Recipefiesta

This year, it’s a sure bet that holiday gatherings will likely be more intimate, with perhaps more celebrating online rather than around a table. As you cozy up to the chimney…or computer, it’s nice to have a drink in hand either to take the chill off or to make things feel more festive. Unless you’re the lovely Ina Garten, who prefers to make drinks by the pitcher, individual drinks are a nice way to celebrate more intimate gatherings and you can make just one to two, or scale ’em up to make four or six, if necessary. My hot chocolate recipes (below) can easily be made in advance – in fact, they’re better if they are – then rewarmed right before serving. Marshmallows and whipped cream are optional, but if I’m going to be honest, they’re encouraged.

Here are my favorite and most popular drink recipes on the blog that’ll warm you up, including two types of hot chocolate (there are several others in Drinking French, including a Salted Butter Caramel version), French mulled wine, an apple-based cocktail, and a few libations with cranberries. There’s also a brown-buttery Old Fashioned, a pink Cosmo to brighten things up, a creative Kir, and Jeff Morgenthaler’s amazing eggnog. So no matter where you are, whether you’re at home with friends and family or able to gather out and about, here are some drinks I hope will help make this holiday season more enjoyable…

Vin Chaud

A winter classic in many countries, when they’re open (they’re closed at the moment), cafés in Paris will have the words ‘Vin chaud’ scribbled on a blackboard either inside or out, beckoning people to come in from the cold to have a glass. Patrons are usually huddled around terrace tables or standing at the bar, sipping glasses of warm spiced wine, but this year, mulled wine maison will be in fashion. My version of vin chaud is spiced with cardamom, star anise, cloves, and fresh ginger. And it’s even better if you tip a bit of brandy in it!

Continue Reading Holiday Drinks...

There may not seem like a lot to celebrate at the moment, but on a lighter note, we have baking. It’s something people have done for centuries, in every country around the world. Some do it for fun, others do it to eat and sustain their families. I used to be asked why I baked (which used to my most FAQ), but I dunno. I just do it.

Bake From Scratch celebrates people who like to bake and when I met editor Brian Hart Hoffman, when he came to Paris to profile me in The French Issue a few years ago, we hit it off. He’s hard not to like, the definition of engaging, and a heckuva lot of fun to spend time with. We’ve kept in touch over the years, meeting up here and there, but since travel is off the agenda for a while, he sent me their latest 5th-anniversary issue, hot off the press. And when I saw this stunning Chocolate, Dulce de Leche, and Vanilla Marble Cake, I knew I had to make it.

Continue Reading Chocolate, Dulce de Leche, and Vanilla Marble Cake...

If you’re old enough to remember, the Grateful Dead had a song that went, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” (There are other reasons you might not remember things back then, especially if you were the type that listened to the Grateful Dead.) But that could be the tagline for a number of things, some as recent as 2020, the Covid crisis, and others that stretch back longer, such as the bean-to-bar chocolate movement.

I was there at the beginning of it in the United States, and I clearly remember when Robert Steinberg handed me a melting wad of freshly-made chocolate he pulled out of his pocket at a baking event, that was folded up in a little foil packet, as if it was a part of a drug deal. That eventually bloomed into Scharffen Berger chocolate.

They were the pioneers of bean-to-bar chocolate making in America, back in 1996, and now there are close to two hundred artisan chocolate makers in the States. That’s amazing, considering when Robert and his business partner John Scharffenberger, told me they were going to make chocolate from scratch, I thought it was a crazy idea and would never get off the ground. Thirteen years later, they sold the company for a reported $50 million. So if you want to ask someone for business advice, you might want to ask someone other than me.

Continue Reading L’Instant Cacao: Bean-to-bar Chocolate Shop...

The Rob Roy cocktail was said to be invented at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, named after a Scottish outlaw in the 1700s, who later became a folk hero. The drink named for him is the drier cousin to the Manhattan, using blended Scotch whisky in place of the rye or bourbon. Unlike single-malt scotch, blended scotch is made from barley as well as other grains and is usually only lightly peated, so it has less of the smoky flavors that are a feature of many single-malt scotch whiskies.

