Recipes Blog

Chocolate Souffle with Grand Marnier & Chocolate Sauce

From French Classics Made Easy By Richard Grausman, 
Founder & Chairman, C-CAP
Prepared by Mehdi Chellaoui

This is an extremely light chocolate soufflé made from my basic chocolate mousse recipe with the addition of orange zest and Grand Marnier. A plain chocolate soufflé can be made by omitting them. The soufflé mixture can also be baked in a water bath (bain-marie) for a little bit linger, to give you a pudding au chocolate, a wonderful, dense fallen soufflé dessert.

Macaroni and Goat Cheese

By Tom Valenti
From Soups, Stews, and One-Pot Meals: 125 Home Recipes from the Chef-Owner of New York City’s OUEST and ‘CESCA by Tom Valenti and Andrew Friedman

Is it just me, or do people take macaroni and cheese for granted? I think the lack of appreciation began with those prepackaged macaroni kits in which low-grade pasta comes in one bag and an unidentifiable cheese goop or powder in another. This recipe is my attempt to illustrate a simple truth: If you approach macaroni and cheese with the same care that you do other pasta dishes, making a thoughtful decision about the pasta and the cheese, it is pretty special. Here, I recommend a small pasta such as tubetti or tubettini, though you might opt for the kitsch value of elbow macaroni. Use a fresh, creamy goat cheese that you know and love or, if you don’t have one, you will in all likelihood do just fine with an inexpensive vacuum-sealed one.

This recipe includes a béchamel – a creamy sauce of egg, butter, flour, cheese, and milk – which is used in a number of classic pasta recipes, especially lasagna. Usually it’s made with milk that’s been preheated in a separate pot, but I find that by allowing the milk to make contact with the bottom of the pot before whisking with the other ingredients, this is not necessary.

German Marble Cake

By Tori Avey, The Shiksa in the Kitchen

The idea of marbling two different colored batters into a cake originated in nineteenth century Germany. Marble cake made its way to America with German immigrants before the Civil War. Originally the cakes were marbled with molasses and spices. The first recorded Jewish recipe for a marble cake appears in an American cookbook called Aunt Babette’s Cook Book: Foreign and Domestic Receipts for the Household, published in 1889. This recipe replaced the molasses and spice combination by marbling chocolate into the cake, a reflection of the new American obsession with chocolate. The cake remained popular throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food by Gil Marks, “Many Jewish bakeries in the New York area in the 1950’s through the 1970’s would distinctively add a small amount of almond extract to the chocolate marble cake, creating a version sometimes referred to as a ‘German Marble Cake,’ that had a characteristic almond aroma.” Delicious, right?

My German Marble Cake recipe is traditional, with a slightly modern twist-- I like to add vanilla pudding mix to the batter. This little trick is a fantastic way to add moisture and flavor to your cakes. You can use regular or instant pudding mix; just sift it in dry with the flour. It creates a wonderful texture and locks in moisture so the cake doesn’t dry out as quickly. They certainly weren’t doing it this way in Germany 150 years ago, but sometimes it’s fun to improve on tradition. If you don’t have vanilla pudding mix in your pantry, just replace the pudding with an equivalent amount of cake flour. And in case you’re wondering, cake flour is a finer grade of all purpose flour that produces a more delicate cake with a tender crumb. I highly recommend it for this particular cake; it makes a batter just perfect for marbling.

If you’ve never marbled a cake before, click here for detailed instructions on my site. A high quality cocoa powder will bring even more flavor to the marbling in this lovely cake; Valrhona Cocoa Powder, available at Zabars.com, is an excellent choice (and kosher certified for those who keep kosher!).

This cake is perfect for the holidays. The loaf size makes it a wonderful hostess gift. Wrap it in cellophane and tie a beautiful ribbon around—presto! A beautiful and tasty homemade gift from the heart. Enjoy!

