My friend Javier Santos, Jonathan, and I hosted a group of Canadian bartenders at the Château de Bourg-Charente in Cognac, France. Inside, the grand rooms and salons stretched farther than most apartments, each with their own history and energy. Wine and music flowed, and it was my birthday, April 21. As a six-liter bottle of Pineau des Charentes emerged, things switched gear—a limbo, blindfolds, cheese, cognac, and more cigars than the local market had for sale. A splash of Pineau was poured for each successful limbo (balancing a six-liter bottle over someone’s mouth without spilling is very challenging). Our host, the distiller for Marnier-Lapostolle (Grand Marnier) asked us to follow him downstairs. We traveled down the staircase to the basement, the air changed, and we were welcomed into a large cellar with barrels stacked against the walls. It was the room we had heard about, where only the oldest and rarest cognacs were kept. Quietly, a bottle was pulled: a 1930 cognac saved especially for this occasion. Later that evening, as the guests left and six of us remained to stay the night, the 400-year-old château started to speak. Multiple sightings of a small, wispy woman walking the halls were reported, including one where she tried to get the attention of two guests sleeping in the cigar room by bursting from one of their chests like an apparition from the movie Alien. The following morning, the staff confirmed that this woman walks through the castle’s halls late at night—we even have photo evidence that makes the hairs on my neck stand up to this day. Luckily, we all survived—she’s a nice lady who likes company. The cocktail inspired by this experience is perfect for the apéritif hour. 

Meringue is a magical mixture of egg whites and sugar that can be used in many ways, but the first time I learned it could be baked directly on top of a cake was a couple of years ago when I saw pastry chef Liz Prueitt’s recipe for Sweet Potato Tea Cake with Meringue, which she developed for Tartine Manufactory along with then head of pastry Michelle Lee. It struck me as an exceptionally smart technique that I wanted to try, and it made sense to employ it in a cake where meringue is already a part of the recipe, like flourless chocolate cake (one of my favorite moments in baking is the swirl you get when folding meringue into a chocolate batter—see the cover!). Not only does it look appealing on top of the cake, it bakes into a light and crispy shell that yields to the rich crumb. This cake is dairy- and grain-free, making it Passover-friendly.

One of my favorite memories from Guangzhou was waking up early on Laba Festival to make laba congee. Laba Festival falls on the eighth day of the last lunar month (臘月 Làyuè), and every year, people will cook a big pot of this winter porridge for their ancestors and then enjoy it with friends and family, since its bountiful ingredients symbolize a celebration of the harvest.

In my culinary school kitchen, a team of chefs simmered the soaked sticky rice, beans, dried fruits, and other grains in 5-liter stock- pots, while the rest of us helped set up a table near the street by the ferry station. We ladled out the congee into lidded paper cups and then wove in and out of the crowd, offering them with our blessings. Later I took a cup myself and spooned up the hot congee gratefully, chewing on the treasures suspended in the thickened rice porridge— starchy lotus seeds, rich peanuts, plump golden raisins, and swelled jujube dates and sweet longan.

Since making the porridge is a tradition over a thousand years old, the ingredients can vary widely. Typically, people include different types of grains (white sticky rice, black rice or black sticky rice, cornmeal, millet, Job’s tears, and oats), beans (mung beans, red adzuki beans, kidney beans), nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, almonds, peanuts), seeds (pumpkin seeds, lotus seeds, pine nuts), and dried fruits (raisins, dates, goji berries), which naturally sweeten the porridge. It’s a very flexible and forgiving recipe, and if you don’t have some of these ingredients, simply substitute more of the others. At home, my mom always makes it in her pressure cooker, which cuts down the active cooking time to almost nothing. Just soak everything the night before, then drain and add to the pot in the morning, and you can enjoy a hot bowl of it for breakfast.

This is a truly special dessert—the grain-free lemony cake is rich with olive oil and lemon juice and is perfectly sweet. It’s deeply satisfying and dense without being heavy. Just twelve ingredients. I could not resist sneaking in a can of gut-friendly beans, which actually lighten up the batter while adding even more prebiotic fibre and replenishing minerals like calcium. Enjoy midday with a cup of tea or maybe even sneak a piece with your morning coffee! It is plant food, after all.