DORIE GREENSPAN

Kitchen Library, A Gem in the New Oxbow Market in Napa

This is Steven Rothfeld standing at one of the tables in his new shop, Kitchen Library, a place so chockablock with beautiful books, photographs, tableware, paper, soaps, ceramics, antiques and vintage finds that people come thinking they'll just take a peek and end up staying hours - every time you turn your head just the slightest bit, there's something new and wonderful to see.

Steven is an extraordinary photographer - whenever I need a little inspiration, want to dream, armchair travel or just take a break, I look at the pictures on his website - and a man who has traveled the world many times over and recorded some of his travels in books that are so evocative of the places they feature (often France) that I can't look at them without finding myself rubbing the pages, a little like rubbing a magic lantern in the hopes of being transported, and a little like rubbing something that you think, or wish, was real.  He's also a guy who was born with the collector gene.  In Kitchen Library, Steven brings so many parts of his work and life together, offering the things he loves and the kinds of things he's collected.  The space is small, but he's built a lyrical world within its confines.

In fact, all of the spaces in the new Oxbow Market in Napa are small, but there isn't one that's not interesting.  The market, which opened just a month ago, is still growing, but if you go there today, you can buy exotic teas at The Tillerman Tea Company, vintage kitchenware at Heritage Culinary Artifacts, Lisa Minucci's stand, from which I was dying to buy the sign she's standing in front of,

spoonables from Three Twins Organic Ice Cream, seasonings from The Whole Spice Company, and gifts from Fete, where we found a folksy handcrafted rooster that's since come back to nest with us.

While there's a weekly farmers' market and more stands are due to open this month and next - including The Model Bakery and St. Helena's cult eatery, Taylor's Refresher - no one visiting the market ever has to go hungry.  There's plenty to nibble and there's Folio, Michael Mondavi's Enoteca and Winery, by which he means a complete micro-winery!  When I joined the crowds there, I was delighted to find that the chef is Sarah Scott

You may not recognize Sarah's face, but my bet is that many of you, like I, have made lots of Sarah's recipes.  She's written stories for Bon Appetit magazine, her most recent being those terrific desserts in the Thanksgiving issue. 

Sitting in the market with Steven was like being on a Main Street front porch in the liveliest, friendliest small town in the world.  If Oxbow weren't more than 3,000 miles from New York (and more than 6,000 miles from Paris!), I'd be a regular.

If you live nearby, lucky you!  If you're a visitor to the Napa Valley, put Oxbow and Kitchen Library on your must-go list.  They would be worth a detour on their own, but happily most food and wine lovers will end up there without a detour because they're just steps from Copia, the center for wine, food and art.

Because we got to Copia early in the morning, we didn't do any of the guided winetastings - aarrgh - but we did see a great exhibit , Forks in the Road, and, of course, we went to the Julia Child corner. 

While The Smithsonian has Julia's kitchen, including everything that was in every kitchen drawer, Copia has the most iconic piece of Julia's workspace: the ingenious pegboard wall with the outlines of all her pots drawn on it.  The idea for this quick and easy removal and replacement system came from Paul Child, Julia's husband, and I wish I had a penny for everyone who copied it when they saw it on The French Chef

I loved being in the Napa Valley - I know, I know, is there anyone who loves food and wine who wouldn't love being there?  I was there to do a chocolate class at The Napa Valley Reserve (take a look - it's so gorgeous) on the grounds of the fabulous Meadowood Resort, which was a treat in itself (and about which I'll tell more when I get the pictures), and, as much as I adore New York, it was awfully hard to get on that plane and fly back. 

