Fruit

In this dessert, you get the same flavor twice but with different textures: creamy ice cream and slightly chewy strawberry leather. Fruit leathers are an ideal way to incorporate secondary flavors, like herbs, and making leathers is really easy.

Recently, I’ve become infatuated with bubbles and carbonation, and I’ve been on a mission to find ways to introduce bubbles as a texture in desserts. So adding a soda to the menu was a natural. With the help of David Arnold, Director of Culinary Technology at the French Culinary Institute, I’ve built a carbonation rig for the pastry kitchen at Jean Georges. Don’t let that scare you from trying this recipe, though. All you need at home is a soda siphon. Using a half-size hotel pan and perforated hotel pan (which you can buy online from BigTray) ensures that the strawberry water freezes and defrosts evenly during the clarification process.

This is a riff on Jean-Georges’s grandmother’s rhubarb tart. It’s not her recipe for the pastry or the streusel, but the notion of macerating the rhubarb before baking and adding the flan came from her. Mustard may not be a traditional ingredient for desserts, but it adds a definite edge to the jam and it’s my nod to Alsace, from where Jean-Georges hails. You’ll have leftover jam. Try pairing it with cheese or with a sizzling steak.

Maybe I like rhubarb so much because I started eating it when I was a child; my mother’s strawberry-rhubarb pie is one of my earliest memories. And I love summer fruit soups; that’s something I learned from François Payard. So this combination is a natural for me. You need just the pod from the vanilla bean for this dessert, so if you have saved some used pods, now is the time to recycle. And you will need a whipped cream charger (see page 279) for the foam. You will have leftover consommé (which you can freeze) and foam; you simply can’t successfully foam less liquid than is in the recipe.

Mochi are sweet, filled Japanese dumplings that are served chilled. I’ve been fascinated by them from the first time I had one, but I’d always been told that they could be made only in factories. And since the commercial ones are artificially flavored and colored and filled with ice-hard ice cream, that didn’t surprise me. One day, I promised my friend David Chang of Momofuku that I’ d make fresh mochi for him. It became a mission. Once I learned how to do it, I found that it really wasn’t difficult at all to make the tender, sweet rice dough and flavor it naturally. And since I fill mochi with a compote, they’re fork-tender. The basil fluid gel is an ideal herbal foil to the compote. I use 2-inch demisphere molds when I make mochi, but I’ve found that an egg carton works fine. The secret to the dough is working quickly. This recipe makes twice as much as you need for the fourplay, but I hardly consider leftover mochi a problem. The mochi will keep for 1 day in the refrigerator.

I had never seen a key lime when I was growing up; I thought the juice was something that just came in bottles. Once I discovered the real fruit, though, I wanted to do something with it. So here’s a fresh, brightly flavored version of key lime pie, with a crisp graham cracker sablé standing in for the usual soggy crust. The sauce would also be great over sliced fresh apricots or nectarines. A scale is a must for making this dessert. And you’ll need ten 2 x 2-inch ring molds.

Muscat grapes mark the beginning of spring, and they’re a prompt for me to start thinking of new menus, new ideas, and the other spring fruits to come. This soup is designed to keep the distinct musky flavor of these grapes in its purest form. “Cape” refers to the papery husk the gooseberries are wrapped in, which makes them look like tiny Chinese lanterns.

Biscotti means “twice baked,” a cooking method that results in the firm, crunchy cookies that have recently become wildly popular here in America. These cookies were eaten by sailors back in Columbus’s day because they last for a long time without going bad. They’re great for dunking in coffee or tea, which is how my mom, nonna, and I would eat them when I was growing up. The citrus zests provide an extra little zing, and really evoke the tastes of Italy. If you want, you could use just orange or lemon; it doesn’t have to be both.

A great dinner-party dessert: You make it ahead of time, it looks beautiful, and it tastes fantastic. For an interesting twist, try infusing the cream with flavors like lavender or rosewater.

The addition of orange and rum are what makes this a very different rice pudding than you’re probably used to. Of course, rum isn’t a typical flavoring in Italian cooking, but once again I’ve taken the liberty of infusing a little New World twist into an Old World classic.

The traditional zabaglione isn’t made with chocolate, but it is served either warm or cold, with fresh berries, as mine is. So why did I add chocolate? To make this something so incredibly rich and special that no one—absolutely no one—could resist it. Serve this before asking for a really big favor

Pineapple doesn’t quite qualify as Italian, but Nutella (a chocolate-hazelnut spread) is definitely an Italian favorite of cult-like proportions, so this can certainly pass as an Italian-American recipe. Grilling the pineapple enhances its sweet flavor, provides the great grill marks, and of course warms it up, bringing a new level of comfort to this incredibly comforting dessert.

One word: easy. Make that two: delicious.

This recipe was born out of leftovers—a half cantaloupe, a handful of strawberries, some grapes—not enough in themselves to feed a family, but combine them and you have a great dessert. Feel free to substitute with your favorite fruit or whatever you happen to have as leftovers. The sweetened wine and the fresh mint meld the fruit flavors together into a wonderfully refreshing, quick, and easy recipe. Perfect for summertime.

Amaretti cookies are a must for this recipe; there really isn’t any substitute for that crunchy almond flavor and texture. They’re becoming more and more popular and easier to find, especially in Italian specialty stores, and they last for a long time; so when you find them, stock up.

Cannoli (“pipes”) are said to be one of the unshakable rocks of Sicilian desserts, and these days they can be found in almost every Italian pastry shop in America. They are crispy fried pastry tubes that are filled with sweetened ricotta cheese or sometimes pastry cream. The tubes are time-consuming to make, but the filling is easy, and dolloped over fresh berries, well, it just brings me home.

In the summer, I like to buy large bags or baskets of fresh peaches at the farmers’ market. I eat the perfectly ripe ones immediately and use the firmer (but still ripe) specimens for this amazing dessert combo. But do be sure that your peaches are a little firm; if they’re going soft all over, they’ll fall apart on the grill. Add the cheese mixture right before you serve it so it looks fresh.

Italians aren’t afraid of using spicy and slightly bitter greens in their salads, and you shouldn’t be either. Belgian endive are small, pale (white) heads of lettuce with yellow tips; they can be eaten raw (as in this salad) or grilled or roasted—the possibilities are endless. Frisée has slender, curly leaves that are a yellow-green color. The blood oranges add a hint of tart sweetness and a beautiful refreshing color to this salad—they’re orange with bright red or red-streaked white flesh. The dressing, nuts, orange segments, and lettuces can all be prepared ahead of time, no last-minute fuss.

In my family, this is a traditional side during the holidays, but that’s just my family—it’s really perfect any time of year. The trick is to blanch the broccoli rabe in boiling water for a minute or so to get rid of some of the bitterness and partially cook it.

I’m not going to tell you that this is a traditional dish from Umbria; it’s not. But it is a traditional dish in my family. And family is what tradition is all about, isn’t it?