Bui Bistro: A Pearl In Napa

A pearl is the oldest acknowledged gem and for centuries was thought to be the most valuable.

The pearl is often mentioned in folklore and there are many traditions surrounding the pearl.

The pearl I am referring to today is actually a street in Napa. The gem I am talking about is a small and intimate bistro located on Pearl Street.

Bui Bistro is truly a local gem. It surprised me to discover that many residents have never even heard about this unique little spot. I was, sad but true, one of this group, but no more.

It shouldn’t be a secret, so please let me share.

Chef and owner Patrick Bui holds his own amongst a plethora of well known chefs in the valley and he has created a comfortably understated dining venue where splendid French Vietnamese meals are served with great respect for tradition. Tradition, passion and innovation are paired well.

Born in Saigon, and raised mostly in Paris, Patrick immigrated to the U.S. in 1980 and followed the career path laid out for him in the world of mechanical design.

His real passion was cooking. The foods of his youth and his early culture.

Fast-forward about 15 years, when Patrick stepped away from the tools used for mechanical design and picked up the tools of a professional kitchen as he entered the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco.

After working in several San Francisco kitchens, Bui’s first restaurant was realized in 1999, when he opened “Saigon City” in Berkeley, where he primarily served college students with Vietnamese style quick foods. The more upscale Bui Restaurant, also in Berkeley, followed.

Bui and his wife Thi found their way to Napa and in 2010, after several months of renovations, Bui Bistro opened its doors.

When I visit a Vietnamese dining establishment, there is a test. It’s the Pho Test. If the Pho is great then I am assured that the restaurant knows what it’s doing and then I delve into the menu for classics and offerings with a creative twist on favorites.

What is Pho, you ask? Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is a broth-based noodle soup, conspicuous in Vietnamese cuisine. Whether it’s chicken, beef or seafood broth there will be thick rice noodles floating in the broth along with pieces of meat, vegetables and a variety of spices and herbs. Flavors, combinations and spices are the chef’s choice, so the dish can vary slightly from place to place. The secret to a successful and delectable soup is the broth.

Simmering bones and fatty meat pieces in good water (this makes a difference), with spices such as ginger, star anise and cardamom is the beginning. It takes patience. Several hours are required to give all the flavors a chance to realize their full potential. This is where I remind you, dear reader, that if you don’t drink the water coming from your tap because you don’t like the taste, why then would you use it to cook with? Something to think about.

Beef broth is called pho bo, the chicken version is pho ga, and the seafood broth is pho hai san.

As soon as I tasted the pho at Bui, I knew I was in the right place and in good hands. Diners will often add a favorite little “extra” to their pho. I sometimes enjoy a bit of lemon or lime, while others might play with Thai basil, bean sprouts, chili pepper, fish or hoisin sauce.

Try not to fill up on the soup, as tempting as it is. Save room for the refreshing Banana Flower Salad with it’s zesty fresh flavors combining wafer thin slices of grilled chicken, sliced pear and a dressing with it’s brightly balanced acidity. Perfect summer salad and the presentation is just plain fun.

The chicken curry had the perfect balance of spices while the sea bass was wonderfully crispy on the outside and lushly juicy on the inside, with coconut rice and a glass of crisp white wine, it was a delightful pairing.

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to mention the egg rolls. Light, delicate and filled with shredded goodness. The dipping sauces are sweet, spicy, savory. It’s all there in every bite.

Great place to go with friends and order several items from the menu to share at the table. Another thing to enjoy about the Bistro is the fact that you can have a great conversation during dinner and actually be able to hear one another. Not the case in many restaurants.

Patrick is the consummate host. Patrick alone could keep diners returning to the Bistro just to chat with him. It’s a very personal experience.

He’s definitely accomplished the art of offering classic Vietnamese foods while implementing the techniques he learned from the French. Dishes like the Asian duck confit and bouillabaisse showcase traditional French fare, Vietnamese style. Is it Vietnamese food with a French twist or French food Vietnamese style?

Delicious BBQ Heading To Needy Families After American Royal

The American Royal World Series of BBQ may be over, but the meals are about to start for thousands of hungry people in the metro.

But that almost wasn't the case, until one barbecuer called FOX 4's Problem Solvers.

At the food donation tent at the American Royal, in between the chicken and the ribs, the brisket and the pork, you'll now find pens.

