Table of contents for March 2015 in SAVEUR

Beef cheek and stout pie with Stilton pastry Appetizers & Side Dishes Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding 27 Charred Cauliflower and Shishito Peppers with Picada Sauce 32 Shaved Cauliflower and Radicchio Salad 32 Cauliflower and Goat Cheese Soufflés 32 Escarole with Confit Duck Gizzards, Comté, and Walnuts 65 Three-Cheese Gougères 66 Creamed Swiss Chard with Gorgonzola, Rye Bread Crumbs, and Walnuts 71 Wild Rice with Dried Cherries 71 Smoked Trout, Rutabaga, and Micro-green Salad 74 White Bean and Lacinato Kale Soup with Smoked Ham Hock 74 Smoked Potatoes with Fenugreek-Whey Sauce 87 Meat & Poultry Danny Bowien’s Hanoi-Style Breakfast Pho 37 Biscuits with Pancetta, Collard Greens, Marbleized Eggs, and Espresso Aïoli 40 Country Ham and Red-Eye Gravy Danish 42 Beef Cheek and Stout Pie with Stilton Pastry 52 Jambon au Chablis…

The olfactory precision of legendary rum distiller Francisco Jose “Don Pancho” Fernandez Perez is so precious it was once insured by Lloyd’s of London. Previously the head rummaker for beloved Havana Club, Fernandez is known as Cuba’s ”minister” of rum . In the 1980s, he started making his own rum in Herrera, Panama, after years of traveling there. Now, Don Pancho Origenes (aged 8, 18, and 30 years) is available in select U.S. markets ($90–$380; luekens liquors.com). We asked the rum maestro to guide us through the basics of drinking rum. What makes aged rum special? Today, there are accelerating mechanisms, flavorings, and chemical additives in many rums. I am totally against that. Just like you can’t become an engineer after only six months of training, you can’t get legitimately…

It’s 9:47 a.m. and I’m late to work. Really late. But I can’t quit the Hanoi-style pho sitting in front of me at chef Danny Bowien’s Mission Cantina restaurant in New York City. T e ever surprising, always improvising Bowien went Asian instead of Latin for the morning menu at his Mexican spot—my bowl is brimming with pulled chicken, thick ribbons of rice noodles, and so much scallion and cilantro I can barely see below the soup’s surface. Strewn across my table are more signs of a Vietnamese feast: an ample baguette smeared with duck liver pâté, lemongrass-flecked sausage patties nestled on a mound of broken rice, saucers of sriracha-doused shaved onions, and plates of Thai basil, mint, and sawtooth herbs. Breakfast made with the same thought and delicate balance…

Jean-Paul and Benoît Droin Chablis wines with searing minerality. From the old-fashioned heraldic label on their bottles to the traditional methods in the cellar, everything about these wines is a reminder that the Droin family has been making wine in Chablis since 1620. jeanpaul-droin.fr Alice and Olivier de Moor All of the De Moors’ natural and biodynamic wines are worth looking for, especially those made from the aligoté grape and their Sans Bruit, made with sauvignon blanc. Their chablis bottlings become as truffled over time as pricier grand crus. Laurent Tribut Handmade, farm-fresh, honest chablis. Offering a stunning combination of high-atmosphere purity and down-to-earth rusticity, Tribut’s wines are almost painfully precise. His premier cru Montmains reflects the terroir’s slightly rounder fruitiness, but is still encased within a razor-sharp carriage of…

For centuries, the British have been grating suet—the hard fat found around the kidneys of cattle and sheep—into puddings, dumplings, and savory pie crusts. Since it contains connective tissue, it can be off—putting at fi rst. Give it a shot, though, and it’ll do wonders, adding rich fl avor and a moist, biscuitlike texture to pastries—and the rabbit and crawfi sh stargazy pie we made for this issue (see page 50 for recipe). Since suet is hard to fi nd in grocery stores, ask your butcher if he can score some for you.…

Truth be told, we’ve grown tired of the uniform, pale-yellow monotony of scrambled eggs. So we were happy to shake things up with the marbleized-egg technique used for the biscuit sandwich at L.A.’s Eggslut restaurant. Here, the yolks are gently swirled into the whites, resulting in an expressionist amalgam of yellow and white (see page 40 for recipe). Fold your favorite omelette ingredients into one for an Instagram-worthy breakfast.…

