The croissant is the most celebrated member of the family of butter- and sugar-enriched, yeasted pastries known as viennoiseries. They obtain their signature flaky texture through lamination, the process of coating a dough with fat and repeatedly folding and rolling it to create layers. Tartine owner Chad Robert­son insists on an unsalted, high-fat butter with at least 80 percent fat for laminating his straight-armed versions.

Recipe times may vary drastically depending on environmental factors, so be sure to mind the visual cues before moving on to the next step. If possible, use a scale to measure your ingredients and work in a cool room.

Featured in “How to Make the Best Ultra-Buttery Croissants,” by Kat Craddock.

Time To Make The Dough

Lead viennoisier, Fausto Echeverria, uses a high-fat, European-style butter from Oregon to laminate Tartine’s croissant dough. First, a thin sheet of butter is laid on top of the dough before it is folded into thirds (1). Then, Echeverria rolls the dough out a second time (2), before folding it again in thirds like a letter (3, 4). After a short rest in the fridge, the folding process is repeated once more. The dough is then rested again for several hours to relax the gluten. After the final rest, the dough can be sheeted out and shaped into croissants, danish, and morning buns.

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The colonizing Portuguese introduced cashews to Sri Lanka via Brazil in the 16th century. Today, the nuts are eaten in everything from curries to desserts. This rich yellow curry, adapted from chefs Jerome La’Brooy and Nishad Jaya­wardena of Asylum restaurant, is best served as an accompaniment. It can be made mild or spicy, depending on your hand with the chili powder and choice of curry powder. Soaking the cashews ahead of time gives them a tender, beanlike quality in the finished dish.

Featured in: “How to Make Fish Rice Like Sri Lanka’s Great Home Cooks.”

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In Spain’s Basque Country, marmitako means roughly “from the pot.” This rustic, filling soup, now common in Basque homes and sociedades, began as a meal local tuna fishermen would make during long fishing routes on their boats, and still do. Traditionally, locals crack the potatoes with a partial cut, then break off ragged chunks to toss into and add starchiness to the potato soup. Adding the tuna right at the end, just as the soup is removed from the heat, keeps the fish moist and tender.

Featured in: “Inside the Members-Only Eating Clubs of San Sebastián.”

For More Nourishing Potato Soup

Get the recipe for Potato and Leek Soup (Sopa de Poro y Papa) »

The post Marmitako (Basque Tuna and Potato Soup) appeared first on Saveur.

The worst present I ever received was a goldfish, when I was 10. I don’t think I even gave it a name. I’d never before had the responsibility of keeping anything alive, but my parents thought a 1-inch fish was a no-fail starter project. On day two, I sprinkled five times the food recommended—I picked that move up from dinners at my grandma’s—and on day three, we bid the goldfish farewell.

After that, I never entertained the thought of owning a pet, or really anything that grows at all. So when my wife announced she was pregnant two years ago, my reaction was to stand frozen in mortal fear. But fatherhood arrived, ready or not, and the responsibilities came fast and furious. So far, so good.

Of the many ways fatherhood has changed me, the most enjoyable has been my transformation into a total homebody. And no hobby illustrates la vie indoors more than my newfound obsession with baking bread. I now own every book there is to read on the subject, and many Saturday nights have been spent studying dough-folding and boule-scoring. Here’s the thing: I like bread more than I love bread. I taste a few slices of what I bake and jot down notes in my bread journal, and the rest gets turned into croutons. How did I fall for baking so hard? I tried retracing my steps. Is it the microbiology? The primordial novelty of cooking a food made 25,000 years ago? No explanation fully satisfied until I birthed my own sourdough starter.

As it has been for so many new bread­makers, Jim Lahey’s no-knead method was the gateway drug. That four ingredients and 20 hours could yield such a crusty, pillowy, wondrous loaf at home felt like some kind of spell. Using Lahey’s recipe as my baseline, the next step was to tackle sourdough. Here was Mother Nature at her most beautiful and giving: With a mixture of water and flour kept in a properly warm setting, enough naturally occurring yeast—in the flour, on our fingertips, floating in the air—would propagate, leavening the dough on its way to becoming bread.

For the first few weeks, it felt like an exercise in futility. I measured out flour and water to the gram, feeding it at the same time before bedtime. I’d excitedly check in the morning to see if science had worked. All it did was produce a few flat bubbles and remain a lifeless, wet pile of dough. At the end of the second week, I threw my jar of failure in the fridge and picked up a book on pickling.

Then: the miracle of life. While rearranging the contents of my fridge a few days later, I took the jar out and forgot about it on the counter. When I returned several hours later, the soggy mixture had transformed, blooming and crawling halfway up the jar! The mixture smelled like beer and stretched like melted mozzarella. I fed it again that night and the next morning, wonder of wonders, the sourdough starter came alive, doubling in size. What the bread gods were trying to tell me was be patient. Listen to what it needs. Give it love and care. Now, feeding this living dough and making bread with it has become part of my daily routine. I feed it to my son, who calls it “daddy bread.” It’s the most gratifyingly caveman thing I do.

