American

My mother’s version of this juicy pan-fried steak came from her grease-marked kitchen bible, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child. The classic bistro sauce is made by sautéing minced shallots in the same pan as the steak, adding a generous amount of red wine, and finishing it with butter and parsley. Although I love the smoky flavor of the grill, nothing gives the meat a better crust than a very hot cast-iron pan. And if you’re planning on making a pan sauce, those crispy bits left behind by the steak will give it a deep, meaty flavor. But remember to get the pan super-hot and smoking before cooking the steaks. You might have to disconnect your smoke alarm temporarily, but it’s worth it.

I have a well-deserved reputation as an olive oil junkie. I use olive oil in most dishes, and not with a light hand. When my regular customers saw this dessert on the menu, they thought I’d gone too far—until they tasted it. The oil takes the place of butter and makes for an incredibly moist crumb. It’s delicious with candied oranges and whipped cream, or by itself in the afternoon with a cup of tea. Or if you’re a chocolate lover, try a slice drizzled with the chocolate sauce from the ,meringues recipe on pages 159–160.

A variety of cheeses work in this salad, but I particularly love St. Agur, a triple-crème French cow’s milk blue cheese. Its pungent and intense blue flavor is balanced by an unusually creamy and sensuous texture. When shaved into long thin ribbons, the cheese is elegant on the plate and delicate on the palate. To make thin ribbons, I use an old-fashioned cheese pull, a wide metal spatula-shaped utensil with a slotted blade in the center. Pears and cheese are always happy companions, so if you can’t find St. Agur choose another blue, or seek out a good sheep’s milk cheese, such as a Roncal, Manchego, or pecorino. We’ve had more than one customer order this salad as dessert, so you decide where it falls in the meal.

The clafoutis was invented in Limousin, France, to showcase that region’s famous cherries. Some compare the eggy consistency of clafoutis to flan, as it’s neither cake nor custard. To me, it’s more like an extra-thick crêpe dotted with fruit. Clafoutis puffs beautifully as it bakes, and hot out of the oven, it’s crisp on the outside and airy in the middle. When chilled, however, it collapses, becoming dense and custardlike. I love it both ways. One of the great aspects of clafoutis is its versatility. Once you know how to make the batter, you can make great desserts with it year-round. At Lucques, we’ve made clafoutis with sautéed apples in the winter and with berries in the summer. For the fall, I like a clafoutis featuring that indigenous American jewel, the cranberry. This dessert is delicious as is, but if you want to gild the lily, serve it with a dollop of bourbon-spiked whipped cream.

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 is not your mild-mannered pork chop! The pork porterhouse is two cuts of meat in one—just like its better-known cousin the beef porterhouse. From the short loin of the pig, the pork porterhouse (porkerhouse?) consists of the soft, luscious tenderloin on one side of the bone and the meatier loin on the other. The classic American accompaniment to pork is, of course, apples. But in place of the traditional applesauce, I like to serve these hefty chops with the time-honored duo of apples and potatoes. Called deux pommes, or two apples—one from a tree and one from the earth—the two are sautéed together until crispy and golden brown. To show off more of fall’s cornucopia, I’ve added quince, “Eve’s apple,” to the mix. Slathering the chops with quince jam (membrillo in Spanish cuisine, cotognata in Italian) is a sophisticated nod back to that applesauce. Be sure to cut the quince, apples, and potatoes into similar-sized pieces, so when they’re cooked they all look the same. The mystery is part of the fun; there’s no telling which bite will be which pomme.

Pastry chef Kimberly Sklar came up with this walnut wedge as the ultimate accompaniment to the thick, creamy date shake. It tastes like the best part of a perfectly made pecan pie—toasty crisp nuts suspended in a chewy, buttery caramel. Since this “pie” doesn’t have a crust, make sure to bake it long enough that it holds its shape when you slice it.

This recipe is in honor of Hadley Fruit Orchards, a legendary stop on the way to Palm Springs where “ice cold date shakes” have been soothing weary and overheated drivers on Route 10 for years.

Shell beans are a big part of late summer and early fall in our kitchen. If you happen to come by Lucques on a slow night when they’re in season, you’ll see runners, cooks, and dishwashers gathered around huge piles of shell beans, shucking, shucking, shucking. For me, shucking provides a much-needed period when my hands can do the work and my brain takes a little time off. Don’t worry, shell beans for six won’t require a crew of shuckers.

Dates were always part of the December onslaught of gifts for my father from his patients. Packages of dried fruit would arrive with bottles of booze, crates of Hickory Farms smoked meats and cheeses, and boxes of C. C. Brown’s pecan turtles. Once my sister and I had made our way through all the other edible gifts, our sugar-dazed eyes would turn toward that untouched wicker tray of shrink-wrapped dried fruit. After one bite of those rock-hard dates covered in shredded coconut, we were convinced that dates were inedible. It wasn’t until my late twenties, when I moved back to Los Angeles, that I gave dates another chance. It didn’t seem right that something so prominent in the local landscape was absent from my culinary landscape. With date farmers at every turn, I broke down and tried a date. Soft, chewy, and rich, this was definitely not the date of my childhood. I embraced my newfound love with a vengeance, sampling all the different varieties. Now I can’t imagine life without dates. For this tart I like Deglet Noors, which have a pleasing chewiness without the cloying sweetness of some other varieties. If you can’t find Deglet Noors, you can use another variety; just make sure the dates are plump and supple. (See Sources for my favorite date farmers who ship across the country.)

