If you have even a passing interest of astrology, then you know that the most basic principle that governs Libras is our underlying, yearning desire to keep everything in balance. Subconsciously or not, it’s how I process and consume art, music, literature and food. For every fluffy album that I put on, I’ll eventually need to hear something heavier and more abstract. I’m equal parts Kate Bush and Kevin Drumm. Fleetwood Mac and Ryoji Ikeda. And so on….

But nowhere does this organizational method fling itself onto my cravings more insistently than in the way that I eat. At work, it’s mostly dabs and tastings of sugar, butter, and cream. Mouthfuls of cake and pudding and syrups. Halved scones and milk buns slathered in butter and jam. Spoonfuls of tempered chocolate and licks of glossy Italian meringue. At home, my eating habits adjust to balance out my pastry work, and I’m really seeing the results right here on my blog. Gratuitous snaps of sugary-sweet Queen Elizabeth cake… followed by a hearty breakfast of eggs, asparagus, chickpeas, and a bit of my stale old levain bread. It’s not a “light” meal, but it feels suitably oppositional to what I was eating the night before. There’s been a lot of big breakfasts like this lately… maybe I’ve been eating too much cake at work and I didn’t even realize it.

If you have a fear of sugar — the kind that’s heaped into quantities that makes your hands tremble and eyes twitch — then this cake is probably not for you. But for us, the sugar-high-riding gang at Lawrence (gummi worms at 5pm is a daily kitchen snack), well, we pine for the Queen Elizabeth cake, which is sweetened with not just regular granulated sugar, but also brown sugar, dried coconut, and dates.

The Queenie, as we affectionately called it, lived on the menu much longer than most of our desserts because it was so popular with clients. (It was also topped with a scoop of homemade Makers Mark-infused ice cream, so that probably didn’t hurt, either). And in the kitchen, we never got tired of the coconut-topped cake either, and we regularly ended shifts with a shared slice or two.

The Queen derives most of its sweetness from dates, which are soaked in hot water until a thick, mashable paste forms.  The rest of the cake is a breeze to assemble — cream some butter and sugar, add a few eggs and vanilla, then alternate sifted flour with the warm date mixture. I love making this cake in a single bowl, creaming butter and sugar by hand, with a good wooden spoon. No mixer required. The batter puffs and swells into a lovely tan-colored cake, which is then topped with cooked mixture of (more) butter, heavy cream, unsweetened shredded coconut, and brown sugar. Then, finally, the cake is broiled until the topping caramelizes into a crunchy, amber crust.

So when Jessica’s birthday rolled around, I surprised her with a Queenie encore, this time gussied up, American-style, into a three-layer birthday cake smothered with vanilla buttercream frosting. (I was in such a rush that the cake didn’t completely cool before I frosted it, which is why you can see that top layer sliding around in the final photo!) I can make this cake in my sleep — I realized I still had the recipe memorized — but it was an entirely new challenge to bake this cake during service with her only a few meters away from me. Jess could totally spy the action from her garde manger station (as in, she saw the cake layers cooling on our speed rack and overheard us whispering about it, oops), but I think she was surprised anyway.

Note — Warm out of the oven, this cake is cozy and comforting, but it’s even better the next day. The flavors are richer, the topping even crunchier, the innards moist and sticky. I’d bring it to a picnic for a sweet finish to a long afternoon.

This photo makes me laugh. Our chef at Lawrence is particularly clear about tidying up the plate’s edges, so as the dish moves from the kitchen to the pass to the dining room, the plate must look clean, impeccable, and gleaming white. So this meal —  smeared so grossly onto the plate, like it was dragged there by a hungry animal — made me giggle. It was also a clean-out-the-fridge kind of dinner, made in haste, and driven by hunger: stewed chickepeas, halved cherry tomatoes, garlic, shallots, tomato paste, sunflower oil, butter, chopped parsley and basil, and a big handful of wilted mizuna and micro arugula, added right at the end, all came together in a pretty tasty tangle. I had another plate after this one.

A while back I was complaining about being over that whole avocado-smashed-on-toast thing, but awesome Ashley suggested an easy switch-up: smashed avocado on corn tortillas. No duh. So simple and obvious and delicious! Just different enough that it’s renewed my (formerly waning) interest in avocado on carbs all over again. Especially if they can be eaten outside on the balcony in the sunshine.

There’s a lovely mention of Lawrence in this month’s Bon Appetit. (Pictured above: the sweet-and-savory Gloucester pancakes that I make with beef suet.) We’re in awesome company, too — our buddies at Foodlab, Hotel Herman, Sardine, and Caffe San Simeon are included in the roundup too. And my personal favorite — the impeccable breads at Joe la Croute — don’t go unnoticed, either.

Read it here!

In the dead of winter, traditional Chinese hot pot might be the perfect remedy. My thought process of the last month: Quick! Before winter ends… and it’s going to end soon… You have one final thing to accomplish. A hot pot feast at home!

I adore everything about hot pot. Thinly sliced meats — like beef, lamb, chicken — perched delicately in a mesh wire basket, are lowered into a bubbling cauldron dotted with floating mushrooms, a tangle of rice noodles, cubes of tofu, and a mysterious thicket of vegetables. As the meat simmers to doneness, the fixings, like a big spoonful of spicy, rich sesame sauce, are arranged in a tiny bowl, alongside a few wedges of crisp Chung Yao Bing, or a savory scallion pancake. As the night crawls forward, the broth gets thicker, meatier, richer, condensed with the dazed memories of the meats and the seafood that entered and exited its steamy world.

