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of which I received a review copy. I was fascinated to learn that she was once Jeffrey Steingarten’s assistant, and her description of the research and ingredient gathering she did in that capacity sounds like a lot of fun. She also worked on Daniel Boulud’s PR team and then on Food and Wine magazine’s marketing team before becoming a judge on Top Chef. Her new book is about what she cooks at home and how her work experience, travels, and family have influenced her cooking. The dishes include breakfast, salads, soups, noodles, seafood, meat, party food, drinks, and sweets. I’ve marked the page for Chocolate Ginger Scones, made with coconut milk and coconut oil, that she makes for her dad who is now vegan. Also, the Beet Cured Salmon is something I’d love to try for the pretty pink edges on each sliced piece. I should point out that this is a book of real food. It’s not trendy food or food specific to any particular way of eating. Instead, it’s from-scratch, home cooking with lots of different influences and some great tips. One of those is to grill limes before juicing them for a vinaigrette. It will give you charred flavor and the warmed lime is easier to juice. The Singapore-Style Hokkien Noodles, inspired by a street-food dish enjoyed while shooting in Singapore, is adaptable with suggestions for changing out the meat used. I remembered from reading Cherry Bombe: The Cookbook that the recipe from Gail Simmons in that book was a cocktail. So, I was curious to see the recipes both alcoholic and non- in the drinks chapters here. The Cardamom-Walnut Date Shake sounds delicious, but I pulled out the blender when I read about the papaya cocktail. The cocktail was inspired by Nilou Motamed, the former editor of Food and Wine magazine, and in the book it's called The Nilou. In the head note, there’s a story about how papaya is a love-it or hate-it kind of fruit. This drink changed Gail’s mind about it. For me, my first encounter with papaya wasn’t a great one. I wasn’t sure I’d picked a good papaya since I though the flavor was lacking. I ended up using it in a tea bread like banana bread only with papaya. Since then, I’ve discovered I like the fruit much better with a generous squeeze of lime. Here, chunks of papaya were blended with lime juice, rum, honey, and ice cubes. I was excited to use the avocado blossom honey I brought home from our summer trip to Santa Barbara. After pureeing in the blender, the mixture ended up thick, slushy, and a pretty coral color.
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by Tessa Kiros came to be. There’s a chapter devoted to each stop along the way. It begins with Provence and continues to Guadeloupe, Vietnam, Pondicherry, La Reunion, and then ends in Normandy. So, the recipes begin with French classics and then veer off into use of flavors from other climates prepared with French influences. The Court-Bouillon de Poisson from Guadeloupe is made with chiles, garlic, tomato, and beurre rouge with annatto seeds. From Vietnam, Banh Mi is of course made with baguettes, and the creme caramel includes lemongrass. Some hints at French influence in foods from Pondicherry include milder flavors with fewer chiles as in the Pondicherry Chicken curry. I lost track of time when I got to the La Reunion chapter due to the fruits, rum, coconut, and interesting uses of vanilla. There’s a braised duck dish made with split vanilla pods and a mashed potato dish that incorporates vanilla-steeped warm milk. I walked straight to the kitchen when I read about the Punch de Coco. Seeds from a vanilla pod were added to coconut milk, and it was chilled while the flavor infused before being served with rum. I highly recommend this combination. Also from this chapter, I had to try a very French-sounding dish of gratineed fruit made with very un-French fruits. 
is fitting nicely into this state of affairs. As I started looking at my review copy of the book, I marked pages of each cocktail I wanted to try. Then, I realized I was just marking every single page. The Rosy Cheek is a Winter White Hot Chocolate made with steeped macadamia nuts, crushed pink peppercorns, and lemon juice for brightness. The Cup of Thai is warm coconut milk flavored with lemongrass, ginger, and lime peel and spiked with rum. The Nutella Melt is hot chocolate with Nutella melted into it and added hazelnut liqueur with a garnish of espresso-flavored whipped cream and chopped hazelnuts. There’s also Classic Eggnog, Pumpkin-Bourbon Eggnog, and Butterscotch Eggnog. I want to curl up on the couch and sip these concoctions one after the next. And, these options are just from the chapters for Hot Toddies and Mulled Drinks and Eggnog, Hot Chocolate, Coffee and Tea. There are also Punches and Pitchers and Chilled Winter Cocktails as well as a chapter for infused liquors and syrups and one for snacks to go with the cocktails. I couldn’t decide where to start with the hot chocolate and eggnog options, so first I opted for Liquid Gold: Pineapple Juice, Spiced and Spirited. 
