Raspberry sorbet using invert sugar

The last time I was at Pizzeria Mozza I sat at the bar, stuffed full of tricolore salad and pizza, unable to stop eating the mango and passion fruit sorbets in front of me. I’ve had Dahlia’s gelatos and sorbets hundreds of times, I even watched them being made when the machine first arrived, but this time I was mesmerized. As I lifted the spoon to my mouth time after time I just kept wondering, how in the world did she get them so creamy?

When I had the good fortune of running into Dahlia at a party just a couple weeks later I asked. The answer, apparently, is simple: invert sugar.

Now I admit to geeking out on the science of cooking now and then—I’ve got a soft spot for Alton Brown’s brand of nerdiness—but invert sugar sounds like molecular gastronomy to me. I just like making things from scratch. Nonetheless I was intrigued. Could this one thing really truly improve the texture of my sorbet that much? I had to find out.

Apparently invert sugar really isn’t that high up on the technical scale. It’s made by taking traditional sugar and using an acid—lemon juice, cream of tartar, citric acid—and heat to break the sucrose into equal parts fructose and glucose dissolved in water. The resulting syrup crystallizes more slowly than regular sugar, giving the product it is added to a softer, creamier texture.

While you can buy invert sugar (try Surfas or Gloria’s Cake & Candy Supply in Los Angeles), I decided I wanted to make it myself. (Did I mention I like to make things from scratch?) I had trouble finding a recipe, though, so I decided to experiment. I combined one cup of water, one cup of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of citric acid and simmered it for about 30 minutes and then let it cool.

With my experimental invert sugar on hand, I rinsed off the tart, sweet raspberries I picked with my family at Underwood Family Farms in Simi Valley and ran them through the food processor and then through a fine sieve to get out all the seeds. Some water, the invert sugar and chill time later I found myself scooping out the creamiest, most luscious-textured sorbet I’d made to date, like velvet across the tongue. Even after a few days in the freezer the sorbet, which usually hardens into a block of ice, stayed soft and scoopable. Next up, sugar plum sorbet…inverted of course.

Raspberry Sorbet

4 cups fresh raspberries
1 cup water
1 batch invert sugar*

*invert sugar – 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon citric acid or cream of tartar, simmered for 30 minutes and then cooled.

Puree the raspberries in a blender or food processor. Push through a sieve with the back of a spoon to remove the seeds. Add one cup of water and the invert sugar to the raspberry puree. Stir and refrigerated until thoroughly chilled (about 8 hours). Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Blueberry Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

“Nothin’ but blue skies for now on…”

Anyone who tells you Seasonal Affective Disorder is a load of crap should be subjected to a Pacific Northwest winter. Eugene, Oregon, where I went to graduate school, layered days upon days of glary, gossamer grey light. It’s not that it rained that much there. Don’t get me wrong, it rained. But the greyness was what was most oppressive, climate-coated  emotional shackles. I prefer the monotony of 300 days of sunshine. Blue skies, blue skies with puffy white clouds, blue skies and wind-whipped icicle cold air, as long as there’s sunshine, I’m happy.

Which is to say, that my least favorite month living in Southern California is June. The hazy, foggy mornings that fall under the umbrella of June Gloom are such a downer. I find it hard to wake up, hard to concentrate, hard to do anything but laze around and watch baseball. And since May Grey seems to precede June Gloom with more frequency than it used to, by half way through June I’m cranky as all get out. And by the behavior of my fellow Angelenos, I’d say it’s getting to them too.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that the shortest route to an attitude adjustment has to be ice cream. Take a crying kid and give her an ice cream cone and those tears quickly dissipate into a dirty-faced smile.  Take a curmudgeony grown-up on a hot, sticky day out for gelato and they’re bound to relax. So last week I decided to take my bad mood out for some ice cream.

