I’ve been meaning to give you the recipe for the most sinful and addictive artichoke dip. I tasted it years ago at a cocktail party at Eliza Dyson and Joel LeVangia’s old apartment on East 10th Street, and have been dreaming of it ever since. The first time I asked Eliza what was in it, she said, “You don’t want to know.” The second time she recited the recipe by memory.

I was longing for an occasion to make it, and late afternoon on New Year’s Day with intellectual extraordinaire Arturo Bomberino De Fournier seemed like as good a time as any. We paused Black Cat, White Cat—the Kusturica film in Serbian which we were watching with French subtitles—long enough for me to make the dip.

Mayonnaise

First, the mayonnaise. Of course you can use store bought, but I like to make my own because any leftover is so easily turned into aioli—delicious with roast vegetables, or tartar sauce chock full of capers and cornichons and herbs to serve with a piece of fish. It’s simple once you give up the apprehension that your emulsion will separate and are confident that it will bind together gladly. The trick is the temperature. Room temperature egg and mustard, and oil a few degrees warmer will make it even easier. A simple ratio (even for a math dolt with a hangover): one egg yolk, one tablespoon of Dijon mustard, one cup of oil. One and one and one.

Separate the yolk from the white and drop yolk into a deep bowl. Sprinkle a generous pinch of salt onto that yolk, because the salt will start the process before you even approach it with a whisk. Add the tablespoon of mustard (a messy, slightly overflowing tablespoon will do as long as it’s not too cold), and a healthy squeeze of a half lemon. It’s then that I reach for my whisk: I combine those four simple elements—yolk, salt, lemon and mustard—and start to drizzle in some oil. I use vegetable oil for the first half-cup because it is thicker and lends more initial body, and then olive oil as the second half for flavor. Start by pulling just a little oil into the emulsion that you’ve already begun with those four initial elements.

Bring the oil into the ingredients that have already bound (not the other way around).

Keep adding oil until your mayonnaise is thick, and then add more until you have added a full cup of whatever combination of oils you choose. Add the rest of the juice from that half lemon. Taste it. If you don’t remember liking mayonnaise but you like what you are tasting then you are on the right track. Don’t be fooled by its yellow color, this is Mayonnaise. This is the real deal, but if you would like it a little paler, add a fewdrops of water watch it blanch.

Artichoke Dip

Remove the contents of two cans* of artichoke hearts packed in water (or one can of hearts and one can of stems) and chop them coarsely. Chop a white onion. Finely chop five or so cloves of garlic. Combine artichoke, onion, garlic and mayonnaise in a large bowl and add some fresh pepper. Taste for seasoning. Add a half a cup of grated Parmesan cheese, saving a bit, and mix thoroughly.  Transfer the mixture into an oven safe dish, perhaps one that you’d use for a soufflé, and add an immodest dusting of the rest of the Parmesan onto the top. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, until you cannot ignore the smell and there is some bubbling and browning occurring on top. Then serve with a spoon and some Carrs table crackers or toasted baguette slices. Dig in, blow off steam, and eat.

Thank you Eliza!! xxxx

* I halved the Artichoke Dip recipe in the photos at right.

Photographs by Arthur Fournier

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Tags: artichoke, Cheese, dip, eliza, mayonnaise

Originally published in the Avenue 32 Magazine.
Photograph by: Skye Parrott

Few people can claim an insatiable childhood sweet tooth as responsible for a much-lauded culinary career, but that’s precisely from where Christina Tosi, doyenne of desserts at David Chang’s Momofuku restaurants, derived her gastronomic mojo.  The head chef of Milk Bar and author of a recently launched cookbook that bears the same name draws on her childhood obsession with cookie dough and the “down home” baking style practised by the women of her family for inspiration in her adult oeuvre to create such unexpected delicacies as Compost Cookies, Cereal Milk ice cream and Crack Pie.

It was a somewhat circuitous path that led Tosi to where she is now at the helm of Chang’s New York City sweet shop and as the pastry chef for all four of his restaurants in Manhattan. Despite a lingering love of baking, Tosi completed degrees in Italian and Applied Mathematics before succumbing to her sweet tooth and attending the French Culinary Institute’s pastry program. It was there that Tosi harnessed her predilection for desserts and created a craft of which everyone now wants a slice. A stint at Bouley and in Wylie Dufresne’s kitchen led to an “etcetera” job with culinary genius Chang, who recognized a star in Tosi thanks to the pies and cakes she made for staff meals. In 2008 Chang added Momofuku Milk Bar to his empire, a bakery to showcase Tosi’s talents, and three and half years since its conception, crowds still flock to the East Village bakery and its three additional outposts to get their “fix” of Tosi’s signature sweet and salty creations.

