Dairy

In The All American Wine & Cheese Book, food writer Laura Werlin named Lively Run’s fresh goat cheese as one of the two best chèvres in the country. A concentrated burst of blue cheese flavor adds zest to an appetizer created by Steve and Suzanne Messmer of Lively Run.

This unpretentious little bakery and café is a favorite with the locals, and Deb Moglia’s smart-looking sandwiches on fresh-baked breads attract a steady crowd at lunchtime. My favorite is the Apple Reuben, a warmingly satisfying construction inspired by the pastrami-stuffed version, only here it is made with sautéed local apples.

Cabernet Franc, with origins in the Bordeaux region of France, is rapidly gaining recognition as a definitive Finger Lakes red. The wine’s dark fruit and spice act as liaison between the tomato/garlic flavors and the earthy mushrooms.

We can’t stress enough the importance of cleanliness when doing a recipe of this sort. That means a good washing of the jar and other equipment and yourself.

Here is the dessert we served on opening day at Joe Beef. You can use small foil molds or teacups for serving.

The mimolette cheese in this dish makes it look like a favorite Kraft product and will have your kids chomping at the bit to eat cauliflower.

Back in the day, when there was Sally Wong, when there was yellow pepper, and when there was tuna, David was doing endive salad and roast chicken. Although nonrevolutionary, this salad is always delicious. It’s on the menu often, especially in the winter when the garden is under a snowbank and the Parc Vinet Salad (opposite page) is a distant memory. Use Stilton in this salad; it works much better than other blues.

A note on ricers: For a young boy, a potato ricer is akin to magic. It’s more impressive than planes or satellites; it’s up there with fire trucks, guns, and large breasts. We use ricers a lot at Joe Beef—for potatoes, Madeira jelly for foie gras, fruit preserves, and polenta. One day, a hungover vegetable cook produced a plate of clumpy, amateur polenta. It was on the menu, so we couldn’t send out carrots and apologies. Instead, we just pressed it through the ricer. It came out freaking perfect, the clumps gone and the polenta shaped like rice, slowly falling in the butter. There we were, four grown-ups, as fascinated as ever with the potato ricer. The general rule for polenta is four parts water to one part cornmeal.

This red sauce is a steroid ingredient that we use to pump up wimpy dishes like gnocchi or in chicken gravy for a quick sauce chasseur. Most of our sauces are done this way, baked in a good French enameled cast-iron pot. We’re not too fussy about the type of tomatoes we use, just canned and whole; San Marzano will do. If you cannot obtain pig skin from your butcher, then a pig’s trotter, halved lengthwise, works, too. You could also add Smoked Baby Back Ribs (page 153) to the sauce before serving it with the gnocchi.

This recipe is a perfect illustration of the Big Mac Theory: It hits everywhere at the same time, it tastes perfect, and it’s so rich but you barely notice it. It’s a bit weird, a bit trashy, and very tasty. Awesome.

Pier Luc Dallaire has worked for us for five years (and counting) as a cook, busboy, bartender, oyster shucker, and now, a real French waiter! His dad, Bertrand, was a kindred soul gardener, and his mom, Huguette, made these killer doughnuts. They rise with baking powder, not yeast. And you will often find them at weekend country flea markets. The Isle-aux-Grues cheese (page 276) is a great Quebec product that we couldn’t resist smoking. Together they sing.

This recipe is from a trip that Fred took with Allison and her parents to the Czech Republic: “I was thirty, traveling in the back of an Opel minivan loaded with adults. The bottles of beer were always too small and the stops never frequent enough. This was back when I was ignoring a little gluten issue and drinking vast quantities of Czechvar/Budvar. Basically, this trip was like the Griswolds in Prague. “While visiting an old brewery’s beer garden, I noticed a ‘little things to eat with beer’ section of the menu. It was full of pickled herring, utopenec (pickled sausage), and cheese. We ordered them all, and when the cheese arrived, it was like a gathering of all of the cheese leftovers blended with beer. It was unsightly and completely delicious.” You will need four (4-ounce) cheese molds with holes or four Styrofoam coffee cups with holes poked in the bottoms and sides, plus four paper coffee filters to make the cheese.

If Parmesan is the king of cheese, Époisses is the cultural attaché. It’s smelly in a way that makes you proud to like it. It’s also red-wine compatible and awesome on a piece of steak. A washed-rind cheese, Époisses is made from milk from Burgundian cows and washed with the local marc de Bourgogne. It is crucial that you buy a good Époisses, and, in fact, only one or two brands make it to the United States and Canada. Sniffit before buying, and avoid one with a horse urine–window cleaner smell. Remember, too, warming up the cheese only amplifies the aroma. Sometimes Gilles Jourdenais at Fromagerie Atwater gets in tiny individual Époisses, which we try to use whenever possible. This dish, which combines the cheese with shallots, used to be the classic Joe Beef drunk staff meal at 4 A.M. Eat it with toasted bread, a few rosettes of mâche, or on top of steak.

Nicolas Jongleux is a Montreal legend. Born and raised in Marsannay, in Burgundy, he grew up working in some of France’s most influential kitchens, including, at age twenty-six, under Alain Chapel at the Michelin-three-star La Mère Charles in Mionnay. He came to Montreal under the guise of partnering in Le Cintra, where he worked for three years. From there he ran the seminal Les Caprices de Nicolas. David says: “He had more talent than anyone I’ve ever seen. I once watched him make sixty identical croissants by hand, no recipe, no scale, and he hadn’t made croissants for more than five years. When he finished, there was not a drop of extra pastry, and each pastry was perfect.” He was also the kind of person who had such discipline all of his life, that he when he left France, he lived the experiences most of us had in our teens, in his thirties. He opened his last restaurant, Café Jongleux, in 1999, and committed suicide in the restaurant later that year. This recipe was a Nicolas classic.

No offense to salsa, but come on, who doesn't love a gooey, cheesy bean dip, bubbling hot like lava from the broiler? If you're a chile head, you'll probably want to up the number of chiles and leave the seeds in. If your friends are more, ahem, delicate, then stick with one chile and remove the seeds and ribs.

Consider this recipe a double whammy. Not only do you end up with a dreamy, cheesy bread pudding, but you also get the recipe for an excellent loaf of Irish soda bread. The bread is so easy to make—there's no yeast involved—don't be surprised if you find yourself baking a loaf often. It makes excellent toast. Many Irish cheeses are now sold in our supermarkets, but you'll have good results with any sharp Cheddar. Buried in the recipe is a nifty trick: Adding a bit of Parmesan to the mixture helps amplify the flavor of the Cheddar.

Consider making a double batch of Ed Lee's orange-honey butter to serve the next morning with toast or warm biscuits.

Don't let the good looks of this eight-layer beauty fool you; it's easy to make. Bake 4 cakes (we used 9" round metal cake pans, but disposable ones work fine), then slice each in half. Finish with toasted coconut, a knockout garnish that's also forgiving— it'll mask a less-than-perfect frosting job.