In the Hands of a Chef (52 page)

16.
Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes, then uncover and continue baking until heated through and bubbling, another 20 to 30 minutes.

17.
To serve, top with the salsa, lime wedges, and cilantro sprigs.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

MAKES 1 CUP

½ pound ripe plum tomatoes, peeled (see page 55), seeded, and chopped into ½-inch dice

¼ cup finely diced red onion

1 garlic clove, minced

1 serrano or jalapeño pepper, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped

1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 to 3 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice

Combine the tomato, onion, garlic, and chopped pepper. Add the cilantro to taste. Season with salt, pepper, and 1 teaspoon of lime juice. Taste, adding more lime juice if you like. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours. Refrigerated fresh salsa will keep for 24 hours.

T
his is a savory cook’s
—not a pastry cook’s—collection of desserts. Savory cooking is flexible; you can often compensate for mistakes without having to jettison all of your previous efforts. Sauces are recouped, soups redeemed, life sails on. Fine pastry, on the other hand, is a pitiless art, akin to high-altitude mountaineering, where a single misstep can end the project. Understandably, the most ardent pastry chefs are control freaks. Impressive and satisfying as handmade mille-feuille with a spun sugar garnish may be in a restaurant, when I’m cooking at home, I’m looking for ease of preparation as much as great flavor.

I’ve sifted through menus from Michela’s and Rialto, as well as family favorites, for desserts in the spirit of my own savory cooking—that is, they’re all a little bit forgiving. Nevertheless, the recipes encompass a broad range of circumstances, with some appropriate for formal dinner parties, and others making happy conclusions to family meals and even tagging along on picnics.

The chapter opens with a trio of sweet fruit endings: Grilled Pineapple with Rum, Lime-Ginger Syrup, and Ice Cream; Fresh Fruit with Balsamic Pepper Syrup; and Roasted Pears with 5-Spice Zabaglione. All three are easy, and once you’ve tasted grilled pineapple, it becomes hard not to have a summer backyard dinner without considering it as the dessert of choice.

The elegant, formal appearance of Chocolate Espresso Torta and Hot Chocolate Creams from
Provence belie their straightforward preparation. Both are rich, intensely chocolate treats with distinctly different characters. The torta offers a dense, silken response to lovers of unadulterated dark chocolate; the hot chocolate creams hover somewhere between cake and soufflé, served comfortingly warm.

Individual Peppered Peach Tarts with Ginger-Caramel Sauce introduce a section of simple pastries requiring only the most basic skills. Given my druthers, I generally choose tarts over any other dessert. I love the textural contrast of crust, custard, and caramelized fruit. If you can make a basic pastry crust and simple custard, you’re capable of dozens of different desserts. In addition to several tarts (my favorite is the Mascarpone Fig), the pastry section includes fruit and nut butter cakes and a couple of desserts that make fine accompaniments to picnics—Ginger Shortbread and Sweet Grape Focaccia.

The desserts conclude with my own family’s comfort food favorites, Crema Spessa, the Italian version of baked custard, and Super-Creamy Rice Pudding with Passion Fruit Sauce. I’m a peasant at heart, and these are about as simple and rustic as you can get.

P
ineapple’s firm texture and high
sugar content make it an ideal candidate for the grill. Be sure to buy a pineapple that is already ripe—the fruit does a poor job of ripening on the kitchen counter. The spiced syrup involves little more challenge than assembling the ingredients and heating them together. The result is an elegant dessert with almost no effort.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

SYRUP

1 cup water

⅔ cup sugar

Grated zest and juice of 1 lime

Grated zest of 1 orange

2 bay leaves

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise

2 star anise

1 ripe pineapple

2 tablespoons grapeseed oil or other mild-tasting vegetable oil

¼ cup dark rum

4 scoops rum, vanilla, or coconut ice cream

2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves cut into very thin strips, for garnish

1.
Combine all the syrup ingredients in a nonreactive saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat. Remove the vanilla bean and allow it to cool. When cool enough to handle, scrape the seeds into the syrup. Discard the pod or save for another use.

2.
Prepare a medium fire in a grill. (A grill is medium when you can hold your hand close to the cooking surface for a count of 4 before having to pull it away.)

3.
Chop off the pineapple flower (the sprout of spiky leaves) and the top inch or so of the fruit. Cut a slice off the bottom of the pineapple so it will stand upright. Slice off the skin in long vertical strips. If there are any “eyes” remaining, cut them out with a paring knife or potato peeler. If you have a pineapple corer, use it to remove the core, then lay the fruit on its side and cut eight ½-inch-thick slices. If you don’t have a corer, just turn the pineapple on its side and cut the 8 slices, then use a paring knife or cookie cutter to remove the woody core at the center of each slice. (Reserve any remaining pineapple for another use.)

