Oven Bake

I’ve laughed a lot while writing this cookbook—and gotten very hungry! I laugh because most people consider these tasty meatballs the perfect small bite for a party or wedding reception, but I sometimes make them just to satisfy a craving! They are usually served cold, but when I make them at home, I serve them warm, right out of the oven, and they are awesome! So to answer the burning question, can you make an entire meal out of sausage ball appetizers? Yes!

I love cheese! I would eat a piece of Cheddar cheese over a piece of chocolate cake any day. That probably makes me a little weird, but if you love cheese like I do, you’ll love these cheese straws. My mom used to make them for baby showers and wedding receptions. In 1991, the year my career started to really take off, she made them for me to give as Christmas gifts to everyone who had been so supportive. We laughed about how these cheesy treats were baked in a small kitchen in Monticello, Georgia, and ended up on the desks of some of the biggest movers and shakers in Nashville.

In The All American Wine & Cheese Book, food writer Laura Werlin named Lively Run’s fresh goat cheese as one of the two best chèvres in the country. A concentrated burst of blue cheese flavor adds zest to an appetizer created by Steve and Suzanne Messmer of Lively Run.

Famous dishes have historically taken their names from the chefs who invented them—Sole Dugléré, for example, was named after French chef Adolphe Dugléré. As a consultant to Finger Lakes Aquaculture, distinguished local chef Etienne Merle, who once ran well-loved Ithaca restaurants L’Auberge du Cochon Rouge and Valentine Café, created a recipe for Dugléré-style tilapia. The addition of curry and herbs gives the dish Etienne’s unmistakable touch.

Montreal institutions like Gibbys and Moishes have been selling their own classic steak spice for decades. Here’s our take on the Montreal steak spice. This is an all-purpose seasoning used in many Montreal-style beef, pork, and steaky fish dishes.

We remember falling in love with a photograph of petits farcis in an old issue of Cuisine et Vins de France. We’re sure that most chefs our age who had dreamed of cooking professionally since childhood feel the same when they open a vintage copy of Cuisine et Vins de France, or of Georges Blanc’s De la Vigne à l’Assiette. There is no greater food era than when Michel Guérard, Bernard Loiseau, Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Georges Blanc, and Roger Vergé were at the top. Petits farcis are vegetables stuffed with sausage mix, then baked and eaten lukewarm. We make them in the summer when the growers show up with pattypan squashes. What else are you supposed to do with those little squashes other than admire them? The stuffed vegetables are awesome with a mâche salad and partner perfectly with a nice rosé or pastis. Get the smallest vegetables you can find, about the size of a golf ball.

The mimolette cheese in this dish makes it look like a favorite Kraft product and will have your kids chomping at the bit to eat cauliflower.

Even though places like St. Hubert Rotisserie have been serving the “hot chicken sandwich” since the 1930s, no factual proof exists that it originated in Quebec. Our only proof is that we haven’t seen it outside the province, whereas inside, it’s a weekly staple. It’s basically hot, shredded chicken, served with galvaude (peas and gravy, usually a poutine variation) and two pieces of white bread. In this recipe, you have four meat options: pork, duck, rabbit, or chicken. They’re all hot and they’re all delicious. For pork, use the pulled pork recipe in Scallops with Pulled Pork (page 30). For the other meats, there are three steps: (1) cure it, (2) smoke it, and (3) confit it. If you don’t have a smoker can, you will need to dig up an empty 1-quart (1-liter) tin can for step 2. If you live in the States, D’Artagnan (www.dartagnan.com) will deliver the duck fat you need in step 4 to your door. If not, use bacon fat. The gravy is the perfect clone of the local poulet barbecue sauce. It’s not a hot sauce, but it’s also not that thickish gravy that tastes like spinach and baking soda. It’s zingier, a cross between BBQ sauce and gravy. It is classic on these sandwiches, but it’s also good, minus the bread, on duck, pork, poutine, or yes, chicken.

