My question is fairly innocent, as far as questions go: “How do you peel a grape?”
Chef Anne Quatrano is quick with her retort: “With your teeth.”
That pretty much captures Quatrano: funny and brusque and slightly glib about what she’s doing, which, at this moment, involves garnishing a deconstructed baba au rhum with a dollop of crème fraîche, cinnamon-infused sultanas, and the peeled grapes. The finished dish is a geometric work of art: round plate, rectangular brioche, and those ovoid grapes. In Quatrano’s kitchen, you eat with your eyes first.
Which is why she insists that everything—the toasted brioche, the duck that we cook before that—get blotted with paper towels, both out of the pan and after it’s sliced. “I refuse to have blood on the plate,” she tells me, almost wincing at the thought of bloody duck. (She blots the brioche so it’s not greasy.)
The visual extends to how she preps vegetables for a soup. When she makes her pasta fagioli, every ingredient is prepped to highlight its natural beauty. The baby turnips are kept whole, the baby fennel sliced in half, and the Yukon Gold potatoes are scooped with a melon baller to echo the other shapes. When the soup is finished, it’s as stunning to behold as it is to eat.
“This is really good,” I say as I begin devouring it.
“It is really good,” Quatrano agrees.
Quatrano started cooking at an early age in Fairfield, Connecticut, because her mother didn’t cook at all. “I cooked because I got hungry,” she tells me. “And when I got older, I left as soon as I could. I wanted my autonomy.”
Her quest for autonomy took her to San Francisco, where she begged for a job at the legendary Zuni Café. She went to cooking school in the mornings and worked at Zuni at night. It was in cooking school that she met her husband and future business partner, Clifford Harrison. They eventually moved to Atlanta to live in a double-wide trailer on a sixty-acre piece of property that her mother owned.
Together, Quatrano and her husband built a house, built a barn, built a fence, and turned the sixty acres into a working farm. In 1992 they opened their first restaurant, Bacchanalia, using the food from the farm to stock their kitchen.
“That’s amazing,” I say, in awe.
“I’m not sure it’s that admirable,” Quatrano counters. “There are wonderful farmers here in Atlanta.”
The point, though, is that in her quest for autonomy, Quatrano rose to a stature unknown to most working chefs in America. She cooks the food that she loves and presents it in a way that meets her very exacting standards. Still, Quatrano doesn’t see it that way: “I’m hugely responsible for lots of people, and that’s not an autonomous kind of feeling. Everything I do directly affects them.”
Try as I might to convince her that she achieved precisely what she set out to achieve, her unspoken message back to me is clear: Go peel a grape.
“I think food should be visual, don’t you?”
Serves 2
If Melissa Clark’s duck breast with grapes is easy enough to be a weeknight dinner staple, this version is slightly fancier. It requires that you make a cure with herbs, salt, and sugar that you rub onto the duck a few hours before you cook it. Because of the sugar, though, you’ll have to be careful; when the duck hits the pan, it will brown up quicker and you may not have time to render it all before it starts turning black. The best strategy is to trim the fat down to a quarter inch before you apply the cure. Don’t trim too much, though, or you won’t get that glorious crisp skin! As for the sauce, the milk might sound strange, but think of it as a lighter version of cream and then you’ll get where it’s going. The final combination of fiery bronzed duck in a mellow, perfumed herbal broth is an absolute knockout.
FOR THE DUCK
½ cup sugar
⅓ cup kosher salt
½ cup basil leaves
¼ cup mint leaves
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary*
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 large duck breast, with the fat trimmed down to ¼ inch and then cut into a crosshatch pattern, being careful not to cut through the flesh of the duck
FOR THE SAUCE
2 tablespoons high-fat unsalted butter, such as Plugra (see Kitchen Know-How)
½ onion, sliced thin
3 baby fennel, sliced in half, or ¼ large fennel, cored and sliced thin
4 baby turnips, cleaned and peeled with some of the green still attached
Peel and juice of 1 Meyer lemon (use a vegetable peeler to make thin strips of yellow skin)
1 cup chicken stock
¼ cup milk
¼ cup mixture of chopped chervil, parsley, and tarragon
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fleur de sel or other finishing salt
Additional chopped chervil, for garnish (optional)
Blend the sugar, kosher salt, basil, mint, rosemary, orange zest, and garlic in a food processor until it’s well incorporated. Place the duck in a covered container or a resealable plastic bag and rub it all over with the cure. Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours, but no longer or it will get too salty.
Rinse the cure off the duck completely and then pat it very dry.
To make the sauce, gently melt the butter over medium heat in a medium pot and add the onions. Cook until they start to soften and then add the fennel, turnips, and Meyer lemon peel. Stir, and then add the chicken stock and Meyer lemon juice. Bring to a gentle simmer and let the stock reduce by at least half (this may take 10 to 15 minutes on low heat). Once it has reduced, set aside.
