Ever since I learned from Dorie Greenspan that even the top French pastry shops usually use canned pears in their pear tarts I’ve been experimenting with various brands, and, to my amazement, all have worked splendidly.

When I found this jar of mini-pears I knew they’d look cute in a small galette and thought they’d be quick and easy to core. Cute, yes. Quick to core? Hell, no. I’d thought the cores would be nearly non-existent, like the barely developed fuzzy centers of baby artichokes.  So wrong. These small pears had sizable and sturdy centers that had me cursing softly by the time I’d wrested them all free.

But nestled into a bed of almond frangipane they did make an attractive and tasty little tart.  So I’m grateful to those two uber-bloggers: Dorie and Pim — the first for the info about using canned pears and the latter for the suggestion to freeze frangipane in tart-sized portions, ready to enrich all sorts of fruits. But the next time I make a pear pie of any size I’ll stick to fruit of conventional dimensions.

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The Fabulous Project RunGay Guys

If  I could spend a long, laughter-filled  dinner with any two big shots of the blogosphere, I’d  choose those rockstars formerly known as The Project RunGay guys and now as Tom & Lorenzo.  Though fashion, rather than food, is their subject matter I suspected they’d also have strong, irreverent opinions about cooking and entertaining. I love it when I’m right.

1. You told me: “Tom cooks. Lorenzo washes dishes.” Tom, describe your cooking style and your favorite cookbooks. Lorenzo, is a he a man of many bowls, skillets and spatulas or does he clean up as he works?”

Tom: I would describe my cooking style as “adventurous.” And by that I mean, except for the dozen or so dishes that have been in my repertoire for years, I tend to just wing it. Which isn’t to say I don’t consult cookbooks. When I’m taking on the task of cooking a dish I’ve never cooked before, I look up as many different recipes for it that I can find, study them, and then go off and do a sort of combined version of all the various recipes I consulted. Most of the time, it works pretty well. The benefit of learning a dish that way is that you really learn what works and why, rather than slavishly following a “3/4 of a teaspoon of this, 1/3 cup of that” recipe. I’m more of a “handful of this, pinch of that” kind of cook. I can’t teach recipes to save my life because they only make sense in my head. As for favorites, I’ll read anything by Lidia Bastianich because she has such a love of old-school, well-prepared food that it comes through on the page and just makes you want to cook. I’ll also read anything by Nigella because she is a self-proclaimed goddess and we’re all about the self-proclaimed goddesses.

Lorenzo: Oh, GOD. Are you kidding me? I practically have to scrape the kitchen down when he’s done with it. I have no idea how he manages to dirty every bowl and cooking utensil in the house making dinner for two people.

Tom: It’s true, but then again, I think that’s a small price to pay for basically having every meal prepared for you for 14 years. Bitch.

2. You can have ONE of The Big Three (Heidi, Nina or The Duchess) to dinner chez vous. Who would it be and why? And what would you serve? And how would you set the table?

T Lo: Nina, without a doubt. Not to be TOO bitchy, but we imagine the conversation would probably stall a lot with Heidi. Michael’s a possibility, but we adore Nina and would love the opportunity to spend an evening talking fashion. As for what to serve? Well, any Latin American cuisine is right out because we can’t imagine anything lamer than forcing your guest to eat something you assume is “ethnically appropriate” for them. Since she’s a fashion editor, we’re assuming that anything too heavy or carb-loaded is out too. A lettuce leaf and an after-dinner mint would probably be all we need. But in all honesty, we’d probably serve something relatively simple and light,like a basic tapas menu. We love to entertain and we have a fairly strict set of ideas as to how to do a dinner party. Keep the food light, flavorful and filling. Don’t serve anything heavy, anything that’s going to give your guests gas or bad breath, and anything that requires disemboweling at the table, like a roast or a whole chicken.
And yes, we like to make our guests feel like guests, so we do tend to set a nice table. No one throws bridal showers for gay couples (or at least, not when we got together) so we went a little nuts 10 years ago buying all the accoutrement one could ever need to set a beautiful table. We have 6 different sets of china, and 4 sets of glass and stemware. We only have one type of silverware, but we bought three sets of it several years back when we hosted 30 people for Thanksgiving. For Nina, we’d imagine none of our current table linens would be good enough (even though they’re fine) and since Lorenzo’s a wiz on a sewing machine, we’d probably head out to our favorite fabric stores and just buy the fabric and make the linens ourselves. We don’ t do theme tables (unless it’s a holiday) and we don’t do place cards unless there are more than 6 people sitting down. We’d want Nina all to ourselves, so it’d just be the three of us. Again, the table would be simple: our brand new linens, probably the vintage Mikasa we got for a steal a few years ago (Pattern: Wheaton) and the Lennox stemware, a simple flower arrangement, some candles, and we’re good to go.

