Delectable: Sweet & Savory Baking
- Description
- Product Details
- About the Author
- Read an Excerpt
- Table of Contents
“A home baker’s fantasia . . . [Fans] have been waiting twenty-one years for a follow-up to her equally legendary first book, The Last Course. The wait was worth it.”—Eater (10 Best Cookbooks of Fall 2022)
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Saveur
In Claudia's first cookbook, a culinary classic, she shared recipes from the menus at Gramercy Tavern that introduced home cooks to her sophisticated, classically inspired seasonal desserts and pastries and established a standard in pastry kitchens across the country. Now Claudia is offering a new collection of recipes all developed and tweaked in her own small kitchen. Baking at home, Claudia brings her characteristic style and skilled approach to every sweet and treat, along with an ease with culinary history, and a growing connection to her own family traditions. A mix of classic favorites and new explorations, including her first foray into savory recipes for savory baking, each delicious dish is the work of a master in her prime.
Claudia's knowledge and facility, refined over a storied career in pastry, mark these more casual, desserts and savory bites. Her thoughtful essays on subject ranging from working with yeast to a professional’s approach to frosting a layer cake, reflect her intention to share all she knows. With more than 140 recipes, the book is organized into chapters including:
• Breakfast & Breads: Blueberry Muffins; Rhubarb Scones
• Doughnuts & Cakes: Cider Doughnuts; Devil's Food with Earl Grey Cream
• Cookies: Grapefruit Rugelach; Pizzelles; Maple Shortbread
• Pies: Nectarine and Fig Tart; Plum Cobbler; Kumquat Tatin
• Savories: Eggplant Caponata Tart; Chickpea Crackers; Tomato Crostata
Making simple preparations truly delicious is a challenge Claudia Fleming has always embraced. With Delectable, she continues to set the standard for pastry chefs and home bakers alike.
ISBN-13: 9780593230541
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication Date: 10-25-2022
Pages: 352
Product Dimensions: 8.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Claudia Fleming is a pastry chef, restaurateur, and author. She has worked in New York restaurants such as Union Square Cafe, Montrachet, TriBeCa Grill, and Gramercy Tavern, and at Fauchon in Paris. Fleming and her husband, chef Gerry Hayden, opened The North Fork Table & Inn in Southold, New York. She is currently the executive culinary director for Daily Provisions, Union Square Hospitality Group’s collection of all-day neighborhood kitchens. Fleming has been named Outstanding Pastry Chef by the James Beard Foundation, and her recipes have appeared in publications such as Town & Country, Martha Stewart Living, and Vogue. Fleming has appeared on Barefoot Contessa and Beat Bobby Flay and served as a judge on Chopped and Top Chef: Just Desserts. She lives in New York City and Long Island’s North Fork. Catherine Young is an author who has collaborated on critically acclaimed and James Beard Foundation Award–winning cookbooks including The Beetlebung Farm Cookbook with Chris Fisher; Salt to Taste with Marco Canora; Anatomy of a Dish with Diane Forley; and Think Like a Chef and The Craft of Cooking, both with Tom Colicchio. Catherine started her culinary career after leaving the practice of law. She cooked at leading New York restaurants beginning at Tribeca Grill (where she first met Claudia Fleming) then at Union Square Café, Lespinasse, and Gramercy Tavern. She began food writing as an editor at Saveur. Catherine lives in New York City.
IntroductionRead an Excerpt
The Next Chapter
A lot has changed since I wrote my first cookbook, The Last Course, more than twenty years ago. One thing that hasn’t is my fascination with the world of baking. Breads, cakes, pies, and cookies occupy a special place in the culinary realm, distinguished by the fact that fancy and rustic sit side by side—centuries-old recipes alongside novel creations. As a professional pastry cook, I share a lot with bakers. We use the same ingredients, have a common tool box, and our related branches of the culinary family both benefit from a deft touch. Mastering the proper ratios, managing things just so, and heating to the right temperature are all necessary to avoid disappointment. This is true in cooking generally, but the opportunities for transformation are more extreme and margins thinner when you are playing with flour, sugar, and eggs. That test of skill draws me, but alone it has never been enough. I want to touch people with my cooking, to strike resonant chords. I hope each dish I prepare—elaborate or not—links to something deep inside. I am a pastry cook, a composer of desserts by trade, but baking inspires me.
Because my career has shaped and defined me, it was no real surprise that I felt anxious when it came time to say goodbye to my restaurant after fourteen years. I worried I might be leaving not only the North Fork Table and Inn behind but an important piece of myself as well. The sale was necessary. I wanted a change and needed time—hard to find in a life defined by long workdays. In January of 2020, when the sale was done, I hoped to travel. I did, but not for very long. I yearned for adventure but missed order and soon settled into a routine at home, firing up my anything-but-fancy oven to bake ingredients I bought at my not particularly well-stocked local grocery. I started by “tweaking” old recipes, fiddling until I felt completely pleased with them, then I moved on to cooking things I never had. At some point—I can’t say when—I realized my practice of baking at home was just what I needed.
