los Angeles I was glad I had taken the job.

“Wow.” I actually said it, then put my hand to my mouth and blushed. The kitchen was a theater, and the round table in the middle was set so that the people seated there would be facing the stove. The cook would be the star of this show, and as Danny strolled possessively around the stage, showing off exotic pots and expensive gadgets, I saw that the entire room had been built with this in mind. It was a one-man kitchen, designed exactly for his body: Each counter was precisely calibrated to his height, so that he could stand at the stove and reach anything he might need.

Danny picked up a cleaver lying on the butcher block and held it out. “Try it,” he urged. “I have them hand-made just for me.” I took the cleaver, feeling the comforting heft of the thing.

Danny handed me a carrot. “Cut it,” he said, and I understood that he was conferring a rare privilege. “I don’t normally like people to touch my tools, but I want you to.” The cleaver felt good in my hand. I swung and felt it bite cleanly through the carrot.

“Great cleaver,” I said, handing it back.

“Knives are very important,” he noted, solemnly caressing the edge.

He went to the big refrigerator and took out something wrapped in white paper. “I hope you eat liver,” he said, opening the paper and holding up a thick maroon slab.

“Of course I eat it,” I replied. “I’m a restaurant critic. I eat everything.”

“You have not eaten liver like my liver,” he said confidently. “Just wait. There’s only one butcher in the entire city worth buying it from. And then you have to slice the meat just so, on the diagonal.” He demonstrated.

He showed me the vegetables, the fruits, the cheese, reciting the pedigree of each. As he offered to introduce me to his purveyors I realized that my opinion really mattered to him. I hoped, with all my heart, that he cooked as well as he believed he did; I did not think I would be able to lie to him.

Danny led me back to the sitting room, and then he disappeared for a while. The rest of us chatted, distant and polite, but the room seemed empty without him. Suddenly he was back, standing in the doorway imperiously calling, “Dinner, now!” Everyone in the room jumped up, scattering crumbs and spilling drinks, scrambled into the hall, and made a mad dash for the kitchen.

I stood in the doorway, staring at the scene. The table had been set with bowls of clear, golden broth that sat steaming at each place. The fragrance drifted intoxicatingly through the room. “Lemon-grass!” I said.

“Sit down!” Danny shouted irritably from his post at the stove. We stopped milling and each of us rushed for the nearest seat, as if this were a game of musical chairs. We threw ourselves down as he commanded, “Eat!” We obediently picked up our spoons.

With the first bite I knew that no lies would be necessary. Danny’s soup was extraordinary, with that resonance that goes on and on, like a bell still humming, long after the last note has been struck.

Danny did not sit down. As we ate he stood at the stove like a mad scientist, enveloped in the steam that billowed about him from a huge cauldron. I heard the sizzle of butter hitting a hot surface and sensed the high, clean note of lemon juice being added to the pan. Now there was a richer scent-cream, I guessed and then the aromas began to mingle, so that lemon and cream and butter were dancing through the air.

Water drained; wet pasta hit a skillet with a hiss, and a cover went crashing down. Then Danny was rushing to the table with a plate in his hand and setting it in front of me. “Eat it now,” he insisted, “don’t wait for the others. This is a dish that can only be served to people eating in the kitchen. In a few minutes it won’t be any good. I made the noodles myself.”

I twirled the pasta around my fork and took a bite. And then, in spite of myself, I gasped. The pasta was so thin that it seemed to have vanished, leaving only a memory behind. What was left was simply the subtlety of the sauce, pure and light, as if the liquid had somehow taken solid form. It wasn’t food; it was magic on a plate, and for a moment I disappeared into the flavor. When I returned Danny was standing over me, watching me so intently and with such pleasure that I knew I didn’t have to say a word.

I didn’t listen to the conversation after that, or think about much of anything at all. I just ate, conscious of my luck at being there, trusting that each dish would be extraordinary. The liver was like little pillows of velvet between satin slivers of onion, and so sweet it was as if it had been dusted with sugar. “It’s the onions,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “They’re grown in special soil. And, of course, the way they’re cut.”

The conversation flowed around us, background music, but I didn’t try to join it. I understood that in his kitchen Danny was desperate for an audience; cooking for people who didn’t pay attention ruined it for him. He was a creator, not a consumer, and the only thing he required was appreciation.

And so I said nothing as he snatched the lemon soufflé from the oven and rushed it to the table. High, light, rich, and eggy, it fell, slightly, as it was cut, collapsing onto itself with a fragrant sigh. I ate it slowly, savoring the way it disappeared in my mouth, drank the espresso he served me at the end without sugar, liking the bitterness against the sweetness of the soufflé.

“I think it’s the best meal I’ve ever eaten,” I said as I left. Danny nodded. “You have to come back,” he said. I understood that this had been a test, and I had passed.

Danny’s Lemon Pasta
½ stick (¼ cup) unsalted butter
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 pound fresh egg fettuccine
2 teaspoons fresh lemon zest
salt
freshly ground pepper
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in a deep heavy 12 inch skillet and stir in the cream and lemon juice. Remove the skillet from the heat and keep it warm and covered.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente, 2-3 minutes.

Reserve ½ cup of the pasta cooking liquid and drain the pasta into a colander.

Add the pasta to the skillet with lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of the pasta cooking liquid and toss well. (Add more pasta cooking liquid 1 tablespoon at a time, if necessary to thin the sauce.)