For almost 10 years, Gary Benham and hundreds of others donated the meat they made for the World Series competition - to Kookers Kare, which then donated it to Harvesters, and other local food banks.

Until last year.

"Last year," said Benham, "we had a little problem with the health department -- not knowing the process that we follow, to get the food safely to the people that needed it."

He explained, "Harvester's wasn't allowed to distribute that food. The food that was distributed to the pantry was tossed in a dumpster and bleached, and the rest of the food that had not been distributed had to be detroyed as well. It was a big disappointment to the people who work really hard."

Benham called Fox4 Problem Solvers and explained the situation. He said he and other BBQers were disappointed that a near 10 year tradition was about to end.

Now, in 2017, Benham said he worked with food inspectors at the Kansas Department of Agriculture and the Missouri Department of Health.

"We were very diligent in documenting what we did today," said the President of Kookers Kare. "It took us - it took us a little bit longer than what we've done in the past, because we did have to document all the stuff."

That documentation involved pens and adhesive labels - and the cloud.

"We had another company come in," said Benham, "that helped us with the digitally documenting some of the process. We've got temperature probes going that are going up to the cloud, and we've created a document up there with graphs and charts and everything, so we can physically document how we took care of samples of this food."

And now, some of the hungriest people in the metro will have some of the tastiest BBQ this week.

"It's going to go feed the hungry, the homeless, and they're obviously very grateful," said Harvesters volunteer Dennis Velasquez. "It's not often that they get world class BBQ. Just once a year - during this time. And they're very grateful."

Kookers Kare is the non-profit organization that handles all these donations. It estimates it will have anywhere between 3,000 - 4,000 pounds of meat at Harvesters and local food pantries; it expects it will all be eaten within a week.

Operation BBQ Relief (OBR) was also at the American Royal World Series this weekend. It donated food to the Kookers Kare organization on Sunday as well.

Operation BBQ Relief is already cooking food down in Houston for those affected by Hurricane Harvey. But it doesn't have refrigeration capabilities, so organizers say they donated all the cold food donations they received to Kookers Kare.

That means people at metro food banks and shelters will have some tasty sides to go with their award winning BBQ.

How To Make Delicious Muffins That Are Actually Good For You

However healthy it may seem, the presence of shredded zucchini in a quick bread or muffin doesn’t make it good for you. Most are still essentially forms of cake, held up with lots of butter, refined flour and sugar.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing once in a while, but for everyday breakfast and snacking you probably want something more nutritious and less dessert-like. The problem is that truly healthy muffins and quick breads — with or without zucchini — are often disappointing: dry, leaden and rubbery. Not so with these. They are the best of both worlds, genuinely good for you but also desirably moist, tender and fragrant. Lightly sweetened, flecked with zucchini, and made with healthy oil, whole grain flour and rolled oats, they have a wholesome sensibility and hearty texture that pulls them away from the dessert realm into the daily sustenance category, in a good way.

Not only do they taste good, you’ll feel good eating one of these zucchini muffins to start your day or fuel you midafternoon.

They get most of their sweetness from dried dates, which also provide a deep flavor, valuable nutrients and fiber. The dates are soaked in water, then pureed until they form a smooth paste. Just a little white sugar — a quarter of what is in a typical recipe — is needed to round out the muffin’s flavor. Soft whole-grain pastry flour keeps the crumb tender, while rolled oats add a rustic texture and walnuts an element of crunch.

The zucchini (which needs to be drained of most of its water), eggs, oil, and date paste together provide enough liquid so that no milk or other fluid is needed. The tasty, cinnamon-scented muffins make for an energizing on-the-go treat, so do yourself a favor and make an extra batch. Wrap them individually in plastic wrap and freeze so you have one to grab when you need it.

Zucchini Oat Muffins

12 servings

These tender, fragrant muffins are sweetened primarily with dates, which, besides sweetness, provide deep flavor and valuable nutrients. Made with whole grains and healthful oil, the muffins have a wholesome sensibility and hearty texture that steps away from the dessert realm into the daily sustenance category, in a good way. They not only taste good, they are a nourishing and energizing way to start your day or fuel your afternoon.

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed pitted dates
• Boiling water
• 1 1/4 cups coarsely grated zucchini (1 medium zucchini)
• 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup neutral-tasting oil, such as light olive oil or canola oil
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Steps

Place the dates in a medium bowl. Pour enough boiling water over them to cover and let soak for 1 hour. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the soaking liquid, then drain the dates well.