Inspiration wasn’t too far off. As I was snapping pictures at the Hollywood Farmers’ market for my monthly contribution to Serious Eats’ Market Scene (which, incidentally, was about June Gloom too—there seems to be a theme here), I tried gorgeous tangy-sweet blueberries from Jimenez Family Farm, newcomers to the market. The navy blue orbs were like nature’s Pop Rocks, exploding with flavor that was surprising for this early in the season. Armed with blueberries, I wandered over to Lily’s herb stand and, sniffing around, discovered some lemon verbena. An herb native to South America, it has powerful lemony scent with just a hint of grassy undertones. It’s a nice complement to fruit salad, makes for a refreshing tisane and, I thought, would add a nice lemon quality to the ice cream without adding more acidity. When I told Lily what I was thinking she raised her dark eyebrows skeptically.

The combination of the fruit and the herb was the delightful, summery remedy I was looking for. And it’s cerulean color, tinged with purple, and its creamy richness would have to suffice for blue skies, at least until July.

Blueberry Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 oz lemon verbena
12 oz blueberries, rinsed
pinch of salt
5 egg yolks

Stir together the blueberries, a pinch of salt and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until the berries start to give up their liquid. Add sprigs of lemon verbena and let steep for about 45 minutes. Remove the lemon verbena and puree in a blender until smooth. Pour the blueberry mixture through a sieve to remove seeds and skins, then add back to the pot and stir in the milk over medium-low heat.

Pour the heavy cream into a medium bowl and set a strainer over it. Set aside.

In another medium bowl whisk your egg yolks until they’re smooth. Slowly pour the warmed blueberry mixture into the eggs, mixing constantly, to temper the yolks. (Do this too fast and you’ll end up with blueberry scrambled eggs.) Transfer the blueberry custard base back into your pot and heat again over medium-low until the mixture thickens slightly. You’ll know it’s ready when you can drag your finger through the batter on the back of a spoon or spatula and it doesn’t run together.

Pour batter through the strainer into the cream. Stir to combine, cover with plastic and chill overnight. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Strawberries from Harry’s Berries@ the Hollywood Farmers’ Market

Sometimes I think I want to just throw in the towel. Writing is hard work, and some days the last thing I want to do, after a full day writing and editing for work, is to sit in front of the computer while the last hours of sunshine and warmth recede into purplish sunsets. To me a bad day writing is like a bad day cooking—you’ve still got something you created in front of you, but do you really want to eat it?

Still, it seems, almost immediately after a string of uninspired days, I’ll be filled with a creative impulse that allows my brain and my ego to shut off just long enough for me to type with abandon. And generally, that inspiration comes from the kitchen, a dish or dessert that rekindles that desire to share, a literary running around with the spoon, eager to feed everyone. I had intended to make a springtime pizza this week complete with a new dough recipe I’m working on in my head. But a succession of incidents left me feeling discouraged, and I never got around to making the dough. As of yesterday, the English peas, fava beans and asparagus for the pizza were still sitting in my fridge, next to the three pints of ruby red strawberries I picked up at the farmers’ market last week.

I love strawberries. In fact, I love them so much, and I ate them with such gusto as a kid (strawberries, strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, strawberry yogurt—if it had strawberry in it, I ate it) that I developed a strawberry allergy. For nearly a decade, those sweet, juicy berries were forbidden fruit. I grew out of the allergy, thank goodness, but to this day I savor every berry like it might be my last. I try not to over-indulge, but the force is strong with me. I can easily eat a pint in a sitting. Surprised that I hadn’t eaten more of them, my wheels started churning.

I learned long ago that pity parties are best with ice cream. So I decided to take advantage of my new loaner, countertop ice cream maker, my semi-sour mood and riff on the strawberry thyme sorbet recipe I’ve been playing with.  (Thanks Adam!) And wouldn’t you know, inside the perfectly smooth scoop of strawberry rosewater sorbet last night was that seed of inspiration that I had been looking for. Now I have two recipes to post!

To spring!

