The Brooklyn D-I-Y craze has been my ethos long before
porkpie hats and soul patches were required to live here (sometimes, yes, on
the women, too).
I have a sourdough starter, I always make cakes and pie
crusts from scratch and I infuse my cocktails with herbs from my garden.
But one thing long eluded me: puff pastry.
In a classic go-around, I just avoided recipes that called
for it. Store bought dough in my homemade creations? Forget it.
Then I got The French Kitchen Cookbook, by Patricia Wells. There Is a recipe for
a ‘blitz puff pastry’ that takes 2 hours to make, but most of that time is
letting the dough rest in the refrigerator. While the dough recuperates, you
can pickle a few artisanal carrots, or master the foam design on your milk froth-er.
Or, of course, you can explore the other hundreds of pages
of recipes, including some that don’t seem particularly French – mixed nuts with
kaffir lime dust (am incredibly simple stunner, once you find the kaffir
leaves). Or the sautéed dates with fennel.
There are a number of vegetarian dishes, including a pear endive salad, eggplant with mint and fish
sauce and some lovely fish dishes.
But I was mainly drawn to things like a homemade curry
paste, and a hoisin sauce that dances circles around the commercial varieties.