Of all the crab we receive at the restaurant, West Coast Dungeness and the common crab from the Saint Lawrence (tourteau, brown crab, or Jonah) are our favorites. Many of the same guys who fish for lobster in these areas also fish for crab. But oddly enough, these crabs don’t make it to Montreal. Instead, they’re highjacked somewhere along the way for the Asian market. The crab is typically picked clean and frozen in blocks, shipped to China (for example), sawed, and only then sent back in one-pound (455-gram) packs. Although we make a point of using PEI or Quebec crab, Maine seems to understand the game a bit better. At Portland’s Browne Trading Company, you can buy fresh, handpicked Jonah crab, meat and claws: our dream. Whatever crab you buy (or catch!), make very sure to check the meat closely for bits of shell and cartilage that might have been left.

Whelks are giant marine snails. In towns along the Saint Lawrence (like Kamouraska), you can find them in gallon jars, marinated in brine or white vinegar. At Joe Beef, we buy whelks fresh from La Mer, Montreal’s big seafood broker, and serve them with escargot butter. In Burgundy, chefs are judged by their snail butter. Literally. You can work under three different Michelin-starred chefs and they’ll all tell you that there is only one way to make escargot butter—and each way will be completely different. This classic recipe is the escargot butter that drowned Montreal after Expo 67 (see page 52). If you’re not a whelk fan, you can enjoy the butter slipped under the skin of a chicken before it is roasted, on a steak, over mashed potatoes, or just spread on toast.

Fred worked at Toqué! in the early 1990s, and one of his many tasks was cleaning squid. Every so often, the Anglophone sous chef would order from the Quebecois fishmonger at La Mer, and one day “15 pounds” of squid was heard as “50 pounds.” That week Fred cleaned 150 pounds of squid. He couldn’t smell squid for about ten years without feeling sick, but he’s back on the squid train now. The only way he can bear it, though, is filled with lobster and cooked in lobster juice.

This great side dish has a bit of a Quebecois-lumberjack-in-Bollywood taste. It is red lentils cooked like dahl, seasoned like baked beans. It is a pork chop’s best friend, or will mate with a hefty breakfast.

This is yet another recipe that evokes that nostalgic, “Why don’t people make this anymore?” feeling, like a beautiful picture from the old Larousse, a civil-war reenactment, or sleeping on a train. There is only one good reason to make this dish: because you can! Thankfully, people like Frank, Marco, and Emma (our kitchen mainstays and true Joe Beefers) see the value in making historically relevant dishes like this, and it stays with them forever and can live on. The most difficult part of this recipe is measuring the dough to cover the pâté. Although some pâtés are served hot, the salt content in this one means it only tastes good cold. We serve it with some mustard and a glass of Morgon.

Colcannon, a classic Irish combination of mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale, is standard winter fare. If that sounds, well, boring, trust us, this version is anything but that. We freshen it up by cooking the potatoes and cabbage separately, then we make it easy to serve for a party by adding an egg and baking it in a pie pan, so that you can cut it into wedges.

To easily roll out chilled store-bought dough, soften it first on a baking sheet set over a bowl of hot water.

Transform sweet potatoes into caramelized beauties by cooking them with rice wine and honey. Serve them alongside roast duck or pork chops.

Baking wings yields crisp skin without the mess and constant tending of frying. Divide the wings between our two sauces, or double one sauce recipe and use it on all 60 wings.

Puttanesca isn't just for pasta. Anchovies and olives punch up a sauce hearty enough to stand up to meat or fish.

American cheese gives this classic from Arnold's its melty consistency.

I like this seafood stuffing far better than the usual meat stuffing: it's surprisingly light and refined. If you want your cabbage rolls to look as pretty as ours do, make sure to use Savoy cabbage, then trim the cabbage leaves so they lie flat. Right after you blanch the leaves, lay each leaf, rib side up, on a cutting board and slice off the thick center rib. By removing the excess, you'll be able to roll the cabbage leaves tighter and more uniform-looking.