One of the scene-iest scenes in Orange County is Fig & Olive, so when I found out FIG & OLIVE’s founder/owner Laurent Halasz was releasing a cookbook AND throwing a party to celebrate it, obviously I was in. The party was fabulous and the food obviously divine, but the highlight of the evening was Laurent stopping by our table to chat.
The man obviously loves food, and his passion is contagious. Even though I had just eaten a four-course meal, I wanted to go home and make a secret recipe he shared with us at the table. Here it goes, incomplete both because a famous chef was telling it to us over cocktails at a party and because my memory may or may not have been colored by a few glasses of Veuve and a new fave white wine—a wine I cannot for the life of me google but is available at the restaurant for $68/bottle (reads like this on the menu: Vermentino Cote D’Azur Côtes de Provence, 2014):
Ingredients:
- heirloom tomatoes
- basil from the farmer’s market, nowhere else
- pasta (“Barillo is fine, it doesn’t have to be fancy” he says)
- olive oil (more on that below)
- parmesan “always parmesan! I love parmesan!”
Make it:
- Slice(?) the tomatoes
- Hand-tear the basil. It must be hand-torn, because knife-cutting dulls the flavor.
- Toss tomatoes, basil, and olive oil with pasta cooked just past al dente
- Put it in the fridge
- To serve, take it out and bring it to room temperature
- He didn’t specifically say when you add the cheese, so add it whenever you feel is best
“The best cooking is like my mother’s: simple, fresh, flavorful, and colorful on the plate and on one’s palate,” says Laurent.
FIG & OLIVE: The Cuisine of the French Riviera is a gorgeous cookbook, but it also offers a little slice of life in the South of France—about half of the photos were shot in Laurent’s (yes, we’re on a first-name basis, deal with it) home there. He and his mom, Francine, who he referenced multiple times and must have taught him everything he knows, like all moms, believe that hosting is about the enjoyment, not the execution. “This is simply how we entertain in France.”
Lest you think you need to go all Julie & Julia on the French recipes in the cookbook, it’s actually aimed at simplicity. Whether that means a non-chef like myself can actually succeed at making something from a recipe, time will tell.
FIG & OLIVE: Cuisine of The French Riviera by Laurent Halasz with photography by Harald Gottschalk is available at ASSOULINE boutiques and assouline.com.