Raspberry Pie + France Photos

I took this pie to work with me, fresh out of the oven, in a cake carrier. My Uncle Mark requested it. He’s not the kind of man who eats a lot of dessert–a boxer who prefers Earl Grey tea to coffee–so when he confessed his love of raspberry pie, it was basically an invitation to write a recipe. Who am I to deny this health-conscious person a little pie, especially when it’s the season for fruit pies? This one’s made with good butter, and lemon, and vanilla bean.

He asks for raspberry pie, pure and simple, with no bells and whistles, but I can’t help giving the raspberries a small lift. It’s still early in the season, and the raspberries I find at the market are tiny, and not as sweet as they’ll be in a few weeks. So I use a whole vanilla bean, and a whole lemon, too. They marry well with the all-butter crust. Feel free to substitue (or add) other summer berries, or even stone fruits, as they come into season.

Did you know that cake carriers are not leak-proof? On the subway, with no space to maneuver, I hold the cake carrier to my chest. As the train jangles forward, I watch helplessly as raspberry juice breaks free from the confines of the pie tin, and pools into the floor of the cake carrier. Where is all this juice coming from? Can one pie really contain it all? In the interminable, underground minutes between Brooklyn and Manhattan, I watch futilely as a bright red stain appears, and grows and grows, on my dress. It’s like I’ve been shot in a school play. By the time I tumble off the train, several stops too soon and out of desperation, the cake carrier has become a ring of dripping raspberry droplets. Read more »

Snap Pea and Radicchio-Basil Pizza

I love making pizza at home. The topping options are vast and limitless, and my creations are often more interesting than the standard choices available at most pizza parlors. Pizza-making at home is also a great way to take advantage of seasonal ingredients: Currently, my crisper is full of sugar snap peas, spring onions, and plush bunches of basil, and so all three made their way onto this spring version.

Also, pizza parties. They’re a thing. You can prepare all these toppings ahead of time (as well as many others, whatever you can think of), so that guests can assemble their own. Each pizza only spends a few minutes in the oven. If you prefer to be outside, cook your pizzas on the grill.

Some general advice: fight the urge to overload each pizza with toppings. Fight it! Trust me, I learned the hard way, and I still have to remind myself every time. Too many toppings, and the dough will become laden and impossible to slide onto the pizza stone. Too many toppings, and the dough will be a soggy, unruly mess. Remember, you want the dough to crisp up on the bottom! Read more »

Cornmeal Cake with Mascarpone Cream and Strawberry Glaze

I created my dream cake! (And then found excuses to bake it twice in one week, naturally.) It’s perfect for the season, and also perfect in general–did I mention that this is my dream cake?

It’s strawberry season in New York. Like some bizarre fruit addict, I’ve been hitting up the farmers market at least three times a week for these small beauties. (Yeah, yeah, I’m strange, don’t worry about it.) In-season strawberries are typically tinier than the supermarket variety, also, a lot sweeter and more flavorful. They are maddeningly, delightfully fragrant from a distance, and bright red all the way through.

Also, they taste really very good stirred into mascarpone cream. In fact, you could simply offer guests a bowl of strawberries with a generous dollop of cool, whipped mascarpone cream and be well on your way.

But since you already went to the trouble of buying great strawberries, you might as well go ahead and make the cake, too. Why not? It’s low maintenance, as cakes go, and also very delicious. The crumb is tender, almost-dense, and not overly sweet–the cornmeal helps keep the sugar in check. Read more »

Roasted Broccoli Pesto Spaghetti with Veal-Ricotta Meatballs

This recipe came together the way many of my recipes do: After filling my bike basket to the brim with farmers market loot, I had to figure out how to tie all those ingredients together into something, you know, halfway cohesive.

Some ladies lust after designer heels, while I prefer the first first broccoli of the year. A shopping problem is still a shopping problem.

This weekend, I came home with: fresh ricotta, ground veal, purple spring onions, parsley, garlic, as well as the aforementioned broccoli. I laid it all out on the kitchen table, and got to thinking.

