Saveur December 2015

I’m obsessed with sausage balls,” says Annie Pettry, chef-owner of Decca restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky. “No matter where I am on Christmas morning, I’m making them.” Hers are juicy pork sausage mixed with cheddar cheese that oozes out and forms a lacy, cracker-like disk at the bottom—just like her mother always made them. “Christmas would be incomplete without them,” she says. And that’s the thing about holiday breakfasts: As much as we love the dressy to-do of a festive dinner—the centerpiece roast, the good china—our simpler holiday morning traditions can often be the more lasting and beloved ones. Free from the stiff ness of a formal sit-down, celebratory morning meals allow for those sometimes messy dishes that even exacting chefs love. For Noah Bernamoff , co-owner of Mile End Deli and Black…

Carved wooden spoons, hand-thrown micaceous clay pots, and flame-worked glasses with unique imperfections—when it comes to outfitting our kitchens, we’re looking for more than just utility. We want something that speaks to the allure of our favorite room, and all over America, artisans are channeling their creativity into handmade housewares. Some have backgrounds working with food, like pastry chef turned metal worker Ann Ladson; others, like napkin designer Annabel Inganni, draw inspiration from their childhood kitchens. Whatever the medium—glass, fabric, clay—each artisan brings past experience and singular traditions to the workbench. The “Made in America” stamp never looked better. 1 When Felipe Ortega was 17, he apprenticed himself to a 90-year-old blind Apache woman who had been working with clay all her life. He’s been making his own micaceous clay cooking…

Growing up in France, while everyone else was having bûche de Noël for the holidays, Kamel Saci ate his mother and grandmother’s basbousa instead. Drenched in an orange blossom syrup, the semolina cake was a fragrant reminder of the Ramadan and Eid desserts they’d grown up with in Algeria.“They made the cake for the Western holidays because it was fit for a celebration, any celebration,” says Saci, now head baker at Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria in Manhattan. His mother also made baghrir, thick but wonderfully light, yeasty crêpes. Cooked only on one side, they’re pockmarked with holes—crannies for capturing melted butter and warm honey. They made a festive holiday treat. “Even now,” says Saci, “I make basbousa and baghrir around Christmas because we’re with family and we want things…

When it’s all too much, and humanity is rounding the corner toward irredeemability, I think of the cacao bean. Somewhere between now and a billion years ago, some hairy visionary gazed upon this bitter, homely fruit and foresaw a Snickers. It’s a chilly night in San Francisco and I’m being coached at seeing even further, beyond Mars. My instructor is Todd Masonis, the jovial co-founder of small-batch chocolate factory Dandelion Chocolate and a luminary in the emergent bean-to-bar movement of confectioners who don’t just make treats, but create chocolate itself from scratch. Over the next three hours I will learn how to roast, crack, sort, winnow, and grind humble beans into a superior, post-industrial hunk of chocolate. All my life, chocolate has essentially been an MRE, but it turns out I…

Makes 3 cups (2 lbs. 14 oz.) Active: 45 min.; Total: 14 hr. 8 cups (2 lbs. 6 oz.) cacao beans 1 1⁄2 cups (12 oz.) sugar 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil 1 cup pepitas 1 Tbsp. ancho chile powder 2 Tbsp. turbinado sugar 1 Heat the oven to 350°. Spread the cacao beans on a parchment paper–lined baking sheet and bake, stirring occasionally, until toasted and the beans smell like brownies, about 30 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet to a rack and let cool for 8 hours. 2 Divide the beans between 2 large plastic bags and, using a rolling pin, gently crack the beans into nibs. Pour the nibs into a large bowl and shake gently to allow the lighter husks to float to the top. Remove the husks by hand or blow them off with a hair…

In 1927, Vogue editor Dorothy Todd invited her friend Virginia Woolf to a small lunch. Th e writer, it was well known, hated noisy, crowded restaurants, and so Todd arranged to throw the luncheon at the private flat of Marcel Boulestin, a French writer and boutique owner. As a parade of tempting dishes appeared before the guests, it was suggested that Boulestin open a small restaurant. “By the time that the pudding and coff ee had arrived,” writes Jans Ondaatje Rolls, in her Bloomsbury Cookbook, “finance had been secured.” And the rest, as they invariably say, is history. Although the restaurant Boulestin became a hit (and the proprietor himself one of the first celebrity chefs), it maintained a level of intimate conviviality that allowed even Virginia Woolf to feel comfortable. As a…