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I thought I’d share this recipe for Dulce de Leche Brownies from The Sweet Life in Paris because I had several jars of what the French call Confiture de lait in my refrigerator from another project. Since I happened to love the combination of caramelized milk and dark chocolate, I thought – Why not combine the two in brownies?

Continue Reading Dulce de Leche Brownie recipe...

This rosy coup holds a drink from Cocktails de Paris, a book of cocktail recipes from Paris, published in 1929. (It’s available to download* for free here.) I was attracted to it because it called for Cherry Rocher, a French liqueur produced by a distillery that was founded in 1704 and is still making it today. Coup de roulis translates to “strong blow,” referring to the strong sway or roll of a boat. My guess is that maybe it got its name because it has four different spirits in it? No matter, I needed a strong drink last week when my apartment sprung a fuite d’eau, causing a flood.

The Paris cocktail book is an excursion back in time, as was the leak, harkening back to other, um…issues I’ve had with my apartment. In the pages, there are words used, such as Angustura (with an alternative spelling that may be from days of yore) and ‘focking,’ a term I’d never heard of either, and when I searched Google for “cocktail focking,” let’s just say most of the search results were adult-only…and I don’t mean in the cocktail department.

Continue Reading Coup de Roulis cocktail...

Anyone who has kids, or a puppy, can relate. I don’t have either, but after all we’ve been through together, I now have a similarly intimate relationship with my apartment. One afternoon at the end of last week, I came home from lunch and the moment I stepped inside my place, I felt something was wrong.

Continue Reading La fuite d’eau...

I was recently reunited with something I miss very much – a loaded apple tree! Friends of mine who had a house in the French countryside had a tree that, come fall, had so many apples, the limbs threatened to break off. Not wanting to be an accomplice in apple-cide, I decided to do my part to save the tree, and the apples, and make Apple Jelly.

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We spent part of our summer vacation in the Languedoc-Roussillon. The region is famous for its wines, especially the reds and rosé (which we sampled – generously…), while it was once the most popular apéritif in the world, selling over 30 million bottles annually, Byrrh is also made in the region but nowadays less well-known. In fact, if you order a Byrrh in France, more often than not, you might be brought a glass of bière, unless your ear for French is pretty good as it’s pronunciation is close to ‘beer.’ (I once had to point it out on the menu at a wine bar in Paris, as the waiter had no idea what I was talking about.) There’s no beer in Byrrh, but there’s plenty of flavor in this iconic French apéritif.

Continue Reading Byrrh Cassis...

I made a statement recently on social media that plums were my favorite fruit. I guess I said the same thing about cherries, at some point, which I was reminded of. But I’ll confess that I may have also said the same thing about nectarines, figs, mangoes, and litchis at some point in my life. However plums really are my favorite fruit, and I’m happy that they stick around from summer all the way through the beginning of fall.

There are a lot of plums out there. In Northern California we had big purple Santa Rosa plums, as well as an array of others with names like Elephant Heart and Angelino, as well as pluots, a hybrid of apricots and plums. While they don’t show up in Paris, there are green Reine Claudes (which are close to being at the top of my list for favorite varieties of plums), tiny golden Mirabelles, and sturdy Quetsches, which hold their shape relatively well during baking. And while they’re not as tart as U.S. varieties (most of the tartness of plums is in their skins), they are reliably good, and flavorful, when baked or oven-roasted, as I often prepare them.

Continue Reading Oven-Roasted Plums...

I was surprised the first time I met Jacqueline Ngo Ppii, who by sheer coincidence, I’d contacted a few weeks earlier when I learned about her company, Little Africa Paris. I wanted to sign up for one of their culinary tours of the African neighborhoods and markets of Paris. I’ve visited some of them a few times on my own, but I wanted to learn more about the foods, ingredients, and preparations from someone with close knowledge of them. The owner wrote back that they started culinary tours yet, and I’d be notified when they did. But I was surprised when I was at a book event and found myself seated right next to her!

