Cognac

My grandmother used to take whatever extra livers we had—calf, chicken, goose—and cook them with bacon and a splash of Cognac. She chopped the mixture with a mezzaluna, creating a rustic spread. I swap pancetta for the bacon and puree the mixture in a food processor to create a creamy mousse.

These leaf-shaped chrusciki (khroost-CHEE-kee) are adapted from Martha’s mother’s classic Polish recipe. The dough is kneaded for a while, to incorporate lots of air into it and keep the finished cookies light and delicate. If you’re storing fried cookies, wait until just before serving to dust them with confectioners’ sugar.

Zarzuela—the word means “medley” in Spanish—unites a variety of fish and is, like bouillabaisse, a dish whose ingredients can be varied according to what you can find. The traditional sauce accompaniment for Zarzuela is Romesco (page 606), but the variation makes that superfluous. I love this with crusty bread.

This recipe was found in a handwritten Swedish cookbook, dated about 1864, belonging to Countess Frida Af Trampe. This was said to be her favorite cookie. Ingrid Albertzon Parker, who is Swedish, took the time to translate this recipe into American measurements. I had the pleasure of having Ingrid come into my kitchen one afternoon to teach me the art of making these buttery little morsels. They are really very simple to make. The optional Cognac and shaved chocolate were added by Ingrid.

In my mom’s saigon kitchen, the food processor, a modern luxury appliance, was reserved for making giò, while the old-fashioned hand-crank meat grinder was used for delicious liver pâtés like this one. We regularly enjoyed it, tucked into bánh mì or simply smeared on a baguette slice. In the traditional Viet interpretation of French paté, pork or beef liver, pork meat, and fatback are seasoned with lots of garlic and sometimes Cognac and Chinese five-spice powder (a substitute for French quatre épices). Some cooks add tapioca starch or flour as a binder, and, when available, they line the mold with caul fat for encasing the meat mixture. The paté is then steamed, steamed and baked, or baked in a water bath, the method usually depending on whether or not the cook has an oven. When my mother came to the States and switched from pork to chicken for making giò, she began saving the left over livers for this light, elegant pâté. She also started making the pâté in a food processor. If you want a more intense liver flavor, use half pork and half chicken liver, or make an all-pork version, cutting the liver into 1-inch cubes before processing. Don’t skimp on fat, or the results will be dry and tough. Meat today tends to be lean, and this recipe needs the fat to achieve the right taste and texture. You will end up with a large pâté—the better to impress others with your efforts.

Imagine strolling home along the long dusty road after a hard day in the fields. At the crossroads you encounter a gaggle of tow-haired youngsters sitting at a card table. “Sidecar, mister?” they shout. The sidecar is a lemonade drink for grown-ups. A touch of salt opens up the entire experience, makes it restorative. Citrus playing tag with sugar, chilled juice teeter-tottering with warming alcohol, the entire drink alloyed with salt’s wisdom and captured beautifully in a glass of coppery liquid.

This recipe was found in a handwritten Swedish cookbook, dated about 1864, belonging to Countess Frida Af Trampe. This was said to be her favorite cookie. Ingrid Albertzon Parker, who is Swedish, took the time to translate this recipe into American measurements. I had the pleasure of having Ingrid come into my kitchen one afternoon to teach me the art of making these buttery little morsels. They are really very simple to make. The optional Cognac and shaved chocolate were added by Ingrid.

Maybe I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. When I visited the Chartreuse distillery in the French Alps, our guide told us that the exact recipe for the famed herbal liqueur was a closely guarded secret, known only by three brothers who worked at the monastery. Astounded, I spoke up. “Wow, that’s incredible. What is the likelihood of three brothers going into the same business together, as well as becoming monks at the same monastery?” The other guests on the tour simply stopped and looked at me with their mouths slightly agape. Then our guide enlightened me and we moved on, but not before I overheard a few hushed conversations evaluating my intellect. This is a very light ice cream, and it’s so simple that anyone, regardless of their intelligence level, can easily put it together.

I finally understand the allure of milk chocolate. While writing a book exploring the world of chocolate, I became determined to get over my skepticism, and I taste-tested as many milk chocolates as I could. Yes, it was tough work, but I felt compelled to do it. I became a convert after sampling premium milk chocolates made with a high percentage of cocoa solids, and a whole new world opened up to me. Mixing in cocoa nibs adds a crunchy counterpoint to this milky-smooth ice cream. I like biting into the little bits of pure, unadulterated chocolate, but I’ve made them optional, since you may not have them readily available (you can substitute chocolate chips). But once you taste a few, you’ll find yourself adding them to chocolate desserts all the time, like I do. (See Resources, page 237, for online sources.)

