Written for Edible Santa Barbara - Spring-Summer 2024
'You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.' —Julia Chil
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When I first read this quote by Julia Child, I immediately thought of my grandmother, Genevieve Fay, who essentially lived by this credo. She and Julia had a love affair with butter and crème fraiche, and like Julia, her cuisine was classic French, full of boeuf bourguignon, blanquettes de veau, and hachis parmentier. Yet, although she was an excellent cook, she often served simple food. Dessert at her house was, for example, a piece of fruit rather than a cake, tart, or baked confection, but what a piece of fruit it would be! As a small child, she would regularly take me with her on her daily shopping routine, and it was by her side that I learned the art of selecting fruit and vegetables at their acme.
My grandparents lived in Briançon, a fortified ancient town high up in the French Alps. There were no supermarkets there, so we went to the cheese monger for milk, cheese, eggs, and butter, the butcher for chicken, patés, saucisson, and other meats, and the baker for the prerequisite baguettes and Pain de Mie that she served daily. There were no farmer's markets during the snowy winter months. Even in summer, as the growing season was short, the picturesque market, located along the banks of a burbling alpine river, ran for just a few months. As a result, my grandmother, ever the resourceful woman, shopped directly at the local greengrocer's wholesale warehouse. It was called Chez Jacques. I was a little afraid of going there when I was small as the building, tucked away on a narrow side street, was unusually cold, gloomy, and intimidating. Thankfully, the proprietor was anything but and always greeted my grandmother warmly. They would discuss in great detail what she planned on cooking and the choice items on hand. She would carefully inspect the proffered vegetables or fruit, accepting the ones she deemed in perfect condition or rejecting those that didn't meet her exacting standards. This was serious business. I stood by and watched silently as she explained why she chose a particular item. All the produce came packed in wooden crates, which would be carefully loaded into her car once she made her choices. Once home, she placed the crates in her cellar, where the magic in her kitchen began.
It's curious how the memory of a place, sight of an object, sound, or aroma can evoke such strong emotions. Marcel Proust coined the term Involuntary Memory to describe this phenomenon, and I relive this experience every year when the first apricots arrive at our farmer's market. Along with grated carrots, baby radishes, cherries, blueberries, and red currents, apricots are some of my first memories of anything edible. I see them and am instantly transported back to my grandmother's kitchen, where she schooled my brother and me in the delicious art of jam-making. Her golden-hued apricot jam was legendary in our family.
One of its key components was her use of the apricot kernels, which lent it hints of marzipan. She would cook them with the apricots and leave them in it once jarred. They were small, white, and almond-shaped. We painstakingly extracted the kernels from the pits, a task to which we happily lent a hand, as our reward was a giant jar of jam we could take back home with us to London. To remove the soft kernel, you had to break open the pits using a small hammer, tapping them with enough strength to break the pit open but not squash the kernel inside. It took ages, and we'd often smack our fingers with the hammer instead of the pit! It was a messy job, and we'd usually sit out on her terrace, halving the apricots, bashing pits, and telling stories. It's funny how a little piece of fruit can be so evocative.
When I pick up apricots today, I imagine what can be made with them, apart from the jam. Clafoutis comes to mind; it is divine made with them instead of the classic cherries, and Apricot tarts. The latter are a particular favorite of mine, and as soon as I get my hands on some just-picked apricots, I favor Blenheims; if I can find them, I'll make two or three versions of the tart or a galette with them. The key element is ripe fruit. Not so ripe that they will squish to a pulp when sliced, but not too hard as their flavor can be slightly sour if under ripe. It's worth waiting for that particular moment, you know, the one when you bite into fruit and let out a little involuntary sigh because the fruit is just perfect. When something is that good, I like to let the fruit (or vegetable) be the star of the dish and not manipulate it too much, hence my new apricot tart where you don't cook the fruit at all but instead lightly glaze them using a blow torch or under the broiler. You will taste their essence in all their glory.
In the summer months, some of the produce in my grandmother's cellar came from small local farms in the surrounding valleys and the Provencal hinterland. I remember a particular honey whose floral taste was suffused with the abundant wildflowers and lavender growing in the area. Imagine my delight when I tasted a local wildflower honey from the Santa Barbara foothills that was so reminiscent of the one I ate as a child! The honey was akin to a silky, sweet conduit, a connection between my childhood in France and my adult life in California. It was a bridge between the two cultures I call home, but what struck me the most was the simplicity and purity of this link. Freshly harvested honey, nothing more. The bees, nourished by nature as they foraged in the local chaparral, produced perfect food.
