Prune: A Cookbook

Canned Sardines with Triscuits, Dijon Mustard, and Cornichons

Radishes with Sweet Butter and Kosher Salt

Garrotxa with Buttered Brown Bread and Salted Red Onion

Marinated White Anchovies with Shaved Celery and Marcona Almonds

Deviled Eggs

Giant Frico

Grilled Lamb Sausages with Dijon Mustard and Cornichons

Deep-Fried Shrimp Toasts with Sesame Seeds

Serrano Ham, Fried Pistachios, and Fresh Figs

Cold Pâté Sandwich

Pickled Shrimp

Gouda Cheese, Aged and Young, and Salted Warm Potatoes

Baked Mussels with Escargot Butter

Fried Oysters with Tartar Sauce

Canned Sardines with Triscuits, Dijon Mustard, and Cornichons

1 can sardines in oil

Only Ruby Brand boneless and skinless - in oil - from Morocco

1 dollop Dijon mustard

small handful cornichons

small handful Triscuit crackers

1 parsley branch

Buckle the can after you open it to make it easier to lift the sardines out of the oil without breaking them.

Stack the sardines on the plate the same way they looked in the can—more or less. Don’t crisscross or zigzag or otherwise make restauranty.

Commit to the full stem of parsley, not just the leaf. Chewing the stems freshens the breath.

Radishes with Sweet Butter and Kosher Salt

red globe or French breakfast radishes, well washed to remove any sand, but left whole with a few stems intact

unsalted butter, waxy and cool but not cold

kosher salt

There is nothing to this, but still … I have seen it go out looking less than stellar—and that’s embarrassing considering it’s been on the menu since we opened and is kind of signature, if Prune had such a thing as signature dishes.

Keep the radishes fresh with ice and clean kitchen towels.

Cull out any overgrown, cottony, spongy radishes; keep your butter at the perfect temperature; and be graceful on the plate, please.

*SPLIT  BIGGER ONES IN HALF. LEAVE THE TAILS.*

Garrotxa with Buttered Brown Bread and Salted Red Onion

peeled red onion, halved and thinly sliced into ribbons

kosher salt

brown bread

unsalted butter, cool but softened for spreading

Garrotxa

extra virgin olive oil

freshly ground black pepper

thyme

Liberally salt the red onion and toss with your fingers to break up the ribs. Let sit 10 minutes to weep out some of their bite.

Spread bread with a generous amount of butter, wall to wall. Cut bread in triangles and arrange on plate.

Lay slices of cheese next to bread.

Heap a generous tangle of salted onion on the plate.

Drizzle whole thing—cheese, buttered bread, and onion—with EVOO just before selling. Be light-handed with the oil—3 fats on one plate makes sense here but it’s about flavor and texture, not about ostentatious macho eating. Keep it accurate.

One grind black pepper and branch of thyme to finish.

Marinated White Anchovies with Shaved Celery and Marcona Almonds

Per plate:

1 scant ½ cup thinly sliced, sweet, tender inner branches of celery, leaves left whole

1 short dozen marinated white anchovies

¼ cup Marcona almonds

good drizzle extra virgin olive oil

brief squeeze lemon juice

lemon cheek

few grinds black pepper

big pinch parsley leaves, mixed into celery and celery leaves

Deviled Eggs

Bring large pot of water to a boil.

Pierce the eggs at the tip with a pushpin to prevent exploding.

Arrange eggs in the basket of the spider and gently lower them into the boiling water. This way they won’t crack from free-falling to the bottom of the pot when you are adding them.

Let boil 10 minutes, including the minutes it takes for water to return to boil after adding the cold eggs.

Moving quickly, retrieve 1 egg and crack it all the way open, in half, to see what you have inside. (If center has any rareness larger than a dime, continue cooking half a minute.)

If thoroughly cooked, drain eggs, rough them around in the dry pot to crackle their shells all over, then quickly turn them out into a frigid ice bath to stop the cooking. It helps with the cooling and the peeling to let the ice water permeate the cracked shells.

Peel the eggs.

Cut the eggs in half neatly and retrieve the cooked yolk from each. Place the hollow, cooked whites into a container with plenty of cold fresh water and let them soak to remove any cooked yolk from their cavities.

Blend yolks in food processor with mustard and mayonnaise. Make sure the bite of the Dijon can make itself felt through the muffle of the rich egg yolk and the neutralizing mayonnaise.

