Cookbooks

This dish was inspired by one of my favorite Italian meals, bistecca fiorentina, a huge, rare grilled steak dressed simply with salt and lemon juice. Instead of the traditional T-bone steak served in a Tuscan ristorante, I opted for tri-tip, a less expensive but super-flavorful cut from the triangular end of the sirloin, popular in the central coast region of California.

This dish was inspired by an old Julia Child recipe that my mom used to make when I was a kid. Lots of stewed onions are bound with a tiny bit of Arborio rice, like a very loose risotto in which the onion, rather than the rice, is the key player. Finished with Gruyère and a touch of cream, it’s great with grilled lamb, rabbit, and even braised beef.

I like to use a variety of shell beans for this dish. Because of their different sizes and shapes, cook each type of bean separately, dividing the other ingredients as necessary. You may need a little more oil if you have many varieties of beans. The starchy liquid from cooking the beans is delicious in the ragoût.

This dish was inspired by a trip to Tunisia a few years ago. I fell in love with the Tunisian cooks’ use of spices and the bowls of harissa served with every meal. What surprised me most was the use of caraway, which I had always thought of as an Eastern European spice. For this Tunisian-flavored stew, I season the lamb shoulder overnight with caraway, coriander, chiles, cayenne, and paprika, and then braise it in an aromatic broth with cinnamon and allspice. For a traditional braise I usually deglaze with wine, but in keeping with Muslim prohibitions common in Tunisia, I refrain and substitute lemon juice, which also adds a bright, acidic note to the stew.

This grilled pork confit evolved one night when I was making a staff meal at Lucques. I salvaged the leftover ends and trimmings from the day’s pork confit, crisped them in my favorite cast-iron pan, and ran to the walk-in to see what produce I could find to add to the dish. When I got back to the stove, I noticed half the meat was missing. Looking around, I saw that all the cooks had their heads down, suspiciously quiet. Half of my staff meal had disappeared, but I couldn’t be angry. Who can resist succulent pork, hot and crispy, out of the pan? Something so irresistible deserved to be shared with the outside world, so I put this staff meal on the menu!

This was one of our first Sunday suppers at Lucques. It’s a variation on the classic osso buco, which is traditionally made with veal shanks. I use the same technique, but for this lighter summer version I braise the lamb shanks in white wine and a combination of veal and chicken stock (as opposed to straight veal stock). The tender shanks are a rich counterpoint to the freshness of the shell beans and crunch of the haricots verts. Ask your butcher for lamb osso buco, but if you can’t find it you can use lamb shanks.

This dish takes me back to Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island in the Mediterranean, situated between North Africa and Sicily. Undeveloped and relatively untouched by the modern world, the island is famous for two things: the caper bushes that dominate the dry, brush-covered hillsides of the rocky coast, and resident Giorgio Armani. My husband and I spent a magical week in that salt-drenched haven, eating grilled, freshly caught tuna; bowls of couscous; and salads of tomatoes, potatoes, and capers. The grilled tuna and the combination of tomatoes and potatoes in this dish are a tribute to those leisurely days on Pantelleria. And though rouille isn’t part of their Moorish-meets-Italian culinary lexicon, I’m sure the Pantellerians would love this saffron-tinted, spicy pepper mayonnaise.

Although they might sound like an odd combination, hot crispy squid and spicy chorizo tossed together with spinach, cilantro, and olives make an irresistible warm salad. This salad is a salute to the Portuguese and the Spanish, who have been cooking seafood and meat together for centuries, long before the term “surf and turf” was coined.

This is the dish to make in the middle of the summer when heirloom tomatoes are everywhere. I can think of few more satisfying things to eat. Bottarga, considered the caviar of Sicily, is a delicacy made by drying tuna or mullet roe in the sun until it forms a dense, rust-colored block. Here, it’s shaved and tossed into the pasta, adding a deep oceany essence and salty-savory contrast to the sweet summer tomatoes.

