Red Wine

This bread soup has some vegetables in it, but it is made with beef stock. For a vegetarian version, use all vegetable or wild mushroom stock and skip the pancetta or bacon.

Oregon on a plate: From Willamette Valley Pinot Noir to cranberry bogs and filbert trees, this menu celebrates one great state!

Chefs have chased the perfect consommé for as long as there has been cuisine. Traditionally clarified using a raft of egg whites, meat, and aromatics, it was inevitable that chefs would start looking for modern alternatives. The first solution was introduced by Professor Gerd Klöck in 2004 and popularized by Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck. Ice clarification is a method of freezing gelatin-rich stocks and then slowly defrosting them through layers of cheesecloth and a fine sieve to create a perfectly clear liquid. As the gel is frozen, the water trapped in the gelatin crystallizes. This causes the sharp edges to damage the cell walls. As the frozen gel warms up, the water and all of the water-soluble components melt before the gelatin or the fats and leak out of the damaged cell structure, leaving everything else behind. The next innovation was using agar instead of gelatin to speed up the freeze-thaw process. Agar works more quickly because it has a much higher melting point. If there is no fat in the preparation, it can actually be defrosted into a filter at room temperature, which greatly reduces the filtration time. From there we made the leap of eliminating the time spent in the freezer when using agar. Syneresis is the process by which the liquid leaks out of the gel structure. Agar naturally creates a hard, brittle gel that is prone to syneresis. It seemed reasonable to us that we could easily make an agar gel and break it up in the vacuum sealer, causing the clear liquids to leak out while the impurities were trapped in the gel. Once we poured the broken gel into a cheesecloth-lined filter, we would have a clear liquid almost immediately. It worked beautifully and was a huge breakthrough for us. As we worked through the process, we realized that brisk stirring of the agar-thickened liquid was enough to break it apart and create syneresis, effectively giving us a low-tech clarification process that could be easily accomplished at home. We use a ratio of 0.25 percent agar to clarify most of our liquids. Occasionally in liquids with more dissolved impurities we increase this to 0.3 percent.

These short ribs are everything you want braised meat to be. They are tender and juicy with a rich beefy flavor that is nicely balanced by the sweetness of the carrots. The root beer and birch bark draw on familiar aromatics and tastes but we use them in a slightly different manner. Come to think of it, these short ribs are not too far off from a traditional cola-glazed ham.

We use organic cider vinegar as a starter because it usually contains a live mother. If you have friends who have made their own vinegar, you can begin with their live vinegar instead. In either case, we start with equal parts, by weight, of live vinegar (vinegar with mother) and wine. Make sure there is enough room in the jar to add more wine as the vinegar develops. Wrap the mouth of the vinegar jar with cheesecloth to prevent vinegar flies from taking a dip and then place the lid back on top. A little patience here will yield great results.

This may seem like an unorthodox flavor profile, but roast chicken brine is delicious. Just as chicken stock is used as the base for myriad soups, this roast chicken brine pairs well with a variety of vegetables and fish. Unsurprisingly, it is also amazing with chicken and turkey. We are lucky enough to be able to buy inexpensive chicken backs at our local Whole Foods. If you can’t get backs or if wings are too expensive, chicken legs or thighs are sometimes an economical substitute. Even if you prefer to eat white meat, using dark meat for the brine will give you the most flavor.

In the early twentieth century, a Jewish woman named Geneviève Halévy Bizet, the mother of Marcel Proust’s friend Jacques, held one of the most popular women’s salons in Paris, depicted in Proust’s work. Gertrude Stein, the Jewish writer, along with her partner, Alice B. Toklas, hosted another famous salon, conversing with and cooking for writers and artists during the many years when they lived together in France. One of the recipes Alice liked to serve to their guests was very similar to this prune-and-fig compote. In Alsace and southern Germany, prune compote is eaten at Passover with crispy sweet chremslach, doughnutlike fritters made from matzo meal (there is a recipe for them in my book Jewish Cooking in America).

When Elie Wiesel stopped in Bordaeux to give a speech, he asked members of the Jewish community for suggestions on where to eat. They told him to go to Jean Ramet, a marvelous thirty-seat southwestern-French restaurant. Run by a Jewish chef, it is located right down the street from the eighteenth-century Grand Théâtre. Raised in a Polish Jewish home in France, Jean doesn’t have many culinary memories from his childhood. He grew up in Vichy, where his parents, like so many other Jews returning to France after the war, had priorities other than food. But food became a career for Jean. He apprenticed at the three-star Maison Troisgros in Roanne, learning pastry skills. “Pastry-making gives you discipline; it is very important for a chef,” he told me. “You need the rules of pastry first.” In the 1970s, Jean met Tunisian-born Raymonde Chemla on a youth trip to Israel. They have now been married for more than thirty years, living mostly in Bordeaux, where they run the restaurant. On vacations, they often travel to Morocco, because they love the food of North Africa. “Moroccan food is sincere,” said Jean. “When I met Raymonde, I fell in love with North African spices, such as cinnamon, mint, and cloves.” This gratin of figs with a zabaglione sauce and a splash of orange-flower water is a dish that celebrates North African flavors and classic French techniques. It also captures the essence of the flavor of fresh fig. As the French Jewish sage Rashi so beautifully stated in his commentaries on the Bible, “Summer is the time of the gathering of the figs and the time when they dry them in the fields, and it [the dried fig] is summer.”