For the second edition of the best-selling Where Chefs Eat: A Guide to Chefs’ Favorite Restaurants (Phaidon; $25), 600 culinary heavyweights from 70 countries reveal where they love to eat. Learn which spot Massimo Bottura of Modena, Italy’s Osteria Francescana wished he had opened (Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York) or the Tokyo restaurant that is a must-visit for Alex Atala of Brazil’s D.O.M. (Umi). Better yet: Get the companion iPhone and iPad apps ($15), which recommend places near you and filter your searches by chef and city. —M.U.…

Sweet and caramelized when roasted, creamy when puréed, and delicate when raw, cauliflower is a delightfully choose-your-own-adventure-style ingredient. Of all the vegetables in the brassica family—the Brussels sprouts, kales, and cabbages that restaurant chefs can’t stop salad-ifying, kimchi-ing, and reinventing altogether—cauliflower is surprisingly the most versatile. Here are four preparations we love. PAPPARDELLE WITH CAULIFLOWER AND MUSTARD BROWN BUTTER SERVES 6–8 Simple ingredients—chewy, charred cauliflower, fried capers and bread crumbs, and browned butter, bolstered by whole grain mustard—combine for the ultimate late-winter pasta. 1 head cauliflower, cut into small florets, stems minced 3⁄4 cup olive oil Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1⁄3 cup large capers, drained 3⁄4 cup coarse fresh bread crumbs 1 tsp. crushed red chile flakes 10 tbsp. unsalted butter 1⁄2 cup whole grain…

BLUSHING ROSE MOJITO The cocktail scene in Cape Town is at the moment obsessed with botanicals: herbs, roots, and shoots. While drinks using fynbos, a family of floral plants native to western South Africa, are the way to go truly local, this variation of the mojito uses the more universally found and similarly flavored rose water (and rose petals as garnish). It’s from the Vista Bar & Lounge at the One&Only Cape Town hotel, named for its breathtaking view of nearby Table Mountain. Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront; capetown.oneandonlyresorts.com Simmer 2 cups Demerara sugar, 1⁄2 cup rose water, and 1⁄2 cup water in a 2-qt. saucepan over medium-high until sugar dissolves, 3–4 minutes; chill syrup. Muddle 3⁄4 oz. fresh lime juice, 1⁄2 oz. rose syrup, and 1 cup mint…

ESCAROLE WITH CONFIT DUCK GIZZARDS, COMTÉ, AND WALNUTS SERVES 4– 6 Winemakers Alice and Olivier de Moor use confit duck gizzards in this simple winter salad (pictured on page 57), but confit duck legs make a fine substitute. 2 5-oz. confit duck legs 2 tbsp. white wine vinegar 1 ½ tbsp. Dijon mustard ½ small shallot, minced Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste ⅓ cup olive oil 1 large head escarole, leaves torn into bite-size pieces, rinsed, and dried 4 oz. Comté cheese, cut into ¼” pieces ⅓ cup walnuts, toasted Heat duck legs in a 12” skillet over medium until fat is rendered and duck is crisp, about 15 minutes. Transfer duck to a cutting board and let cool, then coarsely shred meat, discarding bones; reserve…

GETTING THERE Virgin Australia has daily nonstop service from Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney to Hobart. virginaustralia.com WHERE TO STAY The Henry Jones Art Hotel A design-minded hotel with views of the waterfront in a converted 19th-century jam factory. The IXL Long Bar has an extensive list of Tasmanian wines from the Tamar and Coal River valleys. 25 Hunter Street,Hobart; thehenryjones.com WHERE TO EAT Sweet Envy Tasmanian pastry chef Alistair Wise’s cakes, cookies, and ice creams are tasty works of art. He also turns out savory items, like the excellent harissa lamb sausage roll. 341 Elizabeth Street, Hobart; sweetenvy.com Me Wah Book a table for dim sum on Sundays at this classic Cantonese restaurant. Panfried daikon with XO sauce and roasted duck with tangerine plum sauce are standouts. 16 Magnet Court,…