Maine has lobster and Maryland has soft-shell crabs, but the prize shellfish of Southern California is the Santa Barbara spot prawn. Spot prawns have a softer texture than most shrimp and are best when cooked in their shells, heads on. As the shrimp shells caramelize in the pan, they leave behind crispy bits that infuse the sauce with a rich shellfish flavor. Besides, they’re fun to eat out of the shell, and they make for a beautiful and dramatic presentation. Serve the spot prawns with salt and lemon and a big hunk of crusty bread. This is a messy feast, so choose guests who will enjoy participating in such a primal feeding frenzy.

At Lucques, we search out the heirloom varieties of corn, available all summer long from our local farmers’ markets. This soup is spiced with jalapeño and cilantro and topped with avocado cream and lime. The key to its silky texture is blending it long enough at high speed and adding enough liquid to achieve the consistency of heavy cream. Although customers swear this rich soup must have cream in it, the only cream you’ll find is in the topping that garnishes the soup: a delicious purée of avocado, crème fraîche, and lime juice.

This early fall medley was made famous by the legendary Richard Olney, whose books brought the south of France to kitchens all over the globe. In his recipe, the prosciutto is julienned, scattered over figs, and drizzled with a crushed-mint cream. In this version, I add melon, and instead of thin strands of prosciutto, I drape whole slices around the fruit to create a layered antipasto. There’s no right or wrong type of fig for this dish; as long as they’re super-ripe, luscious, and oozing, they’ll work beautifully. If you have the luxury of choosing more than one variety of fig, such as Genoa, Adriatic, or Honey, this is a spectacular way to show them off. The same rules apply for the melon: just pick the sweetest, most perfumed one you can find.

This tart has all the boisterous Mediterranean flavors of pasta puttanesca: tomatoes, anchovies, capers, and olives layered on puff pastry and caramelized onions. Make a tapestry of red, yellow, and orange by layering different-colored heirloom tomato slices over the onions. Though I usually want to put cheese on everything, this tart doesn’t need it. The tomatoes are the stars, so let them shine.

This refreshing chilled purée wakes up your palate with a jolt of sweet pepper essence, cooling yogurt, and the ubiquitous Middle Eastern spice sumac. Sumac is made from the dried berries of a sumac tree, and in the Middle East it’s sprinkled over everything from kabobs to yogurt to rice. The dark-crimson powder lends an acidic, lemony flavor to this soup.

When I was growing up, I made on special occasions what my family called “the Hemingway dessert.” My father was obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. He was an avid collector of his first-edition books, and, despite his lack of academic credentials, somehow talked his way into the International Hemingway Society. My mom, Jessica, and I would tag along on their “Hemingway trips,” whose itineraries inevitably included many stops in remote villages to locate particular taverns, hotels, and cafés that the expatriate writer had at one time visited (drinking and carousing along the way, of course!). Closerie des Lilas, a bohemian café on the Left Bank, was one of Hemingway’s Parisian hangouts, and the place where this dessert originated under the name Coupe Hemingway. Don’t be afraid of making the meringue. Just remember, meringues are never good when they’re rushed, so be sure to give yourself enough time to bake them in a low oven until they’re dry and firm.

Pork loin is a lean, delicate cut of meat compared to, say, a big, fatty chop, and this recipe is all about maximizing its taste and preserving its moisture. Applying the mustard marinade twice and roasting slowly with butter and herbs will simultaneously infuse the meat with complex flavor and help protect its precious internal juices. It’s very important to use a roasting rack, which helps the air circulate, resulting in even cooking.

Part of what makes these marinated peppers and eggplant so delicious is the involved process they go through to get to their seemingly simple final state. In her book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Judy Rodgers suggests that the chef’s eternal quest is to make the simplest process more difficult: “Stop, think, there must be a harder way,” she writes. There are easier ways to make peppers and eggplant, but once you taste this version, it’s hard to go back. If you like, make them the day before and let the vegetables marinate overnight.