The Turks & Caicos islands are a little bit of paradise in the Caribbean and the Grace Bay Club is one of the loveliest resorts to be found there. Each year for the past few years, the resort has created pop-up dining experiences for their guests—unique restaurant concepts that last one season only. Kone is this season’s pop-up, following the success of Biere et Boules, and its predecessors Jar on Grace Bay and the original Stix on Grace Bay. All have been imaginatively curated by Wolfgang von Wieser, Group Director of Food & Beverage for Grace Bay Resorts, to deliver a unique perspective on contemporary Caribbean cuisine, serving exciting combinations of fresh fish, local flavors and traditional island comfort foods, along with some really creative cocktails.
At Kone, I enjoyed an authentic Turks & Caicos lobster with green beans and an avocado chicken salad updated with a peppered ricotta. Another memorable dish was the Greek salad, deconstructed and delicious. But I was really missing the farro falafel they once served at Biere et Boules, and a most unforgettable cocktail called Garth’s Fish Hook, which I first enjoyed after two hours of paddle boarding—battling the winds to get back to shore. The flavors were so simple, uncomplicated, and purely refreshing.
The bartender, a talented intern named Charles Grontier, was kind enough to give me the recipe, one created by Garth Brown and no longer on the menu, which inspired me to share it here. While I love the pop-ups and their ongoing creativity, some things are worth preserving!
Valentine’s Day comes in varying hues of red—from the pinkish blush of rosé Champagne to the lush burgundy of chocolate, and of course the vermillion-red of the official flower of romance, the rose. It’s a holiday that conjures dreams of an enchanting and leisurely candle-lit dinner that leads to the clinking of glasses, slow dances, and long kisses. There are actually seven shades of red, and at least as many ways to celebrate your love.
On this special day, I take a pass on the expected. No restaurants for me on this holiday—ever! Reservations at the best restaurants are booked within the hour they become available, and then tables are added for loyal customers and super VIP guests that call last minute. (Yes, I’ve been that person, too, begging for a last-minute reservation). It’s a recipe for stress: a crowded restaurant with staff that will certainly be overwhelmed. More times than not, I’ve been disappointed with the meal and service, as well as the premium holiday prices, on Valentine’s Day. Of course, they do their best to make you happy but it still pays to be smart and know when to go—and when to stay away. Leave the three-star dining experience for your anniversary.
Here are just a few ways I’ve celebrated in the past—perhaps you’ll find some inspiration and feel less guilty about not having made reservations or cancelling the ones you have.
Plan a Candle-Lit Dinner at Home. There’s nothing more romantic than a home-cooked meal. It’s the ultimate declaration of love. I’ve done dinner for two and as many as eight. Add a beautiful table setting, candles, and a lush soundtrack for a memorable evening. On the table, include a photo for every year you’ve been together (or every month if it’s a new romance), and do the same for any couples that may be joining you. It’s a great way to reminisce.
Schedule a Couple’s Massage Such a wonderful treat for you both! Many spas are happy to arrange little bubbly, light bites, and chocolates post massage. It’s such a decadent feeling to be lounging in your robes, totally relaxed. Make your appointment late in the day so you can enjoy the sunset together, cuddle up, make a toast and share some chocolate-covered strawberries.
Create a Picnic by the Fire. Lay out a cozy blanket by the fire to create an indoor picnic. A lovely platter of cheese, fruit, nuts and chocolates paired with the right wine, a few candles and great music is all you need. The Wine Enthusiast has a fun wine and cheese pairings guide.
Set Up a Romantic Movie Night. There’s a great gourmet popcorn recipe in Hamptons Entertaining and I love to serve it with a crisp white wine and chocolate-covered raisins. A cozy blanket and a romantic movie complete the night. Love is best expressed without an audience.
Have a Game Night. Choose games that are fun rather than competitive. I love Twister, especially after a glass of champagne! If your romance is new, choose get-to-know you trivia games like “Would You Rather.
Be Spontaneous. It’s always memorable when you experience something for the first time and when that memory is shared with someone you love it only brings you closer. Have you ever wanted to go to the dog track? How about roller blading? Taking a dance class together is always good for a few laughs. Choose something you’ve always thought about doing, but never had the time for.
Support a Great Cause. This year my family and I will be celebrating Valentine’s Day at the American Heart Association’s annual gala in Palm Beach. Held in the Versailles ballroom at the iconic Breakers Hotel, where the staff is accustomed to serving 500 guests, I know it will be a beautiful evening. A romantic setting, a lovely dinner that will certainly close with a gorgeous and descendant chocolate dessert, lots of dancing, and I get to wear an evening gown. The best part? The price of a ticket or a table helps spread the love on this special day.