I had been at it for almost two months when the world sputtered to a halt. I was fortunate to be spared the hard decisions my friends in the restaurant business coped with during the unfolding pandemic. I never had to let people go because infection rates made operating a restaurant impossible. I could just keep on doing what I had recently begun, cooking at home by myself, happy to have my time organized by refining recipes, hoping the effort would lead to my next step and turn into a collection I could share. Weeks became months and I kept at it. Along the way, a new relationship to my food developed. I was lightened by what evolved into a freewheeling approach to my craft. I felt renewed, even as I rolled out time-tested doughs and poured favorite batters.
I made chocolate-covered-marshmallow cookies modeled after my dad’s favorite snack. I had served them at the North Fork Table and now cooked them for friends. I added salted peanuts to the chocolate caramel tart I developed at Gramercy Tavern and liked it even better. As is my habit, I followed the seasons, baking with rhubarb and strawberries, peaches, then plums, quince, and apple, putting the fruit in pies, piling berries on cakes, and spooning preserves onto cookies. When I wanted a challenge, I would take on things I’d never attempted. I made pretzels and then batches of sticky buns filled with shiitakes. A gift of squash blossoms stirred me to make a tart. It was stimulating to cook this way and very gratifying to be able to head to a neighbor’s with focaccia or a crostata during a time when it was easy to feel isolated.
In the summer, I longed for good, homemade ice cream. I don’t have a machine, so I started making semifreddos. I experimented with different techniques and lots of flavors. I made some tasty ones, stacked three, and found I had made a dessert that reminded me of spumoni, something I hadn’t had since I was a kid.
My mother’s parents came to New York from Caltanissetta in Sicily. An excellent cook, my mom passed on her love of the flavors she’d grown up with. I thought of her more and more often as I cooked at home. I made an eggplant caponata tart and then an escarole pie. I baked taralli (a batch of fennel, then pecorino, and then another flavored with pancetta) and made dozens of pizzelles and pignoli cookies. I worked out my own adaptation of a Sicilian cassata and baked a more-or-less traditional pastiera—“grain pie”—a sweet ricotta dessert we ate every Easter. It was as though I’d found a source of inspiration that had just been waiting for the right moment to be tapped, so I delved deeper, comforted by the feeling that I had time, my goals and inspirations shifting over the course of a year.
The sweet and savory treats I made in my kitchen were not nearly so elegant as the food I’ve served in restaurants, but, like those dishes, each was intentional, and carefully wrought—the product of an effort to make things taste not just as good as you’d imagine but even better. Making stripped-down preparations truly delicious is a challenge I have always embraced. Cooking on my little electric stove imposed new limits, but working one recipe at a time, by myself, at my own pace, afforded unanticipated opportunities to get things precisely how I wanted them. While I’d never claim to have produced the ultimate version of anything, I did get the recipes I worked through to a place that satisfied me, and I was delighted to see them eaten with joy.
My home stay is now behind me (at least for the moment). I am glad to be back at work, but I don’t want to forget what I felt, learned, and produced during my time baking solo. So, I’ve gathered the recipes that resulted from my meanderings, along with thoughts on how to make each one well. The following pages provide maps that will lead to tasty food—a delicious end in itself—but I hope you find, as I did, that the process, too, is worth savoring. For me, it proved both heartwarming and soul-sustaining.
