Vegetarian

Every baker has a favorite pizza recipe, and this one is mine. This is one of the easiest pizza doughs you can make, and it can be used for calzones, too.

When the talk is about biscuits I always think of Leah Chase, chef and owner of Dookie Chase’s in New Orleans, and those she baked for us on one of our Master Chef TV programs. They were the tenderest, the lightest, and really the best I ever remember eating. This is our interpretation of her method. The key to tender biscuits is using light, rapid movements, so that you activate the gluten in the flour as little as possible, and the flour itself plays a role. Southerners make their famous biscuits with soft wheat (low gluten) flour, and to approach its equivalent use part regular all-purpose and part cake flour as indicated here.

It’s not always easy to find good sandwich bread, and when I need just one loaf I enjoy using the bread machine. I don’t bake it in the machine, because I don’t like the look of the loaf, but it’s neat and easy for mixing and rising. Here’s my formula, made in any standard-size machine.

Chocolate mousses were of this general type before the popularity of chocolate ganache (page 102), and the ganache is far quicker and easier, being only melted chocolate and heavy cream. You can make a ganache even more attractive when you fold in beaten egg whites, and you go to even greater heights when you blend in Italian meringue (page 102). However, the following smooth, rich, velvety classic continues to be my favorite of all chocolate mousses.

We so often think of scrambled eggs served only with bacon or sausage for an everyday breakfast, but they make a fine fancy breakfast or even luncheon dish with baked tomatoes, sautéed potatoes, asparagus tips, and all manner of garnishes. Scrambled eggs are also good cold, as you will see later on, but I don’t think these do well when mixed up with other things. I like them to stand alone and be garnished on the side.

The versatile poached egg! Serve it hot in an artichoke cup, or crowned with béarnaise atop a tenderloin steak, or glittering in aspic, or gracing a curly endive salad, or buried in a soufflé, or dressed as a Benedict, or simply sitting on a warm, crisp, buttery piece of toast for breakfast. It’s a graceful oval, whose white is softly set and whose yolk is thickly liquid. If we could have them fresh from the hen they would literally poach by themselves, since a really fresh egg holds its shape when dropped into simmering water. But most of us have to take certain steps to assure success, using either vinegared water or oval metal egg-poachers (which you can buy in some cookware shops).