We exchanged books and kept in touch. I later found out that Little Africa Paris was looking to move into its own dedicated space in the Goutte d’Or neighborhood, considered the heart of the African community in Paris. The idea is to create Little Africa: A Parisian Village, a place that will host art and cultural events, as well as being a permanent space dedicated to educational tourism, and a venue to highlight Afro-entrepreneurs and artisans. Another goal of her project is to create conversions about race and identity in France, which aren’t often discussed. Jacqueline and I had a wonderful conversation about that on Instagram Live. (And I’m still completely floored by the lovely words she wrote about me on her Little Africa Travel Instagram post.)

Continue Reading Little Africa Paris Crowdfunding Project with Live Cooking Demonstration & French Cooking Class...

Last spring feels like quite a while ago, when I (and we) were all wondering about our food supplies running out, rediscovering things in our jumbled pantries and packed-to-the-gills freezers, and also being a lot more conscious of food waste. On the other hand, it’s hard to use everything up. But I did my best.

I’m the kind of person who finds a 1-inch (3cm) cube of pesto lurking in the back of the freezer, then goes out and spend time at the market shopping for the vegetables, then comes home to wash and chop them up, while the beans are soaking to make soupe au pistou. Then I realize I forgot to buy more basil because I only have a little cube of pesto (or more accurately, pistou) and it’s not enough, so I head back out to buy more basil, cooling my heels in line behind madame, who is requesting that the vendor show her each oignon and carotte for careful examination before she buys it. When all is said and done, and the soup has been served that evening, I find myself with a little bit of leftover pesto when all is said and done, which goes back into the freezer. And the cycle begins again.

Continue Reading Radish Leaf Pesto...

This may or may not happen to you, but sometimes when I’m a guest in someone’s home, where everyone pitches in to make dinner, all eyes (or just the host’s eyes) fall on me to make dessert. Gulp. I happy to pitch in with the cooking or bringing along a few baked goodies for the weekend, but I’m not always prepared to bake on the spot.

Continue Reading Moelleux of Summer Fruits...

Being a baker, braising wasn’t something I did a lot of. I also didn’t cook a lot of meat or poultry. Actually, I didn’t cook much at home as I ate most of my meals on the fly when working in restaurants. (I was also going to say that when I lived in California, I tended to grill as much as I could on my patio but someone sent me a rather pointed message to stop talking about living in California…so I guess I should work on that.) It wasn’t until I came to France, which has a plethora of butchers and volaillers (poultry sellers), that I started branching out from my usual fall-back meals from when I was a professional baker and line cook in San Francisco (if that woman is reading this…sorry!), which included chips & salsa, bbq from Flint’s in Oakland, or a burger at The Smokehouse.

Another thing that happened when I no longer had to work in the evening was that I began to have people over for dinner. But I’ve learned in France not to make something that needs to be served at a precise time. That’s because it’s considered impolite to arrive on time. If you do, you’ll surprise your hosts which I did recently when I was invited to someone’s place for dinner who I didn’t know. I arrived 15 minutes after the time I was told, and I was the only one there, except for the host, who was surprised to see my standing in his doorway. And it was a somewhat uncomfortable twenty minutes I spent making small talk, and watching him put the last-minute preparations on things while I just stood there like a dope. Oops.

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It’s been quite a year for businesses in Paris. From the gilets jaunes movement, to the longest transit strike in French history, then a pandemic, they’ve had to tough a lot of things out. One of the troopers has been Dirty Lemon. After a major remodel of a space that formerly held a LED-lit sushi restaurant, I had a night out with friends – Jennifer, Jane, and Forest – at Dirty Lemon, tasting and testing some of the cocktails on their menu. And even better, enjoying the food of cheffe/owner Ruba Khoury.

Ruba’s goal was to create a bar and space that was for everyone, but especially women-friendly, something she said was lacking in Paris. The name comes from a bad experience she had with a funky lemon she was served, and ate (with unfortunate results), at a cocktail bar in the Marais. But Ruba knows her stuff. She worked at such esteemed restaurants in Paris at Septime, Yam’Tcha, and Frenchie before creating the menu at Ibrik, which I loved, that reflected her Palestinean heritage and growing up in multicultural Dubai.

