A Chef's Diary

To look into a chef's  heart, look into their daily schedule. It is a whirlwind of planning, shopping  preparing and cooking. It is also a diary of an artist, someone who constantly creates and tweaks classics. It's a fascinating look inside , especially if it's by Clare de Boer. You can learn from just spending one day in her life.

That's what the New York Times Food section did yesterday.British born de Boer gave Times readers an interesting peek inside her kitchen. The section asked her to keep a journal for one week in July of what she made at home and not at her restaurant, King in Manhattan.,It was actually a story of two kitchens - her home in Brooklyn and her weekend place near Dover Plains, New York , a bucolic Duchess County hamlet.She cooks not only for herself but for her husband, Luke Sherwin, and his family.Although he's not a chef, more of founder to companies Block Renovation and Casper, he contributes recipes as well. I loved this diary. It gave me a lot of ideas for recipes and got me excited about adapting them for fall produce.They're relatively easy to recreate and would be perfect at any end of summer gathering. They're not fancy. You can find them at any farmer's market or grocery store.Like me, you can even adapt them for the upcoming autumn harvest, subbing in apples and pears for berries.

What are the recipes? The one that intrigues me most is the frangipane. This is a mix of almond flour, butter and egg yolks. It's then mixing them and slathering the mix on slices of buttered sourdough bread. Chef de Boer then piles sugared stone fruit such as peaches, plums and apricots.The slices are then baked for twenty to twenty-five minutes and afterwards broiled for only one to two minutes. It would be good with apples and even pears subbed in , topped with vanilla ice cream or plain cream. Another have to try recipe is the sformato, an easy kind of a souffle. It's combining the kernels of six ears of corns, and combining it with ricotta cheese and four whole eggs.Fresh basil leaves and lemon juice zing up the flavor.It's fluffiness comes from separating the eggs and whipping the whites into a meringue,What a great brunch dish this would be, especially with toasted and oiled Italian bread. One of her recipes, chicken baked in bread dough sounds amazing. Chef de Boer didn't list the recipe but you can find similar ones online. Her other recipe was a chicken with pepper and vinegar along with her husband's BLT one - the last a perfect Saturday lunch.

Chef de Boer gives us an interesting insight into her world. There is just more than shopping, prepping and cooking. There is creativity and thought - along with fun - the most vital ingredient in cooking.