Strawberry Rosewater Sorbet
adapted from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop

1 lb fresh strawberries
¾ cup sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp rosewater
pinch salt
1 tsp vodka

Rinse and hull the strawberries, then quarter them. Add strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, rosewater, salt and vodka to a medium bowl and cover with plastic. Let the strawberry mixture macerate for a half an hour and stir. Let stand for another half an hour. Puree strawberry mixture, then push through a fine-meshed sieve with a wooden spoon to get rid of any pulp or seeds. Chill mixture for 6-8 hours and then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Strawberry Thyme Sorbet
adapted from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop

1 lb fresh strawberries
¾ cup sugar, separated
1 tsp lemon juice
1 oz fresh thyme springs
¼ cup water
pinch salt
1 tsp vodka

Rinse and hull the strawberries, then quarter them. Add strawberries, ½ cup sugar, lemon juice, vodka and pinch of salt to a medium bow. Let macerate for an hour covered with plastic wrap, stirring occasionally. In the meantime, place ¼ cup water, ¼ cup sugar and thyme springs in a small saucepan, heat until the sugar dissolves. Let cool, then pour over the strawberry mixture. Let macerate for another half hour to hour.

Remove thyme spring and puree strawberry mixture. Run through a fine-meshed sieve to get rid of any pulp or seeds. Chill mixture for 6-8 hours and then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Murcotts at Burkart Farms, Hollywood Farmers’ Market, Murcott Olive Oil Ice Cream

The pile of Murcotts at Burkhart’s farmers’ market stand shrank a little this week, the stack looking more like a pile of bright orange tennis balls left behind on the playground than winter’s citrus bounty. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, you can see the stand above, and the selection is far from paltry. But I’m waxing a little poetic this morning about winter’s waning. There are probably only a few more weeks left in Murcott season, and I’m a little melancholy. I almost packed up my sweaters in defiance of Mother Nature, hoping the razzing would prolong the season just a couple more weeks. But it looks like our wedding is going to be next spring, instead of the fall, and I couldn’t afford to piss her off. I may want more Murcotts now, but next April I want warm days and mild evenings and mountains of springtime produce to help execute the dinner menu that’s slowly evolving in my head.

The Murcott, as I mentioned in last week’s post, is a tangerine that deftly walks the line between tangy acidity and breakfast-orange-juice-sweetness, making it exceptionally easy to eat. While I enjoy them in savory dishes and out of hand, it’s the deconstructed creamsicle that Foodwoolf made last Easter that stands out in my mind as the ne plus ultra of Murcott use. So in homage to the fading winter, sticky-fingered childhood memories sitting on the curb eating a rapidly melting popsicle, and my favorite citrus of the season, I decided to preserve the Murcott’s memory by making ice cream.

I was a bit concerned about adding the Murcott juice directly to the cream and milk, imagining the citrus’s acid turning my dairy into Little Miss Muffet’s curds and whey, so I decided to take a slightly different tack. Inspired by the tangerine olive oil Neal and I tried at Pasolivo Olive Oil while hunting for wedding venues up on the Central Coast, I decided to infuse my favorite fruit olive oil with the Murcott zest to extract the flavor. The result? Murcott Olive Oil Ice Cream that layers flavors like delicate sheets of puff pastry melting into each other on your tongue. The little girl in me was jumping up and down with every bite, oohing and ahhing at the sweet tangy goodness, and the grown-up in me couldn’t get over the featherweight creaminess in my mouth. Of course, if you can’t find Murcotts at your local farmers’ market, you can try this recipe with the zest of almost any citrus. Satsuma mandarin? Key lime? Kumquat? Let your palate be your guide.

Murcott Olive Oil Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
¾ cup heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
½ cup fruity extra virgin olive oil
3 egg yolks
1 oz Murcott zest cut into large strips, pith removed

Pour olive oil into a small saucepan. Add the Murcott zest, gently rubbing it between your fingers to help extract the oils. Bring the oil and zest to a boil then turn off the heat and let stand for 1-2 hours.

In the meantime, heat the sugar and milk in a medium saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the egg yolks with a whisk. Slowly whisk the warm milk mixture into the egg yolks to temper them. Return all of the mixture to the saucepan and warm over medium-low heat until thickens slightly, stirring constantly. You’ll know the custard is ready when you can run your finger through the batter on the back of a spoon or spatula and it leaves a clean line.

