5 Ingredients or Fewer

With all the recent interest in Spanish cuisine, it’s no surprise that membrillo—Spanish quince paste—has become a global hit. Anyone who has tasted it paired with Manchego cheese and a glass of sherry understands why it’s become so popular the world over. But that popularity doesn’t come easy: it takes at least 30 minutes of almost-constant stirring to make quince paste. I always wear an oven mitt while stirring with a wooden spatula because the hot mixture occasionally pops and sputters as it thickens.

It was the name of this candy that first won me over, but it’s the taste of this easy-to-make treat that continues to make me smile. Both novice and intrepid candy makers will be happy because this simple confection doesn’t require a candy thermometer or any fancy equipment and it can be made in minutes. Serve pieces of almond ding as part of a cookie or candy plate, chop it into bits and fold them into just-churned ice cream, or offer some alongside a favorite sorbet. (It goes particularly well with Simple Cherry Sorbet, page 165.) Be sure to use flaky sea salt which will provide dramatic bits of salty sparks when you crunch into the buttery caramelized almonds. This recipe is from Cindy Pawlcyn, chef-owner of Mustard’s Grill in the Napa Valley.

It was a happy day when an enterprising midwesterner decided that the surplus of sour cherries could be dried instead of left neglected on the trees. And thus, one of my favorite baking ingredients was born. But this recipe is eminently adaptable and you can use any kind of dried fruit or toasted nuts that suits you. Diced apricot pieces and cranberries, walnuts and toasted pecans, and roasted cocoa nibs have all found their way into various batches of this bark. I even got really crazy once and crumbled candied bacon into a batch. That one met with a few raised eyebrows, but was gobbled up by all.

I thought I knew all about chocolate truffles until I enrolled in an advanced course in chocolate making at a school for professionals next to the Valrhona factory in France’s Rhône Valley. I spent three very intense days there learning how to combine three simple ingredients—chocolate, cream, and butter—into silky smooth ganache. In the class were eight of the top chocolatiers in the world, plus a ninth person, who quickly realized that he had a lot more to learn about chocolate than he thought he did. Ganache seems simple, but chef Philippe Givre taught us how to whip these three ingredients into a velvety paste that needed several days of rest before it was ready to be tasted. (It’s worth the wait!) It would take a whole book to explain his technique and a professionally equipped kitchen attached to a chocolate factory to try it out, so for this recipe, I’ve shortened the process a bit. Of course, to make these truffles, it’s worth seeking out the best chocolate you can find, which, if you’re lucky like I was, might be right next door.

This recipe is much easier to make than conventional tuiles because the batter isn’t as fussy and it doesn’t need to be painstakingly spread out on a baking sheet with a spatula. The heat of the oven takes care of the spreading, making sure that the cookies expand to the right dimensions as they bake. No, unfortunately, the oven can’t mix up the batter for you, but maybe in a few years kitchen technology will make that an option. The cookies can be coaxed into an endless variety of shapes warm out of the oven—they can be curled over a rolling pin for traditional tuiles, wrapped around the handle of a wooden spoon into cigar-like tubes, or molded over the bottom of an overturned teacup into nifty cookie cups for holding ice cream. You’ll have to do that part yourself, too, but then again, why let your oven have all the fun?

Recipes aren’t written in stone, which is a good thing (literally speaking), because lifting a cookbook would be a Herculean chore, and because (figuratively speaking), I love to tinker with recipes and am always thinking of ways to improve them. Lemon has always been one of my favorite flavors of frozen yogurt, as I like things that are tart and tangy. But I often wondered how some commercial lemon ice creams and frozen yogurts got that extra zing that homemade batches lacked. The answer came to me when I was in an ethnic spice market and saw little bags of citric acid crystals. I brought some home and did a test, adding just a few granules to the frozen yogurt mix before churning. When I dug my spoon in, I realized with the first taste that I’d found exactly the flavor I was looking for.

