Beverages

Flavor pairing comes naturally when using products that come from the same region, and Lakewood’s assistant winemaker, John Damian, developed this recipe to prove it. The secret to a chicken dish that he guarantees will awaken sleeping taste buds is the combination of fragrant, flavorful local peaches and just enough residual sugar in the wine to give the marinade a lift.

Cabernet Franc, with origins in the Bordeaux region of France, is rapidly gaining recognition as a definitive Finger Lakes red. The wine’s dark fruit and spice act as liaison between the tomato/garlic flavors and the earthy mushrooms.

Cayuga White is an easy-to-like, food-friendly wine, unique to the Finger Lakes region. Joyce Hunt was inspired by the Riesling-like characters in her family’s Cayuga, and she developed a German-inspired dish to match the local wine.

In Quebec, only two real game meats can be legally sold, caribou from the great north and hare snared in the winter. The taste of these meats is surprising at first, the incarnation of the word “gamey,” but like truffles or blue cheese, it becomes what you crave. Many little classic Parisian restaurants offer this dish in season, and there are as many ways to cook it as there are chefs. The basics are wild hare (lièvre), red wine, shallots, thyme, and garlic. The rest can vary. At Joe Beef, we use both hare and rabbit. D’Artagnan (www.dartagnan.com) ships in-season Scottish game hare that we have tried. It’s gamey all right, but it’s the real McCoy. If you can’t find a hare, you can use all rabbit. Count on two days to prepare this recipe. It should yield six to eight portions, and it freezes well.

We never went hungry as kids. And we have no inherent fear of the next Great Depression or anxiety about canned food. Still, we always want more. Wanting and eating four of the Swedish shrimp-egg things you can buy in the restaurant at IKEA is a good example of that. Another good example is how we would have piled more stuff on this modest toast if we could have fit it: a can of sardines from Bretagne, maybe, or quails stuffed with crab hiding in the corner. Our first reaction on seeing this photo was, “Shit, we forgot clams.” There are thirty items here, and if we do another book, we will put in sixty, we promise (just so we don’t run out of food). Disclaimer: In no way do we aspire or pretend to serve authentic Scandinavian food. This is just our view projected onto a classic. The closest we have been to Scandinavia is Fred Heimlich-maneuvering a Dane who choked on the biggest oyster ever eaten raw. And it was a weird experience because it was like they kissed; they were shy around each other for the rest of the evening. In the list that follows, an asterisk means a recipe is included. If there’s no *, it means the item is straightforward and you can figure it out. We suggest serving the items on rye bread or a baguette sliced lengthwise and buttered. You then eat your open-faced sandwich with a fork and knife. Or, you can do as we do: add condiments and eat it like a military strategist, portioning, placing, moving, and rationing. Regarding yields: the smorgasbord is more of a concept than a straightforward recipe. The smorgasbord shown here serves 4 to 6, and includes every single thing listed. You don’t have to follow our lead (though we would be pleased). Typically we put 4 or 5 proteins and 4 or 5 condiments on the average smorgasbord. Following this rule, each of the small recipes serves four.

My mom use to take me and my brother to a pastry shop in a weird apartment building in Ottawa, and it had the best pastries. She would always choose the merveilleux. A meringue dessert is the best thing to make when you want to use up egg whites, after, say, an eggnog party! We make it every few weeks at the restaurant and pour hot chocolate sauce over the top at tableside. Everyone digs it.

Here is the dessert we served on opening day at Joe Beef. You can use small foil molds or teacups for serving.

The financier gives you a failproof moist cake that will stand through the rigors of pâtisserie de cuisine. It is simple to make, which is a good thing for us at Joe Beef, with our limited space and no real pastry chef, and for the home cook. Keep in mind that baking is a science, and although we include volume measures here, weighing the ingredients is recommended. We use ornate wax paper tartlet molds. If you don’t have them or can’t find them, you can just fill muffin cups half full and you’ll get the same result. Serve the cakes with ice cream and sweet wine.

This recipe calls for Carnation evaporated milk, which provides that neutral yet milky taste you want in an ice cream base. Suggestions for flavoring this all-purpose base follow. There is no way to get around making ice cream without having an ice cream maker—at least not if you want to get the best results.

A great way to maintain matrimonial bliss is not to make classic stock in your house. Do this one instead. It’s another one-Creuset wonder where everything goes in the oven. It’s enough for a few recipes, plus you can eat the meat with pickles and mustard for a classic French snack. You can use a bit more meat if you have it. This is more of a guideline than a recipe. Remember that when you make a stock, it has to look like you would want to eat the meat at any stage—that is, don’t use old meat or lean cuts. You want that marrow taste and that thick jelly feel.

Hot, it’s beef stew. Cold, it’s jellied beef stew.

Sauce Vin Rouge is our mother-ship sauce, good on all matters of protein. When seasoning this sauce, or any sauce, keep in mind that it won’t be consumed like a soup, so go ahead and be relatively liberal with the salt.

On the first year of the garden, we planted six tomato plants, one smallish row of lettuce that bolted overnight, and, just for fun, a dozen wormwood plants (Artemisia absithium). Of course, by then the absinthe craze had faded and the silver-slotted spoons were long gone. It didn’t take much for us to soak way too much of those plants (in our houses, of course) in a jug of alcool (grain alcohol), then correct the awful taste of wormwood with a full bottle of pastis. Man, it was strong, and it worked, too. A few years ago, we gave Martin Picard at Au Pied de Cochon a pickle jar full of absinthe; when we later visited the restaurant, about a thousand dollars in cash was sitting in the liquid and people were drinking it right out of the jar. Disgusting. Picard would add more booze when the level dropped. So you have this huge jar of plants and money just sitting there with the top on. Every season we try to concoct a better mix—at home, of course. You’ll need a gram scale for this recipe.

When we opened Joe Beef, we didn’t have a patio. We had a patch of wasteland where only burdock grew. Not many people know what burdock is, though they may have seen or eaten the roots in vegan or Japanese restaurants. Its Latin name is Arctium lappa and it is a biennial plant, which means that the first year it makes a long taproot and hairy rhubarblike leaves. It survives the winter because of its reserve of food, and then the second year, it bears flowers, then fruits. These itchy little clingers stick to your pants. It’s a treasure chest of medicinal virtue for lungs, hair, and bowels. We didn’t know what to do with it. But the four leathery-skinned Italian men who came to lay our concrete slab knew what to do with it. In fact, it took them four hours to lay the slab, half of which was spent carefully pulling and collecting the burdock roots. They said they would wash it when they got home, then steep it in red wine and consume it as a tonic. So now every year, we send the newbies to dig for burdock in the fertile grounds of the Liverpool House backyard and make a few bottles of that tonic.

This recipe, aka Kälte Glühwein trinken für Freunde im Sommer, was inspired by a box of German mulled wine: it depicted a blond, deliriously happy family sitting down to a few cups of this mulled tea. Serve in highball glasses.

This is more of an appetizer than a cocktail. What’s the reason behind the size? Hunger, gluttony, and insecurity are but a few. Serve in a large glass or a Mason jar.

Here’s a short, delicious, and lethal concoction. Good when you’re in search of instant numbness. Serve in a lowball glass.

This drink started as a vinaigrette for razor clams, and it still is. But with scotch, really cold, it’s awesome. If you have a juicer, it’s the best. If you don’t, a blender and a sieve will do. Chervil is one of those herbs that you can’t cook, and if you buzz it in syrup, for example, you will end up with something more akin to soup Florentine than a cocktail component. Serve in a lowball glass.