Milk Chocolate Brownies

Nick Malgieri of the Institute of Culinary Education
From One Sweet Cookie: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes
by Tracey Zabar

Image © Ellen Silverman

Every week, David cooks and I bake for Sunday dinner. I often make one of the brownies from One Sweet Cookie - Cheesecake Brownies from Nicole Kaplan, Maida Heatter's Palm Beach Brownies (with or without chocolate covered mints), or my own blondies, which we call Chumleys. These Milk Chocolate Brownies, from my friend and baking teacher, Nick Malgieri, are often requested by the children--Ben & Marki, Danny, Michael, and Willie. They are yummy by themselves, but you can also serve them with whipped cream, ice cream, and berries.

Master baker Malgieri has been my teacher for several years. He keeps me laughing with stories of his great-aunts Philomena, Elvira, and Nicoletta, and the trouble they were always getting into. This recipe for delicate, lightly caramelized brownies is a variation on one he learned in culinary school almost forty years ago. When he tried to scale down the recipe to make a smaller batch, he added only half the required flour. Here is the result of that lucky accident.

Buy the book: One Sweet Cookie: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes

Braised Brisket with Ginger and Coriander

(Poitrine de Boeuf Braisée au Gingembre et Coriandre)
From French Classics Made Easy By Richard Grausman, 
Founder & Chairman, C-CAP
Prepared by Carla Contreras

This recipe is a wonderful example of how ingredients not normally associated with classic French cooking can be used to bring new life to a traditional dish.

I really should call this recipe Boeuf Braisé Deborah, for it was created on the evening my wife gave birth to our second daughter, Deborah. One of the nurses who attended to my wife was from the British West Indies and a food enthusiast. When she found out my profession, she asked me for my chocolate mousse recipe. In return she gave me her favorite recipe, chicken cooked with fresh ginger, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, and hot pepper.

When I returned home, I took out the brisket of beef I had in the refrigerator and started to prepare a classic braised beef. Finding a piece of ginger in the vegetable drawer, I thought of the nurse’s chicken recipe. Although I did not have cilantro (fresh coriander), I did have ground coriander (the seeds of the coriander plant) and dried hot peppers. My older daughter, Jennifer, and my gourmet mother-in-law were both so pleased with the results that I have been cooking this recipe ever since. As it turned out Deborah was born a “super taster” like her mother, so both find this dish too spicy. Jennifer and I still love it.

From French Classics Made Easy. Buy the book. 

Andrea’s Overnight Turkey Recipe

By Andrea Watman

The very best part of Thanksgiving is sitting down at a table crowded with my family and friends - the worst part is having to cook a big meal in my apartment size oven. 

There were many years that I would get up at 6 in the morning to start the turkey – and I would be exhausted by the time we sat to dinner. I began to dread the holiday.

I am a night person and had to come up with a solution. One year my father, Nathan, recommended that I stay up all night and cook. I knew he was joking – but why not cook and sleep at the same time!

So be brave and try my overnight turkey – you will awake to a house that smells divine, an oven that is perfectly warm and ready to be filled with stuffing, yams and pies.

This recipe works best with a large bird.  I prefer a turkey that is 20 – 22 Lbs. You will also need an instant read thermometer so that you can be totally convinced that the turkey is fully cooked.  I start at 11:00 pm – so that by midnight the kitchen is cleaned and the turkey is cooking all by itself. When I awake I have a fully cooked turkey and empty oven.  

Since this turkey is going to be cooked slowly at a fairly low temperature, do not stuff the turkey cavity.  Cook your stuffing separately. 

Challah Slow Cooker Stuffing

By Tori Avey, The Shiksa in the Kitchen

When Thanksgiving rolls around, we expect certain foods to be on the buffet. Like stuffing. Or dressing. Dressing, or stuffing? A stuffing by any other name…

Some people say that it should be called dressing unless it’s cooked inside the bird. But in our family, it’s always been called stuffing, so that’s what I call it. I don’t actually stuff my turkey, though. I follow the Alton Brown school of thought; he stuffs the turkey with aromatics, because he feels that stuffing draws moisture out of the bird (making the meat drier). But everybody expects a little stuffing with their Thanksgiving meal, whether you’re stuffing a turkey or not, so I like to prepare a batch in the slow cooker. This frees up oven space and makes the holiday prep just a little bit less manic. Knowing that the stuffing is slowly cooking, filling the air with delicious herby aroma, gives me one less thing to worry about. 