Combine the dates and the reserved liquid in a food processor (mini, preferably) and puree to form a smooth paste, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides, as needed.

Place the grated zucchini in a colander in the sink; let drain for 20 minutes, then gather it up in your hands to extract as much moisture as possible.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Have a standard-size, 12-well muffin pan at hand. Lightly grease the wells with cooking oil spray or line them with baking paper cups.

Stir together the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a medium bowl.

Stir together all the date paste, eggs and oil in a mixing bowl until incorporated, then stir in the grated, drained zucchini. Add the flour mixture and stir until no trace of it remains, then stir in the walnuts.

Divide the batter evenly among the wells. Bake (middle rack) for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Serve warm, or at room temperature.

Is Ordering Meat Well-done A Misteak

Somewhere, a chef is crying.

Many chefs feel a sort of kinship with the foods they cook. They lovingly season it with salt and pepper, they cook it to perfection, they take the time and effort to make it just right.

And then someone goes ahead and orders his steak well-done.

Actually, it’s a lot of someones.

LongHorn Steakhouse recently shared the details of all of its steak orders for an entire year with the data geeks at FiveThirtyEight. That’s a ton of information — LongHorn boasts 491 locations around the country, including seven in the St. Louis area.

The results were shocking, or at least sad. Sad to chefs.

It turns out that 77 percent of LongHorn patrons who order steak order it cooked to medium or beyond.

Many chefs will tell you that the only way to order beef is to ask for it rare or medium-rare. That way you can taste the juice; it’s tender and delicious. The more a steak is cooked — and there has to be some scientific way of demonstrating this — the more it loses its flavor. And it indisputably becomes tougher.

And yet, according to the survey, a plurality of 37.5 percent of LongHorn patrons order their steaks medium, 25.8 percent order it medium-well and 11.7 percent like their steaks well-done.

With all due respect to my friends (and readers) who like their steak well-done, you’d get the same flavor profile out of a microwaved bomber jacket.

Lindsey Curtit, managing partner of the LongHorn Steakhouse in O’Fallon, Mo., is happy to have her customers ordering their steak any way they like it.

“There really is no wrong way to cook a steak. It’s really just the guest’s preference,” she said.

Curtit, who likes her steaks cooked medium, said that, based on her casual observation, her customers at the O’Fallon location order their steaks in about the same proportion as the national numbers.

Curtit also pointed out that not all steak is the same. The different types of fiber in different cuts of meat mean that some cuts can stand up to more cooking than others. The ribeye, for instance, can take the heat better than other cuts because of all of its marbled fat. The same is true of the porterhouse and its cousin, the T-bone.

The pertinent question is: Why do people like their steaks the way they like them?

I find I get maximum beefy flavor, without the meat being too chewy, out of steaks cooked on the rare side of medium rare. Though I have no evidence to back it up, my guess is that people who like their steaks medium-well or well done prefer them that way because they are (or were, as children) a little grossed out at seeing juice run out of their meat.

The numbers in the latest data seem to contradict the information gathered just three years ago by FiveThirtyEight. At that time, a survey of 432 steak-eating Americans indicated that 43 percent of us like our steaks cooked to rare or medium-rare.

The plurality of that group, 38 percent, said they like steak cooked medium-rare. A significant number behind, 31 percent, said they like it cooked medium.

The folks at FiveThirtyEight looked at the disparity between these two studies and suggested that people have heard they are supposed to like their steaks rare or medium rare, so that’s what they say when they are asked how they like it. But in reality — when they order at a restaurant — they ask for it medium or above.

But I have a different possibility. LongHorn is a national chain, with locations often (though by no means always) on expressway interchanges. It caters to travelers and families. With a ribeye going for $20.49 and a porterhouse topping out at $28.49, it is a solid and popular restaurant.

But maybe travelers and families are more likely to want their meat cooked longer than couples, singles or people staying closer to home.

Curtit doesn’t think so. “Our vision is to become America’s favorite steakhouse, so America is our target market,” she said. “I would say our guests do represent the country as a whole.”

Oh, Snap! Scientists Are Turning People's Food Photos Into Recipes

When someone posts a photo of food on social media, do you get cranky? Is it because you just don't care what other people are eating? Or is it because they're enjoying an herb-and-garlic crusted halibut at a seaside restaurant while you sit at your computer with a slice of two-day-old pizza?

