Pasta and Pastry

A reliably good Italian restaurant is a wonderful thing, especially if it isn't far away. Basilico in Millburn is just such a place, a BYO with great food and an atmosphere that looks Manhattan-style trendy, with dark red tones, wood floors, big windows out front, and high ceilings. The staff is friendly, the prices are reasonable -- if I weren't obsessed with cooking, it's the kind of place where I'd want to eat every couple weeks.

Tonight we were packing a gift certificate from my parents, so we went all out. We had a trio of ceviches and a stuffed artichoke to start, then Margy had porcini ravioli with truffle sauce and I had a special of seafood ravioli with vodka sauce, asparagus, and mushrooms. Everything was delicious, especially the ravioli. The homemade pasta was just the right thickness -- we could almost but not quite see the filling smiling through each tasty little package -- and it had been expertly cooked. We wiped our plates clean with fluffy focaccia.

But we saved room for dessert, which is essential here. Though Margy's banana tart was excellent, the apricot strudel (pictured) took first prize. I can't decide how I feel about the presentation -- gorgeous? clumsy? overwrought? -- but we didn't look at it for long. The strudel was warm, the filling was hot, the ice cream was cold. It was over before we knew it.

The Icing Says It All

When the band arrived in Vermont for our annual pair of Martin Luther King Weekend gigs, we found that my sister had baked Margy a cake to celebrate her birthday, which was this week.

Band members, and our associates, arrived at different times throughout the day, so we waited until after tonight's gig (good show) to cut the cake. It wasn't exactly planned as such, but we couldn't have asked for a more perfect hour to tuck into a sweet treat than 2am. We stood around the Vermont kitchen singing to Margy and licking our forks.

The rich and tasty delight was a chocolate cake topped with a masterful layer of cinnamon cream and then enrobed in Lindt-chocolate ganache. I expected the whole deal to be too slam-bang chocolaty for me -- I'm a chocolate tenderfoot -- but it was right up my alley... even if I scraped off some of the ganache, as reluctant as I am to admit it.

My sister is a wizard. Some might say that for a given occasion she whips up the dessert that she herself would like to eat most, but the truth is that she's so good that everyone always loves everything she makes. Anyway, in this case, if she were truly baking only for herself, that cake would have been topped with peanut butter rather than cinnamon cream. Aw, she's so selfless.

Happy birthday, Margy!

The Party's Over

My sister was staging a protest: That's it, I'm done.

I don't blame her. She worked hard, harder than any person in his or her right mind should ever have to. The party was over, and the crowd was down to my parents, Margy, and me. My sis agreed to grill the leftover burgers and dogs for tonight's dinner -- after doing everything your way this weekend, I told her, I'm not about to risk overcooking your hamburger. But s'mores were where she drew the line. Alas, you're not looking at a treat crafted by the sure hands of a trained pastry chef but rather at one clumsily assembled by her non-s'more-seasoned brother. Still, it went down nice and was a good cap to a few days of eating and drinking and generally making merry.

Lemony Musings

Margy and I decided to try a new French-Mediterranean restaurant, Café Monet, that opened up a few towns away. It was terrific.

Red onion tart, grilled octopus salad, bouillabaisse with skate wing and bass, duck with cumin sauce -- everything rocked. But the lemon meringue tart really took the cake.

I was reminiscing about how as a kid I loved lemon, but I couldn't deal with meringue for some reason, and so my mom would forgo the topping and make me "lemon chiffon pie." It was my favorite thing in the world, and her graham cracker crust just rocketed it right over the top. But I still can't quite believe I didn't like that fluffy meringue. Oh, a kid's fickle palate...

Hunka Chunka Hubba Hubba

My sister knows dessert.

Not only is she an unbelievably talented pastry chef, but she is also quite the connoisseur, able to sniff out only the best of the many mass-produced sweets. Margy thinks she should be a dessert developer.

Sis's current favorite is Friendly's Hunka Chunka Peanut Butter Fudge ice cream. In fact, she swears her fierce devotion to this variety led to its elevation from ephemeral flavor of the month to permanent fixture on Friendly's ice cream menu. She insists on serving Hunka Chunka drizzled with Friendly's peanut butter sauce, which is a sweeter, more viscous version of regular peanut butter. Sis says she's tried to make something similar herself but has yet to figure out Friendly's secret. (My guess is that the secret involves chemicals.)