Introduction: The Next Chapter xiii About this Book xvii Weights and Measures xvii Equipment and Ingredients xix Chapter 1 Breakfast and Breads 3 Morning Baking 4 Biscuits and Scones 5 Drop Biscuits 5 Biscuit and Scone Notes 7 North Fork Biscuits 8 Sweet Potato Biscuits with Bitter Chocolate and Pecans 9 English-Style Scones 12 Cheddar and Stilton Scones 13 Rhubarb Scones 14 Blackberry Shortcake 16 Muffins and Quick Breads 19 Blueberry Muffins 19 Date, Nut, and Coconut Muffins 20 Oat and Banana Muffins with Pecans 21 Mom's Irish Soda Bread 22 Chipotle Cornbread 25 Working with Commercial Yeast 26 Yeasted Breads Cheese Rolls 27 Sweet Potato Rolls with Miso 29 Chocolate Babka Buns 31 Prosciutto Bread 35 Rye English Muffins 38 North Fork Focaccia 41 Focaccia Rolls 42 Chapter 2 Doughnuts and Cakes 45 A Cake Problem? 46 Doughnuts 48 Cider Doughnuts 48 Chocolate Doughnuts with Espresso Glaze 51 Vanilla Cream Doughnuts 53 Maple and White Chocolate Skiffs 56 Seasonal Cakes 59 Strawberry Cassata 59 Plum and Almond Cake 63 Quince Goat Cheese Cake 64 Apple Crumb Cake 67 Cornmeal and Olive Oil Cake 69 Fennel Tea Cake with Pernod Whipped Cream 71 Layer Cakes 72 Coconut Layer Cake 72 Devil's Food Cake with Earl Grey Cream 75 Ginger-Stout Layer Cake with Ermine Frosting 77 White Cake with Plum Filling 81 How to Frost a Cake 83 Frostings and Toppings 85 Italian Meringue (Frosting) 85 Maple and White Chocolate Cream 86 The World of Buttercreams 87 Chocolate Buttercream 88 Vanilla Buttercream 90 Buttermilk "Ermine" Frosting 91 Chapter 3 Cookies 93 Seeking Deliciousness 95 Cooking Sugar 96 European Inspirations 98 Fig Bars 98 Grapefruit and Poppy Seed Rugelach 101 Crisps 102 Pecan Olive Shortbread 103 Pignoli Cookies 104 Raspberry and Cranberry Linzer Cookies 105 Pizzelles 109 Melted Chocolate: Ganache and Tempered Chocolate 110 Tempered Chocolate Glaze 111 Toffee 113 American Classics and Riffs 114 Almond and Walnut Brownies 114 Food Truck Chocolate Chip Cookies 117 Dad's Favorite Cookie 118 Espresso Shortbread with Cocoa Nibs 121 Maple Shortbread 123 Molasses Ginger Cookies 124 Oatmeal Cookies with Sour Cherries 125 Chapter 4 Pies 129 Careful with the Crust 130 Pies, Tarts, and CObblers 132 Rhubarb and Strawberry Pie 132 Blueberry, Blueberry, Blueberry Tart 135 Blueberry Turnovers 137 Peach and Blackberry Cobbler with Ricotta Biscuits 139 Peach and Raspberry Crostata 141 Caramelized Nectarine and Fig Tart 144 Raspberry, Rose, and White Chocolate Tart 146 Ricotta Tart with Roasted Cherries 149 Plum Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuits 151 Italian Plum and Hazelnut Tart 152 Apple Tartlets 155 Apple and Raspberry Crisp 157 Lemon Pie with Coconut 159 Lemon Tart 161 Kumquat Tatin 163 Chocolate Caramel Tart with Peanuts 165 Pastiera (Grain Pie) 167 Doughs 170 Basic Butter Pie Dough 170 Chocolate Dough 171 Cornmeal Buttermilk Dough 172 Cheddar Crostata Dough 173 Cream Cheese Dough 174 Crostata Dough 175 Cast-Iron Pizza Dough 177 Hazelnut Dough 178 Rough Puff Pastry 179 Sweet Almond Tart Dough 180 Sweet Tart Dough 181 Chapter 5 Savories 183 A Taste for Savories 184 Mostly Vegetable Tarts 187 Eggplant Caponata Tatt 187 Mrs. Stasi's Escarole Pie 190 Shiitake Sticky Buns 193 Potato Flambé Tart 197 Spring Torta 198 Squash Blossom Tart 201 Tomato Crostata 203 Nibbles 205 Cheddar Coins 205 Chickpea Crackers 206 Gouda Pizzelles 207 Gruyère and Onion Cocktail Biscuits 209 Cheese Kiffles 210 Onion and Poppy Seed Kiffles 212 Pretzels 215 Pancetta Taralli 219 Fennel Taralli 221 Pecorino Taralli 222 Chapter 6 Custards and Semifreddos 225 About Eggs 226 Custards 229 Chocolate Mousse 229 Espresso Custard with Orange 231 Coconut Custard 232 XVOO Lemon Cream 233 Passion Fruit Custard 235 Yuzu Panna Cotta 236 Chocolate Panna Cotta 239 Sweet Corn Puddings with Blueberries 241 Semifreddo: History and Technique 243 Banana and Espresso Semifreddo with Butterscotch and Macadamia Nuts 244 Black Raspberry and Chocolate Semifreddo 246 Squash Semifreddo Tart with Coconut and Pecans 248 Spumoni with Meringue and Caramelized Oranges 251 Olive Oil Semifreddo 255 Orange Semifreddo 256 Pistachio Semifreddo 258 Chapter 7 Fruit 261 Cooking in Season 262 Roasted Peaches with Caramel and Cherries 265 Roasted Pears with Maple and Goat Cheese Cream 266 Roasted Figs with Sugared Pistachios 267 Poached Quince 268 Citrus Salad 269 Poached Rhubarb 270 Candied Kumquats 271 Poached Grapefruit with Fennel 272 Blood Oranges in Caramel 273 Candied Orange Rinds 275 Candied Grapefruit Rinds 277 Apple Butter 278 Grapefruit Conserve 279 Wintertime Apricot Jam 280 Eggplant Caponata 281 Quick-Pickled Cucumbers 283 Chapter 8 Pantry 285 Be Prepared 285 Basil Oil 288 Blood Orange Caramel 288 Butterscotch Toffee Sauce 289 Honey Butter 289 Savory Mixed Seeds 290 Sugared Nuts and Seeds 291 Sugared Almonds 291 Sugared Hazelnuts 292 Sugared Macadamia Nuts 292 Maple Sugared Pecans 293 Molasses Pecans 293 Sugared Pine Nuts 294 Sugared Pistachios 294 Sugared Pumpkin Seeds 295 Maple Sugared Walnuts 295 A Trio of Crumbles 296 Brown Butter Pecan Crumble 296 Oat Crumble 298 Chocolate Crumble 298 Acknowledgments 300 Index 303Table of Contents