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I was dangerously low on chocolate during the recent lockdown and fortunately, the owner of a neighborhood bakery kindly gave me a big bag of chocolate to bake with. (I didn’t tell him that most of the time, my “baking” chocolate, gets snacked on.) When I offered to pay for it – three times! – he finally said, “Just bring me something you make with it.” When he saw the panic in my eyes, at the idea of bringing something I made to a lovely French bakery, he said, “Daveed, don’t worry about it. C’est pas grave,” letting me gently off the hook.

Continue Reading Milk Chocolate Chip Amaro Ice Cream...

[NOTE: Learn more about making this apéritif with Brad Thomas Parsons, award-winning author of Bitters, Amaro, and Last Call, on my IG Live Apéro Hour today at 6pm CET (Noon ET, 9am PT) Tune in and join us!]

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a better way to relax in the warm weather, than with a refreshing Spritz. I was introduced to the Spritz when I went to coffee school in 2007, in Trieste, Italy. I drank at least six cups of espresso every day – how could I not? – surprising even the Italian teachers. And by the end of the day, I needed to wind down.

So after class, I’d go to a local caffè in the early evening where I noticed everyone drinking colorful drinks in large, wide goblets filled with handfuls of ice. Since icy beverages are often hard to come by in some countries in Europe, it was surprising to see people drinking cold drinks loaded up with ice. And I wanted one.

Continue Reading Negroni Sbagliato Spritz...

When you write a book, it goes through several editing phases. The first is the developmental edit, which happens when you’re sort of on your way there, and your editor wants to see it. (And make sure you haven’t been sitting around watching Netflix all day.) Once that is read, you get pages of suggestions for what you should change, what should be kept, what needs to be modified, and perhaps suggestions on how to do those things. Then, you go back to work.

The next few steps are more edits, including a pass for grammar and spelling, and someone to check to make sure you said when there is “1 teaspoon of lemon juice” in the ingredient list, that it’s sure to be in the instructions for making the cake or cocktail. When you’re looking at the same words for two years, an errant keystroke or a reviewing a three-hundred-plus-page document filled with digital notes, comments, and directions laid over the text, can have unintended consequences.

Every step of the way, every editor (the main editor…as well as the copy editor, production editor, and proofreader) questioned the same thing in Drinking French: It was about Amer Picon. What would an amer be called in English? Is it Amer Picon or Picon Amer? (Or is that moot, since the most recent bottles now are labeled Picon Bière?). But most of all, the editors were inquiring why was I including a liquor in the book that had an ingredient that wasn’t available in the United States. What was I thinking?

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This Peach Cobbler has become the most requested dessert around here this summer. I don’t think Romain had ever had a cobbler – I usually make crisps, which the French call crumbles. But I’ve been revisiting some cookbooks on my shelf that I hadn’t used for a while, and pulled down The Pastry Queen by Rebecca Rather, who owned several bakeries in Texas.

I met Rebecca when my first book, Room for Dessert, was coming out and I was slated to do a book tour that included Texas. I had never done a book tour and I had been in a very bad car accident and was worried about navigating and getting myself from place-to-place in an unfamiliar state, and doing baking demonstrations, which require a lot of planning and organization. I don’t know how we came to meet each other but Rebecca had a bakery in Texas and, being Texan, knew how to get around the massive state (someone told me the entire country of France could fit inside Texas), and she knew how to bake. So we became a team

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During the lockdown, I did what everyone else did: Went through all my kitchen cabinets, cleaning them out, and finding little bits and bags and jars of stuff that I should have used a long time ago, but didn’t.

You did do that – right?

Mine was quite a purge. I’ve had so many things from travels, friends, food companies, houseguests, strangers, etc. that my drawers and cabinets were out-of-control. I posted some pictures on social media of the things that I appeared to be running low on, but that I was anxious to use up, and people, kindly, offered to send me more…which would have negated the whole idea of the purge. The time had come to use things up.

Continue Reading Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto...