Garlic

Serve with crusty bread.

Chefs have chased the perfect consommé for as long as there has been cuisine. Traditionally clarified using a raft of egg whites, meat, and aromatics, it was inevitable that chefs would start looking for modern alternatives. The first solution was introduced by Professor Gerd Klöck in 2004 and popularized by Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck. Ice clarification is a method of freezing gelatin-rich stocks and then slowly defrosting them through layers of cheesecloth and a fine sieve to create a perfectly clear liquid. As the gel is frozen, the water trapped in the gelatin crystallizes. This causes the sharp edges to damage the cell walls. As the frozen gel warms up, the water and all of the water-soluble components melt before the gelatin or the fats and leak out of the damaged cell structure, leaving everything else behind. The next innovation was using agar instead of gelatin to speed up the freeze-thaw process. Agar works more quickly because it has a much higher melting point. If there is no fat in the preparation, it can actually be defrosted into a filter at room temperature, which greatly reduces the filtration time. From there we made the leap of eliminating the time spent in the freezer when using agar. Syneresis is the process by which the liquid leaks out of the gel structure. Agar naturally creates a hard, brittle gel that is prone to syneresis. It seemed reasonable to us that we could easily make an agar gel and break it up in the vacuum sealer, causing the clear liquids to leak out while the impurities were trapped in the gel. Once we poured the broken gel into a cheesecloth-lined filter, we would have a clear liquid almost immediately. It worked beautifully and was a huge breakthrough for us. As we worked through the process, we realized that brisk stirring of the agar-thickened liquid was enough to break it apart and create syneresis, effectively giving us a low-tech clarification process that could be easily accomplished at home. We use a ratio of 0.25 percent agar to clarify most of our liquids. Occasionally in liquids with more dissolved impurities we increase this to 0.3 percent.

These short ribs are everything you want braised meat to be. They are tender and juicy with a rich beefy flavor that is nicely balanced by the sweetness of the carrots. The root beer and birch bark draw on familiar aromatics and tastes but we use them in a slightly different manner. Come to think of it, these short ribs are not too far off from a traditional cola-glazed ham.

Mushrooms are well known for their meaty flavor. They are rich in natural umami elements and we enhance that here with the addition of soy sauce and sherry. The finished stock has a rich flavor that can be used for vegetarian soups and sauces or to enhance meat dishes. You can easily turn this into a rich mushroom soup with the addition of some sautéed mushrooms and a touch of cream.

This is comfort food at its finest. It blends Italian risotto with the idea of American macaroni and cheese to create a dish that is more than the sum of its parts. And because we love the crisp juicy flavor of apples with our Cheddar cheese, we decided to take things a little further and use cider to deepen the flavors of our risotto. That hint of tartness balances out the richness of the dish. If you happen to have them around, fresh chives are a wonderful finishing garnish.

When we think of kimchi we tend to picture the classic kind found in Asian supermarkets, which is made primarily with Napa cabbage stained red from the chili powder and pungent with garlic. Interestingly, although that is indisputably the most popular variation, kimchi can be made with a wide array of vegetables and spices, with regional variations that affect the ingredients used and levels of heat and spice. Here we’ve used red cabbage for two reasons. The first is because we like its sweet flavor and slightly sturdy texture. The second, more practical, reason is that these fermented pickles are generally deemed ready when enough lactic acid is produced to change the pH from 6.5 to approximately 3.5. Red cabbage juice changes color at this pH and becomes a bright reddish-purple, giving you a visual cue when fermentation is complete. Kimchi is a surprisingly good condiment for grilled hot dogs. It is a great way to doctor up packaged ramen at home. In place of coleslaw on a sandwich, it can add an unexpected kick to anything from corned beef on rye to pulled pork on soft white bread. Its heat and tang are wonderful for cutting through rich ingredients, and as a substitute for sauerkraut in choucroute, it is utterly delicious.