Happy Valentine’s Day! And, remember Oscar Wild’s words of wisdom; “Never love someone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
A home-cooked meal is a labor of love: The seemingly effortless transformation of simple, honest food presented with a personal touch. A good home cook is a fount of culinary knowledge and many seem to be naturally gracious hosts as well. We sometimes need to be reminded that the best chefs aren’t always found in Michelin-starred restaurants. In fact, some of the most delicious and authentic meals I’ve had have been prepared by home cooks who make everything from scratch from family recipes handed down from generation to generation.
One of the best ways to learn someone’s native cuisine is to actually step into their kitchen or invite them into yours to create a dish working side by side. It’s rare that we have the opportunity to cook at a grandmother’s elbow while sharing a worn recipe card or peering into a cookbook with food-stained pages. Ingredients, instructions, or maybe a tip or two scribbled in the margin, and comments spoken quietly in the kitchen can be invaluable. Oftentimes, the most critical ingredient is not flour, liquid or fat, but nostalgia, which is easily evoked by the right aroma, flavor or presentation. Personal stories and authentic, unguarded memories are offered spontaneously when cooking elbow to elbow.
I was taking an online recipe-writing course with Gotham Writers when one of my classmates submitted a recipe for pickle soup. I knew immediately it was a dish my family and I would enjoy. My youngest daughter loves sour flavors and I grew up in New York City at a time when sandwiches were always served with a sour dill pickle on the side (the best part!). The recipe looked amazing and I couldn’t believe I had never encountered a pickle soup before.
When I showed the recipe to our Polish cook, she said she had a better one from her grandmother. I asked her to collect all the right ingredients from her favorite shops and together we made her family recipe for pickle soup—and now it’s one of my family’s favorites!
I was fascinated by the memories she shared of making pickles with her family. Cucumbers and other vegetables were preserved in brine to be enjoyed throughout the winter. Oftentimes, dozens of jars were stored in the basement, buried in the dirt floor. In the winter her grandmother would create new and imaginative recipes to make use of the pickled vegetables and that’s how this soup was born. I learned that most recipes for pickle soup call for dill pickles, and too often cooks reach for cucumbers pickled in vinegar. For just the right flavors, the way her grandma intended them, be sure to use cucumbers in brine (a salt-water solution with no vinegar), and be sure to strain and grate them.
If you ever have the opportunity to learn ethnic cuisine from an experienced immigrant cook, don’t miss it! I will be posting more ethnic recipes in the future, but the next time you are in New York and craving something different, check out the the League of Kitchens workshop series. In the meantime, let me know how you like this pickle soup.
I have found the ingredients for this recipe in the international section of most grocery stores, but there’s also a great Polish store in the Palm Beaches called A Taste of Europe Delicatessen and in the Hamptons look for Wisla Polish Deli in Riverhead.
A friend in Austria recently introduced me to a local version of Planter’s Punch, the classic rum cocktail. To my surprise, the recipe substituted passion fruit for the traditional grenadine syrup and, even more unusual, referred to it as maracuyá in the ingredients, rather than passionsfrucht. Maracuyá is one of my favorite tropical fruit delights—its juice can be drunk on its own or used in ceviche marinades as well as in cocktails, including the Maracuyá Sour, a variation of the Pisco Sour (a popular and potent drink served in Peru). This fruit is particularly wonderful in desserts, especially when paired with butter and sweet cream, as in Victoria’s Coconut Passion Fruit Raspberry Layer Cake, featured in Hamptons Entertaining.
Maracuyá is a word I first heard in Peru, and then again in Paraguay where it described the fruit as used in mousse, cheesecake, and ice cream. In Mexico, I learned to eat maracuyá by loosening the seeds from the shell, adding a little chili powder and lime juice, and then slurping it out of its shell. It’s a method that delivers an addictive burst of hot, sour, and sweet flavors all at once and, when served chilled, is quite refreshing. You really can’t have just one! In Thailand, maracuyá is served au naturel, split in half and simply eaten out of its skin with a spoon.
Several years ago, our Columbian cook introduced my family and me to her favorite restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Las Orquideas, where we shared an authentically wonderful Pollo a la Plancha en Salsa de Maracuyá (Grilled Chicken in Passion Fruit Sauce). The entire family fell in love with this dish and while traveling in South America, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic we requested it often but were always met with a look of dismay. That is why we decided to learn to make it at home—and we do so often!
I was so excited to hear my Austrian friends refer to this flavorful fruit as we do—maracuyá—and I learned that this little round berry (yes, I was surprised, too!) is called chinola in the Dominican Republic and known as parcha in Puerto Rico. Call it what you will (as Shakespeare said, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), I’m sure you will enjoy our version of Salsa de Maracuyá as much as we do. We like it poured over boneless, pounded grilled chicken breasts paired with a simple green vegetable. I also serve a garlic-infused rice or jalapeño bread alongside; after all you need something to soak up all that delicious sauce once the chicken is gone!
