Starter

Puttanesca is a sauce named after streetwalkers. The ladies would make pots of a fishy-smelling mixture of tomatoes, anchovies, and garlic and leave the pots in brothel windows to attract fishermen in like stray cats. After the business was done, the sauce was tossed with pasta and became their dinner, or breakfast. This is a very unappetizing story for such a delicious dish, so when I am asked what “it” means, I tell a slightly less descriptive version, which you can pass along: Puttanesca is the sauce of the ladies of the night because it’s spicy, fast, and easy! (It still makes me blush, but at least I remain hungry.)

The restaurant La Tupina in Bordeaux, France, serves a soup that’s slow cooked for four hours. The last few delicious spoonfuls are combined with red wine and swallowed back. These are my kind of people! This is an adaptation my way, minus three hours and thirty minutes. This peasant can’t wait!

Eat well, eat more! I cut out the bun so I can have more dogs and veggies with less guilt. Chicago-style dogs are my favorites, with pickles, tomatoes, onions, mustard, and slaw on top. This salad reverses the order and piles the veggies up high underneath the dogs.

Here’s another example of “stoup”; a meal in a bowl that’s thicker than soup, thinner than stew.

I love noodle bowls! What’s not to like? This one makes plain chicken noodle soup seem, well, really plain. The next time you want either take-out Asian food or just a bowl of chicken noodle soup, make this instead. It rules!

Gloria Estefan taught me how to cook plantains in the microwave and her husband, Emilio, gave me the urban, updated idea of lightening up some Cuban-influenced dishes. The result is this menu, my interpretation of Metro-Retro Cuban cooking. This dinner is also delicious made with seasoned grilled thin-cut chicken breast, seasoned in the same manner as the steak.

Serve with a green salad.

The shrimp mosaic can be served warm or cold. It is an unusual presentation that works nicely on the bottom of the plate with a pasta or salad built on top of it, much like a chicken paillard. We’ve served it with a chunky avocado salad or tucked underneath a creamy risotto. It also makes for a fine spin on the traditional shrimp cocktail.

These small orbs have big celery flavor from both the celery root centers and the celery stock that encapsulates them. The cream cheese gives the celery root a little extra body and tang. The gellan in the water bath reacts with the calcium in the celery root, forming a delicate gel around each orb. They may be heated in the celery stock and served warm like miniature raviolis, topped with brown butter, or hidden in a soup or stew as pockets of exploding flavor. You can also serve the orbs as single bites topped with shaved country ham and chopped celery leaves.

This recipe demonstrates Methocel’s ability to form a warm gel. This custard mimics the texture of the classic chawan mushi, hence the recipe’s name. We add Methocel at a ratio of 1 percent of the total weight of the other ingredients. The flavor of the cheese gives it an unusual twist. We’ve served this with marinated baby tomatoes, fresh cherries with tarragon, or a little crab salad garnished with fresh lovage. Any garnishes should be room temperature or slightly warm because as the custard cools the texture will soften, although the individual ramekins help preserve their heat.

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.

Octopus is an acquired taste. People who enjoy it really love the meaty texture and slightly sweet taste. Here we’ve cooked it in oil flavored with garlic and smoked ham hocks. We like the gentle nutty flavor of rice bran oil, but you can substitute the vegetable oil or fat of your choice. The slow, gentle cooking leaves you with incredibly tender and flavorful meat.

There’s nothing better than melted cheese on a chilly winter evening. A wide range of dishes center around hot cheese, like Welsh rarebit, queso fundido, raclette, and the classic fondue. Fondue hinges upon a few ingredients handled well. Cooking temperature is very important—do not give in to the urge to increase the heat. Have a glass of sparkling water or wine while you’re cooking and enjoy the process. A whisk helps bring everything together smoothly. Your fondue will start out thin and slowly thicken. At times the fat may threaten to break free, but have faith and keep whisking and everything will come together in the end. If you’re the kind of person who likes added insurance, you can toss your grated cheese with a tablespoon (6 grams) of tapioca flour before adding it to the wine. It’s not strictly necessary but will help compensate for a slightly distracted cook. We like to serve fondue with good bread, sliced apples, charcuterie, and occasionally a salad on the side.

While most custard is made with eggs and dairy, classic Japanese chawan mushi is made using stock. There’s no real equivalent to chawan mushi. It is a light and deeply savory custard. The egg-to-liquid ratio is 3:1, designed so there is slightly more liquid than the eggs can hold. This way, as you dip the spoon into the custard, it releases some of its juices and creates its own sauce. Here we’ve used fresh clams to make the broth. Its buttery flavor speaks of our American heritage. We’ve garnished the custards with the clams, celery, and jalapeño instead of cooking them inside the custard, as would be traditional; this preserves the texture of the littlenecks. As with all steamed custards, it’s important to keep a close eye on things because the time difference between a smooth, silky custard and a grainy, scrambled mess is less than you might think.

This flatbread is a riff on the classic focaccia from Recco, Italy. Unlike the traditional yeasted focaccia, this bread is two layers of unleavened dough separated by cheese. The dough is made by first adding the oil to the flour, mixing it in to coat the starch, and then adding the water. This method keeps the flour from clumping and facilitates a well-blended dough. This flatbread is a great way to start a dinner party with everyone congregating in and around the kitchen, cocktails in hand as the flatbread comes out of the oven. It’s a graphic illustration of the power of steam leavening. After the bread is cut it deflates into a truly flat bread. It’s beautiful and delicious, a sure conversation piece as people relax and settle in for the evening.