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05/23/2002 Archived Entry: "Desserts 1-2-3"

Everyone who listens to Food Talk must know that Rozanne Gold is among my very dearest friends. So, if you want to take this with a grain of salt, do: She is a genius.

However, I am not the only food professional who thinks Rozanne is beyond brilliant. She is one of the most accomplished and highly regarded people in my world.

I met her nearly 25 years ago when, as a kid in her early 20s, she became Ed Koch’s first chef at Gracie Mansion, so I will start there. We met in the kitchen of the mansion, which was still decorated with Mary Beame’s trellis wallpaper and wrought iron dinette set. The refrigerator was empty, except for an already opened container of the Beame’s cottage cheese and a brisket in the freezer. We bonded. Ed was my friend and he had sent me to the mansion to check on this impossibly young woman who his staff had hired to feed him and cook for his friends, other politicians, and visiting dignitaries. Ed likes to eat and he was worried. I assured him – even though Rozanne didn’t feed me as much as a slice of toast – that he wasn’t going to starve. I could tell by the way she talked about food that she was a good cook.

After a couple of years with Ed, Rozanne left city employment to become the executive chef of all the Lord & Taylor stores across the nation. Among her responsibilities was revamping all the department store’s restaurants. You can blame her for the demise of the Bird Cage, the store’s ladylike and even-then outmoded tea rooms, and give her credit for revamping and reviving the equally famous Soup Bars.

I can’t possibly list all of her accomplishments here, but to mention two more that you can relate to, she developed the menus at the Rainbow Room, in its modern heyday under the management of the Joseph Baum-Michael Whiteman Company, and she developed the menus at Windows on the World when Baum-Whiteman regained their management of it after a brief stewardship by a large hotel company. They were the original developers of the restaurant, too.

Now, among other things, Rozanne is a cookbook and magazine writer. She has seven cookbooks under her belt (an eighth is due this fall) and she is the entertaining columnist for Bon Appetit magazine. Her most recently released book is Desserts 1-2-3.

“Desserts 1-2-3” is the fifth in her 1-2-3 series in which all the recipes require only three ingredients. She is, indeed, as she has been called, The Queen of Simplicity. It is awesome what delicious food she can produce with so little. Just the other night, I ate dinner at Rozanne’s and all of us at the table were bowled over by the variety and quality of the desserts she had prepared for a photo shoot that day. (We were, in essence, eating the props.) Here are two of the recipes. You can find many more as fabulous as these in the book.

By the way, all of Rozanne’s 1-2-3 books have been nominated for the two national cookbook awards that are given each year, and four of the five have won at least one of them, if not both.

(Secret: Rozanne’s next book is Christmas 1-2-3.)


Michael’s Chocolate Obsession
Serves 10

1 pound very-best-quality semisweet chocolate
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 extra-large eggs

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line an 8-inch springform pan with a round of parchment paper or aluminum foil. Coat inside of pan with vegetable cooing spray.

Chop chocolate into pieces. Cut butter into small chunks. Place chocolate and butter in top of a double boiler, or in a bowl over simmering water, making sure bowl doesn’t touch water. Melt, stirring frequently, until smooth.

Whisk eggs with an electric mixer together with a pinch of salt, until mixture triples in volume, about 6 minutes.

Fold chocolate mixture into egg mixture with a flexible rubber spatula, until completely incorporated.

Pour mixture into prepared pan. Bake 20 minutes. The center will still be a little soft. Remove from oven. Let cool at least 30 minutes before cutting. You can refrigerate the cake up to 2 days; let sit at room temperature at least 1 hour before serving.


Moroccan Sandies

Makes 32

1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/3 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 1/4 cups semolina flour

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over very low heat. Using a spoon, remove all the white foam from the surface. Slowly pour the butter into a large bowl, making sure not to include any of the milky white solids that have accumulated in the bottom of the saucepan.

Add 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, the semolina flour, and a pinch of salt. Mix with a wooden spoon until the mixture is stiff. Add up to 3 tablespoons cold water so that you have a dough that you can knead. It will be very crumbly.

Using your hands, knead the dough in the bowl for several minutes, until smooth. Place dough in a large piece of plastic wrap and form into a large thick disk. Set aside at room temperature for 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Break off 32 pieces of dough, about 1 1/4 inches in diameter, and roll into perfectly formed balls. You will need to warm up the dough in your hands to make it more pliable; the dough at this point still has a rather crumbly texture.

Place balls on a large ungreased baking sheet. Bake 15 minutes, or until firm. Remove form oven and let cookies cool on baking sheet.

When cool, put remaining 1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar in a sieve and generously dust the cookies. Store in a tightly covered tin.