A Chocolate Soufflé for Your Valentine

Plus: Lunch with Jessie Sheehan at Via Carota, Sweet Potato Hash, and a Super Bowl Feast for Nine.

Hey everyone,

The first chapter of my novel FOOD PERSON (arriving May 20th!) features my shy, introverted main character, Isabella Pasternack, in a nightmare scenario where she’s forced to demo a chocolate soufflé for thousands of viewers on a livestream for her boss at Comestibles, a digital food magazine. Let’s just say things don’t go that great for her.

But not to worry! My publisher Knopf asked me if I would demo the right way to do it on Instagram (it’s a joint post between our accounts) and not only did it come out great, I used Julia Child’s recipe from The French Chef Cookbook which Knopf also publishes:

amateurgourmet

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Give that video a watch and if you’d like the recipe, you can find it in these images here that Sara at Knopf sent to me:

It is indeed a bit of work, but once you understand the concepts — melting chocolate with coffee in a double boiler, making a thick base with milk and corn starch and egg yolks, whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks, folding it all together — you’ll knock this out of the park.

On Thursday last week, I met one of my favorite food writers and influencers, Jessie Sheehan, at Via Carota for lunch.

This was such a dreamy day in New York: it was overcast, cold, and drizzly and the perfect context in which to enter the cozy, beloved West Village restaurant and to meet up with such a ray of sunshine. I knew we were off to a great start when we both ordered wine (actually, Jessie ordered bubbly!) and it was only noon.

We shared so much good food but I knew we had to get the salad which is justifiably famous:

Samin Nosrat enthusiastically wrote about this salad in the New York Times and I’ll never forget the revelation of the secret ingredient in the dressing that makes the whole salad sing: are you ready? It’s water. **DUN DUN DUN**

We ate many other delicious things, but the highlight for me was the cacio e pepe which was notable for the consistency of the sauce (creamy but without cream) and the texture of the pasta, which was so chewy and fresh.

Thanks Jessie for being the most fabulous lunch date.

On Saturday, I cooked us up a brunch using sausages that we bought at The Meat Hook (it’s a weekend ritual). Craig buys the sausages and this weekend he came home with a “dumpling” sausage that had the flavors of a Chinese dumpling. Far out!

(That’s the dumpling sausage all the way on the left. The other sausage is a chicken sausage. Don’t worry we shared the dumpling sausage.)

To serve this all up, I fried eggs in the sausage fat and then on the side I made a sweet potato hash.

How did I do it? I added a layer of vegetable oil to a cast iron skillet and heated it on high heat until smoking hot. Then I added lots of cubed sweet potatoes (both Japanese and regular) with the skin still on plus a pinch of salt.

The key is to keep stirring them around so they don’t burn (the sugar in the sweet potatoes makes that more likely to happen than if you did this with regular potatoes). It takes about 20 - 25 minutes to get the potatoes cooked through and crispy. But they’re a great side dish for breakfast and also would work for dinner, maybe with a fried egg on top.

Finally, last night I had a big crowd over for dinner including several powerful child food critics:

What did I serve up?

Martha’s Mac and Cheese of course!

Plus I made a salad with radicchio, arugula, apples, fennel, and a dressing that my friend Diana coached me through because Craig likes her salads more than mine (!!!). It was my same dressing formula — Dijon, white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, olive oil — only Diana adds a full teaspoon of honey which really balances everything out. She just saved our marriage.

For dessert, I served my world famous almond cake which is really Amanda Hesser’s mother-in-law’s famous almond cake:

The only bad thing about making this cake is that if there’s any left over, I will eat it all. I’m spying about two pieces left on my cake stand right now and I feel like Wile E. Coyote looking at the Road Runner.

Okay, let’s look at some links:

• More and more physicians are taking Ozempic (NYT);

• Planet Hollywood has reopened in Times Square… this seems even more awful than the original iteration, though I did like the chicken fingers coated in Cap’n Crunch cereal growing up (Eater);

• Cheese Tea may taste delicious, but it needs a better name (same for Nutritional Yeast; Grub Street).

Finally, we’ve been grieving this weekend because Craig’s oldest friend Ellen Blair passed away on Saturday after an epic battle with breast cancer. You can read Craig’s beautiful tribute to her and their friendship on Instagram:

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Until next time….

Your pal,

Adam