To cook the duck, preheat the oven to 400°F. Get an ovenproof pan (do not use nonstick) very hot over high heat. Add the duck, fat side down, and allow the fat to render, 5 to 10 minutes. Monitor carefully; you don’t want the sugar in the duck to burn. If it gets too dark too fast, lower the heat. When it’s a beautiful golden brown and almost all the fat has rendered, flip the duck over and cook for a minute on the other side. Place the pan in the oven and roast for 2 to 3 minutes, until a thermometer placed in the center of the duck reads 125°F. Remove the duck to a plate and allow it to rest for at least 5 minutes.
While the duck is resting, finish the sauce. If it’s reduced too much, add a bit of water. When the consistency is a bit soupy, add the milk and the herbs and adjust for kosher salt and pepper.
Blot the rested duck dry with paper towels and then slice it thin. Blot one more time with paper towels.
Spoon the sauce (mostly vegetables, a little liquid) into warmed bowls. Top with some of the sliced duck and a little more of the sauce. Sprinkle with fleur de sel and garnish with chervil, if using.
Serves 4
Think of this soup as more of a concept than a recipe. Quatrano throws in a handful of turnip greens while making hers and says: “This is the idea of a pasta fagioli. Use anything you’ve got.” The garnishes for this soup—the dehydrated olive powder and the sourdough croutons—aren’t necessary, but they sure make it great.
½ sourdough boule, crusts removed, cut into small cubes
¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup finely chopped onion
¼ cup finely chopped celery
¼ cup finely chopped carrot
3 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
4 baby fennel, sliced in half, or ¼ large fennel, cored and sliced into thin strips
4 baby turnips, peeled, or 1 large turnip, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
½ cup balls of peeled Yukon Gold potato, scooped with a melon baller
4 skinny baby carrots, peeled and quartered
¼ cup cooked cranberry beans (optional)
¼ cup cooked cannellini beans (you can use canned)
4 to 6 cups good-quality chicken stock
½ cup chopped turnip greens (optional)
½ pound elbow-shaped pasta
Crushed red pepper flakes
A sprinkling of kalamata olive powder* (optional)
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Toss the cubed sourdough on a rimmed cookie sheet with ¼ cup of the olive oil and some salt and pepper. Bake, tossing every so often, until the croutons are golden on all sides. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
For the soup, begin by heating the 3 tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat in a large pot, Dutch oven, or saucier. Add the onions, celery, and chopped carrot and cook, gently, for a minute. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds more. Nothing should brown; it should just soften.
Add the fennel, turnips, potatoes, baby carrots, and beans and stir. Season lightly with salt.
Add the chicken stock and bring the liquid to a boil. Add the turnip greens, if using, and the pasta; lower the heat and simmer until everything is cooked, 10 to 15 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper; for heat, add a pinch of red pepper flakes.
To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top with the sourdough croutons and a sprinkling of the kalamata olive powder.
Serves 4
This is not a traditional baba au rhum, so purists, stand back. Instead, this is an elevated French toast infused with a syrup made with a whole orange, white rum, sugar, and a cinnamon stick and garnished with jewel-like golden raisins also infused with another cinnamony syrup. If you cut the brioche the right way—that is, into fat, rectangular spears—your guests won’t recognize it as breakfast for dessert. And if you have any brioche left over, you can serve it for breakfast. In either case, this dish will leave you very satisfied.
FOR THE GOLDEN RAISINS
1 cup water
½ cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
½ cup golden raisins
FOR THE RUM SYRUP
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
1 orange, cut into quarters
1 cinnamon stick
¼ cup white rum
FOR THE CUSTARD
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup milk
¼ cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
FOR THE BABA
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter (1 tablespoon for each piece of brioche)
1 loaf of brioche, crusts removed, cut into wide rectangular sticks (about 1-by-1-by-5 inches)
¼ cup crème fraîche or sour cream
A handful of peeled grapes*
Lemon mint (optional)
For the raisins, bring the water, sugar, and cinnamon stick to a boil in a small pan, then reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 3 minutes. Add the golden raisins, cover, and simmer until they’re plump and most of the liquid is gone, then set aside.
For the rum syrup, combine the sugar, water, orange, and cinnamon stick in another small pot; bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 8 minutes. Add the rum and set aside.
For the custard, in a medium bowl whisk all the ingredients together by hand until smooth. Set aside in the refrigerator until ready to use.
To finish the dish, put a sauté pan over medium heat and start melting the butter in it. Depending on the size of the pan and the size of the brioche sticks, you can cook them all at once or in batches. Distribute the butter accordingly.
Soak each piece of brioche in the custard for 1 full second (that’s a “one Mississippi” kind of second) and then add to the hot pan. Fry on all sides until deep golden brown (2 to 3 minutes per side).
When the brioche is cooked, pat it dry with paper towels and place it on a serving plate. Spoon rum syrup onto each piece; use enough to soak the bread.
To finish, spoon a small dollop of crème fraîche onto each piece of toasted brioche. Sprinkle the golden raisins on top and garnish with the peeled grapes and the lemon mint, if using. You’ve got to serve this dish hot.