I thought about this, the idea of food at its simplest, as I drove through the vineyard-covered hills on a hot summer's day last year. I stopped the car on the side of the road and gazed out at the Santa Ynez mountains silhouetted against a cloudless sky. A breeze stirred up the sweet, rich aroma of the grapes ripening in the summer sun as the loamy warmth of the earth was palpable in the air. I smiled; it was an aroma I'd come across in the vineyards in Provence, and here it was again. It felt and smelled like home. I drove back to make a late Sunday lunch with my family: A herb and flower-filled salad, roast chicken with some grapes I had picked up at the farmer's market, and an apricot tart. As Julia and my grandmother said, 'just good food from fresh ingredients.'
Summer In The Alps Salad
There is an utterly magical valley high up in the French Alps near my mother's hometown. It is a pristine, unspoiled alpine vale filled with gurgling crystal-clear mountain streams and vistas that will have you yodeling and singing in the hills a la Julie Andrews. I grew up hiking in these mountains, and one of my favorite times to meander there is when the valley floor erupts into a veritable carpet of wildflowers in late spring. On my last visit, I took a photograph of this floral magnificence, and that photo inspired this salad. I tried to capture the wild beauty of the valley in a bowl.
Serves 6-8 people
For the salads:
4 oz assorted microgreens
2 oz pea sprouts
6 oz asparagus — ends trimmed and stalks thinly sliced on a bias
6 breakfast radishes — thinly sliced lengthwise
6 zebra tomatoes — cut into eighths
50-60 edible flowers such as pansies, violas or nasturtiums
Small handful of small mint leaves
Small handful of small basil leaves
For the vinaigrette:
3 tablespoons olive oil
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
Pinch of salt
2-3 grinds white pepper
Line the base of a large shallow bowl with the microgreens. Nestle little pockets of pea sprouts into the microgreens, then insert the asparagus stalks and radishes into the pea sprouts. Dot the surface of the microgreens with the tomatoes, then scatter the flowers and herbs over the surface.
Provencal Roasted Chicken Legs with Champagne Grapes
Serves 8 people
8 chicken legs
Olive oil
1½ tablespoons Herbes de Provence
Coarse sea salt
Black pepper
1 lb champagne grapes or the smallest grapes you can find — cut into small clusters
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Herbed Fingerling Potatoes
Serves 8 people
2 lbs. fingerling potatoes — washed
½ cup finely chopped parsley
¼ cup finely chopped shallots
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
1 tablespoon capers
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
4-5 grinds of black pepper
Juice of ½ lemon
'Sunflower' Apricot Tart
Yes, this is a labor of love. It takes a while to thinly slice all the apricots, but the result is absolutely worth the effort. When I have lots of chopping or prep to do, I listen to a podcast, something inspirational along the lines of "How I Built This,' a good audiobook, or blast some James Brown at full volume while I slice away and in no time at all the fruit are sliced, and I had fun doing it. As with other stone fruit desserts, you can, by all means, substitute peaches or nectarines for the apricots, but make sure you make the crunchy nut layer between the fruit and the tart shell, it makes the dish!
Serves 8 people
For the dough:
9 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
5 ½ oz cold butter – cut up into small pieces
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1 large egg
Pinch of salt
For the filling:
½ cup pistachios
½ cup sliced almond
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 tablespoons sugar, divided
3 tablespoons apricot jam
14-16 firm ripe apricots — halved, pitted and thinly sliced
Written for Edible Santa Barbara - Winter 2024 Issue
Late 1980s, Los Angeles
After finishing business school in London, I came to Tinsel Town to work in the property development business. If I wasn't working, I spent my hard-earned dollars on discovering restaurants, as my passion lay in the kitchen and fine cooking. Through sheer good luck and a family relationship, I turned up very early one morning in Michel Richard's spotless kitchen at his then flagship restaurant, Citrus, for a mini 'stage.' Over the next 72 hours, I learned two essential lessons. The first was that the restaurant business is a life of unending hard work surviving on thin margins and the second, more importantly for me personally at that time, I realized that although I was then a good home cook, any illusion I had that I could do something professionally with food fell to pieces in my first ten minutes in his kitchen.