Maybe you'd like to have what they're having, but don't know how to make it. If only there were a way to get their recipe without commenting on the photo.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) would like that for you, too. That's why they're creating an artificial neural network — a computer system modeled after the human brain — to examine those photos and break them down into recipes.

The growth of the Internet has supported the ability to collect and publish several large-scale datasets, allowing for great advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), says Javier Marin, a postdoctoral research associate at CSAIL and co-author of a paper published this July at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Honolulu.

"However, when it comes to food, there was not any large-scale dataset available in the research community until now," Marin says. "There was a clear need to better understand people's eating habits and dietary preferences."

To do this, researchers have been feeding the computer pairs of photos and their corresponding recipes — about 800,000 of them. The AI network, called Recipe 1M, chews on all of that for a while, learning patterns and connections between the ingredients in the recipes and the photos of food.

"What we've developed is a novel machine learning model that powers an app. The demo that you see is just a pretty interface to that model," says Nicholas Hynes, an MIT graduate student at CSAIL who also co-authored the paper.

You, too, can try out this interface, called Pic2Recipe. To use it, just upload your food photo. The computer will analyze it and retrieve a recipe from a collection of test recipes that best matches your image.

It usually works pretty well, although it can miss an ingredient or two sometimes. Take for example, this video, in which the MIT team uploads a photo of sugar cookies.

"The app took the image, figured out what was in it and how it was prepared, and gave us the recipe that it thinks was most likely to have produced the image," says Hynes.

Pic2Recipe did correctly identify eight out of the 11 ingredients. And it did accurately find a recipe for sugar cookies. Alas, it missed the icing.

But the program doesn't need to visually recognize every ingredient in the photo to find an accurate recipe.

"Just like a human, it can infer the presence of invisible, homogenized or obscured ingredients using context. For instance, if I see a green colored soup, it probably contains peas — and most definitely salt!" says Hynes. "When the model finds the best match, it's really taking a holistic view of the entire image or the entire recipe. That's part of why the model is interesting: It learns a lot about recipes in a very unstructured way."

But as with every new technology, there are some kinks to work out.

The current model sometimes has trouble making fine distinctions between similar recipes, Hynes says. "For instance, it may detect a ham sandwich as pastrami or not recognize that brioche contains milk and egg. We're still actively improving the vision portion of the model."

Another issue, Hynes says, is that the current model has no explicit knowledge of basic concepts like flavor and texture. "Without this, it might replace one ingredient with another because they're used in similar contexts, but, doing so would significantly alter this dish," Hynes says. "For example, there are two very similar Korean fermented ingredients called gochujang and doenjang, but the former is spicy and sweet while the latter is savory and salty."

There are other refinements to be made, such as how to recognize an ingredient as diced, chopped or sliced. Or how to tell the difference between different types of mushrooms or tomatoes.

And when a reporter at The Verge tried the demo, photos of ramen and potato chips turned up no matches. How could the program miss such basics?

"This is simply explained by not having recipes for those foods in the dataset," Hynes says. "For things like ramen and potato chips, people generally don't post recipes for things that come out of a bag."

In the future, the MIT researchers want to do more than just let you have what they're having. They are seeking insight into health and eating habits.

"Determining the ingredients — and therefore how healthy they are — of images posted in a specific region, we could see how health habits change through time," says Marin.

Hynes would like to take the technology a step farther, and is working on a way to automatically link from an image or ingredient list to nutrition information.

"Using it to improve peoples' health is definitely big; when I go to community/potluck dinners, it always astonishes me how people don't pay attention to preparation and how it relates to plausible serving sizes," he says.

Hynes also can see how aspiring cooks might appreciate a system that takes a restaurant item and tells them how to make it. "Even everyday people with dietary restrictions — gluten free, vegan, sparse pantry — would appreciate a tool that could minimally modify a complicated dish like Beef Wellington so that it fits the constraints."

And why stop there? These are MIT scientists, after all, collaborating with researchers from the Qatar Computing Research Institute and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain.

"In the far future, one might envision a robo-chef that fully understands food and does the cooking for you!" Hynes says.

