Ottolenghi's Newest Cookbook: Sweet

I have written over the years about the wonderful cookbooks of Yotam Ottolenghi, who first got me excited about Middle Eastern food. I have read and cooked from all of his books -- The Cookbook, Plenty, Plenty More and Jerusalem -- with one exception. The exception is Nopi, which contains recipes used in the restaurant of the same name where Ramael Scully is the chef. The recipes in Nopi look too complicated and intimidating to be of much appeal to me, although I hope someday to have a go. But I digress. Ottolenghi's newest book is Sweet, written with Helen Goh, an Australian woman who is, above all, Ottolenghi's principal dessert chef.

When I read a cookbook, I write down or put stickies next to the recipes I really want to try. Here is my annotated copy of Sweet, where I marked 24 items in the "must try" category.

Sweet with "must try" recipes tabbed

Some examples: amaretti with honey and orange blossoms; orange and star anise shortbread ;Persian "love cakes"; tahini and halva brownies; rum and raisin cake with rum caramel icing (see below); prune cake with Armagnac and walnuts; parsnip and pecan cake with aniseed and orange; apple and olive oil cake with maple frosting; coconut, almond and blueberry cake; Helen's version of lemon and poppy seed cake; flourless coconut and chocolate cake; ricotta and hazelnut cheesecakes; chocolate tart with hazelnut, rosemary and orange; fig and pistachio frangipane tarlets; apricot and thyme galettes with polenta pastry; lemon, yogurt and juniper berry ice cream; and saffron and pistachio brittle.

You get the picture: non-conventional adaptations of classic cakes and other desserts, with unexpected spices and syrups that take them to new places.

I have only had time to make the rum and raisin cake with caramelized rum icing, and it was a delicious beauty.

Rum and raisin caske with caramelized rum glaze from Sweet

As I get through the "must try" recipes, I will probably return to this book for another post or two.

Bobby Jay

The Week of Cooking Dangerously -- Part 2 -- Thanksgiving in January

I have often said that I should make a Thanksgiving dinner at some other point in the year to try things that I wouldn't dare to try at the real Thanksgiving for fear of a failure at the all-important feast.

So when Joan invited a group of friends and family to dinner on Thursday, I determined that this was the moment. And, in contrast to the meal I prepared a few days before, everything went right, and I actually discovered a new turkey presentation that I will use next November: roast turkey breast, porchetta style. This roasted breast, which was seasoned and rolled a day ahead, proved to be incredibly juicy with the exact taste of Italian porchetta, as a result of the massive amount of sage and rosemary rub inserted in the center and under the skin.

Roasted turkey breast, porchetta-style

Before the meal, hors d'oeuvres consisted of the same sturgeon I had served on Sunday, my proprietary ricotta and sun-dried tomato spread and cheese gougères.

Ricotta and sun-dried tomato spread

The meal began with ginger beet soup with tarragon, a vibrantly gorgeous and foolproof recipe from Gordon Hamersley's Bistro Cooking at Home.

Ginger beet soup with tarragon

The turkey, described above, was accompanied by a sage and chicken sausage stuffing and classic gravy, both from Kenji Lopez-Alt's wonderful new book, The Food Lab (see my post of October 10, 2015 for more on this book). The secret to the gravy was a deep dark brown turkey stock that I had made earlier in the week by roasting the hell out of turkey necks, onions, carrot and celery before making  them into stock.

Sage and chicken sausage stuffing

Roasting turkey necks and aromatic vegetables for stock

I will repeat both the stock and the gravy at Thanksgiving.

Finally, a Tarte Tatin, made according to the recipe of the Confrérie des Lichonneux de Tarte Tatin, which came out perfectly. I will be doing a separate post on this tart, so enough said for now.

My advice, therefore, is to invite some friends to non-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving and experiment.

Bobby Jay

Baking

Well, the cold weather's here and it's time to get back to baking. In truth, I bake in most months, but desserts in summer are most often fruit with ice cream (especially homemade lemon verbena or ginger) or yogurt (homemade and flavored with shredded coconut or cardamom, vanilla and sugar) or luxurious crème fraîche.

Over the years I have made hundreds of apple tarts and am always working on ways to improve them. I recently invented the killer apple tart: apples over ginger caramel and minced candied ginger with ginger caramel sauce.

Apple tart with ginger caramel and candied ginger

For the crust, I use Clotilde Dusoulier's pâte sablée (short pastry), which, being a hand-shaped crust, solves the problem of dealing with brittle rolled sweet dough, as well as the need for pie weights when blind baking. Then I made a ginger caramel from a recipe that I found in Maximum Flavor, by Aki Kamozawa and Alexander Talbot, who run the amazing Ideas in Food blog. I slice the apples thin and heat them for 2-3 minutes in the microwave in 1/2 apple clumps of slices, to get rid of the excess liquid that can kill a crust.

I blind-baked the crust, then when cooled painted it with a thin coat of caramel. On this I placed a layer of minced candied ginger, the dry, spicy kind, and then the apples. Baked at 400 until ready, about 35 minutes, and voilà, a wonderful tart ready for eating, dressed with more ginger caramel or not.

What makes this tart special is the ginger, with an assist from the ginger caramel. I love ginger in all its forms and it really worked here. My only residual question is whether to add some ginger powder to the crust, for an apple ginger three-ways tart.

While on the subject of baking, I recently got Dorie Greenspan's brand new book, Baking Chez Moi, hoping that it would be as good as her Around My French Table. Too soon to tell, but first signs are good: the same excellent organization (including metric measurement!), logical recipes and lush photos. Most important, the recipes are extremely inviting and not intimidating. I made the very first one in the book: "Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake": a simple cake that's a perfect vehicle for ice cream, fruit or compote, among other things.

Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake

Happy Baking!

Bobby Jay

Still Summer

Summer may be winding down but the farmers' markets are bursting with late summer fruit and vegetables.

For dinner the other night, I celebrated heirloom tomatoes . . .

Heirloom tomato salad with mozzarella di bufala and torn basil

and apricots.

Apricot pistachio tart

What a pleasure to cook with great fresh ingredients like these!

Bobby Jay

Clotilde Yet Again - Almond Blueberry Tart

I made Clotilde's Tarte Amandine à la Myrtille last night. Just her excellent pâte sablée, with a layer of frozen wild blueberries topped with almond filling. Maybe the best tart I have ever made.


This recipe is not on Clotilde's blog, Chocolate and Zucchini, so you have to buy her cookbook with the same name.


Bobby Jay