The tres leches cake at Aldaco's in Stone Oak.

Q. My husband’s birthday is coming up and he loves tres leches cake. Who do you think makes the best in town? Thank you!

— A.C.

A. Tres leches cake was introduced to San Antonio largely through the efforts of Blanca Aldaco. Since then, you can find it at numerous places across town, and many of the versions are fine. But Aldaco still serves the best to be had.

The name tres leches refers to the three milks that are used to keep the cake moist. The lineup can vary, but it is usually sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and heavy cream.

The Mother's Day tres leches cake.

What Aldaco does with this cake at her restaurant in Stone Oak, 20079 Stone Oak Parkway, is always rich and delicious.

She also varies the flavors she offers, depending on the season. The current lineup includes chocolate and Kahlúa in addition to the regular style

Call 210-494-0561.

Orange and Olive Salad

Olives have been on my mind lately, thanks in part to the recent Olives Olé. And one of the ways I like to serve them is in a salad with oranges, so the sweet and salty have a chance to blend. This is a Mediterranean classic, and Dorie Greenspan has a great variation in her new cookbook, “Around My French Table: More than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours” (Houghton Mifflin, $40).

“This is an exceedingly simple first-course salad or chaser when the main event is a tagine or rich stew,” she writes. “Here, slices of orange are drizzled with olive oil and strewn with onion rings and small black olives.”

Play around with the ingredients. I used blood oranges, simply because they were all I had in the house. The color wasn’t as vibrant, but the juice was abundant and flavorful. That forced me to add a touch of cilantro, which worked nicely in the mix.

Orange and Olive Salad

1 small onion, red or yellow
4 navel, Temple or other “meaty” oranges
About 2 tablespoons olive oil
Niçoise or other small black olives, pitted or not
Salt, preferably fleur de sel, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

You can leave the onion whole or cut it in half. thinly slice it, and separate the slices into rings or half rings. rinse the slices and drop them into a bowl of ice water. If you’ve got the time, let them sit in their water bath for about 20 minutes — the rinse will wash away some of their bitterness, and the bath will make them crisp.

You may want to remove the zest and save it before peeling the oranges. You can remove it in wide strips, cut away the white pith on the underside, and freeze the strips; you can sliver or chop the zest or you can grate it. (Slivered or grated zest won’t freeze as well.)

Remove a thin slice from the top and bottom of each orange to give yourself flat surfaces, stand the orange up, and, working your knife around the contours of the orange, cut away the peel, the pith and the tiniest bit of flesh. Once they are peeled, cut the oranges into rounds 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick, and arrange attractively on a large serving platter. If you’d like, you can cover the oranges and chill them before you finish and serve the salad.

Drain the onions and pat them dry. Drizzle the olive oil over the oranges, scatter over the onions, top with the olives and season with salt and pepper.

Makes 4 servings.

From “Around My French Table” by Dorie Greenspan

Sometimes the past comes up to bite us firmly on the butt.  Other times, though, things seem to miraculously come together.

Olives for sampling have been a feature at each annual Olives Ole event.

As a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, San Antonio Chapter, I’ve worked on the Olives Olé: The International Olive Festival of Texas for three years now. The one this past weekend was held at a new location, the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. As does any event of this kind, it reflected changes made from lessons learned during the first two events, held at the Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard near Elmendorf.

Asking for assistance from St. Philip’s College culinary students (along with many other terrific volunteers) was one of the good moves we made. The number of hours the students put into the food preparation was awesome, as were the skills and good spirits that went into it. Then, the next day, they came out to the festival to help some more!

The school’s culinary program is under the benevolent dictatorship of William Thornton, a chef, program director and all-around nice guy who keeps his students in line with an appropriate kind of tough love. After all, many of them will be going to work in the challenging culture of professional food service and will need to have not just the good skills they are learning but the ability to roll with the punches on a daily basis.

I worked alongside them the day before Olives Olé on Saturday. Their spirits were good, and they weren’t averse to taking occasional instruction from me.

In the 1970s, before most of these students were born, I was developing my own professional culinary skills in the old-fashioned way: working for veteran chefs in the restaurant business. It was more toughness than love, on their part. They just wanted the job done right, and woe betide the kitchen worker who dropped knives, burned pans of bacon, or sliced themselves so badly that a fingertip had to be located somewhere in a blood-spattered pile of onions.

Those were just a few of my own mishaps. And I was not an inexperienced cook, having done much of the family cooking since the age of about 10. Eventually, I was able to do a good job of running a Continental kitchen, often on my own, as a sous chef.