4.
Brush the pineapple rings with the oil and grill on both sides until lightly charred, about 5 minutes per side.

5.
Arrange 2 pineapple rings on each plate. Pour a tablespoon of rum over each set of rings, then drizzle with the spiced syrup. Add a scoop of ice cream to each plate. Sprinkle with the strips of mint and serve.

W
here would we be without
balsamic vinegar? I can still remember my teenage incredulity when a cooking teacher prefaced my first taste with the explanation that it was often served over strawberries. All it took was one taste of a fine ten-year-old sample to erase my skepticism. This dish should really be prepared only a couple of hours before serving. Raspberries and strawberries are particularly fragile and they will turn mushy if cut and allowed to sit in the syrup too far ahead.

Ordinarily people jettison macerated fruit after a night in the refrigerator because its texture deteriorates, but we love smoothies for breakfast, especially with whole-milk Greek yogurt. So I always save these leftovers—somebody will purée them into breakfast the next day.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

¼ cup packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper (use a little less if you prefer a milder dish)

2 bananas

1 pint fresh strawberries, washed, hulled, and halved lengthwise

1 pint fresh raspberries

1.
Mix the vinegar, brown sugar, and pepper together in a medium bowl.

2.
Peel the bananas and cut into ½-inch-thick slices. Add all the fruit to the bowl with the syrup and toss gently to coat. Let sit for 15 minutes, then serve.

Z
abaglione, a delightful whipped froth
of egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala, can be served as a sauce or a dessert in its own right. Traditional recipes call for it to be served warm, right after it’s made, but I sometimes like to thicken it a bit by adding some cream and chilling it.

This particular dessert evolved out of my experience writing Sunday night menus with Gordon Hammersley at his restaurant, Hammersley’s Bistro. On Sunday nights, we served a special abbreviated menu, so desserts had to be quick, easy, and flavorful; roasted fruit with zabaglione was ideal. Gordon is a big fan of Chinese 5-spice powder—cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise, and Szechwan peppercorns—and I happen to like incorporating savory ingredients into sweet desserts. The result is both sensuous and exotic.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

ZABAGLIONE

4 extra-large egg yolks, at room temperature

¼ cup sugar

½ cup Marsala

1 teaspoon 5-spice powder

Pinch of kosher salt

½ cup heavy cream

PEARS

4 ripe Bosc pears

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

½ cup sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

DO AHEAD:
Roast the pears a day or two in advance and reheat in a 400° oven for 5 to 7 minutes before serving; the zabaglione is also fine if made a day ahead.

1.
Beat the egg yolks, sugar, Marsala, 5-spice powder, and salt together in a medium metal bowl until smooth. Set the bowl over low heat and whisk vigorously until the mixture is thick, foamy, and pale yellow in color, about 10 minutes. If there is the slightest hint that the eggs are cooking rather than just foaming, remove from the heat and keep beating. If you’re uncomfortable setting the bowl directly over the heat source, place it over a pot of simmering water (don’t let the bottom of the bowl touch the water). Remove from the heat and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least an hour. Then stir in the cream and chill again at least 15 minutes. While the zabaglione is chilling, you can roast the pears.

2.
Preheat the oven to 450°F.

3.
Peel the pears and cut them in half. Toss with the lemon juice and sugar.

4.
Cut the butter into 8 pieces and place in the smallest baking pan you have that will hold the pears comfortably, but without touching. (Don’t put the pears in it yet.) Place the roasting pan in the oven until the butter melts, about 3 minutes; don’t let it burn. Remove the pan from the oven. Roll the pears around in the pan until they’re evenly coated with butter (reserve any leftover lemon-sugar mixture). Arrange them cut side down in the pan in a single layer without touching and sprinkle with any remaining lemon-sugar.

5.
Set the pan on the lowest rack in the oven. Roast for 20 minutes. Flip the pears and continue cooking until caramelized to a deep golden color, about another 20 minutes. Remove from the pan. Remove the cores as soon as the pears are cool enough to handle, but keep the cored pears warm.

6.
Place 2 pear halves on each plate. Spoon the zabaglione liberally over the pears and serve.

E
very chef has three or four
recipes that haunt her, following her wherever she goes, refusing to change. Ironically, one of my culinary ghosts is a recipe I inherited when I became a chef at Michela’s, a dense flourless chocolate torta that had been developed by one of the restaurant’s previous pastry chefs. When Michela’s closed, loyal clientele followed Michela Larson and me to our new restaurant, Rialto, demanding their old favorites, including the espresso torta. One customer, who eats at Rialto every Wednesday night, wrote me so many adamant notes that I finally threw in the towel and we now keep one or two tortas on hand just for diehards like him, even though the torta is no longer on our dessert menu. Don’t fiddle with the recipe—believe me, we’ve tried—it really can’t be improved on. Just be sure to use premium chocolate and espresso.