My fondness for hot pot has been documented on this site before. There’s that time I had it in Hong Kong, which was pretty mind-blowing. But organizing a hot pot feast at home  — as I did once in California — is not even that hard, and maybe even more fun than going out. So for my friend Karine’s birthday, I knew right away that I wanted to throw her a party that we’d all remember forever.

The day of the dinner, we drove down to Chinatown and scooped up all of the ingredients for a proper hot pot experience. As for prep, that’s about it. The night of the party, it’s an every-man-or-woman-for-himself kind of situation. You make the food as you crave it, gulp it down as soon as it’s ready, and don’t stop until you’re about stuffed, practically hallucinating with pleasure, peering through the steamy room that feels as hot as a sauna.

It’s the best way to say zàijiàn to winter.

Good thing it’s still winter (haha, NOT), because at least I’m still not sick of brussels sprouts, especially when charred in the oven and tossed with my all-time favorite pasta shape, the adorable orecchiette. The key is a bracing amount of aleppo pepper, lemon zest, and a splash of starchy pasta water to bring everything together. A big handful of grated pecorino doesn’t hurt, either.

Can we take a BRIEF MOMENT to take a break from my (admittedly super-sparse dinner party posts of the last three months) usual blogs to lament the newly acquired information that there is supposed to be a major snow storm in Montreal tonight? I know winters are hard, but it’s true what they say: March is always the worst. I can’t stop fantasizing about warm water, fruity cocktails, park picnics, and RIDING MY BIKE. To say I’m going a little loopy is a modest assessment. I saw this cute card and actually got goosebumps thinking about how wonderful it would feel to hang in an innertube, holding a wine spritzer and a pair of red sunglasses.

Our freezer is always stocked with one of or two loaves of my sourdough, ready to be transformed into slices of toast, a tupperware of breadcrumbs, or a pan of garlicky croutons. Recently, I read about a curious walnut-bread sauce, thick and creamy and off-white in color, spooned over pasta and served with a glass of cold Ligurian wine. I pulled out some bread from my freezer and got to work.

It all starts with a loaf of stale or defrosted country bread, torn into manageable chunks and soaked in a pot of warm milk. A pan of walnuts is lightly roasted and then crushed in a mortar and pestle. A few cloves of garlic are peeled and lightly flattened. Then, the entire aromatic mess is blitzed with an immersion blender until pureed, but still chunky. With a wooden spoon, I whipped in a few cups of grated Parmesan and half a cup of good Italian olive oil. What appeared next was one of the most voluminous, gorgeous sauces I’ve ever made. It’s rustic and pasty — who likes that wan, pale shade of beige, anyway? — but the taste is totally remarkable. There’s that faintest shade of garlic, the salty punch of cheese, those sweet, earthy walnuts, and the tang and heft of the milk-soaked bread. I used Rachel’s recipe as a guideline and inspiration more than anything else, but if you’d like to follow it exactly, you can find it here. When we were ready to eat, I thinned out the sauce with a big splash of starchy pasta water, which loosens and relaxes the sauce, perfectly coating your pasta.

Okay, a few notes about the linguine, which was so easy to make. Marcella Hazan’s basic pasta recipe has always been my favorite, and I love her preference for intuitive dough-making: the feel and look of the pasta is way more important than precisely scaling out ingredients. Hazan estimates about one cup of flour for every two eggs, and I find those proportions to be exactly right. Our dough was springy, soft, and smooth.

The rest of the dinner was light and fresh, starting wedges of Tuscan melon and smoked Charlevoix ham. Next, an easy and colorful chopped Italian salad, using mostly bitter-tasting vegetables like radicchio and dandelion greens, all brightened by red bell pepper, golden raisins, shaved fennel, and chopped almonds. It might be my new favorite winter salad.

The rest was seriously simple: a wedge of my favorite 18-month aged Comte, straight from Jura, eaten with slivers of ripe Comice pears and sourdough toasts, followed by Italian blood oranges and dark chocolate-covered candied ginger, a lovely Valentine’s gift from my mom. The night was a perfect homage to the region of Liguria, and the certainly perked up our cold winter nights!

Not that I need an excuse to throw an elaborate dinner party, but it’s become something of a tradition around these parts that I host a big feast in honor of my friends’ birthdays. (Sometimes, of course, the birthday parties end in blood and tears).

So for Fred’s birthday, something special was in order. We began with fresh oysters, halved radishes, bowls of salty pistachios, and local charcuterie. We moved onto a creamy purple potato dauphinoise spiked with thyme and sage. We relieved palates with a shaved fennel, dandelion greens, blood orange and chicory salad. The main event was a heaping platter of roast quail, fried in duck fat and stuffed with black cabbage and bacon. We ate them with our fingers, squirting the birds with juice from lemon wedges. Then we tackled a huge board of cheeses – most of them local Quebec products that we also feature at the restaurant. (Have you ever had the Alfred le Fermier? It’s one of my favorites, like a creamy, milky gruyere).  For dessert, a leftover baked alaska pinched from work and a sweet chocolate ganache tart contributed by Seeger. There’s just something about cooking for friends… it always makes me feel great.

(Quail photo by Marc)