Gribiche, gribiche, gribiche: A different take on the sauce that jazzes up everything

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Boiled shrimp with four-minute egg gribiche

Last month I wrote about a modern take on sauce gribiche, promising to follow up right away with more about gribiche. Forgive me – I got sidetracked by a startling hummus development! 

So, back to gribiche. I don't know how long gribiche has been around, but I do know August Escoffier gave a recipe for it in his 1903 Guide Culinaire. You've gotta love the way recipes were written then:

"Crush in a bowl the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs, and work them into a smooth paste, together with a large tablespoon of French mustard, the necessary salt, a little pepper, and make up the sauce with one pint of oil. Complete with two teaspoons of parsley, chervil, and tarragon (chopped and mixed), as many capers and gherkins, evenly mixed, and the hard-boiled whites of three eggs, cut in short, Julienne strips. This sauce is chiefly used with cold fish."

A few notes: First, this is the 1969 American English translation of the French; today it would no doubt say "Dijon mustard" rather than "French mustard." Second, I love the phrase "the necessary salt." Third, by "make up the sauce with one pint of oil," I'm pretty sure he meant whisk the olive in slowly, as in a mayonnaise – though I was surprised not to find vinegar or lemon juice in the recipe. "Gherkins": no doubt Escoffier was referring to cornichons. 

Anyway, the effect would have been like a chunky mayo – and that's what sauce gribiche meant for the better part of the century. (Excuse me while I geek out on culinary history; if I'm boring you, just skip down to the modern part!) 

Fast forward to The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, which the late great Judy Rodgers published in 2002. In it Rodgers included a recipe for Four-Minute Egg Gribiche. 

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"This one is inspired by the mustardy gribiche the Troisgros brothers drizzled over beef carpaccio," she wrote, "and crowned with a pile of crispy hot fried potatoes, as an alternative to the familiar raw-egg steak tartar. " She goes on to describe the grillions of things you can do with it, from serving it with grilled fish or poultry to slathering it on sandwiches to putting it in potato salad.

Her version is much more like a mayonnaise than my modern take is. But it's much zingier, herbal and zesty than mayo, with wonderful texture.  Here's my adaptation of Rodgers' recipe:

It requires more a bit more concentration and technique than my easy modern version; you need to whisk all that olive oil in slowly so the sauce emulsifies (getting that mayonnaise consistency) and doesn't "break." But for some people it'll be worth it: Thierry loved it even more than he did my new-wave version. 

Roasted romanesco with four-minute egg gribiche

And if right about now you're thinking it would be fun to live with me because I cook, think again: I must have fed him gribiche twenty times that weekend! That day for lunch we had the gribiche three ways: with boiled shrimp (excellent); with boiled asparagus (wonderful) and with roasted slabs of romaneso (also very good!). Insanely weird all together: We had gribiche coming out of our ears! But that shrimp would be really nice as a main course for a Sunday lunch, or as a starter at a dinner party (the shrimp can be served warm or chilled). Or it would be great with cracked crab. Or roasted ham. Maybe even a roast tenderloin of beef. 

I'm not providing formal recipes for those very simple things, but happy to walk you through the three I made:

Roasted romanesco (feel free to substitute cauliflower): Slice the romanesco into slabs about 1/2-inch thick, place on a baking sheet, brush with olive oil, sprinkle on a little salt and pepper and roast in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until just tender. Serve with sauce gribiche – the four-minute egg version or the new wave version. 

Boiled shrimp: Devein the shrimp, but leave the shells on. Drop them in court bouillon or boiling salted water and cook just thill they're pink and firm, about three minutes or so, depending on their size. Drain and serve. To make a quick court bouillon, fill a medium sauce pan about half way full with water, add a few glugs of white wine, half a sliced onion, a peeled and sliced carrot, salt, a few black peppercorns, celery leaves, thyme and parsley, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 15 or 20 minutes. Don't worry if you're missing an herb or two. Serious people would tie the herbs and peppercorns in a bouquet garni, but I see no harm in the stuff floating around. To me it's easier to fish out the shrimp than look for the cheesecloth. 

Boiled asparagus: Trim the bottoms, and use a vegetable peeler to peel the asparagus to an inch or three below the tips. Simmer in a pan of salted water until the asparagus are floppy but still firm-ish, about four minutes for average-size asparagus – longer for jumbos and quicker for pencil-thin. Don't want to peel? Roast them instead: 17 minutes in a 400 degree oven, et voilà.

