Wine-friendly

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Celebrating in place? Try Daniel Boulud's short ribs braised in red wine

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By Leslie Brenner

We all need them — at least those of us who love to cook, and love to entertain need them. They’re the dishes we know we can count on to make everyone swoon. It might be for a family member’s birthday dinner, or an anniversary, or the occasion of entertaining someone you want to impress. Or hey — maybe you need an extraordinary dish for New Year’s Eve, in a season when it feels important to treat yourself to something nice.

Daniel Boulud’s short ribs braised in red wine has long been one of those dishes for me. Braised short ribs are always delicious (as well as very easy to make); what makes Boulud’s version special is that it’s dressed up with a spectacular celery duo — celery root purée and glazed celery — and bathed in a marvelously deep-flavored and silky sauce. It’s gorgeous on the plate, like it came from an incredible restaurant.

The wine-braised short rib dish is from ‘Café Boulud Cookbook,’ which (alas!) is out of print. With so many great recipes, it would be worth republishing!

I first fell for the dish sometime back in the 1990’s, at dinner at Café Boulud, one of my favorite restaurants in New York at the time. (It is temporarily closed, with plans to relocate.) And then, when Boulud published the Café Boulud Cookbook (co-authored with Dorie Greenspan) in 1999, there was the recipe in its pages — what a gift!

The dish is timelessly delicious. Fall-apart-tender, incredibly flavorful and rich short ribs melt into the purée, which is actually a gorgeously earthy, creamy blend of celery root and Yukon Gold potatoes — like potato purée with a PhD in philosophy. The sauce is made by sending the braising liquid through a fine strainer. The glazed celery on top celebrates and elevates a vegetable that used to be a luxury in days of yore.

There’s nothing difficult or tricky about putting it all together. There is a single pyrotechnic moment, when we’re asked to light some heated wine on fire, but if that makes you nervous, just skip that part — it’ll still turn out great. In fact, if you’ve never made short ribs before, this recipe will teach you about all you need to know about them: Brown them, then long-braise them, and you’ll be richly rewarded. You can play with the braising liquid, and it’ll still be good. It’s a perfect dish for entertaining, as it’s ideally made in advance, so you can chill it overnight, lift off the fat and have most of the work done.

Precede the show-stopping dish with a salad of winter greens (maybe with smoked trout, or crab and avocado), or oysters on the half-shell.

The recipe serves eight, but don’t let that bother you if you’re cooking for four or fewer: You’ll have the best leftovers imaginable.

RECIPE: Café Boulud Short Ribs

Looking for more festive dishes for New Year’s Eve? You might like these:

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To make a traditional gratin dauphinois, back away from the cheese

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By Leslie Brenner

It’s amazing how wondering about the origins and traditional expression of a famous dish can lead to descent into a rabbit hole. In this case, testing a recipe for Gratin Dauphinois — French potatoes au gratin — from a new cookbook led me to wonder, what is a gratin? Does a proper gratin always involve cheese? Never? Sometimes? Where does the word gratin come from, and could its origin be a clue to what the dish is meant to be? What kind of potato is best? How thin should it be sliced? Where does “Dauphinois” come from? Is the recipe we offered from the cookbook legit? Is there a more classic expression?

Spoiler alert: Yes — there is a more classic expression of a Gratin Dauphinois, and it is insanely (even life-changingly) delicious. While we love the one from James Oseland’s World Food: Paris, and that version is ideal for those who don’t own a mandoline and don’t have top-notch knife skills, we wanted to develop a recipe for one that’s more traditional. As it turns out, if you do have a mandoline, our classic version is quicker and simpler to achieve than Oseland’s — and even more delightfully crusty on top and creamy and luscious underneath.

Because not every cook enjoys geeking out on history as much as I do, let’s cut to the chase — the basics of the dish, what it should be and how to make it — before breaking the golden-brown crust of food history and diving into the creamy, rich past.

Warning: If you make this dish once, you’ll probably want to make it again and again, and soon. OK. You’ve been warned. Here’s the recipe.

Now I’ll give you the talk-through version, because in truth, this is not a dish you need a recipe for.

To achieve gratin dauphinois nirvana, peel and slice as thick as a coin a couple pounds of firm, not waxy yellow potatoes. Do not rinse them. Rub a gratin dish or oval baking dish with garlic and butter it, then lay down the potato slices in a rosette pattern, adding a little salt, grated nutmeg and bits of butter on top of each later. Top with a bare layer (no salt, butter or nutmeg), pour in heavy cream to come about three-quarters of the way up the potatoes, bake for an hour at 350 degrees, then add another 1/3 cup or so of cream, turn up the oven to 375 degrees, and bake till crusty golden brown on top, about another half hour.

No cheese, s’il vout plaît!

