Delectable: Sweet & Savory Baking

Introduction

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 feelin...