Season the pasta with salt and pepper and serve with Parmesan cheese.
Serves 4

When I wrote that passage, I did not have this photograph, a gift from a friend a few years ago. But it captures, very beautifully, how proud Danny was of his cooking.

You can’t see it in this photo, but if you peer closely at the original you’ll find the initials DV in the top right corner. Apparently the shot was taken by Cecil Beaton for an article in Vogue in 1970, and approved by the magazine’s editor Diana Vreeland.

The great actor was, truly, one of the best cooks I’ve ever met. And if you’ve never seen him in action, here he is with Louis Armstrong singing When the Saints Go Marching In.

I also included a number of lemon recipes in my most recent cookbook, My Kitchen Year. These are two of my favorites.

This is the dessert I make most often when I’m entertaining. I’m not big on sweet things, but I love the puckery tartness of this tart. I also love the fact that you can make the shell the night before and simply whip up the lemon curd in the morning.

Tart Lemon Tart
½ cup cashews (or unsalted almonds or hazelnuts)
¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
¾ cup flour
salt
10 tablespoons (1¼ stick) butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
5 large eggs, separated
4 large lemons
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Begin by making a tart shell. If you have some nuts on hand—I like cashews in this crust, but unsalted almonds or hazelnuts are also excellent—carefully toast a handful, then grind them in a spice grinder or food processor with the flour, the confectioner’s sugar, and a pinch of salt. Put the nut mixture into a bowl and cut in 4 tablespoons of butter with two knives until it is the size of peas. Stir in the olive oil and 1 egg yolk.

Form the dough into a disk, put it between two pieces of plastic wrap, and roll it out to an 11-inch round. Press the dough gently into a 9-inch tart shell with a removable bottom, and chill for half an hour. Bake in a 400-degree oven for about 15 minutes and allow to cool on a rack.

To make the filling, grate the zest from 1 lemon. Squeeze all 4 lemons and mix the juice with the zest. Put the lemon mixture into a heavy-bottomed non-reactive pot and whisk in the sugar and cornstarch. Whisk in 2 eggs plus 2 additional yolks.

Put the pot on the stove and turn the heat to medium high. Whisk constantly until the mixture begins to boil, then keep whisking for a couple more minutes until the mixture is smooth and thick.

Remove from the heat, add 6 tablespoons of butter (cut into pieces), and whisk the mixture until the butter has vanished. Spread into the tart shell and allow to cool. Put the tart in the refrigerator to chill for at least 2 hours.

I find this dish almost magical; most panna cotta recipes require gelatin, but this one is held together merely by lemon juice. The result is something ethereally fragile and very delicate. (To me this is the essence of panna cotta - cooked cream - but it is technically a posset.)

Lemon Panna Cotta
2 pints whipping cream
3 lemons
1/2 cup white sugar
mint for garnish (optional)
Grate the zest from the lemons, being careful to not include any of the bitter white pith. Squeeze the lemons, add the juice to the zest, and set aside.

Pour the cream into a heavy-bottomed pot, stir in the sugar, and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and scraping the spoon across the bottom of the pot, for about two minutes. Remove from the heat, and still stirring, add the lemon juice and zest. Pour into ramekins or small bowls (or for something rather special, the hollowed-out halves of the lemons you’ve just juiced), cool and leave to set in the refrigerator for at least four hours. This is so delicate that it will be barely set at four hours; eight hours will give you a more solid custard.
Serves 6

When I went searching for lemon menus my computer spit out both the menus and notes from a 1989 trip to France. Of all the restaurants I visited on that trip my favorite was Alain Passard’s 2-star restaurant in Paris, Arpege. (I ate another gorgeous meal at Arpege a few months ago; the restaurant now has 3 Michelin Stars, is entirely vegetarian and there is no red lacquer in sight.)

Notes on the meal:
Alain Passard’s two-star restaurant occupies the site of the former L’Archestrate near the Invalides; it’s a small, slightly stuffy restaurant with too many mirrors and far too much red lacquer. And yet the food itself is fresh, light, almost Californian in the purity of its strong, clear flavors.

The best dishes we had were slices of raw scallop topped with Beluga caviar, with nothing to mediate between the flavors. And then a fish - St. Pierre (John Dory) stuffed under the skin with lots and lots of bay leaves. There were so many bay leaves that the fish was virtually wallpapered until the flesh had became infused with the flavor of the herb. It was a joy to eat.

It was followed by the most wonderful sweetbread I have ever eaten. The plump organ had been skewered with a whole sprig of rosemary, then cooked to silken softness. Eating it, you got just a mysterious hint of rosemary, which was brought out by the sweet-sour lemon sauce that was served in two hollowed out half lemons.

A salad of herbs was another wonderful touch. It was a tiny plate of strong flavored little leaves, a simple mouthful to clear the palate for dessert.

Desserts were a mille-feuille au chocolat, a currently trendy Paris treat. There was a chocolate souffle that the waiter served by scooping a ball of coffee ice cream into the middle so that it disappeared into the depths of the souffle in one sexy motion. And a sweet stuffed tomato a la vanille-- a fine reminder that the love apple is, after all, a fruit.

What I particularly liked about Arpege is that, unlike the food I ate in other restaurants in France, the cuisine was not rich, not buttery, not dependent on a complexity of flavors. (I was also pleased to note that the restaurant’s excellent sommelier has put a number of affordable wines on his list.)

Alain Passard is still young, and it is just possible that his sort of cooking is an early clue to a new direction in France.

It was, indeed, just that. Here is just one of the parade of beautiful vegetable dishes Passard was serving last spring.