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Best potato salad ever – thanks to new-wave gribiche

Oh: I almost forgot to mention. I had friends over for burgers last weekend, and made a batch of new-wave gribiche to see how it would do in a potato salad. Success! Here's an actual recipe:

A new cookbook, 'Soup for Syria,' aims to help food relief efforts for Syrian refugees

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Yesterday I was thrilled to find a review copy of a new cookbook, one that will appeal to just about every border-free cook I know, in my mailbox.  Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate our Shared Humanity collects recipes by Alice Waters, Yotam Ottlenghi and Sami Tamini, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Mark Bittman, Greg Malouf, Anthony Bourdain and many more. All of them are for soup, and proceeds of the book go to the Soup for Syria project, a humanitarian campaign that aims to ease the suffering of 3.8 million refugees by delivering food and foodstuffs to refugee camps. 

A photograph of a girl in a refugee camp faces a recipe for gondi by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Barbara Abdeni Massaad, a Beirut-based food writer and photographer, collected the recipes for the collection and photographed the people who are living in the camps. The project started when she was visiting a camp just 45 minutes from her home in the Bekaa Valley "where Syrian families crowd into plastic tents and children die of cold and hunger," as she writes in her introduction. "I try to sleep and ignore this reality, but it's impossible. I am not immune to the suffering of others."

The photos are beautiful; the people in them – particularly the children – are gorgeous. 

And the recipes, many of them simple, look wonderful. I've already put Post-its on a bunch I want to make (of course I'll share them with you once I do!). I have my eye on a recipe from Ottolenghi and Tamimi for Gondi, a Persian chicken soup with dumplings made from ground chicken and chickpea flour. Greg Malouf's recipe for fennel soup with lemon and cinnamon looks great, too. As does Paula Wolfert's recipe for lentil and Swiss chard soup (it's vegan!). Soup seems just the thing to cook for such a cause, as it's nourishing and nurturing.

Of course I'll share the soups with you once I make them, but thought you'd want to know about the project right away so you can help. The $30 book can be ordered through the Soup for Syria website.  The site also offers other ways to get involved in the cause, such as hosting a soup party where you can sell the book or take orders for it.

Brazilian chocolate cake: Really, it doesn't get any better than this

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I can't remember the first time I tasted the Brazilian chocolate cake from Deborah Madison's The Greens Cookbook, but I do remember who made it: my friend Michalene. (She's also the genius who asked the gobsmacking question about whether I'd tried the magic lacquered chicken technique with duck. Now I have! It is going to work! I am developing it! Stay tuned!) But the cake. It doesn't look like the photo above once it's finished; what's pictured is the bottom half of the cake after I iced it with ganache. It just looks so luscious, I couldn't resist. Wanted you to keep reading. Forgive me. This is what it looks like when it's finished:

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I know, not as glam. I'm not much of a baker; yours will probably be more beautiful. Michalene's always is. Also it is not easy to photograph a bundt cake.

However – and this is a big however – I've made the Brazilian chocolate cake a jillion times, and every single time it has turned out great: moist, with a lovely, fine crumb, rich and magnificently chocolatey. Not too sweet. 

It is, quite simply, the perfect chocolate cake. When you slice it, you can see a stripe of that fabulous glossy bittersweet ganache in the middle, exactly the right amount. It is the little black dress of chocolate cakes: simple, elegant, necessary. It may look a little austere, but oh, baby, it is anything but. A cup of strong coffee in the batter gives it depth and dimension. 

Otherwise, there's nothing unusual about the recipe, which as far as I can tell is foolproof. When I last made it, a few days ago, I purposely fooled with the recipe. I used pastry flour instead of cake flour. I used room-temperature coffee instead of hot coffee. I used a 3.5 ounce bar of chocolate instead of the 3 ounces the cake part of the recipe calls for; same for the ganache. Both cake and ganache were perfect. 

I wish I had a slice right now. Thierry, Wylie and I polished it off pretty quickly. It is not only dreamy as a dessert, it's amazing the next morning (and the one after that) for a decadent breakfast. Wylie was home for spring break when I made it. Though he has never been a big fan of cake, he loves this one.