Then, one day, I decided to finish my journalism degree and stay on to get another one in food services. In all, I worked in kitchens and went to school through most of my 20s.

As I cut lemons and sliced eggplant on Friday, I felt right at home, despite it being my first time to work in one of Thornton’s kitchens at St. Philip’s.

How things had changed since the days that I had aspirations to be a chef. The class had as many women in it as men. When I was working in restaurants, there weren’t many women aspiring to be more than pantry or pastry cooks. Much of this was because women weren’t supported in the industry. It was largely the province of males.

I can’t say that latter fact has changed as much as I would have liked. But far more women are going to culinary school and getting certification and degrees, more are working in professional kitchens and I’d like to think that many more are aspiring to be chefs or to own their own restaurants and other food-based businesses.

Male chefs taught me the basics of professional cooking, and I am grateful to them for that. Women, too, are eager to carry on the teaching tradition that is an integral part of being a chef.

Which brings me to Les Dames d’Escoffier: This international organization would have been a place for me to turn for support when I was young; not just financial and professional support, but just plain moral support as well. Our fundraiser, Olives Olé, raises money to help women who want to enter or advance in culinary fields, whether it’s as a restaurateur, business owner, teacher or cookbook publisher. The members of the San Antonio chapter of this organization offer a wealth of experience for any woman, young or older, needing a good brain to pick, words of encouragement or a scholarship to help them finance culinary school.

Thinking back on my own history as a cook, and about my jobs as food writer and editor, website founder, and member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, I can see the pattern pieces of my life fitting together. Something that I love became an important part of my career, and my hopes remain high for ever more women to succeed in their culinary endeavors.

Two local eateries are raising money for Japanese relief from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Coco XO, 18402 U.S. 281 at Loop 1604, and Silo, 1133 Austin Hwy., are hosting benefits for the Red Cross.

“By now, most of us are aware of the devastation caused by the earthquakes, tsunamis, and aftershocks throughout the Pacific,” says the organizing group, San Antonians United for a Cause. “Being a world away, many may feel there is little we can do to aid those suffering from this catastrophe … but we can.”

Coco XO is offering free appetizers, drink specials, and its famous chocolate fountain, with Paul Mireles of KENS 5 serving as emcee. Jennifer Coffey of WOAI will be at Silo, which is offering hors d ‘oeuvres and happy hour drink specials. Each location will have silent auction items as well.

Admission is a $15 donation to the Red Cross. Patrons are asked to wear red to show support for the Red Cross.

Specialty drinks for the evening include the  Rising Sun Martini (Grey Goose vodka, triple sec, orange juice and grenadine) for $5 and the Red Cross Shot  (a Bacardi-torched cherry, passion fruit syrup and a splash of Sprite) for $3.

Chef/owner Michael Sohoki of Gwendolyn.

The restaurant Gwendolyn opened last week in the location vacated by Le Rêve, at 152 E. Pecan St.

Le Rêve was chef Andrew Weissman’s dream. It gained national renown and established his reputation before he closed it in October of 2009.

Now, chef/owner Mike Sohoki, who worked with Weissman at Le Rêve during its last months, and at Il Sogno, Weissman’s new restaurant at the Pearl, has returned to Pecan Street.  The Culinary Institute of America alum also was the chef for two years at The Cove, 606 W. Cypress St.

At 31, Sohoki exhibits a passion that is similar to that of his former boss, Weissman, but exacting on his own terms. The restaurant is focused on fresh, local and seasonal ingredients, and on making all of the food, like the sausages and breads, in house. But his “old school”  approach means he is not using the power tools of the modern kitchen: no machinery, nothing with a motor, says the chef. He doesn’t even have a freezer.

“See this kale,” said Sohoki, holding up a bowl full of chopped, dark greens. “It was picked fresh this morning.” Everything comes in fresh, says the chef, and all is sourced within a 150-mile radius of San Antonio.

Roast chicken breast on French lentils at Gwendolyn.

Sohoki had a smattering of customers when we stopped in at lunchtime Thursday — folks who had gotten the early word about Gwendolyn’s opening. He and his staff fussed over plates of seared chicken breast over a French lentil stew, garnished with sprigs of fresh thyme, and tended to sauces bubbling on the stove.

Gwendolyn is just open for lunches as this time. The dinner meals will be announced later. Lunches are casual; dinners will be fine dining.

Green Garlic Bread with Feta Cheese.

Looking for an easy appetizer? Try this simple variation on toasted bread and butter. You can make the herb butter ahead of time, as long as you soften it before smoothing it on the baguette.