This will be the year I stop buying gift cards for friends. Instead, I will package my sourdough starter in a jar and attach explicit instructions on how to care for it. It will be the cheapest but most meaningful present I can ever give. For some, to have such great responsibility foisted upon them will be as terrible a gift as a goldfish to a 10-year-old. They may humor the process for a few days before dumping it in the trash. And I’d be fine with that. I just need one person to buy in so the lineage continues. Because what is discarded wet dough for some is a living, breathing wonder for others. I hope they see it as I do: That I’m sending this small clump of life into the world.

Get the recipe for Sourdough Starter »

The post Give a Jar of No-Knead Sourdough for Others To Feed appeared first on Saveur.

There are as many methods for making sourdough starter as there are bakers. Classicists say flour and water is enough to begin fermentation. Others—like Peter Reinhart of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, who inspired this recipe—suggest adding fruit juice to kick-start things. Mostly, it’s the environment that matters: Measure liquids to solids carefully, use filtered water, and use room-temperature ingredients to help bacteria and yeast flourish and multiply.

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Dario and Valerio wanted to create a place of their own. Growing up in a small, conservative Italian town, the 30-something gay couple never felt they truly belonged somewhere. Until, that is, they happened upon a plot of beachfront land in faraway Anakao, on the southwest coast of Madagascar. They found the land while researching the area on Google Earth and purchased it sight unseen. They had no particular destination in mind and just wanted something far from the world they lived in. They worked hard, saved their money, and built their own “Neverland” in the form of the Auberge Peter Pan.

They have not quite given up on Italy. The couple bring back fresh pasta and their favorite olive oils from trips back home. When my wife and I found our way there as travelers, we were surprised to be served some of the best food we’d ever had. Each morning, local fishermen brought their catch to Dario and Valerio first. The pair had their pick of the freshest fish, lobsters, and baby clams before the rest were taken to the local markets to sell. We steamed the clams in garlic and ate them with toothpicks, and baked the whole fish under a blanket of sea salt. One night, Dario asked if we might be interested in a dinner of goat, baked whole underground. Soon a couple of villagers came to the hotel with machetes and a live goat tied to a string. That evening, we ate tender goat meat and fresh pasta while we watched the sunset on the Mozambique Channel.

Neverland isn’t always a paradise; the Auberge was robbed at gunpoint multiple times, and now an armed security guard stands perpetual watch. When I asked if the couple thought about returning to Italy after such episodes, Dario quickly replied: “Never. I will die here.”

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Effleurage is an age-old perfumers’ technique used to extract botanicals from flowers by pressing the fresh petals into a layer of vege­table fat. To similar effect, you can spread a high-quality, unsweetened peanut butter across a baking pan to maximize surface area, and then float some bourbon on top to pull out the flavors.

The post Peanut Butter-Infused Bourbon appeared first on Saveur.

Flavoring your own booze at home is a fun, whimsical way to push the limits of your favorite bottle. But the technique isn’t limited to steeping and straining. You can also use rich, fatty, or oily ingredients—like peanut butter, dairy, or aromatic oils—to delicious effect, if you know how to harness their powers. To get started, we asked cocktail pioneer Nico de Soto of Mace in New York City and Danico in Paris to simplify some creative techniques for holiday infusions.

Traditional Infusion

As with other seeds and spices, infusing cocoa nibs simply involves steeping them in your spirit of choice. Toasting the nibs teases out the warm flavors, and pairing them with a grassy blanco tequila makes a best-of-Mexico sipper that easily mimics the appearance and depth of a brown spirit, offset by the brightness of agave.

Fat Washing

Though the name may evoke the idea of a greasy mess, fat washing refers to the process of infusing a fatty ingredient like butter or bacon grease into a spirit, then removing the fat after infusion by chilling and solidifying it. The process leaves behind only the flavor and aromatics of the ingredients, like the toasty, nutty milk compounds of browned butter in crisp apple brandy.

The Orchard

Effleurage

Effleurage is an age-old perfumers’ technique used to extract botanicals from flowers by pressing the fresh petals into a layer of vege­table fat. To similar effect, you can spread a high-quality, unsweetened peanut butter across a baking pan to maximize surface area, and then float some bourbon on top to pull out the flavors.

The post Infuse Your Booze to Make the Most of Holiday Ingredients appeared first on Saveur.

As with other seeds and spices, infusing cocoa nibs simply involves steeping them in your spirit of choice. Toasting the nibs teases out the warm flavors, and pairing them with a grassy blanco tequila makes a best-of-Mexico sipper that easily mimics the appearance and depth of a brown spirit, offset by the brightness of agave.

The post Cocoa Nib-Infused Tequila appeared first on Saveur.

Though the name may evoke the idea of a greasy mess, fat washing refers to the process of infusing a fatty ingredient like butter or bacon grease into a spirit, then removing the fat after infusion by chilling and solidifying it. The process leaves behind only the flavor and aromatics of the ingredients, like the toasty, nutty milk compounds of browned butter in crisp apple brandy.

The post Brown Butter-Infused Apple Brandy appeared first on Saveur.