And you will, too.  Here's the recipe:

Fried rice SMACKDOWN! Lucky Peach vs. Mission Chinese Food - Round Two (Mission Chinese Food)

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After gorging myself on the superb Chinese Sausage Fried Rice from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I rolled up my sleeves the very next evening, put on my apron and pulled out the wok. Time for round two of the smackdown! 

First I made rice – Danny Bowien rejects using day-old rice as an old wive's tale. "How could old rice be better?!" he writes. "Come on. Use fresh warm rice, not a hard puck of cold rice." His recipe calls for 3 cups of rice, "from about 1 1/2 cups raw." Well, 1 1/2 cups raw yielded more than 5 cups; 1 1/4 cups yields more than 3 cups. Just to let you know in case you don't want to waste rice.

Then the prep: I sliced Chinese sausage, iceberg lettuce and scallions (no need to separate the whites and greens on this one), scrambled eggs and chopped cilantro. No need to mince garlic or ginger for this one, which is a plus.  

The salt cod had already been fried (though I neglected to give it a whirr in the food processor – no matter, the pieces were pretty small) and the mackerel confit drained.

Then I made what Bowien calls a rice stack: The rice goes in a bowl with the fried salt cod on top of it and the sausage on top of that. "You want the ingredients to hit the wok in reverse order," he explains, "sausage, fish, rice  – and the stack facilitates this."

Then, in a bowl big enough to toss the whole dish after the rice cooks, I combined the lettuce, cilantro and scallions. 

Then it was showtime! Blazing heat went under the wok and a few "heathy glugs" of oil went in. When it was nearly smoking, I pulled the wok off heat and scrambled the egg together with the mackerel very quickly, just 10 seconds or so and dumping them on a plate. Back on the heat went the wok with a little more oil and in went the rice stack. Bowien's description of how to fry it is clear and easy to follow: "Gently break up the stack and use the spatula to press the rice against the bottom and sides of the hot wok. Wait 10 seconds, then flip and stir the rice. Flatten and press again, and wait 10 seconds. Flip and flatten a last time." 

At that point you season the rice with salt, sugar and fish sauce, give it a stir, add the eggs and mackerel, stir again. Then scoop everything out of the wok and into the big bowl, where it gets tossed with the lettuce, cilantro and scallions. 

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Masterpiece finished! 

For the second evening in a row, I was bowled over: This was stupendous.

Honestly, I can hardly believe that a civilian (me!) can make fried rice this good. The previous night, my friend Carol, a self-described rice fanantic who happens to be Italian, had come over to share the Lucky Peach rice with me. But now, with Thierry away in France, I found myself alone with an entire batch of Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice. I'm embarrassed to tell you how much of it I ate all by myself.

OK, Let's just say most of it. Here is the recipe:

So, how do the two fried rices stack up?

Judging the smackdown

Deliciousness: The Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice was more luscious than the Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice, with bits of crunchy fish adding textural interest and serious umami; the Lucky Peach rice was a little drier, more like the classic good-bad Chinese food pork fried rice (PFR) I so fondly remember from childhood (down to the frozen peas), but with Chinese sausage in place of barbecue pork. Both had plenty of fluffy, moist egg. Of course the Mission Chinese entry involved Chinese sausage too, and even more of it; that one was more chock-a-block full of stuff – a bit more egg, plus the two kinds of fish. Both were truly delicious; both were perfectly seasoned. Minced garlic and ginger brought tasty dimension to the Lucky Peach rice, but I didn't miss them in the Mission Chinese Food rice, with all that fish-umami happening, plus the cilantro. The Mission Chinese Food fried rice was maybe just a little more strikingly fabulous. But I would happily eat a giant bowl of either one any day of the week. 

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Deliciousness: 10/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Deliciousness: 9/10

Ease of preparation: No question, the Lucky Peach recipe was much simpler to prepare. Other than cooking the rice in advance, everything was prepped and cooked in about 20 minutes. The Mission Chinese Food recipe was extremely involved, thanks to soaking/water changing then frying and food processing the salt cod, and making the mackerel confit. While I loved eating the mackerel confit on its own (and will definitely make it again), it got a little lost in the rice. Did it add much to the whole? Hard to say. Neither recipe needed significant tweaking (the only issue in either was how much raw rice yields 3 cups cooked in the Mission Chinese recipe, which is really minor); both were clearly explained and very easy to follow – even with the hot wok going. 