Beyond its role as a harbinger of spring, until recently, rhubarb didn’t excite me very much. I always thought the stalks were lovely, speckled in shades of sorbet-vivid green and fuchsia, but rhubarb’s tart herbaceousness was never my favorite. But then I tried a cocktail, made by a friend who knows her way around cocktails. She also knows how to bring out the best in rhubarb. Her concoction blended rhubarb syrup and bitters with gin, basil, citrus and vinegar. It was delicious–both complex and refreshing.

So when the first stalks of rhubarb appeared at the farmers market, I decided to run with her flavor combination, in my take on an Eton Mess.

The resulting dessert is a bit on the savory side, thanks to the basil, the rhubarb, and the gin. The strawberries and cream add sweetness, and a cool freshness, to the proceedings. I’m tickled by how the meringues turned out: taffy-soft on the inside and crisp on the edges, redolent of basil and lemon in equal measure.

You can serve this dessert in a variety of ways: Read more »

Mushroom, Ramp, and Mozzarella Salad

Good salads are all about balance. Here, bitter-bright endive and radicchio play against the umami of baked olives and browned mushrooms. The richness of mozzarella and egg yolk serve as foil to the mellow garlic-bite of ramps, and the acidity of lemon juice. A thin sheen of pesto brings the whole plate together. This salad is best served on a rainy spring day: It’s bright, flavorful, and texturally varied; satisfying, but not filling.

In other, salad-unrelated news, the Frenchman and I are off to Charleston for the weekend. We have never been, and I’m quite looking forward to sampling the local cuisine. As is my custom, I’ve planned the weekend largely around market visits, and late-but-I-don’t-care dinner reservations. (Frenchman, if you are reading this, don’t worry: we’re spending a whole half day at the beach!) I hope to return with wondrous photographs, and a whole slew of new recipe ideas. Read more »

Spring Onion-and-Herb Tart

Goodness gracious, these past few weeks have been busy. If you’ll allow me, I’d also like to blame the farmers market (and the weather, I suppose, by extention) for my temporary absence from the airwaves: the overall lack of new and snazzy green things has left me a bit writer’s blocked.

But here we are! With a tart! It’s mighty tasty. It makes great brunch, lunch, or dinner. (Add a salad, and perhaps some roasted taters, and you’re in business.) It works for right now, with whatever vegetation you can scrounge at the market, but it will also work later, when peas and asparagus finally do make an appearance. It will continue to work once summer produce–tomatoes!–arrive.

This tart is like a quiche, but with half the guilt, half the commitment: it’s fairy thin, so you won’t feel heavy or fatigued after enjoying it. You are very welcome to take the tart base, and the dairy, and then invent your own tart from there. Vegetables, herbs, and cheese: go crazy! Get inventing. Read more »

Not-So-Virtuous Kale and Brussels Sprouts Salad

Trust me, dear readers: I so badly wanted to provide a super verdant, completely fresh, hugely springtime recipe today. I wanted to be like every other food magazine, extolling the virtues of tender spring peas swimming in warm cream, or mashed with hot pepper against a scrap of olive oiled toast. Of course I want to stir ramps into my Carbonara, or braise skinny stalks of asparagus in Meyer lemon. I’ve been siting on a fava bean soup recipe for the better part of a year.

But do you know what I found at the farmers market yesterday? Root vegetables. Oh, root vegetables: it’s nothing personal, but you’re starting to depress me. Beets, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Turnips, and not the sweet baby spring ones (that should be roasted and eaten at room temperature, dribbled in spring-garlicky aioli), but turnips the size of softballs. There was not a single stalk of rhubarb hidden behind the parsnips.

I did find kale and brussels sprouts in abundance, though, and while I’m not a huge fan of either–the kale (in everything) and brussels sprouts (with bacon) craze is largely lost on me–I jumped at their mere greenness. It’s almost a spring salad, right? Right? Read more »

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