I arrived as the maître saucier and French chef de cuisine monitored his stocks. 'Who are you?' he asked. 'Michel said I could do a stage starting this morning,' I replied. 'Is he here?' 'Non, not right now,' said the chef as he looked me up and down. 'You're with me this morning,' and nodding to the six large, steaming pots on the massive stoves, grabbed a handful of small spoons. 'Taste it and tell me what it is,' he said, handing the first spoon to me. He tasted as I did. My mind went blank. The aroma and flavor were so familiar, but I couldn't spell it out. 'Alors - So?' I shook my head. He gave me a pitying look. He took the lid off the next pot, 'This one?' 'Fish stock,' I replied confidently. He shook his head, 'Non!', 'It's not fish stock?' I asked; I was genuinely confused. 'It's a crustacean stock – you should know the difference.' He stepped up to the next pot, 'This?' I'll save you the rest of the excruciating details; suffice it to say I failed the taste test for every one of them. The last stock, made with olives, was extraordinary in its depth of flavor and intensity. He reduced my knowledge of basic stocks to nothing. It was a completely humbling experience. I left simultaneously deflated and enthusiastic if that's possible. I would have to do better.
He took pity on me then and asked if I had had breakfast or a coffee. I shook my head, not entirely trusting that I could speak without a wobble in my voice. He handed me a strong espresso and a piece of baguette, sighed, and said,' Let's start again – what's your name?' This was my introduction to creating more refined food, and it all began with stocks.
Three days later, I left the kitchen armed with more culinary know-how, a few unique recipes up my sleeve, a small coterie of new friends, and a long list of essential techniques I had to learn to become a better cook. 'It all begins with the foundations,' he had said, Les Fonds or Fonds de Cuisine. Like the foundation of any structure, stocks are the building blocks of cooking for sauces, soups, stews, and braises.
I had long made a basic chicken stock, but there was evidently more to it than that. I plunged into cookbooks, consulting the culinary masters on the subject, Escoffier, Raymond Oliver, Julia Child, and many more. Essentially, they all said the same thing. Use the best ingredients you can find to make the freshest, cleanest stock (or broth) possible. With that in mind, I started my stock education, and the fundamentals came down to these salient points:
Stocks are clear liquids that result from gently simmering bones, meat or fish, and vegetables in water, usually with aromatic herbs and spices.
There are four principal stocks: Beef, chicken, fish, and vegetable.
Beef stocks are made with beef knuckles, joints, and feet to achieve a rich flavor and velvety texture. Sometimes referred to as fond brun, this stock is golden to deep mahogany in color, created by roasting bones and vegetables to intensify their flavor. Beef stocks are an elemental part of dishes like pho, short ribs, and French onion soup and are used in braised dishes to add depth of flavor. These stocks take 6-24 hours to develop their rich flavor profile.
Chicken stocks are usually made with uncooked chicken carcasses, chicken legs or feet, and a mirepoix (a chopped mix of onions, carrots, leeks, and celery). However, you can also use the carcass from a previously roasted chicken (you can freeze the bones for later use) to make stock after removing any remaining meat. The bones are full of collagen and result in a nutritious gelatinous finish. This silky stock is the foundation for many soups, for cooking pasta and risotto, for poaching, and myriad sauces. An excellent light chicken stock can be made in two hours.
Fish stock (or fish fumet) is quick to make, usually in about 30 minutes or less. However, it is delicate, and overcooking will dissolve the calcium in the bones, resulting in a cloudy, chalky stock. It is made by very gently simmering fish bones in water with aromatics such as leeks, carrots, and fennel and herbs such as parsley and tarragon. Fish stocks are used for poaching fish, soups, and cooking rice, risotto, and pasta in seafood dishes.
Vegetable stock is versatile, inexpensive, quick, and easy to make. Using a foundation of onions, leeks, carrots, and celery, other vegetables and trimmings can be used in all manner of soups, sauces and as the cooking liquid for pasta and grains and can be used as a healthy alternative to meat or poultry-based stocks. It is an excellent way to use vegetable trimmings. I like to save all the carrot peelings, onion skins, leek greens, and parsley stems by popping them all into a large freezer bag as I prepare food during the week. When I'm ready to make stock, I have all the ingredients ready and can tip them into a large stock pot and cover the vegetables with cold water. 30-40 minutes later, I'll have a lovely, clear, bright vegetable stock.