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Ease of Preparation: 6/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Ease of Preparation: 9/10

All-around awesomeness and wow factor: Both rate very highly. A steaming bowl of hot fried rice with fluffy egg and chewy, smoky Chinese sausage, excellent texture and flavor that you made yourself in your very own wok is terribly exciting and fabulous.

When Wylie came home for spring break and Thierry returned from France a couple days later, it was the first thing I made them. More on that later. After Wylie goes back to school, I'm thinking a batch of the Lucky Peach rice would be an absolutely dreamy thing to eat when Thierry and I are hunkered down in front of the TV to binge watch House of Cards or election returns. Will I ever make the Mission Chinese Food recipe again? Perhaps. But only if guests who really geek out over Chinese cooking come over. (Sherry and Fred: You are wanted in Dallas!) Otherwise, the Lucky Peach's simplicity-in-preparation quotient makes up for its slight fabulousness deficit in relation to the Mission Chinese Food recipe, creating – ladies and gentlemen – an all-around awesomeness dead heat.

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Awesomeness and Wow Factor: 9/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Awesomeness and Wow Factor: 9/10

Well, after all that, you might think I've had enough fried rice for the time being. You'd be wrong. Now I am consumed with creating the perfect fried rice recipe: one the marries maximum awesomeness and deliciousness with the minimum of effort and time. Interested? Be sure to check back soon!

Fried Rice SMACKDOWN! Lucky Peach vs. Mission Chinese Food - Round One (Lucky Peach)

It's the event of the season, the match-up we've all been waiting for: enticing fried rice recipes from two hot new Asian cookbooks. On the left is the Chinese Sausage Fried Rice from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes by Peter Meehan and the editors of Lucky Peach. On the right is Salt Cod Fried Rice from The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook by Danny Bowien and Chris Ying. 

The Mission Chinese Food fried rice has a cult following and takes more than 24 hours of advance preparation – after a dedicated hunt for ingredients. You'll be required to soak salt cod in several changes of water for 24 hours, make mackerel confit in advance and fry-up the salt cod till it's hard as jerky, then shred it in a food processor. before you start. Are you up to it?

Meehan's recipe is the underdog, with no restaurant pedigree – though Lucky Peach magazine certainly has a cult following. You can put the whole thing together in a half hour, though unlike its opponent, it prefers (though doesn't require) that you use day-old cooked rice.

Both include Chinese sausage, scrambled eggs and scallions, and neither relies on soy sauce, which makes things interesting.

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Mission Chinese Food Cookbook's Salt Cod Fried Rice

We'll be judging the fried rice contenders in several areas:

–Taste: how delicious is it?

–Ease of preparation: Is it worth the time and effort?

–All-around awesomeness and wow factor

It's going to be a tough contest, and we have quite a bit of prep ahead of us, so let's get going!

Both require a trip to the Asian supermarket, though the Lucky Peach recipe offers substitutions if you can't come up with things like Chinese sausage (use bacon or pancetta), Shaoxing wine (dry sherry will do) and fish sauce (use soy sauce). For the purpose of this smackdown, I used the Chinese preferred ingredients. If you're thinking of making the Mission Chinese Food fried rice and you don't have access to salt cod, fresh or frozen mackerel fillets, Chinese sausage and fish sauce, just fuggedaboudit. Make the Lucky Peach recipe and call it a day.

Are you ready? 

After gathering all the ingredients, I started two days in advance, cooking jasmine rice beforehand for the Lucky Peach recipe. For the Mission Chinese Food recipe, I submerged the salt cod in cold water.  

A little background on the Mission Chinese Food recipe. "The spirit animal of this dish is the fried rice with salt fish and chicken at R&G Lounge in San Francisco," writes Danny Bowien, the Mission Chinese Food chef. (Wow – that was the site of one of my greatest food memories ever – a Chinese banquet ordered by Melanie Wong, one of the first friends I ever "met" online.) Bowien then riffs on the umami wonderfulness of salt cod: "I love the way it seasons and perfumes rice with a funky, fermented flavor. But I don't particularly love biting into a gnarly chunk of it. The aim of our Salt Cod Fried Rice was to capture that pleasant fishiness without the stank." His solution for his restaurant was to shred salt cod, then fry it. But customers complained there was no visible fish, "so we gilded the lily with chunks of rich mackerel confit."