This may seem like an unorthodox flavor profile, but roast chicken brine is delicious. Just as chicken stock is used as the base for myriad soups, this roast chicken brine pairs well with a variety of vegetables and fish. Unsurprisingly, it is also amazing with chicken and turkey. We are lucky enough to be able to buy inexpensive chicken backs at our local Whole Foods. If you can’t get backs or if wings are too expensive, chicken legs or thighs are sometimes an economical substitute. Even if you prefer to eat white meat, using dark meat for the brine will give you the most flavor.

A Römertopf, a porous clay pot developed in the 1960s by a German company, is often used in Alsace and southern Germany for long- simmering stews. These stews may be akin to Alsatian baeckeoffe, a pot of meat (usually beef, pork, and veal along with calf or pig feet) mixed with potatoes, marinated in white wine, and cooked in the oven all day long, on Mondays, when the women traditionally do the wash. Agar Lippmann (see page 258) remembers her mother in Alsace making the Sabbath stew in a baeckeoffe, using a mix of flour and water to make a kind of glue to really seal the lid. When I was having lunch at Robert and Evelyne Moos’s house in Annecy, they used a Römertopf to make a similar lamb stew for me. Eveline ceremoniously brought the dish to the table, and in front of all of us, took off the top so that we were enveloped in the steam and aromas of the finished dish.

With my first bite of potatoes sarladaises, I fell in love with the dish. Originating in the town of Sarlat, it is served everywhere in the Dordogne. Cooks sometimes include lardons (a kind of bacon) or giblets, and sometimes, depending on the season, truffles or porcini mushrooms. I was delighted when Anne-Juliette Belicha (see page 47) offered to give me a potatoes-sarladaises lesson at her home in Montignac. I guarantee that this dish will be a crowd pleaser.

The earliest known French potato dish is pommes de terre dauphinoises, which originated in Switzerland in 1600. I tasted this divine dish of scalloped potato, cheese, and milk, a specialty of the region near Annecy, at the home of Ruth Moos (see page 3), who made it as an evening dairy meal served with a salad and vegetables. Instead of covering the potatoes and the cheese with the traditional beef bouillon or broth, Ruth makes it kosher style using only cream or milk.

Old cookbooks of Jewish families from Provence and descendants of the Juifs du Pape contain a famous dish combining spinach and morue (salt cod; see page 290). Morue is also blended with mashed potatoes to make brandade, a typical dish of the south of France. The preserved fish is rehydrated in milk or water, and then grilled, fried, or baked. Fritters were particularly common, and are still prevalent throughout Spain and Portugal. This recipe, a modern interpretation of a traditional salt-cod-and-potato brandade, was created by Chef Daniel Rose (see page 68). He uses fresh cod, salting it briefly to remove the excess moisture, seasons it with thyme and garlic, and then cooks it in milk and olive oil. Mixed with mashed potatoes and fried, the result yields a sort of latke that can be served as an appetizer, a side dish, or a main course, with the fennel-and-citrus salad on page 110.

Like Michel Goldberg, Natan Holchaker was a little boy during the Nazi occupation. When the war started, his father moved to a small village in the Dordogne with a little garden and a well. One day his father told him to “disappear,” and he and his brother left to live with peasants in the countryside. Two days later, the Germans attacked. Throughout the war, he and his brother lived on farms, helping to pick crops and learning how to find porcini mushrooms, which they gathered for the farmers. This delicious recipe comes from Natan and his wife, Josiane Torrès-Holchaker. Josiane’s ancestors came to Bordeaux from Portugal in the sixteenth century. Although they lived outwardly as Marranos, or New Christians, the Torrès-Vedras family continued to live as Jews at home. In 1790, the National Assembly decreed that all the Portuguese and Spanish Jews in France would enjoy the rights of active citizens. As we were driving with Natan and Josiane toward the Médoc wine country in Bordeaux, they suddenly stopped the car, jumped out, and looked at the cèpes (porcini mushrooms) that were being sold by the road. They were so excited, as only the French can be, in anticipation of cooking the mushrooms. “See how fresh these are,” said Josiane. “They are shiny and white, the cap is closed, and they aren’t green inside, a sign of their being too old.” She told me that sometimes she just serves the mushrooms raw, dicing and marinating them first in lemon juice. Then she described the way her mother prepared porcini.

