For Leslie Lampert, the owner of Café of Love in Mount Kisco, apples offer an opportunity to harness local flavor and create something new. “Each variety of apple offers something different—different texture, acidity and personality,” Lampert stresses. Comparing ingredients to a chorus of individual yet synchronized dancers, Lampert says the goal of layering flavors is to create a unified statement. “That’s the essence of cooking,” she says. She applies this philosophy to a duck dish in which apples enter in four different forms: The duck is paired with apple cider-spiked polenta, sautéed apples and beets, pomegranate-apple gastrique and fresh julienned apples. Apples pair naturally with duck, just as they do with pork, because the meat is rich and fatty—the fruit’s tartness creates a harmonious juxtaposition of flavors. Here, sweet gastrique, earthy beets and fresh apples lend freshness to the duck’s rich canvas of flavors. Lampert designs all the menu items at Café of Love—if she is the conductor of the orchestra, chef Hector Coronel is her first violin. Coronel has been with Café of Love since it first opened and uses French techniques to implement Lampert’s visions. He sautés duck breast for the dish and makes confit duck legs that are tender and moist.