OK, then – I went to work preparing the mackerel confit, which involved first filleting the mackerel I found in the Asian market. It seemed a little ridiculous to me, but it was really easy and actually quite wonderful.

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Mackerel confit

All you do is cover mackerel in vegetable or peanut oil in a saucepan and put it in a 300-degree oven for 25 minutes. Let it cool in the oil, then flake the fish into small chunks and either use it right away or cover it with the oil in a jar and store it in the fridge up to a week. It has a wonderful soft texture and lovely, lightly salty (though no salt was added), delicately fishy flavor, like a cheffy version of canned tuna. The fillet I had yielded more than the 4 ounces the recipe called for, so I'd have to think of a use for the rest of it (an amped-up mackerel-salad sandwich, maybe?). Anyway, it made me feel like confiting every oily fish I can get my hands on.

OK, first up: The Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice. 

As in all Chinese cooking, you definitely want to prep all your ingredients in advance, have them ready and all measured out – your mise en place. The book actually uses a master fried rice recipe, which is great, as it teaches you the technique.

To prep, I sliced Chinese sausage, measured out some frozen peas, whisked together a sauce (Shaoxing wine, fish sauce, sugar and sesame oil), beat two eggs, chopped garlic and ginger and sliced scallions. That was pretty much it – 20 minutes max. 

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The recipe calls for 3 cups of cooked long-grain rice, which you can get by cooking about 1 1/4 cups of raw rice. You put the rice in a bowl, break up the clumps with your fingers and make sure your mise is next to the stove. 

First you get your wok very hot, cook the eggs very quickly in a little oil and get them out of the pan. Add more oil, then add garlic, ginger and scallion whites (we kept white and green parts separate), cook just a few seconds, add the peas and sausage, and cook just till heated through. 

Now's the fun part. Dump the rice into the wok, toss it to mix, and use a spatula to spread the rice up against the sides and bottom of the wok, maximizing contact.

"Stir and fold once a minute" for 3 minutes, till the rice is hot and "a little charred in spots." Now pour on the sauce, toss it and continue the spreading, searing, tossing routine "until the rice is evenly colored and looks pleasantly dry." Now add the eggs back in, chopping them up and toss in the scallion greens. 

Ding-ding-ding! Finished!

Oh, man . . . heavenly! The egg is tender, and the dish is perfectly balanced, absolutely satisfying and fun. And it's big fun to make – I can't wait to do it again. Here's the recipe:

Next it'll be Mission Chinese Food's turn. Stay tuned for Fried Rice SMACKDOWN Round Two!

The Chinese lacquered roast chicken that changed my life

Now and then, a recipe comes along that feels truly life-changing. The short crust pastry for the lemon-raspberry tart I wrote about earlier this week was one for me. It wasn't a new recipe when I discovered it a few years ago – it had been right under my nose in the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook forever, but it was new to me when my friend Michalene pointed me to it. Today it's my go-to recipe for tart crust.

Now a Chinese lacquered roast chicken has changed my life.

There's nothing more delicious than roast chicken, and every cook should have a favorite recipe for it (at least one!) in his or her repertoire. For years, my go-to roast chicken has been the Judy bird – that is the Zuni Roast Chicken from Judy Rodger's The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It's the spectacularly flavorful, crisp-skinned chicken you have swooned over if you've ever gone to San Francisco's Zuni Cafe and ordered roast chicken for two. I will write about the Zuni chicken soon here on the blog and give the recipe, but the technique is basically this: Tuck fresh herbs under the chicken's skin, rub it all over with a lot of kosher salt, and let it sit in the fridge like that for one or two days. When you're ready to roast, wipe the chicken dry, heat a skillet on the stove, plop in the chicken, transfer it immediately to a very hot oven, and let it roast. No basting, but you  have to flip the chicken a couple times and fiddle with temperature. It always results in a fabulous bird.

When I don't plan ahead, I've used the Judy technique without the advance salting, and sometimes even without tucking herbs under the skin. It's still always excellent. I thought my abbreviated version was the simplest great roast chicken possible without a rotisserie.

So when I read about author Peter Meehan's roast chicken approach in the new cookbook Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I sat up and took note. "We are advocates of a hot-and-lazy approach: one high temperature, one pan, one position, one great result." He talked about how seasoning a bird ahead of time and letting it sit uncovered in the fridge lets him have an easy dinner to pop in the oven anytime in the next three days, and now I was really sitting up straight. This man is sensible! When he wrote, "I started doing this after I fell under the spell of Judy Rodger's Zuni Cafe Cookbook," I dropped the book and ran out to buy a chicken. Invoking Judy's name confers instant credibility.