Scrape all the egg mixture from the processor bowl into a disposable pastry bag fitted with a ⅝-inch closed star tip, but do not snip the closed tip of the bag until you are ready to pipe. Fit the pastry bag into a clean empty quart container like you might put a new garbage liner into the bin—folding the excess over the lip of the quart—to make this easier on you.

If you don’t already know, you can stick your middle finger up into the punt of the processor bowl while scraping out the contents with the spatula, to hold the messy, sharp blade in place.

Remove cooked egg whites from the cold water and lay, cavity side down, on a few stacked sheets of paper towel to allow them to drain. Don’t serve the deviled eggs wet, please.

When well drained, turn over eggs to reveal cavities and pipe the mixture in, more like a chrysanthemum than a soft-serve ice cream cone, please. Place on plate and finish with finely sliced parsley.

Make sure that the whites are not rigidly cold from the reach-in. Allow the whites and the yolk mixture to temper a little before serving. The whites get rubbery and hard and the devil-mix has a congealed mouthfeel if you serve them too cold.

  Please take care.

   It’s just temperature but it makes a difference.

Giant Frico

In the 10-inch nonstick sauté pan set over medium heat, evenly spread ½ cup cheese.

Leave it alone but stay attentive.

As the cheese melts and gets lacy, watch for golden, toasty edges.

With a heatproof rubber spatula, lift the edges gently to determine color underneath.

When you have achieved a uniform golden, lift swiftly and confidently with the rubber spat and drape over an inverted pasta bowl.

As these are not the real deal (they should be made with Montasio cheese) they are a little trickier to handle. Sometimes they aren’t crispy enough because you have over-portioned the cheese, not scattered it evenly into the pan, or not toasted long enough. Conversely, if you put too little cheese in the pan, the frico shatters from lack of structure. Finally, if you cook them too dark, they turn profoundly bitter.

Keep in mind that if you lose the frico when you are trying to get it out of the pan and it wrinkles up unmanageably, you can try popping it into the warm oven to regain elasticity and then reshape it with your fingers. Sometimes this works.

Try to get it right, though, on the first shot. It’s an expensive ingredient to have to trash.

Grilled Lamb Sausages with Dijon Mustard and Cornichons

For the sausages:

Combine lamb, garlic, parsley, and salt as gently and tenderly as we touch the hamburgers—do not manhandle or overwork.

Cook off a tester to check your seasonings.

Portion 2½-ounce mounds and gently wrap in small sheets of caul fat, just big enough to enclose the lamb patty with a little overlap at the bottom.

Grill 8–10 minutes.

Be careful they don’t catch on fire on the grill. Move them around frequently and only cook to medium rare.

To plate each order:

2 sausages per order

1 thick slab peasant bread, grilled, cut in half

1 dollop Dijon mustard

small handful cornichons

full branch parsley

Deep-Fried Shrimp Toasts with Sesame Seeds

Grind shrimp and tom yum paste in Robot Coupe until smooth and sticky. You want the intensely sticky enzymes in the shrimp to emerge. Taste the mixture—it should be dark orange, with a strong flavor of tom yum. A small lick of raw shrimp won’t hurt you.

By hand, stir in the scallions, distributing evenly.

If you grind the scallion in the food processor, it makes the mixture spongy and weird.

Mound shrimp paste high in center of each slice of bread and spread it to edges with a short-handled offset spatula. Paste should be slightly domed in center, but angular, like a perfect squat pyramid. In any event, use the scale and weigh these out—3½ ounces each (total weight) makes perfect bread-to-paste ratio.

Spread sesame seeds out in shallow container and lay shrimp toasts facedown to coat evenly.

Cut into quarters on the diagonal, to make 4 triangles.

Deep-fry, sesame sides down, in 350° fryer. Flip them midway and fry, toast side down, until golden and crispy. They float, so you have to attend to them or else the bread doesn’t get crispy enough if they are not flipped during the frying.

Drain in stack of coffee filters; do not season further.

To plate:

Lay in one shingled stack, flipping every other triangle over to make seed-toast-seed-toast pattern.

Scatter with freshly shaved scallion at the pass.

Do not bring back any other brand than Pepperidge Farm original white sandwich bread even if you have to walk to three different grocery stores! None of the other supermarket white breads hold their structure in the fryer.

And don’t use anything better — no brioche! no pain de mie! — in some attempt to make this gourmet. We are not that kind of restaurant.