You will notice — right away, I’m guessing — that this recipe does not include cheese. For context, let’s turn to the late, great English food writer Elizabeth David, who was famous for meticulously researching traditional recipes. In her 1960 book (updated in 1977 and 1983) French Provincial Cooking, she wrote:

“Gratin dauphinois is a rich and filling regional dish from the Dauphiné. Some recipes, Escoffier’s and Austin de Croze’s among them, include cheese and eggs, making it very similar to a gratin savoyard, but other regional authorities declare that the authentic gratin dauphinois is made only with potatoes and thick fresh cream.”

Nearly every French expert I turned up takes the absolutely no cheese position; Escoffier and de Croze seem to be outliers.

David’s recipe differs slightly from mine — she has you rinse the potatoes (which she says is “most important”) and she uses pepper; she uses quite a bit more cream (both initially and in total), cooks the thing longer and at a lower temp, then cranks up the heat for the last 10 minutes, without adding additional cream. I love her assessment of how many you can serve with a gratin made with 1 pound of potatoes and a half-pint of cream:

“It is not easy to say how many people this will serve; two, or three, or four, according to their capacity, and what there is to follow.”

Finally, her instruction to cut the potatoes “no thicker than a penny” aligns perfectly with other authoritative versions, which usually specify a thickness of two to three millimeters, or about an eighth of an inch.

Origin of the word ‘gratin’

To understand the origin of gratin, I turned to Larousse Gastronomique, the encyclopedia of French cuisine. (I referred to the 2001 edition of the English translation, which was updated in 2009.)

Gratin, it tells us, is:

“The golden crust that forms on the surface of a dish when it is browned in the oven or put under the grill (broiler). Usually the top of the dish has been coated with grated cheese, breadcrumbs or eggs and breadcrumbs. Formerly, “gratin” was the crust adhering to the cooking receptacle, which was scraped off (gratté in French) and eaten as a titbit.”

Aha — so gratin means that crusty bit! The recipe that follows in Larousse includes whisked eggs, a much shorter cooking time than either my recipe or David’s. Grated cheese (Gruyère) is only mentioned at the end as a variation.

The Oxford Companion to Food backs that up with its entry for Gratin and Gratiner, the noun and the verb respectively:

“Originally, back in the 16th century or beyond, the noun referred to that part of a cooked dish which stuck to the pot or pan and had to be scraped (gratté) off it was not to be wasted. Since the 19th century the meaning has changed to the effect deliberately created by cooks when they cook a dish so that it has a crisply baked top. This is often achieved by strewing grated cheese or breadcrumbs on top, and the phrase ‘au gratin’ is often taken to mean ‘with grated cheese,’ although the gratin effect can be produced without adding anything on top; as Ayto (1993) points out, the gratin dauphinois is correctly made of sliced potatoes baked in cream with no added topping.”

Potato specifics and the crusty factor

I’m not finding much definitive info on the type of potatoes that are correct. I feel most comfortable going with Jean-François Piège, whose recipe for Notre Gratin Dauphinois in his encyclopedic 2020 cookbook Le Grand Livre de la Cuisine Français calls for “pommes de terre à chair ferme” (firm-fleshed potatoes), adding “veillez à ne pas utiliser de pommes de terre nouvelles” (be sure not to use new potatoes). (The book has not been published in an English translation.) There are more than one variety of potatoes that would fit that description; our recipe calls for widely available Yukon Golds. No cheese in Piège’s, bien sûr; besides potatoes, the only ingredients are cream, garlic, butter, nutmeg and (curiously) skim milk.

J. Kenji López-Alt does not give a recipe for gratin dauphinois in The Food Lab, nor could I find any discussion in its pages about rinsing potatoes for a gratin, pro or con. Sohla El-Waylly offers a spin-off on Serious Eats — “Classic Rich and Silky Potato Gratin” — developed following “rounds and rounds of testing.” Her complaint with traditional gratin dauphinois is that only the crusty browned top is worth eating, so her version is meant to have cheese and potato that has browned on the “bottom, sides, and top.” Even more crusty is López-Alt’s turned-on-its-side Hasselback Potato Gratin on Serious Eats, which uses quite a bit of cheese and gets maximum crusty surface. Both use Russet potatoes, not rinsed. I haven’t tried El-Waylly’s version, which is a good deal more involved and has many more ingredients than traditional ones (milk in addition to cream, plus thyme, shallots, Parmesan and Gruyère). I have tried Lòpez-Alt’s, and enjoyed it a lot.

But I’m sure I’ll make mine more often: I find it beautiful in its simplicity, much easier to prepare, not as messy or involved, more elegant, and I actually love the creamy, rich underneath part, which I find a wonderful contrast to the top crusty part. (How could you not?!) It’s a classic for a reason.