In the Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes cookbook, Meehan offers three roast chicken recipes. For me, it was a no-brainer: Lacquered Roast Chicken.

Irresistible, right?

Here's the deal. This is the easiest roast chicken recipe in the universe, and the result is magnificent. 

All you do is this: Paint a chicken with a mixture of half-honey, half soy sauce, then sprinkle it with salt. Let it sit uncovered in the fridge for one or two days, then roast it in a 400 degree F. oven for 50 minutes. That's it. No basting, no flipping, no lowering and raising temperatures. Let it rest 15 minutes, then carve it and here's what you get:

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I kid you not. The skin was wonderfully crisp, the meat super-flavorful and both dark meat and white meat were perfectly cooked. The white meat was moist, juicy and delicious as the dark meat. A miracle!  I can't wait to try it again.

Here's the recipe:

Want something smashing this weekend? Pick up a chicken tonight or tomorrow, paint it with lacquer and it'll be ready to pop in the oven Friday or Saturday evening. Or paint a bird with the lacquer on Sunday afternoon and leave it in the fridge so you can roast it for an easy weeknight dinner next week. And please let us know – in a comment here – how you love it!

Meanwhile, I told Michalene about it, and what she said glued me to the ceiling: "Have you tried it on a duck?" Oh, man.

NOTE: I later made the chicken again, and it required ten minutes longer to cook – about an hour total roasting time. When it's done, the skin will be mahogany, and the legs will wiggle freely at the joints "like you could almost tear them off," as Meehan writes. The internal temperature should be 165 degrees F at the thickest part of the breast and where the thigh meets the breast. Also, when you're preparing the bird, don't worry if some of the glaze falls off the bird – it doesn't matter. That's why we have foil lining the pan.

Ta-da! Presenting a custom-created, Cooks-Without-Borders reader-asked-for-it lemon-raspberry tart

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So I'm pretty excited about this: A reader who signed up for the Cooks Without Borders newsletter mentioned that she's craving a lemon-raspberry tart and would love a recipe. Hmm, I thought. That does sound awesome! Especially this time of year. 

I didn't know how I would make one, but I decided to give it my best. I knew what crust I'd use: Lindsey Shere's amazing short crust pastry from the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook. It's foolproof, easy to put together (even if it seems kind of crazy while you're doing it), doesn't require rolling pin skills (you press it in the pan with your fingers) and results in an incredibly tender and flaky crust. 

I thought it would be nice to marry a classic lemon tart – filled will lemon curd – with raspberries somehow. But simply garnishing a lemon curd tart with raw raspberries didn't sound great. I could create a raspberry tart with lemon pastry cream, but pastry cream is a pain in the neck; lemon curd is easier and more forgiving. 

I found inspiration in Shere's recipe for a simple raspberry tart. She has you brush a prebaked tart shell with melted, strained raspberry preserves, line the shell with rows of berries, bake it for only five minutes, and then glaze it. Why bake the berries only five minutes? "This brings out the perfume of the raspberries without softening and making them mushy," she writes. Bingo! I'd make a lemon-curd tart, pull it out of the oven five minutes early, add just a couple rows of berries (so as not to overwhelm the lemon flavor with too much berry flavor), bake it five minutes more, then glaze the berries.

It turned out great! Two pals and I nearly polished off the whole thing, in any case – after eating a giant dinner. My raspberries were sort of dull-tasting supermarket berries, but treating them this way heightened their flavor. 

Are you up for it? Here we go!

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First we make the crust. Don't be afraid: It's easier than you may think, and every time you make one it gets easier and easier. (Believe me: I'm not much of a baker, and I can manage it!). It's such a great crust that if there's one thing you want to learn dessert-wise, this crust might well be it. It's that good. 

To make it, whisk flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl, add sliced chilled butter and work in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until it looks like this:

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Add vanilla and water, gather it into a ball, let it rest 30 minutes, then use your fingers to press it into a tart pan. It may look at first like you won't have nearly enough dough to cover the pan, but you do – just keep pushing it around with your fingers until you have an even layer covering the bottom and sides.