Healthy Cooking: Pair salmon with lentils for a hearty summer supper

Sometimes, it’s just too hot to turn on the stove. The key is to stock up your kitchen with “healthy convenience food” that doesn’t require any heat, such as fresh produce, canned beans, canned fish and small boxes of pre-cooked legumes found in the prepared produce section.

You can throw together a hearty meal in minutes without breaking a sweat. Sure, you will pay an extra dollar or two for steamed lentils, for instance, but if having a well-stocked fridge keeps you from hitting the drive-thru even once, then you’ll come ahead financially (and nutritionally).

Canned salmon is one of my favorite healthy fast foods. When it goes on sale, you can stock up the pantry with a few cans of it, making wild salmon downright inexpensive.

Not only is canned salmon full of omega-3 fatty acids and protein (12 g grams of protein in 2 ounces of fish), but it actually has more calcium than its fresh counterpart, because the small bones stay in the meat (and go unnoticed; remove any large bones, though).

Pair the salmon with beans or legumes plus some chopped fresh vegetables and vinaigrette, and you’ve got a dish hearty enough for a summertime supper. And it will keep nicely in the fridge, so you can graze on this fiber and protein filled salad for a day or two no problem.

Today’s recipe, a lentil and salmon salad with smoky mustard dressing, was inspired by my favorite bagel toppings — red onion, tomato, capers, salmon and a hint of smokiness in the vinaigrette, which elevates the canned salmon into a little wink at lox. The flavors marry into a surprisingly complex dish, never hinting at the fact that this recipe is of the 5-minute-dump-stir-and-serve variety.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes for an outdoor summer feast

There’s something delightfully bonkers about having a full-on outdoor feast. The set-up is impractical, the weather unpredictable and the logistics of keeping the food warm and the drinks cold unworkable. The only option, when the chance to eat under the open sky presents itself, is to go all-out Mad Hatter’s tea party.

One such opportunity presented itself a couple of years ago, when I was invited to the Glyndebourne opera festival. I knew the evening involved singing, picnics and polished shoes, but the reality was even more eccentric than I imagined. This was a full-scale white dinner jacket, black bow tie, wicker hampers and straw hats affair. Tables were set with silver cutlery, porcelain plates, butter dishes and candlesticks. Butter and wine were kept chilled thanks to buckets of ice. This was different-league outdoor eating. So I pulled my tie straight, picked a handful of wild flowers to dress our slightly wobbly table and embraced the scotch egg moment.

In three weeks, I’ll be serving up an outdoor feast of my own with a Long Table Banquet at the Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire. There will be fewer bow ties, but the set-up is equally crazy, not least because we’ll be feeding about 700 people over two sittings. Our menu, naturally enough, is equally impractical: burrata with chargrilled grapes, confit squid and a host of salads as a meze course, slow-roast lamb with apricots and figs, baked minty rice and rolled pavlova. The logistics involved are epic, but that moment when the sun sets, and all you can hear is the sound of friends sharing a meal outdoors, is special enough to make it all worthwhile.

Polenta with summer greens and lime

Getting flavour into polenta usually requires a tonne of butter and cheese. Here, I’ve done so with a teaspoon of onion granules (OK, and a good chunk of butter). Serves four.

65g unsalted butter
4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp onion granules
Salt and black pepper
1 litre vegetable stock
160g quick-cook polenta
2 limes – 1 finely zested, to get 1 tsp, then juiced, to get 1 tbsp, the other cut into four wedges, to serve
¾ tsp ground cumin
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
100g spring onions (ie, about 10), cut thinly on a diagonal
1 hispi cabbage (aka pointed cabbage), quartered, cored and cut into 1cm-wide slices
150g baby spinach
5g mint leaves, roughly chopped
150g soured cream

Melt 50g butter in a medium saucepan on a medium-high heat. Add half the garlic, half a teaspoon of ground coriander, the onion granules, three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Fry for about two minutes, until the butter is foaming and the garlic starting to brown, then add the stock and bring to a simmer. Turn down the heat to medium, then slowly pour in the polenta, whisking continuously, until the mix is smooth and starting to thicken. Turn the heat to low and cook for eight to 10 minutes, stirring often, until it is the consistency of thick porridge, then take off the heat and stir in the lime zest.