Many consider the area behind the Gare du Nord in Paris rather dubious. Yes, it’s home to the Paris headquarters for the Hell’s Angels. But lots of amazing ethnic foods can also be found there, for which I’m happy to brave the bikers and travel a bit out of the way. Of the various cultures that have opened restaurants and grocers in that part of Paris, Indian is the most prominent. At night, the blue neon–illuminated stands of the Indian épiceries feature all sorts of odd-looking produce that remain a mystery to me. But I do know mangoes. During their season in late spring, I head to that neighborhood and buy them by the case. I use them in everything, from tropical fruit salads to mango daiquiris (which I’m sure aren’t as popular with the Hell’s Angels as they are with my crowd). But a few invariably get churned up into a batch of this sorbet, along with a basket of strawberries from my local market and a dash of rum, which even the gruffest biker couldn’t resist.

One late summer weekend, I was visiting a friend who lives in the wilds of Northern California, and I noticed lots of wild blackberry bushes with berries that were so plump and ripe that they were practically falling off the branches. I can never resist free food, so I set out for an afternoon of heavy picking. When I came back, my basket loaded down with fresh berries, my friend casually asked, “Did you see the rattlesnakes?” “Um . . . no, I . . . I didn’t,” I replied. Actually, I was really glad to have missed them. That incident didn’t quite scare me away from picking other types of fruits and berries, but I’ll let others risk their lives for blackberries, which I’ve been happy to plunk down money for ever since that day.

I was asked to do a frozen dessert demonstration on the Today show and figured it was going to be my big breakthrough. In my imagination, I would dazzle the media and viewers with my ability to make sorbet without an ice cream machine, catapulting my career into the culinary stratosphere. However, as soon as I pitted the first cherry, the host, Katie Couric, became fixated on my spring-loaded cherry pitter and challenged me to a cherry-pitting duel (I should have realized those who get to the top have a competitive streak). She insisted on using a paperclip, which I knew would put her at a disadvantage. Her method was slower than mine, but being a good guest, I let her win (which explains why I’m not at the top). And because of the nature of live morning television, we barely had time to get to the sorbet. In the end, she went on to make millions of dollars as a celebrity and I went home with my cherry pitter in my suitcase. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether to use a cherry pitter or a paperclip to pit your cherries for this sorbet. But you definitely won’t need an ice cream machine—the food processor is the machine for this frozen dessert.

I know you’re going to be tempted to use seedless watermelon here, but don’t. I’ve never tasted one that I particularly liked. And because I have a penchant for making things harder than they should be, I don’t mind plucking out the seeds. For some reason, the harder something is to make, the better it tastes. (And I wonder why I spend a majority of my life in the kitchen.) Don’t worry about using a fancy sake—inexpensive brands work really well in this recipe. And unless you read Japanese, you’re not likely to be able to ascertain the difference trying to read the labels at the store.

There’s nothing I like better than very, very cold Champagne. So cold that I usually drop a small ice cube into my glass to make sure it’s as chilled as possible. I always feared that it was offensive and crass to ice down Champagne until I went to a tasting of Krug Champagne, considered by many to be the finest of them all. I didn’t dare drop an ice cube into any of the glasses that were presented to me, but I did confide that I often did so to one of their experts, who surprised me by saying that it’s perfectly acceptable to put a bit of ice in Champagne for the very reason I do it. For this sorbet, you don’t need to use the finest French Champagne. In fact, I’ve made it successfully with Italian prosecco and Spanish cava—without offending anyone.

If you can’t decide whether to serve something chocolatey or fruity for dessert, this sorbet is for you (and your guests). It’s incredibly easy to make, and even people like me, who aren’t especially fond of chocolate and fruit combinations, will be won over.

Lots of people eat grapes out of hand, but they don’t quite know what else to do with them. Well, I do. I use them to make sorbet. Though seedless grapes are great for snacking, they’re the least flavorful varieties. If you’re lucky enough to live near a farmers’ market, or if you can get your hands on grapes that are good for wine making, like Chardonnay, Merlot, or Zinfandel, you’ll find they make the most amazing sorbets. I have a few older Jewish aunts who swear that Concord grapes make good wine (that comes in a square bottle). I’m not so convinced about the wine, but Concord grapes do, indeed, make one of my favorite sorbets.