Simmering is the key! The gentle cooking of all these stocks is the recipe for a successful stock. Boiling bones causes the albumin in them to be released too quickly, resulting in a cloudy, sometimes chalky stock, which is also why only cold water should be added to the ingredients when you start your stock. Simmering will allow any impurities to rise to the top of the stock pot. It looks like an unappetizing grey, scum-looking foam. Carefully remove this from the stock pot. After 40-50 minutes, there should be none left. Cook the stock uncovered, reducing the chance that the stock will boil.
Finally, stock and broth are technically different (except for the vegetable version), although they are often interchangeably used in recipes. Stocks are made with bones and have a more gelatinous texture. They are also unsalted. Broths are made with meat (or fish) and are more liquid. (For a detailed breakdown of the science behind making stock, Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking provides an in-depth analysis of the processes involved.)
Santa Barbara, 2023
More than three decades have passed since I stepped tentatively into that restaurant kitchen. I have cooked thousands of meals since then and discovered new cuisines, techniques, and foods, but the foundation of all I do has its roots in the stocks I learned to make then. There is always a batch of frozen vegetable and chicken stock in my freezer and a bag of trimmings ready to use for the next pot. As Thomas Keller, famed chef of The French Laundry, said, stocks are "the base for everything else you're going to do. And that's why it's so valuable to learn how to do this and so valuable to have it at home. It's a life changer."
Foundation
Fresh stocks are a vibrant foundation to any soup, stew, tagine, or sauce. A stock that is full of flavor, made with fresh ingredients will improve any dish, and most stocks are easy and economical to make. Use simple vegetable stock when cooking rice, risotto, and couscous to enhance the grains and the roasted stocks add depth and richness of flavor to all manner of soups and stews. They are truly worth the effort.
Simple Vegetable Stock
Makes 2 quarts (1 liter)
2 large onions – peeled and diced
4 carrots – peeled and diced
2 leeks – carefully cleaned, trimmed and quartered lengthwise
1 celery stalk – diced
Roasted Vegetable Stock
Makes 2 quarts (1 liter)
2 tablespoons olive oil
4-5 carrots - peeled and diced
3 stalks celery - diced
2 leeks - carefully cleaned, ends trimmed and quartered
2 large onions - peeled and diced
3 quarts of water
1 bouquet garni - 1 bay leaf, 6-8 stems parsley, 6-8 stems fresh thyme loosely tied together with kitchen twine.
3 good turns of fresh ground pepper
Chicken Stock
Makes 2 quarts (1 liter)
2-3 lbs chicken parts e.g. legs or backs or chicken bones, or the carcass of a roasted chicken
2 ribs of celery - diced
4 carrots – peeled and diced
3 large onions - peeled and diced
4 leeks – carefully cleaned, root end trimmed and quartered lengthways
4 turns fresh pepper
1 bay leaf
Stems from 1 bunch of parsley,
6-8 stems fresh thyme loosely tied together with kitchen twine.
3 quarts of water
Silky Cauliflower Curry Soup with Crispy Shaved Brussels Sprouts
Serves 8 people
For the soup:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion — peeled and finely chopped
2 leeks — ends trimmed, cleaned, white and light green parts finely chopped
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 heads cauliflower (2 lbs each) — core removed, separated into florets
8 cups vegetable stock
Salt
Pepper
For the Brussels sprouts:
Olive oil
1 lb Brussels sprouts — finely sliced using a mandolin
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
Zest of 1 lemon
Salt
Pepper
1/3 cup crème fraîche
Citrus Chicken Tagine with Apricots and Golden Raisins
I have delved into the world of Moroccan and North African cuisine, reading about sumptuous dishes in books by Claudia Roden, Paula Wolfert, the Maloufs and Clifford A. Wright. I’ve been inspired by their culinary journeys and revel in the fragrance and spices of the African continent. After making a batch of Ras al Hanout, a spice mix that means “best of the house,” I thought I’d try combining it with some curry powder to make a tagine with an African-Asian spice fusion. The aroma drifting across the kitchen as this simmered was mouth-watering. The end result produced a chicken that melted off the bone with plump, juicy, succulent fruit. This dish has become a family favorite.
Serves 8 people
1 heaped teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon Ras al Hanout
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup orange juice
8 chicken legs or a combination of legs and thighs
4 cups chicken stock
Salt and black pepper
Olive oil
2 large onions — peeled, halved and sliced
25-30 dried apricots
2 small, preserved lemons — roughly chopped
4 oranges — peeled and sectioned
1 cup golden raisins