Melt the remaining butter in a large saute pan on a high heat. Once it’s foaming, add the remaining garlic and coriander, with the cumin, chilli, three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper, and fry for a minute, until the garlic starts to brown. Add the spring onions and cabbage, and cook for a minute more, stirring continuously. Add the spinach in two batches and cook, stirring, for two minutes, until it has just wilted and the cabbage is starting to soften but still remains a vibrant green. Take off the heat, squeeze over a tablespoon of lime juice and stir in the mint.

As soon as the greens are ready, return the polenta to a medium heat to warm through; if it has thickened too much, thin it down with a few tablespoons of water. Divide between four shallow bowls, top with the greens and finish with a generous spoon of soured cream. Serve with a wedge of lime.

Beef shin cooked in pomegranate and beetroot juice

Buy the shin in one large piece, rather than pre-cut, and cut it to the right size and shape at home, because pre-cut beef shin will be too thin and fatty here. The better the ingredients you use, as always, the better the results will be, so your oil should be extra-virgin, your pomegranate juice should not be diluted, and your salt should be sea salt flakes. Serves two as a main course alongside some bread and a peppery rocket salad.

500-600g piece boneless beef shin, cut into three 10cm x 4cm pieces
80ml extra-virgin olive oil
Flaked sea salt and pepper
8 garlic cloves, peeled
550ml 100% pomegranate juice
550ml beetroot juice (most beetroot juice is sweetened with a bit of apple juice, which is fine)
20g pistachio kernels, roughly chopped
2 tbsp pomegranate seeds, to serve

Season the beef shin with three tablespoons of oil, a teaspoon of salt and a generous grind of pepper.

Heat a deep, heavy-based, 28cm-diameter pan for which you have a lid on a high flame. Lay in the beef pieces – space them well apart – and fry for seven minutes, turning regularly, until seared and well browned all over. Transfer the meat to a bowl, leaving any juices in the pan, then add the garlic cloves to the pan and fry for a minute, until golden. Return the beef and any resting juices to the pan, turn down the heat to low, and add the pomegranate and beetroot juices. Cover and leave to bubble gently for an hour and a quarter, turning the beef every 15 minutes or so, until it’s tender and the sauce is the consistency of thin gravy and reduced to about 170ml (you may need to remove the meat and reduce the sauce for an extra 10-15 minutes to get it to this state).

Turn off the heat and leave to rest, still covered, for 15 minutes before serving. Using a very sharp knife, cut each piece of meat widthways into 0.5cm-thick slices. Divide between two plates and spoon four tablespoons of sauce, including some of the softened garlic cloves, over each portion, pouring half over the meat and letting the rest pool around it. Drizzle two teaspoons of oil over each plate of meat and sauce: if you do this slowly, this will add a beautiful marbling effect to the sauce. Finish with a sprinkle of pistachios, pomegranate seeds and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt.

Roast peaches with kaffir lime, sabayon and raspberries

If possible, use perfectly ripe peaches for this; if you can’t get any, add a few tablespoons of water to the pan when roasting the fruit. If you can’t get fresh kaffir lime leaves, don’t substitute them with freeze-dried ones: the finely shaved skin of one lime (about six strips) is a much better alternative. Serves six.

3 egg yolks
70g caster sugar
65ml sauternes (or another sweet dessert wine)
6 ripe peaches, pitted and quartered
8 fresh kaffir lime leaves, roughly torn
2 limes – zest finely grated, to get 2 tsp, then juiced, to get 3-4 tbsp
120g raspberries, crushed
100ml double cream

Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Whisk the egg yolks, two tablespoons of sugar and the wine in a medium heatproof bowl, then set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water (make sure the base of the bowl is not in contact with the water). Whisk for four or five minutes, until it looks like a thick, foamy cream, then take the bowl off the pan and leave to cool, whisking once or twice as it does so.

While the sabayon is cooling, put the peaches, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, a teaspoon of lime zest and two tablespoons of sugar in a 20cm x 20cm high-sided baking dish. Stir everything together to combine, then roast for 15-25 minutes, until the peaches are soft but still hold their shape (the timing will depend on how ripe they are), then leave to cool.

While the peaches are cooking, mix the raspberries with the remaining teaspoon of lime zest and two teaspoons of sugar.

Put the cream in a medium bowl, whisk to soft peaks, then, using a spatula, fold into the cooled sabayon. If you’re not dishing up straight away, put it in the fridge and take out 15 minutes before serving. Spoon the peaches and any juices into four bowls, and serve with a generous spoonful each of sabayon and raspberries on the side.