If you have a crowd to cook for on Thanksgiving, an easy buffet dessert can help keep your time in the kitchen to a manageable couple of hours. These cheesecake bars can be made a day in advance, and they are small enough to make guests feel that they are indulging, but not overdoing it. This was my Auntie Annie’s recipe, which she called Cheese Freeze. (I thought it should be renamed, since there’s nothing in it that‘s frozen.) She […]
There’s nothing like an old family recipe to take an ordinary ice cream sundae and turn it into a REAL dessert. This recipe from Dallas has been in the Allman family for over 100 years. It’s a good west Texas farm recipe from the land of tumbleweeds, cattle, and oil wells. Amy Allman Dean, from whom I got this recipe, worked with me at the White House, and our families have been friends ever since. Amy’s grandmother, Cora Amy McMurtry, […]
I learned a lot about hospitality from Laura Bush. She understood and exemplified the desire to give every White House guest a memory of a lifetime, and beyond, because each guest’s visit becomes a part of their personal family history. She thought carefully about every event she hosted: how it could be exceptional, how the food and flowers could in some way reflect the occasion, how the calligraphy honored the attendees – it was a package of small but important […]
Sometimes the visual element of cooking is so overpowering that how a dish tastes becomes nearly an afterthought. This pear clafoutis (pronounced claw-foo’-tee) looks as if it belongs in a Dutch still life, with ethereal-looking Bosc pears poking out of a golden custard as if they’re rising from the earth. It evokes a primal memory, like Stonehenge or Carnac: the solstice beckons. Emerson once said “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect […]
Every now and then in life we meet someone who is so very gifted, so extraordinarily skilled at what they do, that it takes one’s breath away. Roland Mesnier is one of those people. He is a genius. I had the privilege of working with him at the White House, and it was a memorable experience for me. Roland was the Executive Pastry Chef in the White House from 1979 until 2004. His creations were so technically perfect, culturally astute, […]