In the movie Ratatouille, the rat made a tian of eggplant and other vegetables, set vertically in a baking dish. A similar dish came down in the family of Gérard Monteux, whose ancestors have made this dish since tomatoes came to Provence. The keys to the recipe are to make sure that the tomatoes and onions are of the same diameter as the eggplant, and to use a square or rectangular baking dish. I have made it in a French tian, but you can use any pan about 9 inches square. Good any time of year, it is spectacular in the summer, when tomatoes are at their best.

I used to think that this dish, called carciofi alla giudea, originated in Rome. But now I am not so sure. When I was visiting Barcelona last spring, it seemed as if every restaurant, every bar, every street vendor was selling this crispy delicacy of deep-fried artichoke flavored with herbs and garlic and served cold. I love it. This is a recipe that has come down in the family of Violette Corcos Abulafia Tapiero Budestchu of Paris.

This delicious cauliflower dish comes from Michelle Cahen Bamberger, whose family had lived in Lorraine since “forever,” as she told me, until World War II brought her to the south of France, where she was forced into hiding. Madame Bamberger says that she feels and cooks French. And she feels French first and Jewish second, despite all that she went through during the war. “One day, I was going home with a bottle of wine under my arm to the place we were hiding in Lyon during the war,” she told me in the parlor of the apartment in Toulon where she and her husband now live. “I saw the Gestapo coming, so, instead of going into the house, I kept walking and saved myself. When we were in hiding, our life wasn’t bad compared with others. Because my parents were in the clothing industry, we traded fabric for butter and rabbits. I remember one day we received a lamb roast. That was really something.” Her cauliflower dish, with its crunchy golden exterior, is similar to ones I have tasted in Israel and elsewhere.

Gerard Monteux, who is a descendant of the Juifs du Pape, told me that this was a very famous dish from Carpentras, eaten at Purim. (It is also a Lenten dish.) In this town, which had an oven in the Jewish quarter, cooks prepared the dish at home, putting it in an earthenware tian. They then brought it to the public oven and baked it, fetching it when it was done. Our modern-day casserole dishes have evolved from this tradition.

The secret of Hélène’s ratatouille is to cook the vegetables separately in the oven, intensifying their individual flavors. This may seem like using a lot of pans, but it is mostly waiting time. She assured me, “You can just let vegetables cook themselves and gently stir them all together.” The word “ratatouille” is related to the word touiller and the Latin tudiculare, meaning “to stir,” “crush,” or “toss.” After being cooked, the vegetables were originally assembled in a rectangular earthenware tian casserole, then gratinéed, and served hot or cold on the Sabbath. Now the cooked eggplant, pepper, zucchini, and tomato may be served together, or separately as individual salads. Ratatouille is similar to the Middle Eastern and North African dish tchoukchouka (see page 94), meaning “to shake up,” in both Hebrew and Arabic, and to other very old Mediterranean dishes of zucchini and eggplant. Hélène seasons her version with a hot but not fiery Basque pepper called piment d’Espelette, from Espelette, a town near her native Toulouse. If you don’t have piment d’Espelette, you can use hot paprika or New Mexico red chili powder.

Nothing tastes so good to me as the intense flavor of a fresh tomato, picked at the height of summer, cooked down and seasoned with fresh parsley, garlic, and olive oil. This recipe exemplifies southern-French vegetable cooking at its best. I have served these tomatoes as an accompaniment to roast lamb (see page 234) or, in the summer, as a scrumptious first course. They are also great with lox, bagels, and cream cheese to break the fast of Yom Kippur.