But don’t stop there. “This vibrant green garlic butter is good on just about everything,” celebrity chef Laurent Tourondel writes in his new cookbook, “Fresh from the Market” (John Wiley & Sons, $35). “I love to stuff it under the skin of a chicken before roasting, dollop it on top of grilled steak, or fold it into a bowl of perfectly blanched peas. You can also add other herbs depending upon your tastes.”

I made the recipe below but added feta cheese crumbles to the top of each before sticking it under the broiler. It worked quite well.

Green Garlic Bread

1/4 cup parsley leaves
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 small shallot, peeled
1 garlic clove, peeled
Sea salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 small baguette

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Place the parsley, butter, shallot and garlic in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Plus on and off until all the ingredients are incorporated and the color of the butter is bright green. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Without cutting completely through the bottom of the loaf, cut the bread diagonally with a serrated knife into 1 1/2-inch thick slices. Spread the butter between each slice. Place the bread on a baking sheet and heat uncovered in the oven until the butter has completely melted and the bread is piping hot, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

Makes 6 servings.

From “Fresh from the Market” by Laurent Tourondel and Charlotte March

Hundreds of health-seekers and food aficionados streamed through the gate at the San Antonio Botanical Garden Saturday to enjoy a beautiful day in a natural setting, and to celebrate one of nature’s most healthful foods, the olive.

Les Dames d'Escoffier members Diana Barrios Trevino (seated, left) and her husband, Roland Trevino, sample Leslie Horne's Spanish Paella at Olives Ole.

Olives Olé, the International Olive Festival of Texas, organized by the San Antonio chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, featured an enormous olive bar that offered samples of olives, food and beverage concessions, including Spanish paella made on site, as well as presentations on how the Mediterranean fruit contributes not only to healthy, delicious food but also offers many health benefits as an ingredient in skin care products and more.

A stand of olive trees from the nursery at Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard drew customers interested in growing the many varieties of trees that thrive in the warm, South Texas climate.  Becker Vineyards shared samples of its wines as well as its harvest of lavender, both its winery in Stonewall while the San Antonio Herb Society was on hand to sell fresh herbs and other items.

“This is a wonderful event, I am really glad I had a chance to be here,” said Craig Hanks, a philosophy professor at Texas State University in San Marcos. Hanks spent part of his time at the event as a volunteer, working in the grilled veggie pita sandwich booth.

Olives Olé is a fundraiser for Les Dames d’Escoffier. The international organization of women in the food professions supports women who want to pursue culinary careers. The membership comprises women in health-oriented fields, as well as restaurateurs and caterers, authors and journalists, food historians and photographers, and many more.

St. Philip's College student Damiana Rodriguez slices lemons in preparation for Olives Ole.

In 2009 and 2010, the festival was held at Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard near Elmendorf. In addition to the change in location, the Les Dames group this year also called upon the skills of volunteers from the culinary program at St. Philip’s College. Chef and program director William Thornton’s students did much of the preparation for recipes developed by Les Dames members and presented Saturday at Olives Olé. The students also manned a booth at the Botanical Gardens and helped in the booths worked by the members.

St. Philip's College students on Friday prep vegetables for Olives Ole. From left, April Estrada, Brandon Cole and Dr. Jermane Insane (yes, his real name...).

The second floor of the Campus Center, where the culinary program has its kitchens, was abuzz with activity on Friday. Students dug into the work required to prepare gourmet dishes for hundreds of festival-goers.

Glistening bowls of diced vegetables for Leslie Horn’s Spanish Paella booth were massed on stainless steel work tables, while scents of chocolate poured from ovens baking large pans of Chipotle Brownies.

The students also made relatively quick work of the 200-plus pounds of vegetables required in the grilled veggie pita booth. Here, they sliced lemons, cut colorful bell peppers into strips, peeled onions, prepared mounds of sliced zucchini and crookneck squash and more.

For hundreds of festival-goers, the weather cooperated as well. While morning skies were cloudy, the sun came out in the afternoon. Perfect weather for growing olives, and a great day for an event in their honor.

For more information on Les Dames d’Escoffier, as well as recipes from the event, click here.

After removing the vanilla bean, scrape the seeds from the center of the pod and stir into the milk.

Whenever a recipe calls for orange zest, I look for a good, ripe tangelo. The zest has a more vibrant flavor. The juice does, too. It worked beautifully in this dish.

I modified the following recipe from “The Golden Book of Desserts” to use the directions for making the caramel from “The Joy of Cooking.”

Orange and Tequila Flan

3 cups milk
1 vanilla bean, split in half
5 large strips orange zest
1 cup sugar, divided use
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup tequila, divided use
4 large eggs
4 large egg yolks

Heat the milk, vanilla pod and orange zest in a medium pan over medium-low heat. Bring to a gentle simmer then remove from the heat and set aside. let the flavors infuse for 1-2 hours (or overnight in the refrigerator).