Pour cream into a large bowl or large measuring cup (at least 1 quart) and place a fine-meshed strainer on top. Slowly strain custard into the cream. Then slowly strain olive oil into the custard mixture. Mix and cover. Refrigerate overnight. Give a stir and then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Serve a scoop of the ice cream with a squeeze of fresh Murcott juice or even candied Murcott zest.

Pulled Pork Sugo with Chestnut Polenta

Let me start first by saying, no, we haven’t set a date yet. Neal and I might be getting married this fall, or we might be getting married next spring. Or maybe we’ll get married fall 2010—though I think I might lose my mind if I’m in planning stages for another year-plus. We figured we’d pick a date once we found a venue we liked. But that’s just it, trying to find a venue has been like Amazing Race meets Survivor. I’ve gotten lost behind the Orange curtain, hit by a cyclist who ran a red light, seen a wedding venue come menagerie and driven all around Sonoma County with Slingblade barking at me from my father’s GPS, “Bear left, cow right.” All this running around is exhausting. And when I get home from a weekend’s worth of talking about tables and chairs and luxury Porta Potties, cranky for having missed my Sunday morning at the farmers’ market, the last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time cooking.

Which brings me to reason number 2,356 that I love my Le Creuset Dutch Oven: No-fuss cooking. Forget the crock pot. This can go in the oven, on the stovetop or even on the grill. It’s sturdy, conducts heat great and almost everything I’ve ever cooked in it tastes incredible. I’ve made carnitas, braciole and Hungarian Goulash. But right now my favorite dish is Pulled Pork Sugo with Winter Greens and Chestnut Polenta Cakes.

The word sugo is Italian for “juice” or “sauce” and it is up there in the country’s food lore with the best Bolognese—cooked slow, different for every family and nonna’s hallmark. Mine started with a recipe from Gourmet and is slowly morphing into something all my own. The dish is hearty and heart-warming, it takes very little effort to make come together—you literally stick it in the oven and walk away for hours—and the flavors have that layered balanced of savory and sweet, texture upon texture. While I love this sugo over chestnut polenta cakes for the nuttiness the chestnut flour adds, and the extra dimension of chew the polenta cakes get, and I like to add sautéed beet greens or Bloomsdale spinach from the South Central Farmer’s Cooperative, it’s also great with firm, dry pastas. The original Gourmet recipe paired it with orechiette, ear-shaped pastas that cup the sauce perfectly, holding onto it like a message from generations long gone. Bigoli, a rough-hewn spaghetti-shaped pasta is another favorite for the dish, and soft polenta goes well, too.

Winter’s running out, which means the opportunities to make this cool weather dish are trickling away with the lingering darkness. But for now I’ll make my sugo and eat the leftovers in the morning, topped with a gently fried egg, a pick through the last of the potential wedding venues on my list, knowing I had to do very little for this great meal.

Pulled Pork Sugo
adapted from Gourmet

2 lbs pork butt or shoulder
salt and pepper
1 large onion, chopped
2 celery ribs, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
11/2 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken stock
½ cup cannellini beans, preferably dried and soaked
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 bunch beet greens, Bloomsdale spinach or other hearty winter green
½ cup Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano, grated

Place rack in the middle of your oven. Heat to 325 degrees.

Pat pork butt dry and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast in a small roasting pan or Dutch oven, tightly covered with foil and covered, about 3 hours, or until the meat begins to pull apart evenly. (This step varies greatly by your oven so the first time you make it, check after an hour.) When the pork is cool enough to touch, shred and set aside.

Pour off all but a few tablespoons of fat. Add the celery and onion and sprinkle with salt and pepper, cooking until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and oregano into combined, then add tomato paste. Cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add wine, broth, beans, vinegar and pork and let simmer, covered for at least 30 minutes. If the sauce gets to thick, add a little water. If you’re pairing it with pasta, use the pasta water.

Wash, trim and shred your beet greens. Heat a sauté pan over medium heat, add olive oil and heat until glistening. Add the beet greens and lower the heat to medium-low. Sprinkle with salt and sauté until wilted and sweet. Remove immediately from heat.

Serve with Chestnut Polenta cakes (below), soft polenta, or dried pasta. Finish with grated cheese.

