Garlic

Come into the Dinosaur any night after work and eat this salsa at the bar with freshly fried tortilla chips. Back home, make it with the best tomatoes you can get your hands on.

These delectable shrimp boiled in beer and rolled in lots of spice and garlic are our most popular appetizer. Their “a-peel” has always been in the roll-up-your-sleeves sloppy nature of eating ‘em. There’s nothin’ polite about ‘em, and that’s the way we like it.

If you’re not a sweet pickle fan, you should try these wonderful dill pickles that my friend Lisa’s grandmother makes. Sweet pickles are generally sliced, but these are served whole. They are deliciously dilled and better than any store-bought pickle, I guarantee it!

In Quebec, only two real game meats can be legally sold, caribou from the great north and hare snared in the winter. The taste of these meats is surprising at first, the incarnation of the word “gamey,” but like truffles or blue cheese, it becomes what you crave. Many little classic Parisian restaurants offer this dish in season, and there are as many ways to cook it as there are chefs. The basics are wild hare (lièvre), red wine, shallots, thyme, and garlic. The rest can vary. At Joe Beef, we use both hare and rabbit. D’Artagnan (www.dartagnan.com) ships in-season Scottish game hare that we have tried. It’s gamey all right, but it’s the real McCoy. If you can’t find a hare, you can use all rabbit. Count on two days to prepare this recipe. It should yield six to eight portions, and it freezes well.

The best image we have of bagna càuda is in the Time-Life Book, Cooking of Italy: a few stocky men and their elegant wives, towels around their necks, are sitting solemnly around a table in a brick vault. You would think they are about to eat ortolans or monkey brains, but no, they are enjoying long sticks of celery dipped in a warm butter-oil-anchovy bath. It’s a strange image, and we were inexplicably inspired by it. Bagna càuda is peasant yet elegant—the essence of Italian food. We love the flavor and the process of trimming the vegetables, and we (bittersweetly) think most people like bagna càuda because it tastes like Caesar salad. We serve our bagna càuda with a dip or aioli and have provided both options below.

This is part of the recipe Chicken Wings Five Ways.

In the Market’s kitchen, we make this in mass quantities and use it for all kinds of things. The gentle cooking method produces garlic cloves that are meltingly soft and delicate in flavor, making them easy to blend into mashed potatoes, mayonnaise, salad dressings, or even spread onto sandwiches. The poaching oil becomes infused with garlic flavor; use it in place of olive oil in any savory recipe. (Brushed onto baguette slices, it makes incredible crostini, too.)

Our chef Eddy developed this recipe based on the salsa he grew up with in Mexico City. It’s a favorite among our customers, especially at the height of summer when the tomatoes and peppers come from our own mini-farm. I love to spoon it over fried eggs after a late night of drinking, but it’s also perfect for picnicking or just snacking. For a milder salsa, remove the seeds from the jalapeño before roasting it.

Letting the broccolini brown slightly in the pan gives it a boost of flavor. To accomplish this, the broccolini must be absolutely dry when it goes into the pan; otherwise, it’ll steam and won’t take on any color. A large cast-iron skillet is the ideal cooking vessel for this dish.

Bagna cauda (“warm bath”) is a traditional Tuscan condiment for dressing veggies and greens. It is meant to showcase the two simple ingredients of anchovy and garlic, which are brought together with oil and butter and tempered by lemon juice. Raw or lightly steamed vegetables are the simplest pairing, but you can also use it to dress fish, especially tuna or swordfish, or dress beans. With a little extra lemon juice, it makes a fantastic salad dressing for sturdy greens.

Pureed garlic—and lots of it—gives body to the sauce for these steaks. The whole cloves are blanched multiple times to mute their pungency, then simmered in milk until they are as soft as butter. Pureed until smooth, the finished sauce looks rich with cream, yet it doesn’t have a drop. It would be tasty with grilled leg of lamb, too. Steeping the cloves in hot water first makes them easy to peel, a handy restaurant technique. Accompany the steaks with Roasted Mushrooms and Baby Artichokes (page 155) in spring or fall, and with Blistered Cherry Tomatoes (page 157) in summer.

When our wine-club members receive their wine shipment, we include a recipe that we enjoy with the featured bottle. Cakebread resident chef Tom Sixsmith devised this pasta preparation to accompany the Chardonnay Reserve, but you may find that you want to make the dish weekly in asparagus season. The nutty whole-wheat pasta and smoky bacon help combat the notion that asparagus doesn’t go with wine.

Brian spreads a roasted-garlic paste on the dough under the mushrooms and potatoes, which gives this pizza an irresistible fragrance. If you have access to wild mushrooms, by all means use them. Bellwether Farms Crescenza cheese is a soft, supple, young cow’s milk cheese that melts well; mozzarella is stretchier, but a good substitute.

The Workshop coincides with sweet pepper season, and many chefs are seduced by the varieties they find in our garden. Chef Donald Barickman, a 2000 Workshop participant, succumbed to the small, sweet ‘Lipstick’ peppers—so named for their crimson color—which he roasted and stuffed with creamy goat cheese and served with arugula and roasted-garlic vinaigrette. Bottled Spanish piquillo peppers make a good substitute. Brian adds heirloom tomatoes to make a more substantial composed salad for the end of summer. Serve it before or alongside grilled lamb, sausage, or burgers.

Hubert Keller, chef-owner of San Francisco’s Fleur de Lys, patterned this recipe after the traditional Provençal soupe doux (sweet garlic soup), a specialty of the peasant kitchen. But as you might expect from a chef for one of the city’s most elegant restaurants, Chef Keller has refined the procedure, blanching the garlic to temper some of its bite and adding saffron for a richer color. A poached egg set on a crouton in the center of the soup really dresses up the dish. Chef Keller participated in the 1991 Workshop.

Take care not to crowd the vegetables, or they will steam rather than brown. You’ll also need to toss them periodically so they’ll stay coated in oil. Add leftover vegetables to a salad, or use them to top the Roasted Root-Vegetable Pizza (page 45).

For the most tender slices, cut flank steak against the grain, at a slight angle. This recipe calls for cooking two steaks, so you should have about one pound left over to incorporate into the salad or fajitas on the following page.

The key to achieving clear grill marks is to make sure the grates of the grill are properly cleaned, heated, and oiled before cooking the steaks; see page 367 for instructions. The steaks can marinate up to overnight in the refrigerator.

Salsa simply means “sauce” in Spanish. These three versions are delicious served with tortilla chips, or as condiments along-side grilled fish, chicken, or pork.

THIS LONGTIME PASTA & CO FAVORITE crosses a pretzel with a breadstick. (The word brezel is German for “breadstick.”) Flagship and Just Jack cheeses give the breadsticks a creamy flavor, but you can substitute Gruyère, Cheddar, or Parmesan. Don’t let the thought of making dough intimidate you; it’s easy to get the hang of and worth the effort. You can, however, use pre-made pizza dough; 2 pounds of dough will make 10 breadsticks.