This is one of my favorite winter Alsatian vegetable combinations, and a common winter vegetable dish of French Jews. It is best made a day in advance and left to meld the flavors. Serve as an accompaniment to roast goose, chicken, or duck.

One Friday morning when I arrived at Philippe and Caroline’s home, the family was in full Shabbat swing. Four of Caroline’s nine children were nearby to help with preparations for the Sabbath. Caroline was assembling ingredients for cholent, based on a recipe that came with her family from Poland. Caroline makes cholent each week, cooking it all night in a slow cooker and serving it at lunch on Saturday. She simmers the meat in red wine, adds some barley and sometimes bulgur, and uses vegetable oil instead of the traditional chicken shmaltz.

Raïto, also spelled Raite or Rayte, is a very old sauce, traditionally served by Provençal Jews on Friday night over cod, either simply grilled or baked. Some people add a small whole fresh or canned anchovy, a few sprigs of fennel, and/or about 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts or almonds. Similar in taste to a puttanesca sauce, it can also be served over grilled tuna or pasta.

Stifatho is a Greek dish also made with beef. Serve it with rice or potatoes.

This is a version, using fillo pastry, of a Greek dish of lamb baked in parchment packets.

The red wine caramel adds a sexy complexity to this classic French staple and the fresh thyme gives it a sweet, earthy depth.

In culinary school, beef bourguignon is one of the first dishes you’re taught that truly represents French cuisine. It’s basically beef stew with a deep red-wine flavor. The kicker is that it’s one of the easiest recipes in this book. Serve this with creamy mashed potatoes and I swear you will feel like Paul Bocuse, and you don’t have to go to cooking school.

Simple ingredients with complexity and depth add up to an Italian classic. Oh, and did I mention this is mind-blowing? When purchasing the veal shanks, check that they are pink and smell sweet. The most important step in making Osso Buco is browning the meat. This develops a really rich brown color on the meat and adds a ton of flavor to the base of the sauce. Serve with Soft Polenta (page 244) or Garlic-Chive Mashed Potatoes (page 237). The gremolata is also good on a grilled fish.

I love this dish for the simple ingredients and hearty, rustic flavors. Braising the chicken in red wine actually tenderizes the meat, as well as imparting a beautiful purple hue. “Leggy” red wine means to me a heavy wine with depth and body. Depending on whether or not each of you can eat half a chicken, you will probably have leftovers. Soft, creamy polenta (page 244) is a great accompaniment.

Pork tenderloin is like the filet mignon of the pig, so I serve this with Red Onions Roasted with Balsamic and Honey (page 260) and round everything out with Garlic-Chive Mashed Potatoes (page 237). Charred red onions match perfectly with the sweetness of the dried plums (dried plum is code for prune).

Italians love prugne, the name for both fresh and dried plums (which we call prunes). Italy is one of Europe’s largest plum-producers, and the fresh fruit is a favorite in season. But dried plums, prugne secche, are in such demand year-round—for snacking, cooking, and baking—that today Italy ranks as one of the world’s biggest importers of prunes (many tons of them grown in California!). I, too, love prugne secche, particularly in crostatas (tarts) and torte such as this cake, which I found in Basilicata. Morsels of prune, poached in a wine syrup, dot the golden, buttery cake, and each bite bursts with their concentrated essence of fruit flavor. It’s a great treat for the holidays, or on any winter’s day—a delicious reminder of the sweet taste of summer.

This is one of those bountiful braises that you make when you want to delight a big table of family or friends, offering them an assortment of tender meats and pasta dressed with the braising sauce. Like other slowly cooked braises, this gives you two courses from one saucepan. Serve pasta dressed with the meaty-tasting tomato sauce as a first course—there’s enough to dress 2 pounds of rigatoni. And then serve the pork, veal, and sausage as a second course. Of course, you don’t have to serve it all for the same meal. Use half the sauce to dress a pound of pasta, freeze the rest, and you have a future meal all ready to go. And after serving the ragù, take any leftover bits and pieces of meat, shred and chop them up, clean the meat from the veal-chop bone, and blend all of it in with any leftover sauce. I bet you’ll have enough sauce with meaty morsels for a lasagna or other baked pasta—yet another meal from that one big braising pan.