by Ruth Reichl
¼ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Small grating of nutmeg
3 eggs
¾ cup flour
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup milk
Sugar for sprinkling
Rum or cognac (optional)
Peel the apples, core them, and slice them thinly. Shower them with about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.
Melt half the butter (2 tablespoons) in a medium skillet, and stir in the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the apple slices and cook over medium-high heat for about 8 minutes, until they’ve become quite darkly caramelized and smell impossibly delicious. Remove them from the heat.
Meanwhile, beat the eggs. Gently whisk in the flour, salt, and sugar. Add the milk. The batter should be thin.
Melt a couple of teaspoons of butter in an 8-inch skillet, and when it’s hot, pour in a third of a cup of batter, tilting the pan so that it covers the entire surface, making a thin crepe. Cook just until set, about 2 minutes.
Evenly distribute a third of the apples over the crepe, pour another third of a cup of batter over the apples, then turn the pancake (this is easiest if you have two pancake turners) and allow the bottom to brown. Turn out onto a large plate, sprinkle generously with sugar, and roll the pancake up like a jelly roll. Sprinkle with a bit more sugar and, if you like, a splash of lemon juice.
Repeat this until you have three plump rolled pancakes. If you want to flame your creations, lightly warm a few tablespoons of rum or cognac for each pancake in a pan, add the pancakes, spoon the liquor over the top, and set the pancakes on fire.
Serves 6
For Laurie Ochoa, who has made every
writer she’s ever worked with look better,
and Jonathan Gold, who blazed a path
for an entire generation of food writers.
I couldn’t have done it without you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TOGETHER AGAIN.
When the news came that Jonathan Gold had died, suddenly and far too young, the Gourmet group gathered to lend one another comfort. It amazes me that even after all this time, we’re still a family. Looking at all those people I love, I was struck by how rare this is—and how fortunate I was to have had them along on the exhilarating adventure that was Gourmet. Nobody has ever had better, smarter, kinder, or more interesting colleagues.
Or more entertaining ones.
“Remember the time…” Sertl began, “when Jonathan was in Las Vegas doing a piece, and he kept calling in with those hilarious reports? One night he told me he’d watched a woman run her finger down the prices on the menu until she found the most expensive dish. ‘I don’t know what she expected,’ he told me, ‘but I think she was hoping for some beautiful sea creature. When the waiter whisked off the silver dome to reveal a huge, jiggly gray mass, she sat there, stunned, staring at an entire lobe of foie gras. Finally she said, in a tiny voice, “But…do you think I’m Hannibal Lecter?” ’ ”
“I remember that,” I said, “although I always thought Jonathan invented the Lecter line. It made a better story.”
“What I remember,” Nanette Maxim, Jonathan’s longtime editor, weighed in, “is that he asked if I would please call every day, just to make sure that he was writing.”
“And what I remember,” I said, “is that you did it.”
It was pure Gourmet: We looked out for one another, and I am still endlessly grateful. “That was the last fun job,” Richard said at one of our reunions, and I hugged the words to me, cherishing them. When all is said and done, that is what makes me proudest. We should all have fun at work.
It takes a village to make a magazine, and I admired almost everyone I worked with at Gourmet. It pains me to have left so many of them out of this narrative, but you can only include so many characters before a book becomes too crowded.
Some I feel especially bad about leaving out of the book, like Paul Grimes and Maggie Ruggiero, two fabulous cooks and stylists who made the Gourmet kitchen fun. Nanette Maxim, maybe the kindest person who has ever walked the earth. Adam Brent Houghtaling, another great Larry hire, who created gourmet.com. And the wonderful production people—Stephanie Stehofsky and Margie Dorrian, who were at Gourmet long before I got there and were endlessly patient with me. And director of public relations Jennifer Petrisko, who helped me weather the magazine’s end.
There were assistants like Shannon Rogers, whom I would have given anything to be able to promote, if only we’d had an opening. And editors like Cheryl Brown who have gone on to fame and glory.
And although they didn’t work on my side of the masthead, I wish I could have mentioned two of the most astonishingly creative women I’ve been privileged to meet, Jane Grenier and Daria Fabian.