It is Tosi’s adventurous approach to baking that has led to some of her most famous treats. Though most people consider baking an exact science that uses quantities and proportions to create balanced, “properly” textured final products, Tosi admits to never measuring quantities at home: “I bake with a cook’s sensibility of taste: add, taste, add, but it allows me to constantly create something new and different, some of them are successes, some of them are failures, but the process of creating is that much more poignant because I bake with that soul.” That spirit is evident in every mouthful of her extravagant nibbles, which make taste buds reel and ricochet between sugar shock and salty scrumptiousness, and play on the palate with their nuanced textures. Pretzels, potato chips and coffee grounds—relics of a childhood junk food habit, become star ingredients in Tosi’s able hands.

As for her personal style, Tosi is partial to clothes imbued with history: a wrap dress that her mother designed and made, vintage shoes handed down from grandmothers and great aunts—clothes “with soul, that feel like home.” Even in the kitchen, Christina’s personal flair is evident: Tosi dons well-worn red Converse high tops rather than the traditional (and decidedly bland) kitchen clogs, and wraps vintage scarves from the matriarchs of her family around her head to tame her auburn locks. For a young woman whose profession necessitates hauling fifty pound sacks of flour and sugar and getting elbow deep in chocolate and dough, Tosi enjoys the occasional day off, when she sports a dress and “relishes being a little lady of the city.”

Tosi’s youthful sensibilities are evident in her uninhibited concoctions, reminiscent of childhood potions with their unexpected and seemingly haphazard ingredients. After all, what could be more pleasantly irreverent than a cake bejeweled by M&Ms or soft serve ice cream infused with Lucky Charms? In a culture obsessed with looking young, Tosi’s confections satisfy the soul that wants to feel young, and other than a slice of Crack Pie, what could be more addictive than that?

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To view the story on the Avenue 32 site, click here.

Tags: Avenue 32, Christina Tosi, dessert, Momofuku, sweet tooth

Sebastian moved to Spain in September, hence the tear-stained scallops a couple of months back. I wasn’t ready to leave my hometown—the center of the universe—New York City, and stayed a while longer to bask in the company of friends and family, trying to make my peace with a trans-Atlantic move.

I’ve been meaning to tell you (though not sure quite how to weave it into the conversation), but I am in Barcelona too, rather open-endedly…and love is in the details. In the morning Sebastian squeezes Valencia oranges for fresh juice and makes pan con tomate for breakfast. (For a tomato lover, the mere fact of eating a ripe tomato in February elicits joy.)

Barcelona—capital of Catalonia, mecca of Gaudí’s oeuvre, and a food fanatic’s paradise—is where I now live. Our grand old apartment boasts magnificent molded ceilings, an antique safe, a bizarre homage to Miró as a mural on one wall, and a persistent smell that disappears for days and then reappears, suddenly and sinister.

We’ve spent these first days gathering the bare essentials. On Saturday in Encants at the flea market, we found three antique sterling forks, a pink lusterware soup terrine and matching bowl and an antique gilt mirror. There is humor and symmetry in this last item, since we never had a full-length mirror in the carriage house; here we have no furniture but can look at ourselves as we sit on the traditional Catalan tiled floor.

On Tuesday Sebastian bought us a refrigerator, oven, and a new batterie de cuisine and with great joy I went to the Boqueria—possibly the greatest market in the world—to pick up what I needed for a very simple meal. For dinner I made veal piccata with caramelized carrots and a mesclun salad—recipes, if you can glorify them by calling them that, ingrained in me by my mother, staples of her repertoire for streamlined suppers that sustained me as a kid after a track meet or origami class.

Our first meal at home was not in the least bit Spanish, and I look forward to the more elaborate and experimental meals that will come forth from my new kitchen in Barcelona. However, on that first night, sitting on the living room tiled floor with Sebastian, surrounded by the shocking space of our new apartment in a city I hardly know, a meal as familiar as a nursery rhyme made the drafts and whiffs of our new apartment feel much more like home.

Veal Picatta for Two

Ask your butcher for four veal scaloppines 1/3 to 1/4 inch thick and pound them if you like them thinner. Pour some flour into a shallow bowl and mix in some sea salt and fresh pepper. Dredge the veal slices in the mixture, patting them over the bowl to remove excess. The veal0 should be coated but not caked. In a frying pan, heat 1.5 tablespoons of butter until it starts to froth. Place the scaloppines in the pan so that they do not overlap, and season with more salt and pepper. Let the veal cook for about two minutes, or until the down-facing side has started to brown in places, then flip the slices. Season the second side. After a minute, squeeze the juice of half a lemon onto the slices mixing it with the melted butter. Place the veal slices on plates, two per person. Let the butter and lemon continue to cook over high heat, adding a tablespoon of water if there is not much liquid remaining. Garnish the veal with roughly chopped flat leaf parsley and drizzle the cooking liquid over the veal.