This dish was inspired by one of my favorite Italian meals, bistecca fiorentina, a huge, rare grilled steak dressed simply with salt and lemon juice. Instead of the traditional T-bone steak served in a Tuscan ristorante, I opted for tri-tip, a less expensive but super-flavorful cut from the triangular end of the sirloin, popular in the central coast region of California.

This grilled pork confit evolved one night when I was making a staff meal at Lucques. I salvaged the leftover ends and trimmings from the day’s pork confit, crisped them in my favorite cast-iron pan, and ran to the walk-in to see what produce I could find to add to the dish. When I got back to the stove, I noticed half the meat was missing. Looking around, I saw that all the cooks had their heads down, suspiciously quiet. Half of my staff meal had disappeared, but I couldn’t be angry. Who can resist succulent pork, hot and crispy, out of the pan? Something so irresistible deserved to be shared with the outside world, so I put this staff meal on the menu!

Maine has lobster and Maryland has soft-shell crabs, but the prize shellfish of Southern California is the Santa Barbara spot prawn. Spot prawns have a softer texture than most shrimp and are best when cooked in their shells, heads on. As the shrimp shells caramelize in the pan, they leave behind crispy bits that infuse the sauce with a rich shellfish flavor. Besides, they’re fun to eat out of the shell, and they make for a beautiful and dramatic presentation. Serve the spot prawns with salt and lemon and a big hunk of crusty bread. This is a messy feast, so choose guests who will enjoy participating in such a primal feeding frenzy.

This early fall medley was made famous by the legendary Richard Olney, whose books brought the south of France to kitchens all over the globe. In his recipe, the prosciutto is julienned, scattered over figs, and drizzled with a crushed-mint cream. In this version, I add melon, and instead of thin strands of prosciutto, I drape whole slices around the fruit to create a layered antipasto. There’s no right or wrong type of fig for this dish; as long as they’re super-ripe, luscious, and oozing, they’ll work beautifully. If you have the luxury of choosing more than one variety of fig, such as Genoa, Adriatic, or Honey, this is a spectacular way to show them off. The same rules apply for the melon: just pick the sweetest, most perfumed one you can find.

Part of what makes these marinated peppers and eggplant so delicious is the involved process they go through to get to their seemingly simple final state. In her book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Judy Rodgers suggests that the chef’s eternal quest is to make the simplest process more difficult: “Stop, think, there must be a harder way,” she writes. There are easier ways to make peppers and eggplant, but once you taste this version, it’s hard to go back. If you like, make them the day before and let the vegetables marinate overnight.

The first tarte Tatin was accidentally invented by the Tatin sisters in France, when their apple tart somehow went into the oven without its bottom crust. The sisters resourcefully laced the forgotten dough on top instead and let the tart finish baking. Once it was out of the oven, they inverted the tart to cover up their mistake. I’m sure they had no idea of the sensation that their sweet mishap would unleash. Unable to leave well enough alone, pesky chefs like me love to play with variations on the classic caramelized upside-down apple tart. In this summer version, I’ve replaced the apples with plums. The plums give off more juice than apples, which makes working with them a little trickier. To compensate for this, I toss the plums in sugar to help draw out some of their juices and then cook them on the stove with butter and sugar, creating a delicious “plum caramel.”

My father hated salad. I remember him saying, “The only salad worth eating is one with green beans and foie gras, because it’s not all mucked up with lettuce.” And yet, somehow, I grew to love salads, especially the kind with leafy greens. This lettuce-free, classic steakhouse salad, made with first-of-the-season Early Girl tomatoes, sweet young red onions, and slabs of potent Roquefort, is a tribute to my dad, who I know would approve.

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.

Every year, we celebrate the heart of summer with a Sunday barbecue feast at Lucques. This annual tradition always includes at least four different barbecued meats, baked beans, long-cooked greens, grilled cornbread, and former Lucques chef Rob Chalmers’s infamous coleslaw. The first year he made it, he miscalculated “slightly” and made enough for about six hundred people! It became a running joke to tease Rob about his coleslaw, and for about a year after the barbecue, the servers and busboys used to greet every staff meal with the predictable, “What, no coleslaw?” Here is a manageable-sized recipe for Rob’s light, crunchy, and always satisfying slaw.

My cooks sometimes refer to Lucques as the “house of pork.” I use pork often and in every form I can think of—marinated, brined, grilled, sautéed, confited, braised, ground into sausage or forcemeat, wrapped around fish or poultry, as a seasoning or an appetizer or a complete main course. This recipe is proof: with three kinds of pork packed into one dish, it’s a regular porkapalooza. These burgers completely satisfy my frequent pork cravings, and I think they’ll take care of yours, too. After all, few cultures appreciate pork better than the Latin ones, and these burgers pay homage to that culinary love. And it’s some spicy, decadent homage, too: Mexican chorizo, Spanish romesco, and the coup de grâce, a slice of melted Manchego on top. Do not be afraid to cook these burgers only until pink in the middle, when they are still juicy and delicious. Not only are all dangerous pork parasites killed at 137°F (long before the last pink disappears), but those organisms have been nearly eliminated from modern pork farming, so the risk is extremely low even from completely raw pork.