Plates by Richard Ginori; glasses by Diane von Furstenberg; placemats and napkins by Windy Hill; napkin rings by Kim Seybert.
People the world over have been celebrating the start of each new year for at least four millennia. Festivities begin on December 31st, the last day of the Gregorian calendar, and generally continue into the wee hours of the next morning. Wherever you ring in the New Year, it seems many traditions remain the same: parties, feasting, fireworks, kisses, and the clinking of glasses as the clock strikes midnight. And then it’s time to make resolutions for the year to come.
In Austria, New Year’s Eve is known as Sylvesterabend, the Eve of Saint Sylvester, as the date coincides with his feast day. It is a roaring good party that continues from the evening through the end of the following day. This is where my family and I have been celebrating for many years. We welcome the new year with a dinner of traditional local delights and our table is decorated minimally with potted four-leaf clovers, figurines of chimney sweeps and marzipan pigs. Pigs represent progress and prosperity in Austria, and they appear on the table, at the buffet, and nestled into our desserts. An Austrian friend remembers tales from his grandmother of the chimney sweeps in town being celebrated on New Year’s Day by having the honor of carrying a pig through the town. It was considered good luck to shake his hand as he passed. Pigs and chimney sweeps are often linked together in tradition as good luck charms.
Our dinner ends just in time to head outdoors into the snow where we join friends and family to light fireworks and fill our glasses with champagne. Midnight brings kisses, hugs, laughter, toasts, and champagne sprays! We soon run back inside to warm up, dry off, and dance to live music, a mix of American and Austrian tunes. It’s a spectacular party that winds down with a buffet of oysters and vodka at two in the morning. A nap is in order for me, followed by a fabulous brunch, a bit more sleep, and then on to the next town over where the party begins again with the most spectacular acoustic firework display and lots of glühwein (mulled red wine). The firework effects are uniquely choreographed and synched perfectly with the music. For me, this show is one of the best firework displays on the planet (and I grew up with Fireworks by Grucci)!
When the party’s over, the only thing left to do is get started on those resolutions. I’ve always wondered where the practice began and I’m told it started with the Babylonians (it’s all beginning to make sense now). They made promises to earn the favor of the gods and start the year off on the right foot. It is a time of rebirth, the chance to start anew and, after the indulgences of the holiday season, we all seem to start the year off with the same intentions: losing weight, seeing family more often, or learning something new.
Too often our ideas of what we should change are too broad and never seem to happen. Several years ago my friend Michael Reiter was quoted in the Palm BeachPost as saying if anything is so important to change, why wait for the new year to do it? I’ve taken his advice and started my resolutions early this year, set with small, achievable goals. So for this New Year’s my only vow is that I resolve to rush more slowly through life, hopefully allowing time to enjoy the practices I felt were important enough to put in place before the new year. Cheers!
One of the most coveted positions in the food and beverage industry is certainly that of a professional bartender. It’s such a social job—and it can be quite glamorous. Sure, it looks like fun, but don’t be fooled! It is very demanding, especially during the holiday season. I’m fascinated by the many talented mixologists I’ve met in unique and exciting venues and have been impressed with their willingness to share their most popular recipes. With my iPhone in hand I’ve recorded a few of my favorites doing what they do best: creating memorable cocktails with a little showmanship and a lot of love.
Of all the bartenders I’ve met, Guenther Kohlweiss is certainly one of the most talented, creative, and professional. He is the Chef de Bar at the Hotel Krone in Lech, Austria, and has been there for as long as I can remember. Every year when we arrive for the holidays my family and I look forward to seeing Guenther. He’s so friendly, always happy and eager to make us feel at home. Beyond being a terrific bartender, he is one of the greatest hosts I’ve had the pleasure to know.
A long-standing member of the prestigious ÖBU (Österreichischen Barkeeper Union), Guenther shares with us the recipe for his famous Testarossa cocktail. The light, citrus flavor of prosecco, which is Italian sparkling dry white wine, makes this pretty drink even more festive, without the expense of Champagne.
Guenther serves 150 to 200 of these delicious raspberry cocktails a day during high season, and because testarossa literally means red head in Italian, I can’t help but wonder if he named this drink after the famous Ferrari or a special red-haired beauty.
This soup was one of my father’s favorites and we shared it often in late August when the garlic in my Hamptons garden was fragrant and flavorful and the sage irresistible. It was our go-to breakfast on many Sunday mornings and just setting the bowl in front of my dad would cause a broad smile to spread across his face as he enjoyed the aroma’s he loved – the co-mingling of garlic and sage. He was a proponent of garlic’s medicinal properties and believed in its ability to boost the immune system which is why this soup always made its way back to my table right about this time of year, mid-December. My parents would arrive here in Florida for the season, and first on the agenda was a trip to the green market where we would pick up the best garlic, a crusty baguette, farm-fresh eggs and a sage plant for my garden. Mom, Dad and I would make one final stop for coffee, and with our to-go cups in hand head home for a late breakfast.