Stick it in the freezer for a half an hour, then it's ready to bake: in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until it's golden-brown and baked through. Got it? Here's the recipe:

Now let's make the lemon curd. Again, this may sound scary, but it comes together really nicely – and it has beautiful, bright lemon flavor.

Basically you cook eggs, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, milk and butter – stirring constantly – over low to medium heat until the mixture thickens to the consistency of a thick cream. Let it rest five minutes, give it a quick whisk, then chill it. Once it has cooled down, pour it into the baked tart shell.

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Bake it in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes, pull it out (leaving the oven on), add a couple of rows of berries, and pop the tart back in the oven for 5 minutes longer. Remove it from the oven, melt some strained raspberry preserves, stir in a little kirsch, and glaze the berries. Tart accompli! Shall we do this? Here's the recipe. Please let us know in a comment if you plan to try it – and if you do, how it turns out!

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Flavors of Spain and Morocco on a most unusual New Year's Eve

It has been a difficult and even terrifying holiday season – thanks to several tornadoes that tore through North Texas the day after Christmas – for many of our neighbors and friends around Dallas, where we live. 

For my friend and colleague Seema Yasmin, her husband Emmanuel, and Seema's mom, Yasmin Halima, it was truly an ordeal, as their house was completely destroyed by a tornado. Emmanuel and Yasmin, unable to get to the safest part of the house, huddled in front of the refrigerator, clinging to Seema and Emmanuel's two-year-old pit bull, Lily, as their kitchen was hit. Seema, a medical doctor-turned-journalist who specializes in infectious diseases, was away in Liberia, reporting on survivors of the ebola epidemic there, when she had news of the disaster. She cut short her trip and arrived back in Dallas – but not home; that was gone – four days later. Emmanuel, Yasmin and Lily were staying in a hotel. 

My husband Thierry and I had planned to spend a quiet evening at home for New Year's Eve, so we invited them over New Year's Eve dinner. What to cook for friends who've been through (and are going through) such a traumatic experience? Seema and Yasmin don't eat meat unless it's halal; "consider us piscatarians," says Seema. When I mentioned the restriction to Thierry, he had one gleeful suggestion: paella! 

Perfect. We'd start with tapas and a bottle of Cava (for those who would partake). I whipped out my favorite Spanish cookbook – Anya von Bremzen's 2006 volume, The New Spanish Table – for tapas ideas. For a first course, maybe I'd whip up something involving piquillo peppers, tuna and allioli – lemony, super-garlicky Spanish mayonnaise, which is also great stirred into seafood paella. For a sweet, I turned south, reaching for a lovely dessert of poached pears and prunes scented with bay leaf and orange from Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco.

I found some beautiful organic red Bartletts at Whole Foods, with a couple days during which I could let them ripen in a paper bag. I poached them New Year's Eve morning. It's a great dessert for a dinner party, as it can be made completely in advance. Wolfert's recipe calls for 12 prunes, but I say the more the merrier and double them; they're so good with the pears – which I planned to serve with some thin almond crisps I picked up at the store.

For tapas, I settled on Sevillian marinated carrots – zanahorias aliñadas – that I'd set out with fleshy, green Castelvetrano olives and smoked almonds. Then we'd have a passed tapa inspired by one I saw in Anya's book: slow-scrambed eggs with wild mushrooms (I was hoping to find some chanterelles), to be served in brown egg shells. I took the eggs in a more French direction, using butter (lots!) rather than olive oil and shallots rather than garlic, as we had so much garlic going on in the paella, carrots and allioli. I couldn't find chanterelles, so instead I snapped up some beautiful cultivated beech mushrooms and small, fresh shiitakes.

Just as Seema and company rang the doorbell, blam!!! I dropped a glass bowl filled with eggs that I was pulling from the fridge. Eggs and broken glass went flying all over the kitchen and beyond – landing in the dining room, the living room, the breakfast nook. Brilliant! Thierry scrambled (hah!) to clean it all up (bless his heart!) as I welcomed our friends, apologizing for the chaos and putting up a fence of chairs to keep Lily from stepping on broken glass in the kitchen. 

Later, as we sat at dinner, Emmanuel and Yasmin – still pretty shellshocked – recounted their terrifying ordeal; they didn't have time to get to a safe room, which was probably a good thing, as the room they thought safest was bisected by a garage door torn from its hinges. Emmanuel was barefoot when the tornado hit, and there was broken glass everywhere; he stepped on a nail as they were walking the streets looking for help. He was carrying Lily at the time, all 65-pounds of her. Yasmin had shards of glass hit her face.