How it got its name

Gratin dauphinois is sometimes confused with pommes dauphine — mashed potatoes mixed with choux paste and butter, formed into walnut-shaped balls, and fried, causing them to puff up. (Rabbit-hole moment: Where does the word “dauphine” come from? Nope — I’m resisting going there).

Dauphinois refers to Le Dauphiné, a former region of Southeast France whose history dates back to the Romans, who called it Delphinatus Viennensis. Interesting to note that the word dauphin, which means an unseated king, derives from that. In the 11th century it became part of the Holy Roman Empire, known as Le Dauphiné. Was the dish invented then? Was it a favorite of Guiges IV, Count of Albon — the nobleman in the region whose nickname was “Dauphin”? The rabbit hole didn’t extend that far down, fortunately or unfortunately.

What we do know is that the dish comes from that region; hence the name. We also know that the Rhône Valley was part of that region — and therefore a white Rhône wine would be a magnificent thing to drink with the dish. Gratin Dauphinois with a white Châteaunef-du-Pape? I can think of worse ways to spend the holidays.

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Kate Leahy's 'Wine Style' is a delicious solo debut from a seasoned (and fascinating) cookbook pro

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By Leslie Brenner

Wine Style: Discover the wines you will love through 50 simple recipes, by Kate Leahy, Photographs by Erin Scott, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $22.

Her name may not ring a bell — yet, anyway — but Kate Leahy is one of the most interesting cookbook authors around.

Leading up to the publication last week of her first solo cookbook, Wine Style, her publishing career had been one of collaboration; she’d been a co-author, working with chefs, restaurateurs and others on 10 wide-ranging titles over the past 13 years. Her first effort — A16 Food + Wine — won the IACP Cookbook of the Year award and the Julia Child First Book award following its publication in 2008. A16 is a captivating romp through the wines and foods of Southern Italy as expressed in Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren’s beloved San Fransisco restaurant of the same name.

If you could spend some time with that first book, along with Leahy’s most recent ones — Burma Superstar (2017), Lavash (2019) and La Buvette (which we reviewed last year when it was published) — you might sense a delightful sensibility running through all — Leahy’s it would seem, as she’s the common denominator. Those books all have an underlying intelligence, grace in the writing and overarching deliciousness. Each expresses a passion for deeply exploring culinary cultures, including the people who uphold the traditions, the places from which the traditions spring.

Leahy is at once an expressive, talented writer and an outstanding, accomplished cook with a great palate — an unusual combination. Dig into her background a bit and you begin to understand: She began her career as a cook, and worked on the line at James Beard Award-winning restaurants including A16 (aha!), Terra in the Napa Valley and Radius in Boston. Later, she went to journalism school — at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Author Kate Leahy / Photograph by John Lee

Author Kate Leahy / Photograph by John Lee

Her projects beautifully and compellingly capture worlds, whether it’s Armenia and its diaspora (Lavash); the cult of laphet — edible fermented Assam tea leaves as practiced in the border regions around Myanmar, China and Thailand (Burma Superstar); or a cave à manger (a wine bar where you can eat) in Paris’ branché 11th Arrondissement (La Buvette). If you want to get an idea of the sensibility at work, check out 1000 Meals, the video series Leahy produces with John Lee, a wonderful photographer and videographer who’s Leahy’s frequent collaborator.

‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

Because there’s such depth and expansiveness in Leahy’s work, I was eager to dive into Wine Style, her first book as a solo author.

Quickly and irrevocably, I was hooked. Wine Style is chock full of smart, enticing recipes that not only pair well with your favorite reds, whites, and oranges, but are easy and delicious enough that they’re sure to become perennial favorites — dishes you’ll constantly be tossing together when friends are unexpectedly stopping by, when you’re heading to a picnic, hosting book club, or even on harried weeknights when you want an effortless yet satisfying dinner.

The first recipe I tried, a ridiculously simple dish of garlicky marinated mushrooms that cooks in a snap, was so good I made it twice more in a matter of days.

RECIPE: ‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

What to drink with that? Leahy suggests an earthy red — a Nebbiolo from Alto Piemonte or a mellow, traditional Rioja. Right she is; a Cune Rioja Crianza I’ve been been picking up for less than $15 was perfect.

Pretension is not part of Wine Style’s picture. “Most of the wines I seek out fall into the ‘charming and affordable’ camp,” Leahy writes in her introduction, “the kind of wines that make people smile without taking over the conversation.” These are the wines she and her friends bring when they gather every month for “Porch Time” — laid-back potluck dinners pulled together from unfussy recipes, often to be served room-temp (or backyard temp, as the case may be; none of them actually have porches).

And it’s in the spirit of Porch Time that she has created and pulled together the recipes that make up the book.

