Vegetarian

I have a well-deserved reputation as an olive oil junkie. I use olive oil in most dishes, and not with a light hand. When my regular customers saw this dessert on the menu, they thought I’d gone too far—until they tasted it. The oil takes the place of butter and makes for an incredibly moist crumb. It’s delicious with candied oranges and whipped cream, or by itself in the afternoon with a cup of tea. Or if you’re a chocolate lover, try a slice drizzled with the chocolate sauce from the ,meringues recipe on pages 159–160.

Chanterelles, porcini, mousserons, and white and black trumpets are some of my favorite mushrooms for this pasta. If you can’t find any of those, use shiitake or oyster instead. When you sauté the mushrooms, don’t crowd too many in one pan. If your pan isn’t large enough, cook them in batches. I love the brightness of fresh shell beans, but in winter, you can make this dish with dried beans, such as cannellini or flageolets, which will be a little more hearty but equally delicious.

In this indulgent salad, wild mushrooms are sautéed until tender and crisp, then tossed in a warm sherry vinaigrette with bitter greens and herbs. There are so many different herbs in this salad that each forkful tastes different, depending on which herb you bite into. Chervil contributes a mild anise nuance, while chives add a peppery, oniony note. Tarragon has a pungent licorice bite, and parsley a bright grassiness. Ribbons of pecorino and a sprinkling of toasted hazelnuts are the final layer of luxury in this delicious warm salad. All Italian sheep’s milk cheeses are called pecorino. They are usually named after their place of origin, as in Pecorino Romano or Pecorino Toscano. However, my favorite pecorino, Pecorino di Grotta, for this salad is from the Emilia-Romagna region. The story goes that the local housewives would hide a wheel or two of this aged cheese in the basement (grotta), storing it for later, when they would sneak out of the house and sell it for pocket money. Let’s hope that times have changed for the ladies in Emilia-Romagna!

When I was growing up, apples seemed so bland and boring—I could never get excited about a mushy Red Delicious the way I could a summer peach. But today, thanks to small farmers around the country like Barbara and Bill Spencer of Windrose Farms, we have a lot more choices where apples are concerned, and a lot more to get excited about. Determined to revive the disappearing heirlooms, the Spencers painstakingly planted more than forty varieties of apple trees on their farm in Paso Robles, California. It took 6 years for the trees to produce, and that glorious fall, when Barbara turned up at the back door of Lucques with boxes and boxes of their impressive crop, I was blown away. The apples looked dazzlingly beautiful and tasted even better. From russeted emerald greens to mottled pinks to deep burgundy-blacks, we sampled our way through them all, picking our favorites and taking note of which were better raw and which were better cooked. Some of our favorites for eating out of hand were Braeburn, Arkansas Black, and Gernes Red Acre. Crisp, sweet, and tart, these revelatory fruits were the inspiration for this fall salad. And if it’s not enough that they’re growing all these beautiful heirloom apples, Barbara and Bill also grow some of the best Asian pears I’ve ever tasted. Juicy and delicately perfumed, they’re a fun surprise, sliced and tossed with the apples, buttermilk, mint, and radicchio in this thirst-quenching salad.

A variety of cheeses work in this salad, but I particularly love St. Agur, a triple-crème French cow’s milk blue cheese. Its pungent and intense blue flavor is balanced by an unusually creamy and sensuous texture. When shaved into long thin ribbons, the cheese is elegant on the plate and delicate on the palate. To make thin ribbons, I use an old-fashioned cheese pull, a wide metal spatula-shaped utensil with a slotted blade in the center. Pears and cheese are always happy companions, so if you can’t find St. Agur choose another blue, or seek out a good sheep’s milk cheese, such as a Roncal, Manchego, or pecorino. We’ve had more than one customer order this salad as dessert, so you decide where it falls in the meal.

The clafoutis was invented in Limousin, France, to showcase that region’s famous cherries. Some compare the eggy consistency of clafoutis to flan, as it’s neither cake nor custard. To me, it’s more like an extra-thick crêpe dotted with fruit. Clafoutis puffs beautifully as it bakes, and hot out of the oven, it’s crisp on the outside and airy in the middle. When chilled, however, it collapses, becoming dense and custardlike. I love it both ways. One of the great aspects of clafoutis is its versatility. Once you know how to make the batter, you can make great desserts with it year-round. At Lucques, we’ve made clafoutis with sautéed apples in the winter and with berries in the summer. For the fall, I like a clafoutis featuring that indigenous American jewel, the cranberry. This dessert is delicious as is, but if you want to gild the lily, serve it with a dollop of bourbon-spiked whipped cream.

This fiery North African condiment is a Lucques favorite.

Pastry chef Kimberly Sklar came up with this walnut wedge as the ultimate accompaniment to the thick, creamy date shake. It tastes like the best part of a perfectly made pecan pie—toasty crisp nuts suspended in a chewy, buttery caramel. Since this “pie” doesn’t have a crust, make sure to bake it long enough that it holds its shape when you slice it.

This recipe is in honor of Hadley Fruit Orchards, a legendary stop on the way to Palm Springs where “ice cold date shakes” have been soothing weary and overheated drivers on Route 10 for years.

Local farmer Bill Coleman specializes in all sorts of exotic herbs and greens, such as curry leaf, epazote, purslane, and fenugreek. When he can, Bill travels to faraway places to source unusual herbs and spices and little-known fruits and vegetables. He carries home the precious seeds and plants them at his farm near Santa Barbara, providing a wonderful source of inspiration for us lucky local chefs. It’s always exciting to see what he will, literally, unearth next. A few years back, Treviso, a beautiful elongated relative of radicchio from the north of Italy, was his plant of the moment. Bill Coleman’s Treviso practically dared me to come up with a dish that would show off its striking magenta leaves and complex, slightly bitter flavor. I paired the Treviso with pungent Gorgonzola and drizzled both with sweet saba, a syrup made by reducing grape must with sugar. This salad-meets-cheese course is the perfect beginning (or ending) to an autumn meal.