Food Processor

A simple-to-make and delectable little paste with which to dress just-cooked pasta, to spoon into vegetable soups, to thin with milk or vegetable stock into, itself, a fine soup, to stuff into fat, ripe tomatoes, to present alongside roasted meat or fish, to spread on great chunks of olive-oil-toasted bread, to eat with a spoon while waiting for bread to bake.

...in the style of Nereto. An old Longobard town in the north of Abruzzo’s province of Teramo, Nereto grows walnuts and breeds turkeys. And when the turkeys grow fat on the walnuts, their just-dressed flesh, roasted with aromatics, indeed tastes of the sweet, smoky nuts. A classic dish for Christmas there, I fix it for our Tuscan version of Thanksgiving. And because our local turkeys, as is likely the case with yours, do not feed on walnuts, I gift the bird with a luscious paste of them smoothed under the skin of its breast. I like the Neretese-inspired turkey infinitely better than the more famous tacchino alla Canzanese, turkey in the manner of Canzano, which typically asks that the bird be relieved of his bones and poached with a calf’s foot and knuckle, then cooled and presented in its jellied broth.

This is a substantial soup classically made from fresh fava beans and a dried sort of bean/pea hybrid called la cicerchia, whose taste and texture are very like that of the fava when it is dried. This version, asking only for the dried favas since la cicerchia is not readily found in America, yields a rich, smoky flavor that is wonderful against the comfort of the warm crunch of the bread.

The cooling green tint of the sauce, its reserved, sensual sort of piquancy, make this a pasta good for high-summer lunch or supper after insalata di cantalupo (see page 22).

Give me almost any combination of toppings, and I’ll turn them into a delicious savory tart. The formula is always the same: the crispy, buttery puff pastry crust; a creamy base of ricotta and crème fraîche; a layer of oozing, usually pungent cheese; and then, of course, the topping. In this case, I sauté an array of winter wild mushrooms until they’re tender, chewy, and still a little crisp. Since they seem to make everything taste better, I can’t resist tossing in a few handfuls of sweet young onions with their spicy green tops. As they all bake together, their flavors unite into this decadent and sophisticated “pizza.”

Many people associate particular years of their childhood with the television shows they watched or the sports they played. In my family, intervals of time were marked by food. The break between third and fourth grade was the summer of crêpes. My parents had just returned from a trip to Brittany, and my mother was determined to re-create the handiwork of their famous crêperies. I got on the crêpe bandwagon, too, and borrowed her Teflon-coated electric skillet on the weekends. While my sister entertained all the neighborhood kids in the pool, I set up my backyard crêpe stand and spent the afternoon flipping and filling to the sounds of “Marco . . . Polo . . . Marco. . . .” These lemon-hazelnut crêpes are a little more refined than those childhood concoctions (banana-chocolate was my specialty in those days!), but they still remind me of those joyful afternoons in my makeshift crêperie.

Lucques had been open only a few months when we were asked to host an Alsatian wine dinner. Working on the menu reminded me of a road trip I had taken many years before through that northeastern region of France. With a corkscrew in the glove compartment and a stinky wheel of Muenster tucked away in the backseat, my boyfriend and I tooled around the picturesque Alsatian countryside. We lived for a few days on tall glasses of Hefeweizen—golden, unfiltered wheat beer always served with a slice of lemon—and on wedges of Flammeküche, warm, cheesy bacon-onion tarts. I made this version of that traditional tart for our wine dinner.