I could go on, calling out every one of the people who worked at Gourmet. They are, pretty much in chronological order:
Elaine Richard, Hobby Coudert, Amanda Agee, Gina Grant, Marina Ganter, Jason Best, Natalie Mikulski, Miranda Van Gelder, Gerald Asher, Alexis Touchet, Lori Walther Powell, Elizabeth Vought, Katy Massam, Shelton Wiseman, Alix Palley, Ruth Cousineau, Lauren Irwin, Andrea Arundell, Myrna Alvarado, Diane Keitt, Ellen Morrissey, Helen Cannavale, Flavia Schepmans, Stephanie Foley, Corky Pollan, Catherine Jones, Russell Day, Ellen Boyer, Shannon Rogers, Amy Mastrangelo, Ed Mann, Daniele Vauthy, Hollis Yungbliut, Linda Immediato, Begay Downes-Thomas, Melissa Roberts-Matar, Margo Leab, Robyn Maii, Nichol Nelson, Sofia Perez, Beth Kracklauer, Sam Frank, Paul Grimes, Lillian Chou, Carla Corteo, Leslie Porcelli, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Emily Votruba, Roopa Gona, Haley Thurshwell, Eric L. Hastie, Amy Koblenzer, Nanci Smith, Julia Garcia-Tobar, Megan M. Re, Adam Brent Houghtaling, Emma Jacob, Andrea Albin, Laurie Nelson, Gillian Berenson, Sari Lehrer, Christian Wright, Kate Winslow, Rebecca Peterson, Maggie Frank, Caroline Patience, Chris Dudley, Kay Chun, Vanessa Shyu, Azon Juan, Leah Price, Rebecca O’Connor, Erika Olveira, Christy Harrison, and Carolyn Coppersmith.
I’ve been equally fortunate in the people I now work with. My editor, Susan Kamil, stuck with me, cheering me on through endless drafts of this book. My agent, Kathy Robbins, was there too, and I am grateful not only for her extraordinary patience, but for the way she swooped in when the magazine closed to reassure me that everything was going to be fine. Thanks to her, it has been. Gina Centrello—the perfect example of a great woman boss—gave me really valuable notes on leadership. And I’ve been very lucky in the other member of the Plums team, Clio Seraphim; she is young and talented and I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.
Once again, the brilliant Susan Turner has made a beautiful book. My father would approve.
Kathy Lord and Loren Noveck are copy editors to equal the great John Haney, and I am so thankful for their meticulous work. They are living proof that without copy editors the world is a lesser, messier place.
This whole book is, of course, a thank-you to the late Si Newhouse, but it can’t be said often enough. If only the world had more people cheering for excellence.
Thanks to my girl group—Lissa Doumani, Robin Green, Caryl Kim, Laurie Ochoa, Margy Rochlin, and Nancy Silverton—who listened to me moan about my manuscript as we ate our way around the world. Through Barcelona, Tokyo, London, Paris, and both Baja and Northern California, you kept me sane.
I am also grateful to my Spencertown friends—Betsy Hess, Peter Biskind, Emily Arnold McCully, and Liz Diggs—who make rural life delicious and thought-provoking.
But mostly, and forever, thanks to Michael and Nick: You always make me happy.
BY RUTH REICHL
Save Me the Plums
My Kitchen Year
Delicious!
For You, Mom. Finally.
Garlic and Sapphires
Comfort Me with Apples
&nbs
p; Tender at the Bone
Mmmmm: A Feastiary
EDITED BY RUTH REICHL
The Best American Food Writing 2018
Gourmet Today
The Gourmet Cookbook
Remembrance of Things Paris
History in a Glass
Endless Feasts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RUTH REICHL is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, and For You, Mom. Finally.; the novel Delicious!; and, most recently, the cookbook My Kitchen Year. She was editor in chief of Gourmet magazine for ten years. Previously she was the restaurant critic for The New York Times and served as the food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. She has been honored with six James Beard Awards for her journalism, magazine feature writing, and criticism. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two cats.
ruthreichl.com
Facebook.com/ruthreichlbooks
Twitter: @ruthreichl
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