For those who like their chocolate sauce rich and thick, this sauce has more body than the Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce (page 243), courtesy of a modest amount of cream. It is particularly appealing when served side by side or gently swirled with White Chocolate Sauce (below) as an accompaniment to wedges of chocolate cake.

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.

Of all the cakes in the flourless genre, this Gâteau Victoire has the most marvelously creamy texture. Once baked, it’s so velvety moist that I recommend you cut it with a length of dental floss instead of a knife—even at the risk of getting some funny looks from your dinner guests who might think that you’re preparing to brush your teeth and call it a night.

Warm, boozy cherries over ice cream is a classic dessert, and it’s so easy to do. We like ours over chocolate ice cream (but when Bobby doesn’t quite have the energy to make this, you know he’s always got Cherry Garcia in the freezer).

Call this a new Old-Fashioned. I replace the dated syrupy orange liqueur with fresh agave, which is essentially a citrus-type honey grown in the arid hillsides of Mexico.

A good recipe for chicken liver pâté is critical. This is not your grandmother’s chopped liver; my version is supremely silky and light, with a hint of brandy. The chicken liver as well as the crostini toasts can easily be made a day ahead: refrigerate the liver, pressing plastic wrap directly on the surface, and store the crostini in an airtight container.

The fried onions in this recipe are sliced very thin and coated with flour to make them crisp. We wanted them to be a bit tart, but the more customary buttermilk just didn’t take the onions where we wanted them to go. So we first soak the onions in vinegar, then flour and fry them; this way they have the acidity we were after. (Think salt-and-vinegar potato chips.) The radish salad adds some heat to the equation, balancing the ensemble.

Fresh sour cherries are best, but you can also make this recipe with frozen morello cherries. These cherries will keep in the refrigerator for several months and are fantastic spooned over ice cream or a simple cake or even dropped into a glass of champagne with a little of their syrup.

Here is a silky and easy-to-make chocolate glaze. It creates a thin layer of satiny chocolate for cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, and pound cake. The quality of the ingredients really counts in this one—use your best chocolate and butter!

At the moment chocolate melts together with cream, butter, and vanilla, the senses awaken. Taste and texture are the stars of this warm, drippy dessert. For a gourmet add-on, make your own cookies to dip in the fondue.

Gina: Oh boy. When I realized the importance of Strawberry Shortcut Cake to the Neely boys, I knew I had to get baking and learn this recipe! The first step was getting permission from Momma Neely to make the cake. Let’s just say baking the cake was the easy part! Momma Neely always brought this cake to our house on special occasions. Didn’t matter if the occasion was a birthday, a graduation, or a good report card. It got to the point where our girls would say, “I need to call Grandma Neely and tell her about my report card so she can bring me some shortcut cake.” I like to call it a shortcut cake because we use a boxed mix. But no one will ever be able to tell when you serve it.

This rich French sauce made of pepper, Cognac, and cream is traditionally served on steak, but it’s equally good on pork or salmon. Instead of cream, this version is given body and richness with cornstarch-thickened evaporated milk.

The elegant Gilbert Simon invited me for tea in her beautiful apartment in Nîmes, a city in the south of France dating back to the Roman Empire. Born in Lyon, Madame Simon, who is in her late eighties, married a Jewish “Nîmois” whom she met at a dance. But then the Nazis came in 1942 and started taking Jewish families away. “We left before they could find us,” she told me. “They were searching for my husband because he was a doctor here, working in the Resistance.” When they left Nîmes, the Simons hid in the mountains. “We found a house to live in with our two little girls. The peasants sold us vegetables; sometimes they killed a lamb; they brought us cheese and butter. When we returned to Nîmes, it was very difficult. There were not very many Jews left.” Today the majority of Jews are Sephardic, having immigrated to Nîmes in the 1960s from North Africa. Thinking back to happier and more prosperous times, this is the pâté she made through the years for her own family on Friday nights and the holidays, as well as for Jewish students who stayed with her while studying in Nîmes or nearby Aix-en-Provence.