Chestnut Polenta Cakes

4 cups water
pinch of salt
1 cup coarse ground polenta
¼ cup chestnut flour
butter
olive oil

Note: The trick to polenta is cooking it for a long time, the longer you cook it, the softer and creamier the corn gets. It also makes it much easier to digest. The trick I learned is to have a pot of hot water on the stove, and to slowly add water as the polenta thickens, to keep it the right texture.

To make the polenta, add water, salt and polenta to a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon, adding water as it thickens. Cook for 45 minutes. Add chestnut flour and stir in until it’s full integrated.

Pour polenta into a greased 9×12 dish and let set, then cut into 3-inch squares.

Heat a sauté pan and add a teaspoon each of butter and olive oil. Add the polenta cakes and cook, about a minute on each side until they’re warmed through and they have a crispy skin. Top with beat greens and pour sugo over polenta and finish with cheese. These polenta cakes are also great with fresh tomatoes and sautéed green and a fried egg for breakfast!

J&J Grassfed Beef Tacos

Sometimes money is just not enough. For one of their final projects at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, Jay Shipman and his business partner, Jack Rice, drew up the plans for a sustainable beef business and wrote a grant to get the project funded. They thought it made financial sense, that it was something that would fill a market niche, and the grant organization, SARS, agreed. But life took hold, and the two graduates never put their plan into play. It wasn’t until a few years later, when Jay’s young wife was suffering from the debilitating effects of rheumatoid arthritis, that the plan took flight. By then it was personal.

While conducting research on how to treat her arthritis, an autoimmune disorder, Jay and his wife discovered research that showed eating grass-raised meats and milk, which has a better Omega 3/Omega 6 ratio than corn-fed beef as well as high levels of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), could actually reduce inflammation, prevent chronic diseases including heart disease and arthritis, lower LDL cholesterol and help reduce body fat mass. The problem the couple found, though, in trying to change the way they bought meat, was that there were few grassfed beef options, and those they did find were expensive and inconsistent.

“I grew up on a cattle farm,” says Shipman, “and I wasn’t excited.” This time Jay had personal ownership on raising quality, healthy, grassfed beef to bring to the market—his ideas had changed about what he fed himself, and his burgeoning family. That’s when Jay went back to his college buddy Jack, whose family had been in ranching for a century. Together they became J&J Grassfed Beef.

I first met Jay last summer at the Culver City farmers’ market. I was immediately drawn to the stall, which was sparse, except for a handful of pamphlets, a pristine boxy white freezer, and a young man with wavy, dark blond hair. Jay had the quiet calm of a cowboy and the affable nature of a San Diego surfer, and he talked about the meat in that freezer with pride. It was easy to get excited about all the buzzwords (I had just finished reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, after all): Local, grassfed, no hormones or antibiotics. I brought home a pound of ground beef and made some burgers, and I was hooked.

These days J&J is a real family affair. Jay’s dad, a longtime farmer, helps out on the ranch, and his brother-in-law, Abe, and his wife both help sell the meat at farmers’ markets around the Southland. J&J has two herds of cattle, one that grazes up in Northern California on one of Jack’s ranches, and the other that munches on a mix of grasses down in the Imperial Valley, near the Mexico border. They don’t use specific breeds—their cows are all angus-based, but crossed with other breeds like Charolais and Hereford. They’re moved around the range weekly the old-fashioned way—by horse—and build muscle by eating legumes like alfalfa, which is high in protein, and rye grasses, which is good for the cows’ rumen and full of energy. As the cows move, they fertilize the grasses, making the use of synthetic fertilizers virtually unnecessary. And the grasses they eat are never treated with herbicides or pesticides. This style of ranching, says Jay, eliminates the need for petroleum-based tractors and harvesters and the gasoline that it takes to haul grain all over the place. By pasture raising and finishing the cows, the sun grows the grass, and the cows harvest it.