Hand-picked micro greens ... cult wines ... artisanal cheeses ... breakfast croissants from Bouchon Bakery ... organic everything ... miles of magnificent vineyards ... sunshine and breezes ... the definition of California dreamin'

Hold the Bag, Get a Reward

As I've mentioned before, I always carry my fold-up shopping bag from Monoprix around with me.  In fact, when I pulled it out in the Boulevard Raspail market last month, my friend, Louisa Chu, mentioned that mine was a collector's item - it seems that the black bag was a limited edition, which explains why the bags in my current stash are pink and red.  Anyway, this week I reaped an extra little perk from having the bag in hand.  I was in St. Helena, in the Napa Valley (about which a lot more, when I've got some time), and shopping at this wonderful store, Baksheesh, which offers
" handcrafted gifts from the developing world".  I was just window-shopping, but a display of trivets like these caught my eye

They're made of recycled newspaper, come from Guatemala and will look terrific on my wood table, so I bought four of them (and yes, for the quality, look and price - $6 each - I should have bought more).  When the trivets were wrapped in one thin piece of recycled paper, the shopkeeper asked me if I wanted a bag and, before I could even say "no" or whip out my trusty black carry-all, she offered me a bribe: "If you don't take a bag, I'll give you a piece of chocolate!" 

Now that's a deal!  Good for the planet/good for the palate. 

I know that goodness should be its own reward - and carrying your own bag, so that you don't have to use more paper and plastic is good and rewarding - but a little bit of chocolate never hurt. 

Baking with Dorie: Boca Negra

This week's Baking with Dorie recipe at Serious Eats is for a chocolate cake that really lives up to its name, Boca Negra, or black mouth - it's chocolaty, chocolaty, chocolaty.

The recipe, created by the talented Lora Brody, comes from Baking with Julia, the book I wrote for the PBS series of the same name.  I love this recipe for its simplicity: it can be made in seconds in a food processor; it can be dressed up with ice cream, whipped cream or Lora's bourbony white-chocolate cream (the recipe's included); and it can be frozen and kept for that rainy day.  Actually, because the cake is so fudgy and has so much bourbon in it (as you'll see when you read the comments at Serious Eats, coffee can be subbed for the hootch), it doesn't really get so hard that you can't nibble a little slice straight from the freezer.  Can you tell I'm speaking from experience?

(Photo by Gentl & Hyers)

Michael Laiskonis: Ace Pastry Chef/New Blogger

Yesterday, my friend Michael Laiskonis, the extraordinarily talented pastry chef of Le Bernardin restaurant in New York, wrote to tell me that he's launched his blog.  It's exciting to have a new neighbor in cyberspace, especially one who is so smart and has so much to tell us and to teach us.

For his first post, Michael muses on "The Egg" and gives a recipe - pictured above - for an eggshell filled with milk chocolate creme brulee, caramel sauce and caramel foam and topped with a drizzle of maple syrup and a few flakes of Maldon sea salt.  It's a showstopping restaurant dessert that can be accomplished chez you with patience and two pieces of fancy, fun equipment - an egg-topper and a whipped cream siphon.  I think  it could also be made in teensy espresso cups (and I hope Michael doesn't mind my suggesting this for us homebakers).

Whether you make the egg or not, you'll find interesting thoughts about eggs, the recipe's roots (as soon as I saw it and the words "maple syrup," I thought of Alain Passard in Paris and, indeed, Michael acknowledges Passard as a source of inspiration here) and Michael's way of working.

I'm really happy to have another friend in the ether - I think you'll be, too.

Baking with Dorie: Daniel Boulud's Coffee-Cardamom Pots de Creme

Leave it to Daniel Boulud, one of the country's most exciting chefs, to come up with a fresh take on classic pots de creme - baked custard to many of us. 

Here, in a recipe from the Cafe Boulud Cookbook, Daniel caramelizes coffee beans and cardamom pods to intensify their flavor, then he uses them to infuse the custard's milk.    The inspiration was Middle Eastern coffee; the result is an exotic reading of what is essentially a comfort-food favorite.

The recipe is this week's Baking with Dorie column at Serious Eats.  (And the photograph, taken from the book, is the work of Gentl & Hyers, the same photographers who did the pictures for Baking with Julia.)

A note to those of you who jump to the recipe and don't read the intro (I know you're out there): if you don't want to cover the pan with plastic wrap, that's okay - you can use aluminum foil.

Oysters! And Red Wine????

Now that it's pretty much accepted that white wine is good with cheese - about 5 years ago the sommelier at Le Grand Vefour told me that after a huge tasting, he and his team decided that white wine is better than red with cheese in 70% of the cases - we've got a new tradition on the line: oysters and cold, crisp white wine.