I first discovered stinging nettle in the woods of Mississippi. It was years ago, and I was reporting a story on eco-tourism for a regional magazine when I stepped into a patch of it. I writhed in pain as the pinlike hairs that line each leaf stung the bejesus out of me. The next time I came across this menacing wild herb was, oddly enough, in a trendy Brooklyn restaurant, where it was served in a “nettle soup” with clams, kombu, and parsley. As it turns out, you can cook the sting right out of nettles with a simple blanch or sauté. The result is a delicious spinachlike green with notes of cucumber and pepper that can be tossed in pastas, salads, or, in the case of Tasmanian chef David…

“Canadian cuisine is not just maple syrup and poutine,” says chef Wayne Morris. At Borealia (borealiato.com), a new Toronto restaurant, Morris and his co-chef and wife, Evelyn Wu (a veteran of San Francisco’s Coi and London’s Fat Duck), modernize (very) old-school Canadian cooking —the food natives, settlers, and early immigrants prepared. On the menu are braised whelks, an indigenous shellfish, updated with a kombu beurre blanc, as well as mussels smoked with pine needles, pine ash, and butter (pictured), a nod to French navigator Samuel de Champlain, who cooked a version of the dish for his men at their camp in Nova Scotia’s Port-Royal in 1605.…

Chueca, once a run-down Madrid neighborhood , has emerged as an edgy dining destination. Young Basque chef Diego Guerrero left the two-Michelin-starred El Club Allard across town to open DSTAgE Concept (dstage concept.com), a modernist restaurant with an urban garden. Nearby at Hotel Urso, Th e Table by… (thetableby.es) hosts pop-ups of restaurants from around Spain, such as Bilbao’s Etxanobe. Ramón Freixa, another two-Michelin-starred chef, unveiled El Ático, serving casual food like croquetas and ensaladilla rusa (potato salad) in the brand-new Principal Hotel (theprincipalmadridhotel.com). For cocktails, chic hotel bars are turning up: Siete Islas (hotelsieteislas.com), its lobby done in collaboration with a local art gallery, off ers lively drinks like the “Siete Islas,” with gin, bananas, and fresh mint. In nearby Salamanca is the market Platea (plateamadrid.com), a former cinema…

Celebrating the arrival of bock beer —a dark, spicy lager with delectable hints of toffee, caramel, and toast —is a tradition that goes back centuries to pre refrigeration Germany and continues today in German-American strongholds like Cincinnati. Bock used to be lagered (stored cold) throughout the winter, allowing its warm, sweet flavors to mellow by spring. While some bocks remain seasonal, many are now available throughout the year. Unlike hoppy ales and IPAs, bocks are all about malt. Doppel (or double) versions are even maltier, with notes of dark coffee and chocolate. TOP BOCKS} AYINGER CELEBRATOR An amber-colored doppel-bock, A yinger is dry and slightly smoky, with a nice roasted, dark-fruit flavor. $4 per 11-oz. bottle; bevmo.com SPATEN OPTIMATOR Pleasantly bitter and not too sweet, this ruby red doppelbock tastes…

Delicious versions of many of Chablis’ home-cooked dishes are also available at its best restaurants. Here are the top places to eat and where to stay when you visit WHERE TO EAT Au Fil du Zinc The young and talented Japanese chef Ryo Nagahama (formerly with Joël Robuchon) has joined forces with sommelier Fabien Espana to open what is widely considered the best restaurant in Chablis right now. Nagahama serves a menu of just three starters, three mains, and three desserts, including scallop tartare and rare game birds, along with back vintages straight from the cellars of the most progressive winemakers in France. 18 rue des Moulins; restaurant-chablis.fr Bistrot des Grands Crus This is the place to sample simple, old-fashioned, bistro-style Burgundian classics like oeufs en meurette or escargots de…

Writer Peter Jon Lindberg made us fall in love this month with the funky, fermented anchovy sauce colatura (see “Italy’s Secret Sauce,” page 34). While the one he tasted on the Amalfi Coast (above, left) isn’t sold in the U.S., we tracked down some that are. Our favorites were Nettuno colatura ($21 for 100 ml.; gustiamo.com), made in Campania from barrel-aged anchovies, and Delfino colatura ($13 for 100 ml.; buonitalia.com), which was developed by Cistercian monks on the Amalfi Coast.…