So after finally spending a day outside in the warm sunshine, we ordered another round of pizzas and capped the last night of our Vermont jaunt with a little Hunka Chunka PB Fudge. We even got to watch the Yankees beat the Red Sox from our post on enemy territory (that is, New England). All was well in the world.

Margy's Mother's Day Tart

Clearly Margy is a woman of many talents.

Her fruit tart was a big hit with our Mother's Day crowd, which was my family minus sister #3. (That mother...) The weather was a bit chilly and overcast, so we stayed inside all afternoon, but we had fun. My mom brought a wonderful dip made of edamame, and I made rigatoni all'amatriciana, which turned out pretty well.

I also made a salad with baby spinach, Boston lettuce, carrot, cucumber, and apple. The dressing was a honey mustard vinaigrette. I had a bit of a heavy hand with the honey, which led to a strange and unusual turn of events. My father, the man who eats everything, couldn't deal with a sweet dressing and pushed his half-eaten salad away as everyone else finished theirs. I mean, an hour before dinner the guy was boasting about being willing to consume any animal part, and now he was setting aside his usual "don't waste a BITE!" attitude because of some honey and a drop of balsamic? I couldn't believe it. You think you know a guy... Yet of course he's allowed. If you don't like it, you don't like it!

I think he did like Margy's tart. Long before the guests arrived, as she put the sandy, crumbly shortbread crust (damn short) in the oven, neither of us could quite imagine that it would turn out solid, but it did. The fruit came next. And then Margy glazed the tart with "Tortenguss," a German import that her mom gave her. (The photo is pre-glaze.) It set the fruit nicely, causing me to make many naughty comments about hooves.

It was our first time hosting on a holiday, and despite a hint of the inevitable anxiety, we enjoyed ourselves. We're looking forward to the next one.

Postmodern Strudel

Tonight I sneaked out of the kitchen and Margy and I headed over to a nearby fancy Italian joint for a late dinner. She had spinach and ricotta ravioli in a cognac sauce with bits of veal, and it was marvelous. I had some nice braciole with light and delicate ricotta ravioli on the side. Everything was good, but the apple strudel might have been the best part. A rather humble-looking hunk of fruit and pastry, the strudel seemed to take itself a bit too seriously by surrounding itself with such glitzy modern-art effects as painted sauces and a 12-inch-high triangular cookie, but hey, we'll play along. The whole shebang was delicious. And you just can't beat a dessert that's hot and cold at the same time.

Basilico, Millburn, NJ

Margy Bakes! Poppy Seed Angel Food Cakes

My parents were about to move out of the house they'd been living in since I was a year old, but first we had one more dinner in the almost empty space. Sister #1 brought a whole mess of pizza from the famous Star Tavern. It was pretty good, and I ate too many slices to be counted. For dessert Margy made her special angel food cakes with poppy seeds and lemon. She served the little cakes with strawberries in lemon syrup.

It was family day, as we'd had lunch at our place with Margy's parents. The chicken cutlet sandwiches went over well. Both Margy and I felt guilty that we couldn't offer angel food to her parents, but her cake output was limited -- and we needed to be sure to have extra for my brother-in-law, who's real skinny but packs it away like Andre the Giant.

Margy and Sister #3 Bake Sticky Buns!

All week leading up to our Vermont trip, Margy was in a quandary: Does she or doesn't she make sticky buns for the gang while we're up there? On one hand, she really wanted to try her mom's recipe for quick and easy buns using frozen bread dough. On the other hand, my sister is a trained pastry chef, and we'd be on her turf.

In the end, while everyone else but my early-rising sis slept off a long evening of heroic rock and roll excess, Margy awoke after three and a half measly hours of shut-eye and went to work. Bless her heart. Like the fabulous sisters-in-law that they are, Margy and sister #3 collaborated beautifully and turned out two kinds of baked goods, which I like to call (from left to right) the psychedelic and the merely groovy.

The merely groovy are cinnamon rolls, while the sticky buns are truly psychedelic, as is any "breakfast" that contains more sugar than a bowl of Ben & Jerry's.

Good-Lookin' Lebkuchen

Margy's mom gave me a package of these cookies straight from Germany. It's a rich spice cookie baked on top of a wafer identical to the ones you get from a priest during Communion. Virtuously delicious.