I make my Thanksgiving stuffing with the ultimate Jewish bread-- challah! When cubed and toasted, this eggy bread becomes the perfect sponge for savory chicken broth and herbs. I make my stuffing dairy free; I found that it doesn’t need butter or margarine (and those unnecessary calories) to taste great. It has plenty of flavor and mouth-watering aroma from fresh herbs, a good quality chicken broth, and sautéed vegetables. Try making it with challah from Zabar’s bakery—you won’t be disappointed!

Orange Cookies

by Lidia Bastianich of Lidia’s Italy
From One Sweet Cookie: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes
by Tracey Zabar

Image © Ellen Silverman

It's starting to get oh-so-cold outside. Time to bake! Lidia Bastianich's orange treats have become staples in the Zabar household; they are also a perfect gift. These fragrant, citrusy cookies with a sweet glaze hit the spot at the end of a meal. Chef Bastianich writes, “These traditional Italian cookies are as easy as it gets, and everybody loves them. The citrus flavoring makes them particularly inviting. Most likely, you have had them at Italian family celebrations like weddings, confirmations, and baptisms. Not too sweet, these cookies keep for a week or two in a cookie container." - Tracey Zabar

Zucchini Stuffed with Mushrooms and Ham Recipe

[Courgettes Farcies]
From French Classics Made Easy By Richard Grausman
Prepared by Carla Contreras

One of my favorite ways of preparing zucchini is to fill scooped-out halves with a combination of ham, mushrooms, and onions and top with a cheese sauce. The stuffing and sauce can be made in advance and refrigerated. The stuffed zucchini should be assembled the day of serving.

As a first course, one half zucchini is sufficient, and for a lunch or light supper I serve two together with bread, wine, and dessert.

- Richard Grausman

Pumpkin Spice Cake

By Tori Avey, The Shiksa in the Kitchen

Autumn is here! I love this time of year. The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and Thanksgiving is fast approaching. It is most definitely my favorite season… in part, because of pumpkins! I can’t help smiling when I go to the grocery store and see gorgeous orange pumpkins piled high in the produce section. It’s the symbol of the season.

The pumpkin originated in Central America over 7,500 years ago and made its way throughout North America before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Native Americans cultivated pumpkins and prized them as a food source; because of their thick and solid flesh, they could easily be stored throughout the winter. Like other forms of squash, pumpkins are easy to grow. They became a favorite with immigrants to the New World, particularly in New England. Pumpkins were prized for their versatility; they were cooked into pies, stews, tarts, soups, and puddings. The flesh could be boiled or roasted, fried or mashed. Pumpkin seeds were dried and salted as a nutritious snack food. In the early 1800’s, decorative pumpkins called jack-o’-lanterns were carved to celebrate the autumn harvest season. In 1819, Washington Irving featured a jack-o’-lantern in his short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as the “head” of his Headless Horseman character, which likely led to the jack-o’-lantern’s association with the Halloween holiday. In the mid 1800’s, it became stylish to serve pumpkin pies for the Thanksgiving holiday, a trend that continues to this day. As you can see, pumpkins play a large role in American food history.

I love cooking and baking with pumpkin; the flavor is subtly warm and delicious. Pureed pumpkin adds gorgeous color and moisture to baked goods, and a special essence that just feels like fall. When combined with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves, pumpkin takes on a magical quality.

Case in point, my Pumpkin Spice Cake. This delicious loaf cake is the perfect treat for a chilly afternoon. When you bake it, your house will smell like autumn. It’s soft, moist, sweet, and delicious. Try topping a warm slice with salted butter; serve with a hot cup of Zabar’s famous special blend coffee. Heaven!