If their commitment to a natural product weren’t enough, J&J decided to work with a small, local processor, which only runs through about 10-15 animals a week. This helps ensure that the animals are humanely processed and that the beef you’re getting is pure J&J, too. J&J’s beef is then dry-aged, from 10-14 days if it comes form Northern California, and for at least 21 days if it comes from Southern California. And the taste is superlative. Unlike a lot of grassfed beef I’ve found at specialty markets, the meat has great texture and a natural earthy undertone that’s apparent but not overwhelming. It tastes like beef. And it cooks beautifully.

And at a time when financial challenges are making it more difficult to eat your conscience, what really sets J&J’s meat apart from the grassfed beef is that it’s affordable. “We’re a small business, and I’ve got three kids,” Jay told me on the phone recently. “We know how expensive it can be. We’re trying to educate people on the value of roasts. At $5 a pound, you get a cut that’s flavorful and tender, a nice piece of meat. A flatiron steak, at $13 a pound is a great cut for value, too. It’s great for guests.”

J&J is at the Culver City Farmers’ Market every Tuesday, and they start this Sunday at the Atwater Village Farmers’ Market, every other week, until business picks up. You can also find them at Santa Monica on Saturdays, or join one of their CSAs, which they’ll tailor to your family size and meat consumption. If all goes well, maybe we’ll see them at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market soon, too, perhaps with a little nudging of the organizers on the corner of Selma and Ivar.

Until then, enjoy this super-easy (and very tasty, might I add) recipe for taco meat using a cross-rib roast from J&J. This 1.25 pound roast cost me just $6.90 and fed Neal and I a complete dinner with leftovers for a couple of lunches, too. Make your own tortillas and salsa and you’re talking a yummy, kid-friendly, healthy meal for the family for under $10!

J&J Grassfed Beef
www.RangelandBeef.com

Grassfed Beef Tacos
from Jay Shipman, J&J Grassfed Beef

1 cross-rib or chuck roast
1 jar salsa
1 cup beef broth

Place Roast in a crock pot and add ¾-jar of salsa and beef broth.

Let simmer for 5-8 hours depending on your schedule. If needed add a little water to keep meat moist.

Shred the meat and serve over salad or with tortillas and taco makings for a quick taco/burrito night!

Note: If you don’t have a crock pot, don’t despair! I made the tacos pictured above in my Dutch oven. I seared the beef in a little olive oil first, to create a nice brown crust, and then added the salsa and broth. I cooked, covered, at 275 degrees for about 2 ½ hours and the meat was just falling apart. Moist and delicious, these were some of the best tacos we’ve enjoyed in ages. And we love tacos. We topped ours with fresh corn, more salsa, a little crème fraiche and refried beans.

Beignets for Fat Tuesday

People who know me know this: I have very few secrets. Maybe I read too much Dr. Seuss as a kid, or maybe I was interested in psychology too early, but I offer up information about myself like a flower does pollen. So when I recently let it slip that I have an obsession with donuts, I think my fiancé Neal was a little surprised.

I wasn’t allowed to eat many sweets growing up, and there were rarely any in our house. My mom occasionally bought coffee cake or, my favorite, boxes of Entenmann’s Donuts. I loved the mildly spicy powdered cinnamon ones best. They were cakey and just a little sweet, and they would almost dissolve into a glass of milk. When the cinnamon ones were all gone, I would furtively sneak the plain cake ones, thinking no one would notice.

Somehow, most of my donut eating after that was done on the sly—the honey-dipped Dunkin’ Donuts a secret treat from my Aunt, the dozen donuts at Yum Yum when my friends and I snuck out at 2 a.m. in seventh grade, even the pre-shift sugar donut in grad school that kept me bounding around the restaurant like a five year old at a birthday party after both cake and ice cream. No one knew.

When I confessed my secret passion for donuts to Neal I discovered, to my delight, that Neal secretly harbored a love for donuts too!

Since tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, the culmination of Carnival celebrations, I thought I’d indulge my sweetheart and my sweet tooth and whip up a batch of one of my favorite kinds of donuts: beignets. Beignets are a traditional New Orleans treat—deep-fried yeast dough dusted with powdered sugar. The word beignet is French for “fritter,” a word that any donut-shop frequenter would recognize. I like mine rolled in cinnamon and sugar, though they’re also good with a little spiced chocolate.