Caramelized Carrots

With a vegetable brush scrub and/or peal a bunch of carrots and remove the greens at your discretion (if the carrots are nice ones, I scrub them but don’t peel them and like to leave a little green top). Cut your carrots so that the pieces are uniform in size and will cook at the same rate (if you are lucky enough to have those slender youthful carrots that aren’t more than seven inches long, slice them once lengthwise and nothing more. Lay the carrots at the bottom of a pan so that they are lying down in a couple of layers. Add cold water to cover them half way up and a tablespoon of butter. Over high heat cook the carrots uncovered, rolling them around every few minutes. Add salt and pepper and let them continue to cook until the water has evaporated and the butter browns (about ten minutes). Continue to stir/shake the carrots until they are fork tender and slightly browned by the butter.

Our Vinaigrette

In a bowl mix 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 2 teaspoons anchovy paste, a pinch of sea salt, fresh pepper, two teaspoons Jerez vinegar, and six tablespoons olive oil. Add the ingredients in that order and whisk after adding each tablespoon of oil. Finish with a few drops of lemon juice and pour over clean lettuces.

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Tags: barcelona, boqueria, carrots, Sebastian, Spain, veal, vinaigrette

On Friday, friends asked if I would join them at opening night of Sing Your Song, Susanne Rostock’s documentary on Harry Belafonte. I needed no convincing; a film dedicated to Mr. Belafonte, that dreamy 1950s icon with the voice as sweet and smooth as melted milk chocolate could not fail to entertain. Thanks to their irresistible melodies (and some duets with the Muppets), the songs that Belafonte popularized in the ’50s and ’60s were still a part of the collective soundtrack of childhood in the 1980s, when I was a kid. At twenty, when I got my first apartment and my first non-Fischer Price record player, I lovingly appropriated my father’s Belafonte records. I listened to them and pretended I was living in the early 1960s rather than the early 2000s, while I danced around my Chelsea studio in a vintage silver lamé dress with my hair teased high.

I used to be a cinephile. I was an actress. For three years I wrote script coverage for production companies while I lived in Los Angeles. But most modern movies disenchant me, and other than serving as tools for distraction, it’s a rare film that educates, challenges, inspires and delivers joy at once, as Sing Your Song does so completely.

The documentary traces Belafonte’s life from a unprivileged childhood in Harlem and Jamaica, on tour as his singing career takes off (though he is forced to use separate doors to theaters from his white co-stars), and to Hollywood, where his incendiary presence challenged cultural taboos on the big screen. His roles in films such as Island in the Sun (1957) and The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) provoked outrage in small-minded individuals, shocked by the implied romance manifested as innocently as mere on-screen hand-holding. Belafonte knew that he was in a unique position to challenge the injustices of segregation and race-related prejudices. He took up a greater cause than that simply of an entertainer or artist. Belafonte dedicated his life to civil rights and social activism, using his celebrity, charm, intelligence and wit to advocate change and create a more humane world.

As I walked out of the IFC into the bustling cold of Sixth Avenue on a Saturday night, I thought of the film Forest Gump. Like the fictional eponymous character, Belafonte was present at an astonishing number of historically remarkable events, conferring with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., JFK and Robert Kennedy, Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton. In Forest Gump, there is irony in Gump’s ubiquitousness given his mental limitations (to put it as he did, he was “not a smart man”). Belafonte, however, is fiercely perceptive and intelligent, well-spoken and talented, but given the historical circumstances of his adulthood, Belafonte was likely to be limited by the color of his skin. Everything about Belafonte defies the concept of limitations. He used his gifts to shrewdly foster change and connect leaders to the masses. He is stoic and steadfast, refusing to be diverted from his path toward justice. At age eighty, he still tirelessly works on behalf of youths and minorities to try to right the mistakes that humanity can’t seem to stop perpetuating.

Now, even after seeing the film, as I watch clips of Belafonte it’s easy to get lost in those dark eyes below the chiseled brow—to admire his features and frame and forget for a moment that he is much more than a pretty face with a captivating croon. Perhaps that was his trick. As performer Paul Robeson advises him, “Get them to sing your song and they will want to know who you are. And if they want to know who you are, you’ve gained the first step in bringing truth and insight that might help people get through this rather difficult world.”

Those compassion-breeding words are ones to live by.

As an appreciative nod to Harry Belafonte’s heritage, click here for a recipe for Caribbean Shrimp with Spicy Chili and Beer Sauce from Bon Appetit, January 2003.

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Tags: beer, shrimp