Serrano Ham, Fried Pistachios, and Fresh Figs

properly sliced serrano ham, at room temperature

perfectly ripe figs, halved

Sicilian pistachios, fried in extra virgin olive oil

lime cheek

drizzle frying oil over whole plate sparingly

few grinds black pepper

If Health Department comes, take the serrano off the carving stand and throw in the oven.

Hone your slicing skills.

Butt: in long ribbons; Butt End: in thin slices; Shank: in petals.

When you’ve taken all that there is from the ham, make small quantity Serrano Ham Broth with the bone and run Spanish Garlic Soup with Smoked Paprika Butter as an addition.

Cold Pâté Sandwich

for the pâté Louise:

for the sandwich:

8 slices Pullman bread

Dijon mustard

Hellmann’s mayonnaise

cornichons

16 ounces pâté

Heat oil and sweat onions and garlic until soft and glassy. Set aside to completely cool.

Pass the liver, belly, and fat chunks through the meat grinder fitted with the fine-hole disk into a bowl with the cooled onions and garlic. Season with salt and pepper and mix well.

Spread mixture into the heavy ceramic loaf pan that accommodates the quantity you are making and lay the bay leaves on top.

Set pâté in a hot water bath that comes halfway up the sides of the pan. Bake for 45 minutes in the oven set at 350°. Check internal temperature and pull at 160°.

Allow to cool, then refrigerate in the loaf pan.

For the sandwich:

Per order:

Slather 1 slice of bread with Dijon.

Slather other slice with Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

Cut healthy slab of cold pâté right in the pan—about ⅓" thick. Get some of the cold jelly that clings. Put the sandwich together.

Trim the crusts, cut in half on the angle, and garnish with a few cornichons.

For double batch, use the 11x4x4" pan. For ½ batch, modify the pan with foil and cardboard to make a false end.

Anyone here who has done it can show you how, or come find me and we’ll do it together.

Pickled Shrimp

For the boil:

For the pickle:

Peel the shrimp, devein, and leave the tails on.

Combine the boil ingredients in a large stockpot with cold water and bring to a boil. Let boil for 5 minutes.

Add the shrimp and cook for just a minute or two until the flesh turns pink/orange. You can pull one out and test if it’s finished before you pull out the whole batch. Remove the shrimp with a spider or drain through a colander. Ice down the shrimp to get them to stop cooking, but don’t let them soak in the melted ice after they are cooled or you will waterlog them and undo all that nice seasoning you just gave them.

Combine all the pickle ingredients, rub the fresh bay leaves between your hands to open them up a bit, toss with the cooled shrimp, and marinate for 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Let recover to almost room temperature before serving.

To plate:

4–5 shrimp per order and a little of all the goodies, in a neat jumble, in a small shallow bowl.

Only use rice wine vinegar — we want its low acidity.

The shrimp will continue to cook a bit in the pickle marinade, so take care in the initial blanch to keep them rare; we don’t want to end up with mealy, overcooked shrimp after 24 hours in the marinade.

Gouda Cheese, Aged and Young, and Salted Warm Potatoes

Per order:

1 small wedge 10-month Gouda

1 small hunk 24-month Gouda

5 marble potatoes, cooked to order in heavily salted boiling water

1 Ryvita rye cracker, buttered, broken in ½, shingled on plate

*Make sure potatoes are fully cooked, well-seasoned internally, and still hot when they go on the plate. Stack them in a small ramekin so they don’t roll around. The marble potatoes take only a few minutes to cook fully.

Baked Mussels with Escargot Butter

2 pounds bouchot or PEI mussels

Escargot Butter

any garlic peels, shallot skins, and parsley stems left from preparing the escargot butter

dry white wine

baguette

**10-pound bag yields 200 mussels +/- 20 orders +/-**

The bouchots are usually very clean when they come in because of the way they are grown on ropes. Still, soak them for 10 minutes in very cold water sprinkled with a little cornmeal to get them to spit out their beards. Tug forcefully and pull out whatever beards emerge. Rinse well.

It is your responsibility to account for the vitality of every single mussel. Be vigilant and toss any that are listlessly gaping open, broken, or cracked. Make utterly certain that each mussel is lively and winning the fight to stay tightly closed. To be sick from bad shellfish—as you may know from personal experience—is a holy hell of wretched despair. Let’s never inflict that on anyone. Ever. The tags that track the beds for all of our shellfish are kept in the bin on top of the ice machine and must be kept for 90 days.