Types of wine (“wine styles”) serve as the organizing principle for those recipes: There are chapters on bubbles, whites (“crisp” or “rich”), orange wines, rosés, on through reds characteized as “picnic,” “reasonably serious” or “big” and finishing with sweet wines.

Leahy suggests pairings without getting hung up on them. The brief opening chapter, Wine Basics, is one of the best things I’ve read for beginners, or for food people who want to learn more about wine. I love that she focuses on texture and acidity — a welcome departure from the puffed-up lists of aromas that have infected wine writing for decades. Leahy provides an excellent section on natural wines, explaining the low-intervention winemaking philosophy (using sourdough as an analogy) and how it’s expressed in the glass.

Kate Leahy’s Harissa Deviled Eggs, from ‘Wine Style’

Kate Leahy’s Harissa Deviled Eggs, from ‘Wine Style’

And so, for Harissa Deviled Eggs — an idea I couldn’t resist — eggs’ propensity to coat the tongue propensity has Leahy reaching for scrubbing bubbles. Bingo! Prosecco was just the thing. And again, super simple; you don’t even really need a recipe if you can remember a third-cup of mayo, a tablespoon of harissa, a splash of lemon juice and half a dozen eggs. OK, here’s the recipe anyway:

RECIPE: Harissa Deviled Eggs

Another winning pairing: Poached salmon set on a charmingly disheveled fennel-celery salad, with caper mayo — sipped with Provençal rosé. I love the play of the fennel and celery, so similar in texture and different in flavor; I’d never thought of putting them together before, and it totally worked. Next time I’ll try it with Leahy’s other pairing idea: unoaked Chardonnay.

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RECIPE: Poached Salmon with Fennel-Celery Salad and Caper Mayo

Freestyling with the recipes

I haven’t always managed to conjure Leahy’s suggested pairings; sometimes a dish sounded good, and I just went for it, wine or no.

Roasted edamame spoke to me: It’s something you can whip out on demand if you keep bags of it in the freezer and own a jar of furikake, the nori-and-sesame seasoning mix. Slightly defrost a bag of frozen shelled edamame, toss with olive oil and soy sauce, roast for 20 or 30 minutes, then toss with the furikake. For this, I pulled out a bottle of sake (which I had on hand) rather than orange wine (which I didn’t). Really good. (It’s also fabulous made with edamame still in their pods.)

Recently I was in Massachussetts visiting Cooks Without Borders’ design director, Juliet Jacobson, who put together Wine Style’s Beet and Potato Salad with Tarragon — another winner. We both loved the unlikely combo of the tarragon with dill pickles, though maybe if a reprint is ever in the works Leahy might consider adding a weight measurement for the pickles; “2 large or 3 small dill pickles” led to confusion. Were the pickles in our jar large? Medium? Who’s to say? We probably guessed wrong, as we wished it were a wee bit more pickle-y.

Juliet had also made Leahy’s Chocolate Olive Cake — which we’ll both be making again (and soon!). Made with almond flour, it gets moistness and fruitiness from the inclusion of prunes — and the combo of nuts and dried fruit certainly sounds fabulous with the Banyuls rouge or port Leahy suggests.

Wine or no wine, all those recipes are keepers — and Erin Scott’s engaging photos capture the dishes deliciously.

And there’s so much else that entices. Green Olive Tapenade and Baked Feta with Olives and Lemon both sound fabulous to smear on crusty bread. Ginger Chicken Salad, inspired by the Burmese salads Leahy fell in love with writing Burmese Superstar, looks enticing, as does oil-packed Tuna with Potatoes, Olives and Lemons. Leahy calls A Really Good Pasta Salad “handy for lunch, picnics, and dinners on hot nights.” It’s a match, she writes, for richer orange wines, “though no one would complain if you poured them a glass of lightly chilled Gamay instead.” Baked Peaches with Coconut and Sliced Almonds, which sounds terrific on its own or with its suggested Moscato d’Asti or dry or demi-sec Prosecco.

Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens, from ‘Wine Style’ by Kate Leahy

Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens, from ‘Wine Style’ by Kate Leahy

Because autumn will be here before we know it, I thought I’d leave you with a recipe I’ll certainly be making again as the weather cools: Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens. Made on a sheet pan, it’s just the kind of effortless yet delicious one-dish dinner I’m always looking for. Red onion and capers roasted with the cauliflower and sausages, along with a squeeze of lemon at the end, give it just the right zing.

And the wine? Leahy assures us there’s no short of reds that go with it, “but those with sunny dispositions, like Argentine Malbec or the Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre blends of the southern Rhône Valley, have a juicy quality that matches well with the sweetness of the caramelized cauliflower and sausages.” Indeed they do! And those sunny dispositions are always welcome — any time of year.

Wine Style: Discover the wines you will love through 50 simple recipes, by Kate Leahy, Photographs by Erin Scott, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $22.