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Rinse 6 (3/4-cup) ramekins with cold water.

To prepare the caramel, place 3/4 cup of sugar with the water and 2 tablespoons of tequila in a small saucepan over medium heat without stirring. Very gently swirl the pan by the handle until a clear syrup forms. It is important that the syrup clarify before it boils, so slide the pan on and off the burner as necessary. Increase the heat to high and bring the syrup to a rolling boil; cover the pan tightly and boil for 2 minutes. Uncover the pan and cook the syrup until it begins to darken. Gently swirl the pan by the handle once again and cook the syrup until it turns a deep amber. Swirl in the remaining 2 tablespoons of tequila and quickly pour the caramel into the ramekins.

Beat the eggs, egg yolks and remaining sugar with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale and creamy.

Remove the vanilla bean and orange zest from the infused milk. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean pod and stir into the milk. Reheat to boiling point. Gradually whisk the hot milk into the egg mixture. Pour the custard into the ramekins.

Place the ramekins in a deep baking pan and fill the dish with enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the custard has set but is still a little wobbly in the center. Let cool to room temperature. When ready to serve, run a knife around the edge of each ramekin and dip into almost boiling water. Turn out onto plates to serve.

Makes 6 servings.

Adapted from “The Golden Book of Desserts,” edited by Anne McRae/”The Joy of Cooking,” 1997 edition

Making flan is easy once you get the knack of it.

When a friend from church announced that she was being deployed to Afghanistan, it was time for a dinner to send her off in style. What would Erica want for her last meal with us?

Boil the syrup until it turns a deep amber.

Tex-Mex, she said. And Tex-Mex she got.

Everyone in the group pitched in with a lengthy array of delicious dishes from beef enchiladas and tacos to fresh guacamole and borracho beans. I decided I would make flan, simply because I had never made it before.

I had certainly eaten enough of this caramel-topped custard in my years, but making it was another matter. I experienced a little trepidation about making it, though, because I’ve failed at making caramel and melted sugar candies in the past. It was time to try it again, if only for Erica’s sake.

The first thing I had to do was find a recipe. I turned to the original “Joy of Cooking” and found one of the oddest recipes for flan I’ve ever seen. The dish in the book is actually called Custard Tarts or Flan with Fruit, and the recipe reads: “Fill Prebaked Tart Shells … with: 1/2-inch layer of Baked Custard. Top the custard with: Strawberries or other berries, cooked, drained apples, drained cherries, peaches, bananas, pineapple or coconut.”

Not a help. And certainly not the flan I remembered that was an egg-rich custard topped with a silky caramel that ran down the sides and flooded the plate.

I thumbed through a number of other cookbooks that were unfortunately no help. “Make a caramel …” would be the full extent of directions offered. Mexican chef Rick Bayless was no help. His new cookbook, “Fiesta at Rick’s,” features a flan recipe, yet it is far from traditional. Instead of caramel, the coffee-flavored “Café de Olla” Flan calls for pre-

Spread the caramel quickly before it solidifies.

made cajeta. Bayless’ introduction offered no comfort, either: “This recipe is an unorthodox approach to flan, since the caramelized sugar — a kitchen terrorist if ever I have seen one — is replaced by store-bought cajeta (goat milk caramel) and the custards are baked in flexible silicone muffin molds for easy removal.”

“A kitchen terrorist”? Oy, what had I gotten myself into?

So, I pulled out the 1997 edition of “The Joy of Cooking.” If you are a cookbook foodie, you know this is the much-maligned edition of the otherwise beloved cookbook, the version that was deemed too hoity-toity for the general populace. Yet the description of how to make a traditional flan, or crème caramel, as the French call it, was written in plain English.

To make the caramel, you had to pay attention. Watch the pot of water and sugar boil, and you’ll do fine, the authors seemed to be saying. So, I gave it a shot. I made sure I had all my ramekins ready and handy before I filled a small saucepan with 3/4 cup sugar and topped it with 1/4 cup water. I didn’t stir the pot but swirled it as it cooked over medium heat. Eventually, the mixture cleared, just as the book said it would.

So far so good. I raised the temperature and brought the mixture to a boil, then covered it for what seemed like an eternal 2 minutes. Any moment, the syrup would boil over, I feared, because the lid was making an angry racket. Then I uncovered it and continued to watch it boil. And watch it and watch it. I swirled it regularly to make the time pass. After a few minutes, the mixture started to get somewhat darker. No matter how long you’ve been watching the syrup, do not let your attention wander at this point. Watch it closely as it gets darker and darker in a matter of seconds. When it’s the color of a fine bourbon, it’s time to remove it from the heat.