We knew it wouldn't exactly be an evening of revelry, considering all they been through and all they had lost, but I was hoping – with food cooked with love, and good cheer and the warmth of a fire in the fireplace – to make their holiday just a little bit less dreadful.

Lily, a sweet creature who is in training to be a therapy dog, was quite nervous, but they had brought her bed – which we set up in the dining room so she could be next to us. Once she settled in, we broke out the tapas. While everyone nibbled on the carrots – garlicky, lemony and fragrant with herbs – and the olives and nuts, I put the finishing touches on the eggs, scrambling them slowly with sautéed mushrooms in butter till they were custardy. (Fortunately I had eggs to spare!) I had just the thing for serving them: a fabulous ceramic egg carton my friend Michalene brought me as a gift from South Africa a few years ago.

Seema seemed to melt."Oooh," she said when I brought the egg carton to the table and offered her one. "I love anything with eggs." There were only five of us and half a dozen eggs, but it wasn't hard to find a taker for the last one.

Next came the peppers with tuna. I wasn't able to find piquillos – those slender, pointed Spanish red peppers with a lovely bite you can buy (if you're lucky) in a jar already roasted. Instead I found jars of whole roasted Spanish Morron peppers. Not as nice as the piquillos, whose shape is perfect for filling. I spooned some allioli onto of our salad plates, set a pepper on each and tucked in fillets of fancy tuna I'd bought in jars, packed in olive oil, into the peppers. The combo was actually pretty good – especially with some crusty baguette to sop up the extra allioli. 

Seafood paella was the main event, of course. Our recipe is based on the one from Anya's book, though I've tweaked it over the years. This time I found some beautiful baby octopuses to use in place of the squid Anya's recipe calls for. About 20 minutes before our friends arrived, I'd started cooking the paella, knowing I could prepare it up to a certain point, then leave it off-heat on the stove. I popped it into the hot oven, letting it bake while we had the tapas, and pulling it out to rest while we had the peppers and tuna. 

Some red wine – Garnacha from Spain (for a few of us) – those poached pears and prunes, and before midnight, the exhausted trio (um, woof! quartet) was ready to head back to their hotel. But not without an invitation to come back soon and cook: Yasmin, who was born in India, has lived in South Africa – where she worked for an international non-profit aid organization – and has roots in Burma, is already missing the kitchen. 

Judy Rodgers and her New Year's Eve Gougères

My favorite thing to do on New Year's Eve is cook for friends – because I love to cook, I love my friends and I don't really like going out on New Year's Eve, especially to a restaurant. If I entertain at home I can spend a luxurious day in the kitchen chopping and slicing and baking, enjoying the smell of something warm in the oven and the sizzle of onions and shallots on the stove. Then I get to enjoy the company of people I love best, spending hours at the table, sipping wine and eating and talking and laughing, and of course popping a bottle of Champagne at midnight. 

It has to be Champagne. It just wouldn't be New Year's Eve without it.

And every New Year's Eve, I think of Judy Rodgers, the late great chef-owner of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. Her Zuni Cafe Cookbook, published in 2002, is one of my favorite volumes of all time. One of the many recipes I love to cook from it is her New Year's Eve Gougères.

Gougères – French cheese puffs, served warm just out of the oven – are wonderful anytime, particularly with a glass of light red wine, maybe a village Beaujolais or a Côtes du Rhônes.

Sliced open and stuffed with great bacon, arugula and pickled onions, as Rogers suggests, they're a spectacular, and very festive, hors d'oeuvre – on New Year's Eve or any other eve.  Rodgers, who died two years ago this month, wrote in the recipe's headnote,"This was the most successful New Year's Eve hors d'oeuvre of the last decade, outselling foie gras, oysters, caviar, crab salad, and little truffle-laden pizzas."

There you go. They are a real treat – definitely something to consider whipping up on the last day of the year.

I treasure my copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, not just because there are so many great recipes and ideas in it, but also because Rodgers signed it for me when I bought it at the restaurant many years ago. "For Leslie," she wrote, "always cook with heart." Rest in peace, Judy Rodgers. You will always live on through your recipes.

Happy New Year!