Dorie Greenspan

Viva -- three cheers for you and your tagine! I'm delighted that the recipe was a good first outing for your new tagine pan.

Chris, I'm with Kalypso -- the dishes you've been making look terrific. I love that your wife called the Lamb and Dried Apricot Tagine "just exotic enough" -- I completely understand what she means. And, like you, I love the sweet-savory combination and I'm extremely partial to the North African spices. I'm curious,did you make the dish in a tagine pan or a Dutch oven? (It works well in both.)

Wow, Chris, you've really cooked up a storm this weekend! I'm with you on the mustard-and-pork combo and I think mustard is also nice with lentils. So glad you and your wife were happy with your dinner.

Viva, I'm delighted to hear that you and yours liked the Mushroom and Shallot Tart. Love your friend's response to it.

Chris, that's just the way I serve it. I think you're chick-in-a-pot looks really good. Here's the all-important question: Did you enjoy it?

Becca, you're right that sel gris is very coarse, but it's nice to have the crunch of the salt in the cookie. Your Break-Up looks great -- I hope you'll make it again and adjust the salt to your liking.

The burger! Chris, what a perfect choice for Labor-Day Weekend. Having made the more traditional chicken and potatoes last night, I think it's terrific that you made the not-at-all-traditional burger and pickles. And I'm so, so glad you loved the flavors. This has become my husband's favorite burger -- minus the parsley. I know it would seem impossible that anyone could dislike parsley, but there you have it. It's very exciting for me to see my food made by others -- and made so beautifully. Thank you!

Chris, it's great that you and your wife enjoyed the chicken and potatoes. I love that you just opened the book and made a good dinner with the ingredients you had on hand. I really hope others will do the same. While there are 'special occasion' recipes in the book, the majority of the recipes are for everyday, all the time food and lots and lots of the recipes can be made just as you made them tonight -- with what's on hand and/or what's easily gettable.

Viva, I hope you enjoy the quiche. Oh course, once you say 'duck fat' we all know it's going to be great, right?

No weights in the recipes for many publishing-related reasons -- most of them the same as the ones we discussed in the Baking From My Home to Yours thread. As some of you know, I would love to be able to have all of my recipes appear in volume measures, American weights and metric measures, but it just isn't possible and wasn't possible with AMFT. That said, I think that the weight issue is less crucial in cooking recipes.

Hello and apologies for not jumping into this conversation earlier. Here's a little background on the new book. There are more than 300 recipes (about 60 are desserts) and they cover the range from little nibbles, Pierre Herme's olive sables, terrific salmon rillettes and gougeres (the duo are my favorites with drinks, to ‘real’ main courses, like beef daube, chicken-in-a-pot (on the book’s cover), lamb tagine with apricots and almonds, vegetable pot-au-feu, linguine with nuts and dried fruit, shrimp with cellophane noodles and Parisian gnocchi. In between, there are soups and salads (there’s a fabulous all-white salad made with mushrooms, celery, apples and a yogurt dressing) and vegetables and first courses of all kinds -- the Tuna-Mozzarella Pizza from Yves Camdeborde of Le Comptoir is great. In short, it’s a soup-to-nuts, as well as a meat and fish and pasta to cake cookbook with lots of stories and about 100 pictures. The recipes come from my ‘other’ life, the one in France, so it’s the food that I cook at home in Paris and the food my friends cook -- most of it is what I think of as 'elbow-on-the-table food'. There are recipes from all over France, some from chefs at simple bistros, some from people at the markets I love, many from friends and lots and lots from my own kitchen. The mix of recipes can only be called 'eclectic' -- the word is so overused, but it fits here. There are traditional recipes, for sure (I think the Cheese-Topped Onion Soup is fabulous), but there are lots and lots of modern and very surprising recipes, for example, a Basque tortilla (think frittata or omelet) made with potato chips (this from a Michelin-starred chef); my friend Gerard's Mustard Tart, made with tomatoes in summer and steamed carrots and leeks in winter; a burger with capers, cornichons and sun-dried tomatoes mixed with the beef (it's become my house burger in the States); pork braised with lemongrass and coconut milk; chicken roasted in a Dutch oven (with a piece of bread to serve as the 'plate' for the liver -- the cook's treat); and “cookies” that are rolled out like pie dough, baked in one raggedy-edged piece and then brought to the table that way, so that everyone can break off a hunk. (They're called Salted Butter Break-Ups, although when they were made at a preview lunch at Book Expo somebody called them Salt-Butter Crack!) And there are the stories ... Stories about the market, about how people eat in France, about how to shop, how to serve cheese and even how to complain and get what you want. Here's what the book isn't: It's not Escoffier. It's not Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It's not a by-the-rules book. It's not a textbook. It's too personal to be any of those things. The book as my look at what people are cooking in France today. It's a very personal book, my editor thinks it's my most personal to date. Thanks so much for being interested in my newest baby. Scream if there's more I can tell you.