In case anyone thinks that the Internet is a cold, impersonal place, I’ve got evidence to prove them wrong. One day, completely out of the blue, I received an e-mail from a server who worked at a restaurant where I’d been the pastry chef, saying that not only did I have the sweetest smile, but that she loved the sherbets and sorbets that I made there. I don’t know which compliment was more touching, but I take any and all whenever I can, and via whatever medium they are sent. This was one of the sherbets I made at that restaurant, where I remember a different server taking a bite and her face lighting right up. “This tastes like a Mounds bar!” she exclaimed with a mix of surprise and delight. For me, that was another compliment, since that’s one of my favorite candy bars.

When you live in San Francisco, it’s likely that at least 50 percent of your friends are real estate agents. One of my realtor friends is whippet-thin because he’s always watching what he eats. But he met his match with this frozen dessert. When he isn’t trying to talk me into buying or selling something, he talks about this gelato. People often ask about the difference between ice cream and gelato. As with most things Italian, it depends on whom you ask. But most people agree that gelato has a lower-fat base, which allows the flavors to shine through. This chocolate gelato has no cream and is proof of that theory. As is the waistline of a certain San Francisco realtor. This gelato is inspired by a recipe from Marcella Hazan.

If there’s anything better than a big, melty scoop of caramel ice cream, I don’t know what it could be. On second thought, I take that back. How about a big scoop of caramel ice doused with lots of warm chocolate sauce and sprinkled with toasted pecans? To make this ice cream the most perfect caramel ice cream you’ll ever eat, it’s crucial to cook the sugar until it’s dark amber in color and as close to—but just shy of—burnt as possible. I call it “taking it right to the edge.” I like the flavor of the ice cream made with the larger amount of salt, but because some people are salt sensitive, the recipe says to start with less, then taste the custard and add more if desired. No matter how long it’s frozen, this caramel ice cream stays scoopably soft, a big relief to those of us who are irked by homemade ice cream that freezes rock-solid and delays immediate gratification.

I definitely have obsessive-compulsive baking disorder. I’d hoped to recreate the classic gâteau de riz, a French cake made by baking rice pudding in a mold. I tried fourteen times. The first time I made it, it was perfect: custardy and topped with a deep-golden crust, the top and sides bathed with a slick of glossy, thick caramel. When I attempted to reproduce it, it came out completely different with each try. Flummoxed, I sent my recipe to a friend in California. She made it two or three times and each time she also had completely different results. After a transcontinental tossing up of our hands, in her last anxiety-ridden response she told me, “but right out of the pot, it was the best rice pudding I’ve ever had.” And when I made it again, for the fifteenth time, I realized she was right.

A few years back, I attended a class at a French pastry school that was, of course, taught by a French chef. If you’ve not worked with French chefs before, you quickly realize that to them, there’s one way to do things—and only one way. Our chef, for example, insisted on doing a cold infusion for tea, letting it steep in the refrigerator overnight. To prove his point, he steeped some tea in warm cream as well so we could later compare the results. The next day, when we had the tasting, there were muted murmurs amongst the students that we much preferred the warm infusion, but no one dared say anything to the chef. We just all nodded in agreement that the cold infusion tasted better. I still infuse tea in warm cream for custards because to me, the proof is in the pudding. Or, in this case, the crème brûlée.

This tart exemplifies what the French do best: combine just a few top-quality ingredients, doing as little to them as possible. Ganache is a mélange of cream and chocolate, reportedly named after a young baker who accidentally spilled some cream into the chocolate the chef was melting. The chef called him a ganache, which is slang for “idiot,” but when he stirred in the cream, they realized the mistake was probably one of the most brilliant things to ever happen to chocolate.

Not all gelatin desserts are squidgy, old-fashioned jelled rings studded with oversweetened canned fruits. Take this thoroughly modern dessert, for example. You’ll see why it won top honors from a national food magazine that called it one of the “Top Ten Desserts of All Time.”