Isaac Mizrahi: The Key 3

Isaac Mizrahi is the award-winning international designer and Project Runway judge. He's a self-taught cook who doesn't waste time. He goes straight to the masters and has a critical eye for whose recipes to trust. In this installment of The Key 3, he shares with Lynne Rossetto Kasper his methods for preparing a basic tomato sauce, a family vinaigrette and Jacques Pepin's chocolate souffle.

Here are Isaac's keys, as told to Lynne:

Three key recipes is a really hard thing, because there are a million recipes that are key. So I'll pick my most guarded, favorite recipes that work in millions of different ways -- my workhorse recipes.

One of them is Alex Guarnaschelli's yellow and red tomato sauce, because it's so easy and versatile and so incredibly delicious. Then I picked a vinaigrette. It's the way my mom used to make vinaigrette and kinda like the best way to make it: in a jar. And finally, Jacques Pepin's chocolate souffle recipe, which is flawless. You could do an endless amount of sauces for it.

1. Tomato Sauce

Recipe for Yellow Tomato Sauce

I swear by this recipe since I saw Alex Guarnaschelli demo it. I'm so entirely smitten with the technique that I can giant batches in August when tomatoes are in their prime. I encourage everyone to do the same.

My whole life, I've been beguiled -- perplexed -- by the idea of creating fresh tomato sauce. It's not an easy thing. People cheat and they put a little bacon or something in it, but no, that's not tomato sauce. I want just tomato sauce.

I love that you just put it in the blender. That's my favorite part of the recipe.

If you look at her recipe, it only says yellow tomatoes. But I'm telling you, on her show she had both yellow and red. So split the difference on the beefsteak tomatoes; do three red and three yellow.

Here's Alex:

Then you have this incredible sauce that can be taken in so many directions. You could add cream to it, you could add meat to it. I make lasagne with it. I make baked ziti with it. It's my tomato product. Seriously.

[Lynne's idea: Wouldn't it be fabulous to put this -- just at room temperature -- on the most wonderful summer tomatoes that you taste? Sliced thick with some mozzarella, so you have tomato cooked on tomato raw?]

2. Vinaigrette

Recipe for Vinaigrette

This is the vinaigrette I grew up eating. Improvisation is the name of the game with this recipe. Taste as you go, and adjust the seasonings to your taste.

The recipe says to start by mincing some garlic. Now to be honest, I would press it, but you're not supposed to because it makes it a little bitter. I'm not a snob about these things, but for the sake of this recipe, I'm going to say mince.

Then olive oil -- a good olive oil. I'm very paranoid about my brands of olive oil since reading that article in the New Yorker. I use two parts olive oil to one part vinegar. Even a little less vinegar.

I have to say, I like to salt it a lot. Two to three very good pinches of salt. And I like a lot of pepper in there, because I don't like to salt and pepper the salad itself.

I use a little bit of dry white wine because I like the way it makes it less thick. It's not so viscous and it's easier to toss the salad. Also, it's delicious.

Now, a little tiny secret: I always do just a little pinch of sugar. That's cheating, I think, because you're supposed to be able to get the proportions right. But this corrects that. Like, I always find lemon really hard to work with, because I always end up just tasting the lemon. Whenever I leave the sugar out, I go, "Oh, that's bitter," or, "That's too lemony," or, "That's too much vinegar," or something's wrong with it. And the minute I add that magic -- a little teeny dram of sugar, it really does a trick. It's funny.

I don't like too much dressing. That's one thing I don't like that the French like. The French like to overdress things. I don't like to overdress a salad. I like more lettuce taste and less vinaigrette taste. That's my thing.

Ingredients

1/2 clove minced garlic

2 tablespoons good-tasting extra virgin olive oil

1 scant tablespoon vinegar

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/2 teaspoon minced fresh herbs

1 scant teaspoon mustard

Dash of white wine

Pinch of sugar

1. Combine all the ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid and shake until the ingredients are well mixed. Pour over clean greens and toss.

There are people who make vinaigrette in bowls and whisk it for hours for the emulsification. But why? Shaking it in a jar is better emulsification than you could ever get whisking. I like a smaller jar -- a pickling jar. I'll buy Hellmann's mayonnaise just so I can empty them out and use the jars for vinaigrette. They're so perfect. They're the right size and have the plastic top that isn't two parts and you can wash them. They're fantastic.

The ideal consistency is when it's just coating the glass -- completely smooth.

 

3. Chocolate Souffle with Rum Sauce

Recipe for Chocolate Souffle with Rum Sauce

Jacques Pepin has made the best cookbooks. I find his recipes to be like suggestions more than recipes. They're really, really plain; it's like a set of instructions on how to get somewhere and then you fill in the blanks. It's like cooking school.

This recipe is foolproof. I love it because the directions are so clear.

Of course, all making a souffle is is figuring out the egg whites. There are so many different people who will tell you so many different things about egg whites and cream of tartar and vinegar and I don't know what they say. And none of that's right because I can always taste that stuff. Here, you whip the egg whites the way Jacques tells you to beat them. He says beat them to sort of soft peaks, which is easy to see. I love that. And it works. It doesn't say what speed to beat them, but somehow in 1960 we knew what that meant.

Where you make or break the souffle is folding the sauce into the egg whites. If you are impatient and you don't have the patience to fold, let someone else do it, because you're not going to get the perfect rise. Also, you have to kind of walk away from it for a while, because if you over mix it, it's not going to work. You turn the bowl, cut in half and turn the contents over on itself. Use these big round circular movements so you're not losing air. It doesn't look like you're getting anywhere; it just looks like you're turning the bowl and cutting the thing. But eventually you'll be very happy.

(I swear, it's all about what kind of chocolate you get. I use the stuff called Callebaut.)

Here's Jacques:

The Key 3 is a series of discussions with great cooks (not just professional chefs) about the three recipes or techniques they think everyone should know.