Set a heavy-bottomed pot on a burner over medium-high heat and let it get super hot. Make sure you grab a pot that has a tight-fitting lid and that is ample enough to contain the quantity of mussels in a layer just 2 or 3 deep.

Pour in the mussels and any clinging water.

Add the scraps and stems and quickly pour in white wine in a steady stream just until the hissing is silenced. That will be as much wine as the mussels need.

Cover the pot and let the mussels steam open, about 4–5 minutes. Give the pot a shake and a swirl occasionally.

When all the shells have opened and the meats look opaque but still tender, uncover and remove from the heat.

Drain the mussels, reserving all that liquid for the Pernod Mayonnaise if we are running Cold Mussel Salad at lunch. Label and date and freeze for future use.

Split open the shells, pull the meats, and return them to the clean half of the mussel shell that doesn’t have the hard eraser-like adductor muscle attached. Get rid of any clinging parsley stems, or shallot or garlic skins. Lay out all of your mussels on the half shell and spread escargot butter generously but neatly over each.

Use a small offset spatula and leave a clean edge.

Refrigerate between sheets of parchment.

Per order, lay out 10 cold buttered mussels on a sizzle plate and set under the broiler until just bubbly and melted. Take care not to undo your good work by sizzling your tender mussels into tough and chewy bits—that salamander goes from zero to burnt as soon as you are not looking.

Arrange attractively on a small plate with several thin slices of baguette in a deep ramekin.

for the Escargot Butter:

Place shallot, garlic, parsley leaves, and a pinch of salt in food processor and pulse until roughly chopped.

Add butter and cognac and grind until emerald green and purely smooth, with a glossy texture.

Season to taste with white pepper, fresh grated nutmeg, and, as needed, kosher salt. Be sure to label the white pepper mill properly; we use it so rarely.

Fried Oysters with Tartar Sauce

Season flour with salt and pepper. Beat eggs well.

Have three bowls ready, one with seasoned flour, one with beaten eggs, and one with panko.

Dip the oysters, one by one, into the flour, shaking off the excess, then into the eggs, allowing the excess to drip off, and finally into the panko crumbs, tossing to coat.

Lay the breaded oysters on a baker’s rack so the coating can set.

Deep-fry at 350° until golden brown, about 2 minutes.

Season with salt while hot.

To plate:

2 oysters, stacked, per order on small oval plate

1 small ramekin Tartar Sauce

1 lemon cheek

1 sprig parsley

Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad

Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg

Pastrami Duck Breast with Small Rye Omelette

Toasted Manti with Garlic Yogurt and Cayenne Pepper Butter

Omelette with Parmesan

Monkfish Liver with Warm Buttered Toast

Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter

Shaved Celery, Fennel, and Radish Salad with Buttered Valdeón Toasts

Mackerel Escabeche, Sliced Sweet Capicola, Buttered Rye Crackers, and Celery Leaves

Grilled Veal Heart with Red Wine–Braised Shallots and Watercress

Duck Liver Garbure with Toasted Chestnut

Shad Roe with Bacon and Smoked Paprika Butter

Grated Radish with Trout Roe and Brown Butter

Bagna Cauda

Deep-Fried Sweetbreads with Bacon, Capers, and Brown Butter Sauce

Salt and Sugar–Cured Green Tomatoes with Fried Sicilian Pistachios

Razor Clams with Smoked Paprika Butter and Hominy

Parmesan Dumplings in Capon Broth

Calf’s Brains Fritto Misto

Sorrel Soup with Salted Lemon Whipped Cream

Smokey Eggplant, Parsley-Sesame Flatbread, Grilled Lemons

Stewed Tripe Milanese with Gremolata

Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad

Prune Vinaigrette

Bibb lettuce, washed and dried

collected day-old bread heels—with plenty of life; don’t unload rock-hard 2-day-old bread here

Rinse and dry the chicken thoroughly. Use paper towels.

Set 2 chickens in each hotel pan, and squeeze lemons over each, leaving spent lemon halves in the pan. Season the birds highly with salt and pepper. Smear them with the Dijon mustard and scatter the rosemary around evenly and the garlic cloves equally between each hotel pan. Drizzle them with olive oil and massage all of the ingredients into, around, and all over the chickens.

*If you are only roasting / chicken for some reason, follow same protocol but use a ½ sheetpan or a ½ hotel.

Set in 350° ovens. Separate the hotel pans—if you can—between the 2 ovens. If you don’t have that luxury of space to spread out in, keep the pans side by side on the upper rack in one oven rather than above and below each other.

Roast, turning and