which is full of great desserts that don’t take all day to make. I was drawn to the idea of a quick gingerbread made with fresh ginger, and the variation suggested in the side-bar sealed the deal. That variation was to replace some of the water in the recipe with dark rum to match the flavors in a Dark and Stormy cocktail. So, not only was this cake whipped up in record time by mixing everything in a food processor, adding a little Gosling’s Black Seal rum took me back to that pretty, pink sand and that sparkling, blue water of Bermuda on a January day. Alice Medrich also offers all sorts of great ideas for garnishing desserts, and there’s even a page of “Things to do with gingerbread” that lists accompaniments like lemon whipped cream, dessert chutney, and fruits in syrup. Sticking with the Dark and Stormy theme, I topped mine with grated lime zest and poured a little more rum over the mascarpone whipped cream. 
. It’s similar to a holiday cake that gets soaked in a liquor-filled glaze only this is much simpler. In this case, you only apply the glaze once rather than several times over days or weeks, and the cake batter is one of the easiest ever to whisk together. The rum and orange juice and zest in the cake and the finely chopped pecans that end up coating it give it fantastic flavor before the rum glaze is even applied. Rum cakes that are soaked multiple times can end up tasting very boozy and I do quite like the taste of rum, but it’s not overwhelming here. In the glaze, the rum melds with melted butter and brown sugar into a lovely butterscotch with just a hint of rum. Soaking the cake with the glaze also extends the life of the cake. It gets better as it sits, and it lasts a few days longer than it would otherwise. To gild each serving a bit more, I whipped cream with Grand Marnier to top the cut pieces. 
For such a simple cookie, there was a lot going on with its flavors. The rum and coconut were subtly delicious, while the orange zest grabbed more attention. Their small size made it easy to lose count of how many I’d eaten in one sitting, but who’s counting when it comes to cookies at this time of year?
The stuffed piquillo recipe in the book is found under the title veal-stuffed piquillo peppers. In the intro to that recipe, von Bremzen explains that the classic version usually involves a stuffing of seafood with bechamel sauce, and she suggests alternate ideas instead of veal. I went the seafood route and made a shrimp stuffing. I chopped some shrimp, sauteed them in olive oil with a little chopped garlic, and then added a bechamel. Once cool, that mixture was stuffed into the piquillos, and the peppers were chilled in the refrigerator to set. Meanwhile, a sauce was made by sauteing finely chopped onion and garlic in olive oil, and to that, chopped piquillos and grated tomato were added. I’d never grated a tomato before, but you simply cut it in half, grate it on a box grater, and discard the skin. After the sauce with the tomato added had reduced, sweet and hot paprika and white wine were added. Last, a little cream enriched the sauce. Some of this sauce went into the bottom of a baking dish, the stuffed peppers were placed on top, and the remaining sauce was poured over the peppers. I should explain, an optional step in this recipe is to bread and fry the stuffed piquillos just before placing them in the baking dish with the sauce. I skipped that option and baked the naked, stuffed peppers in the sauce until warm. These little guys were delightful with chunks of shrimp in the smooth bechamel and the paprika and cream in the sauce. This was a plate and fork kind of tapa, and it was hands-down our favorite if we had to pick only one.
The olive spread was next. I already have a favorite black olive tapenade, but I wanted to try this one just to see how it compared. I was intrigued by the use of anchovy and a hard-cooked egg yolk here. The entire mixture included black olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, one cooked egg yolk, rum, yes rum, mustard, and olive oil. This was a rich and flavorful olive spread and the anchovies and rum gave it spunk. I like a good bit of parsley in an olive spread, so I sprinkled some on top. I already declared the stuffed piquillos our favorite item of the night, but there were no disappointments here. I’ll be making all of these again, and from now on whether I’m making this olive spread or my old stand-by, it will have some rum in it.