Author: Chef M

Named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova and created in her honor during a tour of Australia and New Zealand, a Pavlova is a delicate, crispyet- soft meringue shell filled with fruit and cream. Not only is it fun and easy to make, it’s also gorgeous and delicious. I created this Pavlova to serve at Myers+Chang, where we are always looking for desserts to complement our addictive menu. At the restaurant, we make individual meringues and top them with fresh plums and figs marinated in plum wine that meld marvelously with the simple vanilla whipped cream. This large version is impressive…

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The Paris-Brest is more than a century old, invented to commemorate the famous bicycle race. The dessert is made with pate a choux piped into a ring (the shape of a tire), baked, split, and filled with a praline pastry cream. I love classics, and Sebastien loves to put a twist on them. Here he combines a French creation with something very American peanut butter (making this a reflection of his journey). We think of peanut butter as commonplace here, but it was new to Sebastien. He adds Skippy natural peanut butter to the pastry cream filling and garnishes the…

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Party nuts are a crowd-pleaser. I started entertaining at a really early age, if for no other reason than I was always bent on trying a new recipe that had caught my eye. By the time I got my first apartment, I was an expert at putting out a cocktail-hour spread that almost always included these party nuts. Use kosher salt for added texture.

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When I was living in Miami and strictly following the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol (AIP), I used to make this chicken all the time. While it is not technically a traditional Puerto Rican dish per se, it still tastes authentically Puerto Rican, thanks to the sofrito, and is a dish I’m sure you’ll love to add to your rotation, too. You can also deviate a bit from tradition and bulk it up with additional AIP-compliant vegetables of choice, such as carrots or zucchini. Use this recipe instead of the Pollo Desmechado for an AIP-compliant arepa topping.

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Small and delicate, lemon thins had legions of fans in times past, and grocery store shelves, particularly in the South, were crowded with regional versions. But the cookie zeitgeist now favors bigger, bolder biscuits. We wanted to bring back these pleasantly crisp cookies, and we wanted them to pack a serious lemon punch. When we tested existing recipes, we found them to be too thick and soft or too crumbly or too chewy and all were desperately short on lemon flavor. Texture was the first puzzle to solve. Just out of the oven, our working recipe was thin and crisp;…

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Despite their evocative name, many summer rolls contain mostly bland rice noodles, leaving vegetables as an afterthought. For our version we gathered up a rainbow of healthful veggies to fill our rice paper packages. A mix of red cabbage, red bell pepper, cucumber, and carrots delivered color and crunch. Fresh basil added herbal notes, and strips of marinated tofu made the rolls hearty enough for lunch. Instead of a thin soy dipping sauce, we whisked up a nutrient-packed, Sriracha-spiked almond butter sauce. Thick and rich, it clung easily to our rolls, taking the dish to a new level. Be sure…

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This dish needs big meaty open mushrooms that are just packed with flavour. Once the ingredients are prepared it takes less than 10 minutes to get it on the table. Again, I’ve used avocado but it is an optional extra. The vital part is to have good bread toasted and ready so you can pile the mushrooms on top and let all the juices soak into the bread. Any freshly chopped herb will finish it nicely.

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