A couple of weeks ago, I had oysters three times (making it an outstanding week), and two of those times the servers proposed red wine! (The third time we were at a friend's house and the hosts spoiled us with Champagne and great white wine to go with our mountains of oysters.)

It all started at Les Fines Gueules, where Michael and I ordered a bottle of red wine and I asked for a glass of white wine to go with my sparklingly fresh bivalves.  The owner of the bistro (a place that's on my current favorites list) obliged, but, he said, "You know, you could have red with those - it can be very good."  And to prove his point, he brought the white and, along with it, a glass of a red from Saumur.  He was right - the red was interesting with the oysters; it played more to the oysters' sweetness than to their saltiness.  It didn't, however, win a place in that part of my heart where I keep great food and wine pairings.

One day later, the story repeated itself at Yves Camdeborde's wonderful Le Comptoir.  We ordered a half bottle of Morgon to go with our lunch and I ordered a glass of white wine to go with my starter, oysters served with, of all great things, duck rillettes.  "You know, you could stay with your red," said Eric, the very knowledgeable (and funny) server.

And so, again I stayed with the red and again it was interesting - but again it didn't win me over.  There's such great pleasure to be had from slurping a cool oyster in its clear, salty liquor, then sipping a cold, clean white wine with a racy, acidic edge.  In my book, the red wine/oyster combination just doesn't deliver even a fraction of that pleasure.

But that didn't stop me from telling Kerrin and Oivier (the granola guys) about my experiences when they stopped by for drinks.  They were headed to L'Ecallier du Bistrot Paul Bert, the seafood sister of one of my favorite bistros, where Olivier intended to start his meal with a mound of oysters.

The Bistrot Paul Bert has a stunning wine list (there are over 300 bottles, some hard to find elsewhere, all very reasonably marked-up) and a staff that knows its way around it, so when Olivier asked the server if she'd be shocked if he ordered red wine with his oysters, she replied "Not at all, I always drink red with Belons - it's so good."

She then proceeded to list about nine wines she thought would be right with oysters, among them a red Arbois, a Poulsard from the Jura, a pinot noir from Alsace and a Pineau d'Aunis, a light red from Saumur - just what I drank at Fines Gueules!

I once had an editor who said that if you hear about something once, it's just an idea, but hear about it twice, it might be a trend.  I wonder what it means when you hear about something three times ...

Baking with Dorie: EVO and Yogurt Cake

I'm always so excited when I can pass along a recipe like this one:  It's easy to make; quick to put together; requires no special equipment; uses ingredients we're likely to have on hand; bakes up perfectly every time; and tastes sooooooo good.

I mean, what more could you possibly ask of one little cake?

The evo in the recipe's title is extra-virgin olive oil, and it's what gives the cake its rich flavor and moist texture.  The other star ingredient is yogurt, plain, unflavored and wonderfully tangy.

In this version of the recipe (it's based on a recipe using flavorless oil and lemon that is a French staple), I'm using lime, but you can use anything citrusy that you have on hand.  You can also soak the cake in a citrus and/or rum syrup or glaze it with marmalade or jam.  Or you can just leave it as it -- since as is is great.

You can find the recipe in this week's Baking with Dorie column at Serious Eats.  I hope you'll make it.  And I bet, if you do, you'll make it again and again and again.  I do.

Baking with Dorie: Galette des Rois

It's that time of year again:  Time for Epiphany and Kings' Cakes, galettes des rois!  Last year's best galette des rois was the one above, an Ispahan galette filled with rose-almond cream and raspberries, and it was brought to us by my patissier prefere, its creator, Pierre Herme (above).

Epiphany is officially January 6, but the pastry shops here in Paris are filled with galettes - have been since January 2; will be for a couple of weeks more.  And to celebrate this delicious pastry and its customs (when you click through you'll read all about finding the trinket and winning the crown), the galette des rois is this week's Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats. 

Of course I hope you'll make it and love it, but I also hope you'll be the one to find the trinket tucked inside the cake!

These trinkets - or feves, as they're called - were collected from previous galettes.  I just might cheat a bit and recycle one of them into my own Kings Cake this Sunday.