To balance out the old angel-devil thing, there's chocolate on top.

Margy Bakes! Her Famous Ginger Cookies

I'm not really cheating, since this was pretty much our dinner. And Margy deserves a big hand for making her amazing ginger cookies again this year. They're crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, and they offer a nice hit of spice. The icing is lemon juice mixed with confectioners sugar (as my sister said, you can't beat the combo of ginger and lemon).

We made the mistake of baking the cookies around 6:30pm -- by the time we had each sampled three or four, we were no longer in the mood for the pork chops I'd defrosted for dinner.

So we ate a few more cookies.

Paris Journal: Le Vaudeville

We'll always have Paris.

Our last dinner of the trip was a late, hastily arranged affair due to Margy's torturous work schedule, but it was still a good time. I used the opportunity to tie up some loose ends, in the form of eating more oysters and snails; trying the classic frisée salad with bacon, croutons, and a poached egg; and finally devouring a profiterole with chocolate sauce. I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I didn't get that last one accomplished.

Margy had dorado, that oft-appearing fish, with a sauce made with star anise, that oft-appearing spice. I think I liked the fish more than she did. The skin was crispy.

When the waiter came over with a coffeepot full of bubbling-hot chocolate sauce for the profiteroles you see here (which are filled with vanilla ice cream) and he began to pour the sauce slowly and dare I say suggestively over the puffs until they were about to swim away on a sea of chocolate, he looked at Margy's colleague and said, in French, "Let me know if there is not enough."

Paris, a bientôt!

Paris Journal: L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon

"That was before I was born!" said our waitress, who'd asked if Margy and I had been to Paris before. I'd told her yes, I'd been there twenty-one years ago. "I am just twenty," the server added. But like everything else at this incredible two-year-old food shrine from famed restaurateur Robuchon, she was terrific. Her explanations of the complicated tapas-sized dishes and her suggestions for both food and wine were spot-on. This was our one true Paris blowout -- though honestly even a bottle of eau is expensive in the City of Lights -- and it was one of the best restaurant meals Margy and I have ever had. It was one of those dinners where we kept looking at each other with wide eyes and shooting each other little grins.

The place itself sets the tone for the excitement that's found on the plate. There are no tables, just endless counter seating that wraps around the room, putting the open kitchen at center stage. Every little detail is taken into account: The high stools are more comfortable than they look, the silverware is sleek and inviting (I can't wait to put this fork in my mouth, I thought), and there are even little hooks beneath the counters so you can hang your bag and keep it out of the way.

And the color scheme is almost as striking as the food. Everything at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon -- atelier means workshop -- is in black or red, or both. The eight or so cooks in front of us were clad entirely in black, as they whizzed almost silently around what looked like an enormous griddle with adjacent burners. Margy and I drooled over the dazzling array of red pots and pans they were using, including tiny Le Creuset saucepans (at least we assumed they were Le Creuset).

Here's what we ate. Everything was perfect.

Dorado, or daurade, tartare made with fromage blanc, served with a grilled slice of bread, and topped with radish sprouts

Grilled calamari with chorizo, tomato, and grilled baby artichokes

Sardine escabèche on melba toasts with tomato confit, topped with greens, with spicy mustard on the plate

Langoustine raviolo with black truffle sauce

Braised pork in mustard sauce with a crispy piece of pork skin on top and a dressed heart of romaine on the side, served with a small red pot of the creamiest, most wonderful mashed potatoes ever crafted (we suspected that potatoes accounted for oh, about fifty percent of what was in there; the rest was pure richness)

Grilled baby lamb chops au jus with roasted garlic and fleur du thyme, also served with mashed potatoes

For dessert (pictured -- look at that stone plate!), a Chartreuse liqueur soufflé with a scoop of pistachio ice cream dropped into the center

Since most of the dishes featured seafood, we chose a white wine -- Cot. Charitois Dom. de la Vernière. Luckily it went well with our meat choices. And we couldn't resist finishing off with a quick eau de vie, to which we were quickly becoming addicted.

I'm pretty sure I thanked everyone who worked there a little too profusely as we walked out, but when I've eaten well I feel no need to play it cool -- even in one of the world's coolest cities.