I’ve eaten a lot this year. Let’s just get that out of the way at the start.
So, you can imagine my dilemma in coming up with a list of a mere 10 dishes or items that were my ultimate favorites this year. I limited the list to meals I ate out at restaurants, rather than made at home. They also had to be so great as to have me still longing for a taste even now.
Here, in no particular order, are my top eats of this year:
After taking my first bite of this creamy-dreamy dessert, words simply failed me.
Search as I may, I don’t think there’s a word that can properly describe how amazing this “Frozen Maple-Mousse Pie with Candied Cranberries” is.
Luscious? Yes. But more than that. Gorgeous? You bet it is, but it’s even beyond that. Swoonful? Oh my, it sure is, but I’m not even sure that’s a real word.
I made this as the finale to my Christmas dinner. And what a showstopper it was.
The recipe is from Kathleen Callahan of Seattle’s Emmer & Rye and was published in the November 2010 issue of Food & Wine magazine.
It’s deceptively light tasting, given that the crust is almost all pulverized toasted pecans with a little bit of butter to hold it all together and the filling is a full cup of maple syrup, egg whites and 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream.
A slice of cheesecake may be decadently wonderful, but at the end of a big holiday meal, it just sits like a lead weight in your stomach at the end of the night. Not so this pie. Once frozen, the filling turns ethereal. It’s much more airy than any ice cream; more like a sound wedge of whipped cream. Best yet, you can make it days ahead of time and keep it in the freezer until you’re ready to serve it.
Photo by Sonya Yu
Sure, you’ve indulged at restaurants in wine flights, beer flights, and even dessert flights.
But when’s the last time you’ve succumbed to a porky-licious bacon flight?
You can at Lafitte at Pier 5, just blocks from the Hilton in San Francisco’s Financial District.
Amid all the lengthy, elaborate and supremely elegant recipes in “The French Laundry Cookbook” (Artisan) is a most homey one that concludes the book.
Perhaps it’s only appropriate, too, since “Sally Schmitt’s Cranberry and Apple Kuchen with Hot Cream Sauce” was a favorite dessert at the original incarnation of the French Laundry when it was owned by Sally Schmitt and her husband, Don, before the couple decided to sell it to Thomas Keller.
As “The French Laundry Cookbook” co-author Michael Ruhlman so eloquently writes of the couple in the intro to the recipe, “…they are the ultimate purveyors. They purveyed a restaurant.”
Indeed, had it not been for them, and what they nurtured in that spot, there might not have been the French Laundry as we know it today, nor the now vaunted reputation of the town of Yountville as a tiny culinary capital of the world.
So when I purchased some Philo Gold (Golden Delicious) apples from the Philo Apple Farm that the Schmitts bought after leaving Yountville, and which their daughter and son-in-law now run, I knew just what to do with them. To pay homage to all that the Schmitts have accomplished and created, I knew those apples that Sally had helped sow the seeds for had to be baked into the apple cake she used to serve at her restaurant.
A very thick batter of butter, sugar, egg, flour, a little milk and baking powder gets stirred up with nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Spread it evenly into a greased cake pan. Then artfully press thin slices of apples down into the batter. Arrange fresh or frozen cranberries over the top. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake.
The simple, tender cake lets the fruit shine through. It’s fine as it is. But Sally also adds a hot cream sauce fortified with sugar and butter that you can pour over slices as liberally as you want. I must say, it does add a rather nice touch, making the cake even more special and memorable as it soaks up all that warm richness.
You might not know Sally and Don Schmitt by name. But you know of them by their legacy.
They were the original owners of the French Laundry in Yountville. They transformed what was once variously a bar, laundry, brothel, then run-down rooming house into a destination restaurant with a prix fixe menu even back then that attracted wide acclaim and visits from the likes of Julia Child and Marion Cunningham. Opened in 1978, Don was the maitre d’ and Sally was the cook, serving up five French-comfort-style courses that topped out at $46 per person.
In 1994, after a number of restaurateurs eyed the property with interest, the couple decided to take the chance to sell it to a then down-on-his-luck, young chef named Thomas Keller.
As Sally deadpans now, “That turned out pretty well, didn’t it?”
Sally, 79, and Don, 81 have a gift for seeing the potential in things most folks would turn their backs on.
After selling the French Laundry, they went on to refurbish yet another run-down property — a 30-acre swath in Philo in Mendocino County near the Navarro River. They turned what was once a decrepit sharecroppers farm into a thriving biodynamic farm specializing in heirloom apples. The Philo Apple Farm is so picturesque now that it’s a favorite setting for retailer Pottery Barn to do its catalog shoots.