Quick

A beautiful soft-boiled egg, warm and served from its shell, perhaps with crisp fingers of buttered toast, is enough to make the heavens sing. We have been lucky enough to experience different versions of this egg at Per Se, Elements in Princeton, and Momofuku Ko. Each preparation and presentation inspired us and raised the question of how to consistently prepare and serve this elusive culinary delight. Alex began by weighing our eggs to see if all large eggs were the same size. They were close, with about a two-gram differential in our sample. We bought a pot of water to a boil and added the eggs. We cooked the eggs for five minutes and fifteen seconds in gently boiling water and then placed them in an ice bath. The eggs were cooked the way we wanted them and were relatively easy to peel. It may seem finicky to specify a cooking time in minutes and seconds but the devil is in the details. Deciding which details are important and paying attention to them is essential to consistent cookery.

As long as there is starter on your counter, you can make sourdough waffles. These are an admirable way to start the day. Sourdough waffles are extremely light and crisp. They tend to soak up that butter and maple syrup as though they were meant for each other, while their distinctive tang helps balance the sugar and fat. Adding some crunchy bacon bits to the batter takes them up another notch. They make a wonderful base for fruit and ice cream sundaes, topped with chunks of fresh strawberries and bananas and creamy vanilla ice cream. If you want to try something different, serve sourdough waffles under poached eggs, crisp bacon, and hollandaise—it’s the breakfast of champions in our house.

We love the complex flavors of this puree. We like to serve it with the Twice-Cooked Scallops (page 25). It also goes well with salmon, turkey, corned beef, and the Root Beer–Braised Short Ribs (page 226). The smokiness gives the mixture a rich meaty taste and enhances the sweetness of the dried fruits. Rest assured, though—even if you don’t have smoked fruits, you can use the regular dried version and still enjoy something special.

We love the balance of salt, sugar, and pepper with the intense savory flavor of meat. Although we dubbed this Beef Seasoning, we use it on anything and everything, from hot smoked salmon to grilled eggplant, when we feel it’s appropriate. It’s a wonderfully balanced seasoning that brings out the inherent savoriness in food. We’re not afraid to substitute different peppers either. Togarishi, a Japanese pepper blend, hot smoked paprika, green chile powder, and harissa powder can add subtle nuances to the finished blend. What’s important when choosing your pepper is making sure it’s one you feel passionate about.

The original Soufflé Rothschild, created for James Rothschild by Antonin Carême, was a baked soufflé embellished with gold leaf. Since then, there have been all kinds of “Rothschild” soufflés, salads, and other dishes— the name is used to denote extravagance or richness. This frozen soufflé Rothschild was conceived by the famous pastry chef Gaston Le Nôtre, for a grand dinner at the home of one of the Rothschilds. It was served to me at a dinner party in Paris, and is one of the most delicious desserts I have ever tasted. Neither an ice cream nor a sorbet, it is technically a bavaroise glacée, a frozen parfait based on eggs and cream. The best part of this recipe is that it is quite quick to make. Just watch— your guests will sneak back for seconds and thirds!

No large sign—just a plaque next to a simple security button—tells you that this is the gate to a simple building housing the Cercle Bernard Lazare. The center was named in memory of Bernard Lazare, who, during the Dreyfus Affair, was a left-wing literary critic, anarchist, Zionist, and newspaper editor. He bravely defended Captain Dreyfus, and won over Jewish artists such as Camille Pissarro to the cause. The center sponsors Jewish cultural events, choosing not to advertise its location because of previous anti-Semitic attacks. When I entered this very bare-boned building, it was full of activity. Jeanine Franier came out of the kitchen to greet me, bringing along a waft of the delicious aromas from her oven. Every Thursday, before the center’s weekly lectures, she cooks. She believes that people listen to lecturers more attentively if they know a little food will be served. Regardless of what her staff cooks as a main course, this cheesecake from her Polish past is served for dessert. It has become an integral part of the lectures, and was published in the Cercle’s cookbook, called Quand Nos Boubés Font la Cuisine (When Grandmothers Cook), which she wrote in part as a fund-raising device, in part as a way of preserving a culture that is rapidly being forgotten. The cheesecake reminds me of many I ate all over France, including the one at Finkelsztajn’s Delicatessen in Paris. It tastes clearly of its delicate component parts, unlike the creamy block of cheesecake with a graham-cracker crust we find in the United States.

This is one of the recipes that show how Jews have adapted a local French dish to conform to their dietary laws. Though often sautéed with lardons, braised endives are also frequently served without the bacon in Jewish homes in France, as a first course or as a vegetable side 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.

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.