I can always rely on this soup to boost my mood and I love that it requires only a handful of ingredients, most of which will already be on hand at my house or in my herb garden. When the garlic is fresh and fragrant I make it as I’ve set out here with water rather than stock, giving the garlic the duty of flavoring the broth. When working with less fragrant garlic I cook the soup with ½ water and ½ chicken stock. The swirling technique you’ll see in the recipe is one I learned in the South of France and will help prevent the egg white from feathering out into the pan. I use this method when I’m poaching a few eggs and serving the soup right away. For bigger crowds, I poach the eggs, move them to an ice bath and refrigerate them until I’m ready to serve. Simply reheat them in the warm garlic broth before serving.
My dad had favorites – here it was certainly the garlic and the eggs, but I love the fragrance of sage. Oftentimes I would put a few sprigs in our napkin rings and delight in the stories and jokes it would evoke. Dad would slide the sage out and ask “are you in need of some sage advice?” He would tell me how sage was a memory enhancer and anti-inflammatory, and then with a mischievous grin promptly tuck a sprig behind his ear and drop one into his bowl. He’d take his first spoonful of soup, savoring the flavors, then in his best “female voice” with his head cocked to one side – to show off his hair accessory – he’d say “no more bread for me, I’m watching my girlish figure.”
Welcoming family and friends to the table is joyful by nature and an occasion that takes place often in my home, no matter the season. Thanksgiving weekend I’ve been known to host as many as 40 guests for a holiday break brimming with bingo, movies, bowling, yoga, and a table bursting with nourishing foods that honor our families’ combined traditions and backgrounds.
This Thanksgiving is the first in many years that my husband and I decided to go away with our daughters – and have a holiday with just the four of us. As I write this we are headed to the Amangiri resort in Utah, a bucket-list destination for many, including my husband. We are all looking forward to a vacation filled with hiking adventures, down-time, pampering, shutting down the devices (for a little while), and quite frankly just being a guest.
Last night I whipped up a turkey pot pie – adapted from The Wild Turkey Pot Pie recipe in first book, Palm Beach Entertaining. It was my way of kicking off the week and sharing a comforting meal at home before our adventure. I won’t be roasting an entire turkey (or two) this year, and I will miss every joyful moment — both making it and sharing it — of hosting this traditional meal at my home. Certainly, I’ll miss the simple and satisfying meals of reinvented leftovers.
As we enjoyed our pot pie I was inspired to post this recipe. It’s a great way to serve left-over turkey.
Wishing you all a delicious Thanksgiving and a holiday season filled with occasions to remember.
A Palm Beach neighbor often served a version of this cake, and generously passed her recipe along to a cook who assisted me when I was testing recipes for Hamptons Entertaining. She made it in a variety of ways – changing up the nuts, and the type and size of the chocolates — and presented it to my family on many special occasions. We enjoyed it so much we had to ask her to stop making it! This is truly one of those devilish and delicous desserts that ‘s irresistible at any time of day or night, be it breakfast with a cup of coffee, for dessert after a casual dinner, or in the evening alongside a cup of tea.
It’s also a cake that freezes surprisingly well, so I just couldn’t resist reviving it this time of year. It’s the perfect recipe for using up the the incredible, delicious heap of apples in my garden and the bushels we’ve picked locally, and I can stack a few in the freezer for the upcoming holiday season. It’s a treat that’s readyto serve to unexpected guests or to bring to any party as a hostess gift.
It’s been said that the ancient Romans believed beets and their juice promoted amorous feelings and that Aphrodite, the goddess of love, ate beets to enhance her appeal. Considered an aphrodisiac in ancient cultures it’s fascinating that the modern day beet contains tryptophan and betaine, both substances that promote a feeling of well-being. So, perhaps that’s why this delicious beet soup is so desireable as the weather cools and we bid farewell to summer. It’s time for warmth, cuddling and cozying up by the fire.
The deep purple roots of beetroot are delicious boiled, scrumptious when roasted and add a sweet crunch when served raw. Their gorgeous color and sweet, earthy taste have made them popular among chefs and home cooks alike. But, don’t throw away the stalks and those hearty green leaves that top your fresh beets. They have a flavor similar to Kale and an even higher nutritional value than the roots, especially in calcium, iron, vitamin A and C; all the more reason to include them. The stalks add crunch and color, giving this soup the texture and flavor that makes it a family favorite. We love topping our soup with sour cream, yogurt or an extra sprinkling of marjoram just before serving.
Beets are available all year long, but are at their best from June through October.
