Cookbooks

This cake was a collaboration of sorts between my husband and my pastry chef Roxana Jullapat (don’t ask!). I love this cake so much that, when it came time to think about my wedding cake, I wasn’t concerned with the flowers on top or the color of the icing; all I knew was that I wanted to serve this incredible hazelnut–brown butter cake. A simple recipe of ground hazelnuts, egg whites, and sugar combined with brown butter results in a moist, rich cake with a delicate, slightly chewy crust. Little did I know, it would take 25 pounds of hazelnuts, 25 pounds of brown butter, and 150 eggs to make a cake big enough to feed our 140 friends and family.

Brian Wolff is the chef de cuisine and resident pickler at Lucques. Every time I turn around, he’s got something in the vinegar, like shell beans, cherries, or tiny onions. His pickled raisins are delicious and make a great last-minute condiment. Keep a jar in the refrigerator; if you have a terrine or leftover roast chicken or pork, these raisins make a wonderful sweet-and-sour topping.

This dish offers an opportunity to showcase the great variety of citrus that farmer Peter Schaner grows for us this time of year: pomelos, Oro Blancos, grapefruits, mandelos, tangelos, clementines, and blood oranges. When making the vinaigrette, choose the juice from the oranges and tangerines rather than that of the grapefruits (too bitter) or blood oranges (too dark in color). You’ll have more juice than you need for the vinaigrette, so you can pour the leftovers into a chilled glass and sip it as you finish making dinner. (Vodka is optional.) As for the avocados, look for Reed, Hass, Fuerte, Pinkerton, or Bacon varieties. The olives may seem like an odd addition to this dish, but their brininess contrasts wonderfully with the fresh, juicy citrus and the buttery avocado.

The colored beets and bright green arugula in this dish make for a visually stunning presentation. The sweet roasted beets marinated in lemon vinaigrette play off the pure white fish and horseradish cream. Look for a few different types of beets, such as golden beets and Chioggia beets, and dress them separately, so the dark ones don’t bleed their juices onto the lighter ones. In the spring, you could make this dish with wild salmon. And to make a more hearty meal, serve some beluga lentils on the side (see page 331).

I associate chestnuts with winter scenes that while I live in Southern California exist only in my imagination: snuggling up by the fireplace while the snow falls lightly and chestnuts roast on that proverbial open fire. One Christmas Eve, after a few hot toddies and with visions of chestnuts dancing in my head, I revisited my family’s traditional stuffing, determined to make my winter chestnut obsession a reality. For me, the stuffing, not the turkey or roast beef, has always been the highlight of holiday feasts. In fact, when I was a kid, one of my big culinary promotions was when I finally got to take charge of the stuffing. For the first time, my mom gave me carte blanche with the spice cabinet. I pillaged her Spice Island jars and doctored up the Pepperidge Farm box mix, experimenting with how to make things taste better. Now, as a chef, I’ve learned that seasoning is one of the keys to making all things, stuffing included, taste their best. Good stuffing starts with a great loaf of bread, torn into croutons, tossed with a generous amount of olive oil, and baked until crispy on the outside and soft in the center. Then I add lots of onion, pancetta, rosemary, fennel, chile, thyme, lemon zest—and chestnuts, of course. The biggest mistake people make at home is underseasoning their stuffing. Don’t be afraid to spice it up with plenty of vegetables, herbs, and seasonings. And remember to taste as you go.

During my college years, I’d return home to Los Angeles every summer and promptly—you guessed it—look for a restaurant job. One summer, I did a stage at L.A.’s premier French restaurant, L’Orangerie. I started my stage in the pastry kitchen with Chef Yves. He taught me the classic techniques of crème brûlée, chocolate puff pastry, and soufflés made to order. But my favorite of his desserts was sautéed apples with caramel sauce and crème anglaise. A little less formal and traditional than the rest of his repertoire, that dish was simple, straightforward, and all about the apples. To make our own version of Chef Yves’s apples at Lucques, we cut the apples in half, toss them with lots of butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and Calvados, and roast them, basting all the time, until they are a deep golden brown and glistening with spicy juices. With a scoop of cinnamon ice cream melting over the apples, this easy-to-make dessert is an elegant way to finish a winter feast.

Give me almost any combination of toppings, and I’ll turn them into a delicious savory tart. The formula is always the same: the crispy, buttery puff pastry crust; a creamy base of ricotta and crème fraîche; a layer of oozing, usually pungent cheese; and then, of course, the topping. In this case, I sauté an array of winter wild mushrooms until they’re tender, chewy, and still a little crisp. Since they seem to make everything taste better, I can’t resist tossing in a few handfuls of sweet young onions with their spicy green tops. As they all bake together, their flavors unite into this decadent and sophisticated “pizza.”

One particularly chilly weekend (yes, we have those here every once in a while), I needed a dish that would be opulent and soul-satisfying. At first, duck braised in red wine came to mind. But, I wanted something even more intense and a little bit sweet, and I arrived at Banyuls, a fortified wine from the south of France. Extracted from grenache grapes grown on the rocky, terraced vineyards that overlook the sea, Banyuls is classically paired with chocolate and has deep notes of chestnut, mocha, and dried fruit. As the duck and Banyuls cooked together slowly in the oven, the deeply concentrated wine permeated the meat and produced a rich ruby broth. A gratin of turnips and potatoes dotted with prunes and baked with cream proved the perfect companion for the tender, falling-apart duck bathed in crimson juices.