Some of the egg custard has spilled into the water bath, but it doesn't matter.

I was so excited to see the syrup turn dark that I almost let it go a little longer on the heat than it should. Get it too dark and you’ll burn the sugar and the caramel will solidify in the bottom of your pan.

Be ready to work quickly at this point. Grab a ramekin and swirl a little in the bottom and slightly up the sides. The book said to get it halfway up the sides, but I wasn’t fast enough for that. The caramel had solidified in seconds, and I had more dishes to coat. So, I divided the lot equally among the dishes and let them set.

At this point, it’s time to make the egg custard, which seems easy in comparison. Yet it is also easy to mess up, if you are not careful. Don’t let your milk get so hot that it cooks the eggs before you bake them in the oven. Use one hand to pour the milk into the egg mixture slowly while whisking constantly with the other. Divide the egg mixture among the caramel-lined ramekins, then place the dishes into a large pan and fill halfway with boiling water. Place the pan carefully in the oven to bake.

I somehow jostled the tray as I was sliding it into the oven and the egg mixture spilled over the sides. It baked to the outside of the ramekins, but it was no great problem, because your guests won’t see the ramekins anyway.

The stress of making the caramel had made me somewhat anxious. My thought was, is all this worth it? Do I really need to do all that?

Though the flans look great just out of the oven, let them chill before eating.

After 50 minutes or so, the custards looked good enough to eat. But I couldn’t. The recipe said to let them chill first.

Plus, my work wasn’t done. I had another recipe to make because of how many would be at the dinner. For the second batch, I decided to try the Orange and Tequila Flan from “The Golden Book of Desserts.” The description of how to make the caramel was a little too basic, so I used the knowledge I had gained from the first recipe and put it to work.

This time there were no problems, no kitchen terrors. The procedure went flawlessly, even though the recipe was a little more involved. Having made the first batch, the second seemed positively easy.

Inverting the flans proved to be simple, too. Thanks to the help of a friend, a knife and a pot of almost boiling water, each serving came out beautifully with that caramel bath covering each plate.

Best of all, Erica seemed to enjoy it. I’ll have to make it again when she comes back in six months. God keep her safe.

Let the flan chill before inverting onto a plate.

“Flan is the pre-eminent dessert of Spain and Latin America, and it is also a favorite in France, where it is known as crème renversée au caramel or, popularly, crème caramel,” write the authors of the 1997 edition of “The Joy of Cooking.”

“Flan is a stiff egg custard baked in a mold with caramel at its bottom. It is turned out of its baking dish and served upside down. The caramel, which melts during baking, forms a lovely syrup that soaks the bottom of the custard and runs down onto the plate. Be aware that the baked custards must chill thoroughly.”

Flan (Crème Caramel)

1/2 cups sugar, divided use
1/4 cup water
5 large eggs or 4 large eggs and 3 large egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole or low-fat milk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Make sure the syrup is clear before bringing to a boil.

Place 3/4 cup sugar in a small, heavy saucepan. Drizzle water even over the top. Place the pan over medium heat and, without stirring, very gently swirl the pan by the handle until a clear syrup forms. It is important that the syrup clarify before it boils, so slide the pan on and off the burner as necessary. Increase the heat to high and bring the syrup to a rolling boil; cover the pan tightly and boil for 2 minutes. Uncover the pan and cook the syrup until it begins to darken. Gently swirl the pan by the handle once again and cook the syrup until it turns a deep amber. Quickly pour the caramel into eight (6-ounce) custard cups or ramekins or a 2- to 2 1/2-quart soufflé dish. Using a potholder, immediately tilt the cups or dish to spread the caramel over the bottom and halfway up the sides.

Whisk the eggs, 3/4 cup sugar and salt until blended.

Heat the milk until just steaming. Gradually whisk the milk into the egg mixture and stir gently until the sugar is dissolved. If you wish, strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl or large measure with a pouring lip. Stir in vanilla. Pour into the caramel-lined cups or dish. Place ramekins or dish in a larger dish and fill half-way up with boiling water. Bake until firmly set in the center, about 40-60 minutes for individual cups, 60 to 90 minutes for a single dish. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or up to 2 days.

To unmold, dip the cups or dish briefly in hot water, loosen the edges with a knife and invert onto individual plates or a large plate. The plate for a large flan must be either broad or deep to catch all the caramel.

Makes 8 servings.

From “The Joy of Cooking,” 1997 edition