Catherine, I'm sorry, but I wouldn't even know where to start searching for the original polenta and ricotta cake. It was from a French magazine from years ago and I had it in another Paris apartment (which means it probably got tossed in the great clean-up before we moved). About the Bittersweet Brownies, I can't remember what gave me the idea to bake them in a slow oven. I just checked the recipe for brownies by Rick Katz in the Baking with Julia book, thinking that perhaps that's where I learned the technique, but no. As for the baking pan under the brownies -- at last a question I can answer. I bake many things on a sheet pan because I think it gives you a more even bake (it's also convenient and neat if there's the risk of bubble-over). And when I'm baking loaf cakes that will be in the oven for a long while, I'll often bake them on a stack of two sheet pans, a technique I learned from Pierre Herme --it keeps the bottoms from over baking. Prasantrin, I've never baked with currants -- I've only used fresh currants to finish tarts and desserts -- so I don't know how they'll react under heat, but I'll be interested to hear about it. (Sorry, wish I could be more helpful.) Snowangel, The dough for the Lenox Biscotti spreads like mad and it's fine, but (just as an aside) these days, I'm finding that I like to leave the cookies in the oven a little longer for their second bake. Sugarplum, Your torte looks gorgeous! Rickster, You're right -- if you use a coarser cornmeal, you won't end up with tasty muffins. It is, as you said, a question of hydration.

Hi Aloha Steve, It's great to hear about your successes and I love your enthusiasm. About your batterie de cuisine. The Pyrex pans I use are the rectangular 7-x-11 and 9-x-13-inch pans and the round pie plate and deep-dish pie pans that are 9 inches in diameter. These are available through amazon.com and you should be able to find them in most kitchen shops. In fact, I bet you could find them in a supermarket. As for the round cake pans, look for pans with 2-inch-high sides. I prefer light- rather than dark-metal cake pans and nonstick is nice, but not necessary. Pans with 2-inch high sides should be available at Sur la Table, Williams-Sonoma, Wilton or a good kitchenware shop. As for the tart pans, a 9 1/2-inch diameter pan is fine. Tart pan sizes can be a little problemmatic because those that are made in Europe are slightly different than those made in America. You're right though, if you use a 10 1/2-inch pan, it will change the recipe's results -- but you'll be fine with a pan that's 9 to 9 1/2 inches. Hope this helps. Looking forward to hearing more about your baking adventure -- Dorie

Bill, it's so great to have a new baker in our midst, particularly one who prepped by reading all the fabulous posts on this thread. Isn't it funny how quickly you make friends when you've got a plate full of cookies nearby. Bake on -- Dorie

Aloha Steve, thanks for thinking of me, but this is really not an area I know well. Wholemeal Crank, it looks like you've found just the right guide in Chez Ptipois. I hope you have a terrific trip and that find teas that you'll enjoy -- I know you'll find wonderful treats to go along with those teas.

Glad that the Dimply Plum Cake doubled well and really glad that your group liked them!

The list is mind-boggling! I just saw that no one has made the rice pudding -- phew! It needs to be cooked for 50 minutes -- the recipe says 30. Aargh and sorry.

Erin, I'm so glad your sticky buns were a hit, although I hope no one told your mom that they beat hers out. I'm making brioche and sticky buns today, but the weather is even stickier than the buns -- I probably should have waited for a cooler, drier day, but when a craving for sticky buns attacks ... Deliciously Lekker -- what a great idea to use Nutell as frosting. What's better than chocolate and Nutella!