3. Compare a few of your favorite Project Runway contestants –past or present–to restaurant dishes–i.e. Laura might  be Jackie Kennedy’s favorite meal at Le Cirque: fresh caviar heaped on a basic baked potato.

TLo: Actually Laura would be something earthy and fun and unpretentious. Since she’s a NOLA girl, we’d compare her to a good gumbo. Christian Siriano would be something fussy and slightly overthought, like, well, anything from Julia’s Mastering the Art. Chris March: a cheeseburger and fries. Jack Mackenroth: a protein shake. Jay McCarroll: paella, because like his designs, it’s loaded with color and packed with various elements that shouldn’t go together, but somehow do. Santino: Five Alarm Chili:because it simply will not be ignored.

4.You’re feeling feisty and decide to stage a dinner party where drama, and even a fisticuff or two are likely to occur. Which PR contestants — again, past or present — would you invite, feeling pretty certain they’d cause some merry mayhem?

T Lo: Laura Bennett plus Jeffrey Sebelia would make an explosive dinner party, that’s for sure. Throw in Santino, Christian Siriano and Wendy Pepper and you can bet that’s a meal we’d be serving on paper plates with nothing sharper than a butter knife on the table.

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During a recent drawer de-cluttering I discovered a packet of recipe cards from the phase of my cooking life known as Early Marriage or Bride in the Kitchen. Highlights of the period included many failed Hollandaise attempts, way too many sauces based on canned soups and an astonishingly awful shrimp dish that called for four cloves of garlic which I interpreted as four clusters/heads of garlic.
J — whose mother had advised him to encourage my cooking efforts by eating whatever I set in front of him — actually broke out in a sweat about halfway through his portion, all the while assuring me, “No, I wouldn’t say it’s too garlic-y.”

One recipe I rediscovered, however, is definitely share-worthy: a citrusy banana sherbet. It came from an elderly woman in Dallas who acted as if divulging her long-held-secret recipe was a very big deal. Usually if you dig a little into the background of these “treasured family recipes” from the 1940s and 50s you’ll find they originated on the back of a sugar box or within the pages of The Betty Crocker Cookbook. Whatever its beginnings, this sherbet makes a very nice ending to a late-winter meal.

Banana Sherbet

Combine and boil: for a few minutes:
3 TB. grated orange rind
3 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
Chill the resulting syrup.

Add the juice of 3 oranges and 3 lemons plus 2 large (or 3 small) bananas, mashed.

Freeze in an ice cream freezer.

[Margin Note: technically this is closer to a sorbet than a sherbet, as the latter usually has milk or cream in it--but the recipe card, in the Dallas dowager's hand, calls it a sherbet and who am I to dispute it? In truth, the mashed banana does give it a creamy texture.]

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We were in the lounge at Alain Chapel’s restaurant in Mionnay, France — perusing the menu while sipping champagne and nibbling on piping hot, exquisitely crisp fried whitebait — when another couple asked to join us. “So damned glad to hear someone speaking English,” the husband boomed.
He plucked the last tiny fish from the linen-lined plate and then shouted to a waiter on the other side of the room: “Gar-kon! Gar-kon! We need more of those fried guppies!”
I dared not make eye contact with my spouse, who, I knew, was debating whether to kill our new acquaintance, for his boorishness, or me, for agreeing to let this “owner of all the Burger Kings in New Hampshire” join us.

Those remain in my memory as the Platonic ideal of la petite friture, although a portion I had at J Sheeky in London last September came pretty close on the excellence scale. Recently I found a package of small smelts at an Asian market and decided to haul out my little deep-fryer.

I followed the procedure from Pepin’s Chez Jacques:

[Fortunately these were already completely cleaned, so I didn't have to "push the guts out of the little hole in the lower part of the belly."]

For about a pound of friture, mix 1 TB. flour into 1 cup milk. Add a little salt and pepper. Add the fish, mix well, then lift out. Immediately coat them in plenty of all purpose flour. (Do this right before frying.) Heat enough canola or peanut oil to measure 2-inches in a large skillet to 375-400-degrees. Fry the fishfor 3-4 minutes, moving the fish around with a skimmer, until they are deep brown and very crisp. Drain immediately, sprinkle with fine salt and serve with lemon wedges. I also spiked some mayonnaise with sea salt, crushed garlic and grated Meyer lemon zest as a dipping sauce.

Very cold, dry champagne is the perfect accompaniment. Fast-food restaurant owners? Not so much.

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Hello, Gorgeous!, originally uploaded by caseyell.