Visiting the marketplace of Carpentras, near Avignon, we almost missed the synagogue, the oldest still-functioning one in France, dating back to 1367 and renovated in the eighteenth century. The façade, like that of all synagogues in France, was nondescript, whereas inside it was a jewel box of eighteenth-century Greek Corinthian columns, and all around, the interior was decorated in rose, green, blue, and yellow. As in the synagogue in nearby Cavaillon, the rabbi’s pulpit was perched upstairs, above the congregants. “In 1358, the provincial town of Carpentras was known as La Petite Jérusalem,” Jennie Lévy told us during a tour. “A yellow cloth on their coats and on the women’s bonnets indicated that they were Jewish.” Today about eighty Jewish families live in Carpentras and the surrounding area, most of them emigrants from Morocco. Madame Lévy, who came from Safi, Morocco, in 1964, showed me the basement, which has a mikveh (ritual bath), fed by a natural spring, and an oven used for baking Sabbath bread, as well as another for matzo. As I listened to Madame Lévy’s eloquent history of this French synagogue, I was aware again of how Sephardic Jews are rekindling Jewish life in France. Since it was on Friday when we visited, Madame Lévy was anxious to go home to prepare her Sabbath dinner of vegetable soup, meatballs, and sautéed red peppers and haricots verts, the thin French green beans that are so absolutely delicious.

The French are crazy about seasonal vegetables, and particularly, I am happy to say, about fennel. A flavoring that is mentioned in the Mishnah around 200 C.E., fennel is used in both sweet and savory preparations. This particular dish was served as an accompaniment to fish with beurre-blanc sauce at a Bat Mitzvah that I attended in Geneva. I especially like its intense, sharp flavor.

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.

Mathias Laurent, the cook in his family, makes this simple dish for his children in his sleek kitchen. With leftovers, he adds lots of Comté cheese. You can use any grated cheese you like.

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.

Bottarga, dried mullet roe, is absolutely delicious grated and sliced in thin strips in this simple spaghetti dish with harissa and tiny Tunisian beldi (meaning traditionally produced) preserved lemons. Marc Berrebi, an entrepreneur and food hobbyist who makes this dish that originated in his native Tunisia but is influenced by Italy, says, “It is interesting to taste the melding of three strong ingredients: preserved lemon, harissa, and bottarga in small quantities.” Bottarga is also available at bottarga.net or koskas-fils.com.

People often ask me what kind of latkes were eaten before potatoes came to the Old World from the New. This onion pancake gives us a taste of that past. Buckwheat, called farine aux Sarrazins or blé noir in French, is used for this recipe. Although rendered goose fat was traditionally the oil used in Alsace and elsewhere in Europe, oils made from safflower, walnuts, and other nuts and seeds were also used, probably pressed by the farmers who brought them to markets where they were sold. The recipe, although attributed as Alsatian in one cookbook, is clearly from eastern Europe, as the word “gretchenes” means buckwheat in Polish.

These days, there are all sorts of packaged Passover cereals and baked goods, even in France. But every Jewish family has a Passover breakfast dish to break the monotony of matzo and butter. I like this typically French omelet, served as is or sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Bosc pears and Italian blue plums (dried for use in the winter) are fruits that were most often put into kugel. This very old Alsatian Sabbath kugel uses leftover bread that is soaked in water, squeezed to remove any excess moisture, and then mixed with the dried or fresh fruit and left to stew in the oven overnight. Some, like this version, include onions, which add a savory dimension to the sweetness of the fruit and the dough. I love this dish, which I serve in my home for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath as a side dish with brisket.

If anything is typical of Alsace, it is tarte flambée, a pizzalike flat bread covered with runny white and tangy cheese (a thin mixture of farmer’s cheese, crème fraîche, heavy cream, and fromage blanc or Gruyère, depending on your preference) and a sprinkling of diced onions and lardons. Dating back hundreds of years, tarte flambée is served everywhere in Alsace, with connoisseurs arguing about their favorite versions. In the old days, the farmers would take leftover bread dough, roll it out paperthin, spread some heavy cream mixed with egg over it, scatter some lardons or ham and onions on top, put it in a hot, wood-burning oven, and—voilà!—dinner was ready. The tradition still stands today, and tarte flambée is particularly enjoyed accompanied by a green salad as a simple Sunday night dinner. At the end of a late Sunday afternoon in April, I was driving Yves Alexandre, a traveling salesman who loves to cook, near fields resplendent with signs of spring—white asparagus and rhubarb, and yellow rapeseed flowers (more commonly known in the United States as the flowers that produce canola). We stopped at Le Marronnier, a charming winstub in Stutzheim, a little town about ten miles from Strasbourg. It was here that I tasted my first tarte flambée. Most of the patrons were seated at outdoor tables in the cobblestoned courtyard with wisteria climbing over the brick walls. A marronnier, a sprawling chestnut tree, stood smack in the center of the patio. “You have to eat the tart hot,” Yves told me as tarts were being rushed to tables near us. The two Mauritian tarte-flambée bakers make a few hundred every Sunday, with a topping of farmer’s cheese and crème fraîche. This Jewish version, with leftover challah dough as a base, of course omits the ham or bacon. At Passover, Yves told me, some Alsatian Jews use matzo for their Sunday night tarte flambée.

This typical Alsatian mustard sauce is served with pickled or smoked tongue or pickel-fleisch; it has been eaten with fresh and salted meat or fresh and dried fish for centuries by the northern Jewish communities in France.