ABRA, I have a confession to make: I most often use American flour in France. I bring it with me or buy it in specialty shops in Paris. (But I'm not sure you could do the same in the South of France.) Of course, because I live in NY and Paris, I understand that it's easier for me to do this. When I do bake American recipes with French flour, I add a little more flour than the recipe calls for. (Unfortunately, I don't have a formula for this -- I do it by feel.) In general, French flour doesn't have as much protein as our flour, so it's "weaker". The Francine flour in a box, is a lovely flour -- BUT, I find it too fine for most American recipes. Oddly, I have the most luck with rather generic supermarket flours, ordinary Farine de Ble. I wish I could be more helpful, but even after all these years, it's trial and error for me. As I bet you can guess from this, I never test recipes for publication in France unless I've got American ingredients at hand. (And BTW, I bring American butter, too.) LINDA K, I'm so glad you bought the book and are putting it to good use. Like you - and so many others -- I love the French Yogurt Cake for its taste, its texture and its versatility. It's also the reason the French love it. The French don't bake much at home, but when they do, they'll make a cake like this because, as you found it, they can turn it into just about anything, from a tea snack to a birthday cake. Hope you'll enjoy many of the book's other recipes as much. EMMALISH, Your comment made me smile. It's funny how we all find favorites and return to them. It's great to have recipes that we feel comfortable with and that make us and the people we share them with happy. NAKJI, I can't believe you carried my heavy, heavy book across the ocean! Best of all, I'm thrilled that after using up a chunk of your precious weight allowance, it was worth it.

Sorry to have been so out of touch for so long. However, judging by the gorgeous stuff you've all been baking, it doesn't look as though any of my help was needed. But, I did see a question about melting chocolate and butter. I melt chocolate and/or chocolate and butter in a metal bowl fitted into a saucepan of simmering water and I always make sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl. When I say that the ingredients should not get so hot that the butter separates, what I mean is that you should pull the bowl from the heat at the point where the butter and chocolate are just melted (or even a tad before just melted) and, when stirred together, are smooth and shiny. You don't want the chocolate to be so hot that it loses its shine. Baroness - I love the way the Coconut Tea Cake looks in the Heritage Pan! The last thing I need is another bundt pan, but ... imac2much - I know the blondie problem you're having, but I'm not sure what to do about it. A friend just had that problem and we were going to try making blondies without leavening, to see if it would change the evenness of the bake, but we haven't had a chance to do that yet. Maida Heatter, who writes the most wonderful recipes, had a recipe in her first book for a lemon cake that was terrific. Then, when the book was reprinted, it wasn't included. Three books or so later, the cake reappeared with a note saying that while she'd made the cake for years without a problem, all of the sudden it just didn't work. When she tried to guess the reason, the only answer she could come up with was "kitchen witches". Maybe you've got "blondie witches".

lia, welcome to the World Peace Cookies Club -- I'm so glad you made them and loved them. priscilla, about the use of gelatin when you're making the lemon cream with oranges ... I don't know the exact science, but I couldn't get the orange cream to set properly, and so that's why I added the little bit of gelatin. I think it has to do with the difference in acidity between lemons and oranges and how that acidity reacts with the eggs, but don't quote me on this. It's been so long since I've made the orange cream without gelatin that I'm afraid I can't remember the texture and so don't know if it would be spoonable or not.

Emmalish, both the brownies and Bundt look terrific. I've seen a couple of Bundts lately made in that pan and, like lperry, I'm having pan envy. Is it a re-issue of a classic pan? I think so. Merstar, I can't imagine what happened to your cinnamon squares in the freezer -- there's nothing in the recipe that should go mushy. I'm sorry for your problem, but I just don't have an answer for you. Sugarplum, your P-nut Butter Torte looks fabulous! Perfect, really. Glad everyone liked it.

Sugar Plum -- it's the whole Oreo! Hello to everyone and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope it will be a sweet year for all of you. I'm sorry to have been away for so long -- I've just been swamped -- but it's so exciting to come back and to see the great stuff you've been doing. Lannie, your penguin cake is amazing. I think Pierre would love the idea of his flavor combo showing up in such a fun birthday cake.

Annanstee -- sorry about the missing temp for the Whoppers. It should be 350 degrees F (although I have heard from some bakers who, like you, thought it should be 375, a very cookie-ish temperature, and they said their cookies were fine). Food Man - your brioche look gorgeous, extra-gorgeous in their their baking papers. Yunnermeir -- I'm not surprised that you think of the peanut-butter cookies as so American -- it's exactly what my French friends say when I make them for them!

Melissa H -- single malt for the vanilla cake -- a luxury and a delicious sub. Bet it was great! Yunnameier -- I hope your book has arrived by now and that you'll enjoy baking from it over and over again. Thanks Toliver and Prasantrin for helping out LizD518 -- I couldn't jump in in time. Liz -- I hope you liked the cookies. Alisuchi -- there's no better -- or rarer -- compliment than "better 'n mama's" -- thanks so much for passing this along.