Warning: braggadocio ahead:
I have organized my cookbooks. All [I'm not telling the number] of them. This is one of three cabinet/shelf sections just off my kitchen and I know exactly which cookbook is in every one of them. Far more important, I can locate recipes in most of them with just the click of a few computer keys. It’s a miracle — a miracle wrought by a saintly new website called Eat Your Books.
I have tried and discarded scores of recipe organization systems over the years. Printed ones from magazines, newspapers and websites are easy; they reside in plastic sleeves contained in clearly labeled 3-ring binders. It’s the cookbook recipes — tried and un-tried –that proved to be an unruly, heathen mob.
No longer. At least not for the cookbooks indexed on EYB–which includes a large portion of my collection, with more being added to their list every week.

Books kept close at hand

I can search by recipe name; I can search by author; I can search by ingredient. (The other day I typed in “pomegranate molasses” and found a great new squab recipe.)
I’m an obnoxiously zealous convert, out to preach of this site’s wonders, while offering up prayers that anyone who owns more than three or four cookbooks joins and guarantees EYB’s success and longevity.
You get a 30-day free trial; then there’s a fee. I tried it for less than 30 minutes before I bought a lifetime membership. Go ahead: eat your cookbooks.

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Pear-Rosemary Pizza, originally uploaded by caseyell.

but actually a pizza — in fact, a sublime dessert pizza served by a friend at the end of a wonderful Italian dinner.

Sweet Rosemary-Pear Pizza

Pastry:
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
generous 1/4 tsp salt
1.5 tsp. sugar
1 stick (4oz) cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 large egg. beaten
2-3 TB. cold water

Topping:
4 firm-ripe Bosc pears
1/2 lemon
shredded zest of 1 large orange
1 TB fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 tsp. fresh rosemary leaves, chopped fine
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup sugar
2 TB extra-virgin olive oil

For the pastry: combine the dry ingredients in a food processor. Cut in the butter with rapid pulses until the size of peas. Add the egg and 2 Tb. water. Pulse just til the dough clumps. If the dough seems dry, blend in a bit more water.
Oil a 14-16″ pizza pan. [MN: Our host used a nifty pan pierced all over with small holes, which produced a wonderfully crisp crust] Roll out the dough on a floured board to an extremely thin 17″ round. Place on the pan, but don’t trim the excess–fold it over toward the center. Refrigerate 30 minutes to overnight.
Set an oven rack in lowest position and preheat oven to 500-degrees. Take dough from fridge. Peel, core, halve and stem the pears. Slice vertically into 1/2-inch wide wedges. Moisten with a little lemon juice. Fold back the dough so it hangs over pan edge. Arrange the pear slices in an overlapping spiral on the dough, starting right at the rim. Sprinle with orange zest, basil, rosemary, cinnamon, pepper, sugar and oil. [MN: Don't you dare skip the pepper. It adds a wonderful accent] Flip the overhanging crust up and pleat over the outer edge of the pears.

Bake 20-25 minutes, or til the pears are speckled golden brown and the crust is crisp (Cover the crust’s rim with foil if it browns too quickly.)

Serve hot/warm/room temp and, as you munch, send grateful thoughts to Lynn Rossetto Kasper, who shared this recipe in her wonderful The Italian Country Table.

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I made a great little galette for two using this same herb-y, peppery pear filling and pate brisee for the crust (changing only the final olive oil topping to melted butter). My campaign to bake — and eat– more galettes continues.

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Galettes Galore, originally uploaded by caseyell.

Margin Notes is embarking on a galette-making festival. A tart is my favorite dessert and a galette my favorite form of tart: — easy to shape and with a generous ratio of crust to filling.

Last night’s galette featured paper-thin slices of Pink Pearl apples spiked with a small handful of boozy cherries. (next time I make it I’ll use a bigger handful) For the crust I used a recipe from the new The Craft of Baking” by Karen DeMasco — and I was delighted with the result.–crisp, yet tender.
I don’t post recipes from new cookbooks, but the recipe was close to the ones from Flo Braker and Dorie Greenspan I usually use .
And to whoever wrote recently that new-crop apples don’t really need to be peeled for tarts, I send many thanks.

As I  polish off the last of this galette, I’m surrounded by a mini-mountain of cookbooks so I can plot galettes both sweet and savory to come.

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pim, bearing pain d’epices, originally uploaded by caseyell.

now if dorie would drop by with some world peace cookies and nigella would bring clementine cake..

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Tis the season to booze cherries (http://caseyellis.blogspot.com), originally uploaded by caseyell.

In case you weren’t reading this blog in 2007, or if you were but have forgotten about this seasonal treat, I’m going to link to my own ancient post. Heaven forfend that you go through the holidays without these marvelous little morsels..

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cook Thanksgiving dinner this year, I’m going to spend Thursday just lounging around tending to my knitting.
Happy Holidays, All.

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