Sometimes, in the middle of fall, usually just before Thanksgiving, it hits me: A desperate craving for pumpkin pie. One year, after a few days of my whining and hinting, pastry chef Roxana Jullapat came up with this delicious cake to shut me up. As comforting as that classic American pie but even better, Roxana’s pumpkin cake was super moist and infused with the spicy flavors of fall. And, knowing my love of all things crunchy, nutty, and salty, Roxana topped the cake with a generous layer of crispy pecan streusel. Though pumpkins have an esteemed place in our childhood memories, they actually aren’t very good to cook with—they’re often watery and usually lacking in flavor and sweetness—so we make our “pumpkin” cake with Kabocha or butternut squash instead. “Winter squash cake” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

This exotic spiced snapper dish evolved from the most mundane ingredient in the mix: the everyday carrot. But the carrots that inspired it, grown by local farmer Jerry Rutiz, are by no means ordinary. His funky-shaped, dirt-encrusted carrots are the sweetest and most delicious of any I’ve tasted. One week at Lucques, we found ourselves with an abundance of Jerry’s carrots. I ended up making a big batch of carrot soup for the staff, just to get the carrots out of the walk-in refrigerator. The result was so delicious that I had to find more ways to show off these remarkable roots. Caramelized and puréed with onion and cilantro, they are the perfect foil for this harissa-spiced snapper topped with gingered beets and lime salsa.

This fiery North African condiment is a Lucques favorite.

This dish was inspired by a trip to Tunisia a few years ago. I fell in love with the Tunisian cooks’ use of spices and the bowls of harissa served with every meal. What surprised me most was the use of caraway, which I had always thought of as an Eastern European spice. For this Tunisian-flavored stew, I season the lamb shoulder overnight with caraway, coriander, chiles, cayenne, and paprika, and then braise it in an aromatic broth with cinnamon and allspice. For a traditional braise I usually deglaze with wine, but in keeping with Muslim prohibitions common in Tunisia, I refrain and substitute lemon juice, which also adds a bright, acidic note to the stew.

This dish takes me back to Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island in the Mediterranean, situated between North Africa and Sicily. Undeveloped and relatively untouched by the modern world, the island is famous for two things: the caper bushes that dominate the dry, brush-covered hillsides of the rocky coast, and resident Giorgio Armani. My husband and I spent a magical week in that salt-drenched haven, eating grilled, freshly caught tuna; bowls of couscous; and salads of tomatoes, potatoes, and capers. The grilled tuna and the combination of tomatoes and potatoes in this dish are a tribute to those leisurely days on Pantelleria. And though rouille isn’t part of their Moorish-meets-Italian culinary lexicon, I’m sure the Pantellerians would love this saffron-tinted, spicy pepper mayonnaise.

At Lucques, we search out the heirloom varieties of corn, available all summer long from our local farmers’ markets. This soup is spiced with jalapeño and cilantro and topped with avocado cream and lime. The key to its silky texture is blending it long enough at high speed and adding enough liquid to achieve the consistency of heavy cream. Although customers swear this rich soup must have cream in it, the only cream you’ll find is in the topping that garnishes the soup: a delicious purée of avocado, crème fraîche, and lime juice.

While living in Rhode Island and working at Al Forno, I was fascinated by the celebrations that revolved around food (especially in the Italian and Portuguese neighborhoods) and the connection Rhode Islanders felt to certain local produce, like their native tomatoes and homegrown corn. The most prized dish in tiny Rhode Island is the johnnycake. Originally called journey cakes, these cornmeal griddle cakes, made with locally milled native corn, have been the pride and joy of Rhode Island since the seventeenth century. County competitions are held annually, and there’s even a group called the Society for the Propagation of Johnny Cakes that sees to it that their corn-pancake tradition stays alive and well. So it seemed natural at Al Forno to add that famous stone-ground corn to our shortcake biscuit. Here I’ve borrowed Al Forno’s foolproof recipe and added peaches and my own “soured cream.” To get the peaches nice and saucy, I marinate them in simple syrup with mint and then purée a portion of the fruit to spoon over the biscuit. Feel free to make this shortcake with whatever juicy fruit you like, such as nectarines or berries. The biscuit recipe makes about eight in all. So don’t worry when you notice one or two mysteriously missing after they’re pulled from the hot oven and left to cool on the counter; you’ll still have enough to feed six.