People think risotto is a super-rich dish, made with tons of butter. But when it is made properly, the richness comes from the starchy rice and the stock. To make perfect risotto, really pay attention to what’s happening in the pan. As the risotto cooks, stir it with a wooden spoon in rhythmic movements that go across the bottom and around the sides of the pan. The rice should be constantly bubbling, drinking up the liquid as it cooks.

My first real chef position was at Alloro, a small Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End. In this all-Italian neighborhood, the owner was not Italian, but rather a Portuguese guy named Armando. Some cultures care more about food than others, and, like the Italians, the Portuguese are definitely devoted to their cuisine. Armando loved to tell me about the Old Country and the dishes his mother made for him when he was growing up. This dish is traditionally made with pork loin, but when I tried it, the loin was dry and didn’t seem to marry well with the flavors of the clams. So I decided to try it with pork confit, which would get crispy on the outside but stay meltingly tender on the inside. To give more pork flavor to the broth, I added chorizo and came up with my own version of pork (and pork!) and clams. In honor of Armando, I always make my pork and clams with fried potatoes. If he had his way, everything would come with fried potatoes.

I stole the marinade in this recipe from my husband. That strange combination of ingredients—toasted bay leaves, coriander, white pepper, honey, and sherry—lends an exotic and aromatic quality to the squab. Farro, Kabocha squash, and cavolo nero are three of my favorite things on earth, so in this dish, I just give in, sautéing them all together into a slightly labor-intensive but super-delicious “stir-fry.” I could eat it for lunch (or dinner!) every day. Embellished with a jewellike pomegranate salsa, this dish is a foray into the Near East.

The first time I had gâteau basque, I was living in the southwest of France and trying, in my little spare time, to sample as many of the local treats as possible. Gâteau basque, a very moist, buttery cake with a certain je ne sais quoi, was by far my favorite. Despite its name, it’s not really a gâteau, or cake, but rather two layers of buttery, crumbly crust filled with pastry cream. As it bakes, the crust and filling meld into one delicious whole. This rural dessert has many interpretations, with fillings that vary from almonds to raisins to fruit jams. For this version our first pastry chef, Sara Lauren, came up with a pastry cream spiked with an unusual combination of Armagnac, rum, orange-flower water, and almond extract. The cake doesn’t taste like any one of those flavorings, but together they somehow evoke that unforgettable flavor of the Basque country.

Every winter, when the first blood oranges appear at the market, I’m as impressed as I was the first time I saw one, while visiting Rome my junior year abroad. One morning, at the local café where I had my daily cappuccino and pretended to read the paper, I heard a loud racket coming from behind me. When I turned and looked, I got my first glimpse of that blood-red juice spewing from the juicers lined up on the bar. I had to order a glass. When I got the bill, I was shocked by the steep price. But even back then, I knew it was something very special and worth every lira. This salad is my homage to those blood oranges that won my heart so many years ago. Layered with sweet dates, Parmesan, almonds, and a few leaves of peppery arugula, the blood-orange slices burst with sweet, tart juice. Because this salad has so few ingredients and nothing to “hide behind,” now is truly a time to seek out the very best ingredients. Once you’ve gathered your perfect components, the only difficult part is arranging them on the plate. Thoughtfully weave the ingredients together, layering them into “hills and valleys,” rather than piling them up into a “mountain.” Think of this as a tapestry, rather than a tossed salad.

This lamb dish is saturated with the bold flavors of Provence—rosemary, thyme, garlic, olives, and capers. First the lamb is seared with broken sprigs of rosemary and thyme to infuse the meat with smoky, eucalyptus notes. Then it’s buried under plenty of garlic and herbs, roasted in the oven until medium-rare, and served with a sweet and creamy flageolet gratin, roasted radicchio, and black olive tapenade.

Earthy, sweet beets and tangy, juicy tangerines were meant for each other. I’m just the hungry matchmaker. I set them up on an exotic date with a splash of fragrant orange-flower water and ribbons of mint. Not only do they taste delicious together, they also make quite a stunning couple.

When we were opening Lucques, we had very little money for the renovation. The space had a decent kitchen but lacked a great oven. Fritz León, one of our purveyors, was hanging out with us one long day of construction and happened to mention a “huge, fantastic” deck oven that one of his other clients downtown was selling for (and this was the key) “cheap.” What more could I ask for? I bought it on the spot. I began to doubt myself when we went to pick it up and found it was so huge and heavy that we had to take it apart just to get it through the kitchen door. It was a monster, and when we finally did get it installed it seemed as if the old dinosaur had a mind of its own. Each deck ran at a specific, apparently predetermined temperature, no matter what setting we mere mortals put it at. The lower deck was at a constant 350°F, the middle at 400°F, and the top at a raging 500°F plus. It wasn’t long before the top deck was christened “the Terminator,” and now I can’t imagine life at Lucques without it. It was even instrumental in the evolution of our pain d’épice, developed by former pastry chef Kimberly Sklar. For a crispy exterior, she sliced the classic Alsatian spice bread and toasted it on the floor of the Terminator before slathering it with butter and kumquat marmalade. At home, you can simulate the “Terminator effect” in a hot cast-iron pan.