To find a recipe I turned to my Anne, a friend and colleague who also happens to be a trained pastry chef. She pointed me in the direction of the Village Coffee Café blog, which had this simple (and might I add, fast) beignet recipe a la the famous Cajun chef, Justin Wilson. I cut mine into little bite-sized circles and served them three ways: dusted with powdered sugar, rolled in cinnamon and sugar, and dipped into oozy good dark chocolate. And I saved some dough to make them fresh for the perfect Fat Tuesday breakfast: Fresh beignets and café au lait.

Beignet Justin Wilson Style
courtesy of Village Coffee Café

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1 medium egg
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
¼ tsp vanilla extract
1 quart of oil for deep frying
powdered sugar

Fill a large, heavy-bottomed pot with oil and heat to 375 degrees.

While the oil is heating, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon into a medium bowl.

In another bowl, beat the egg well. Then beat in the sugar, milk and vanilla.

Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just moistened. Turn the dough out on to a well-floured work surface (it will be sticky) and knead lightly. Cut into diamond shapes or cut out 1-inch circles for bite-sized beignets.

Fry in oil, turning once, until lightly browned. Drain on a paper towel. Dust with powdered sugar or roll in cinnamon and sugar and serve hot.

These can easily be adapted to savory recipes as well.

I’ve never really been much of a gamer. My brother and I shared an Atari when we were kids—it was our first and last video game system. While everyone else moved on to Super Mario Brothers, my gaming development was arrested at Pong. Not that there were ever really any games I was interested in playing, frankly. I didn’t like blowing things up, or running away from objects that were trying to blow me up. I preferred playing outside, reading books and decorating cakes.

But video games aren’t just for kids anymore. And they aren’t just about blowing things up, either. I love the Wii because it simulates real, physical action—perfect for rainy days or late-night decompressing. I’ve actually improved my golf swing goofing around on it. What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver is like the Tiger Woods golf game for foodies and junior foodies, designed for the hand-held Nintendo DS. Released last October, What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver is a cooking training game complete with 100 of the Naked Chef’s recipes. Oliver guides you through timed cooking challenges as you chop, whisk and serve his creations. And you have beautiful pictures to guide you. It’s gourmet gaming! And when you’re ready, you can put the DS down and listen to the instructions while you prepare the meal for real. There’s also room to store 100 more of your own recipes, a virtual “test kitchen” to try them out, and a shopping list mode so you can tote your DS to the market instead of that crumpled piece of paper. What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver is almost like getting to learn to cook with a famous chef, minus the sharp knives and the rolling boil of berating epithets that usually fly around a professional kitchen.

I’m giving away four copies of the new Nintendo DS game, What’s Cooking? Jamie Oliver courtesy of our friends at Cookstr. Remember Cookstr? The site is a virtual repository of recipes from chefs and cookbook authors that is fast-replacing a lot of the recipe sites I’ve bookmarked over the years (though, surprisingly, it’s got me to buy more cookbooks, not less). It’s like having Nancy Silverton, Suzanne Goin and Mario Batali’s brains at my fingertips. I’ve found dozens of great recipes on the site, including the one for the crystallized grapefruit zest I made with my grapefruit and black pepper sorbet.

So how do you win? It’s as easy as scrambling an egg. To enter, post a comment here about which famous chef you’d like to learn to cook from. Your comment must be posted by 11:59 PM on February 28, 2009. For an extra entry, Twitter about the giveaway, then comment again here with a link to your Tweet. Winners will be chosen at random. Sorry, US residents only.

Pistachio Persimmon Cupcakes

Do you remember when the cupcake was just a lowly children’s birthday party treat—just yellow Betty Crocker cake with some shelf-stabilized, not-even-sure-if-it-contains-cocoa chocolate frosting? It was simpler then, before New York’s Magnolia Bakery threw down the first whisk in the cupcake wars. There was no sneaking off into the bathroom to eat a Sprinkles carrot cake cupcake where no one could see you lick off all the cream cheese frosting first, no hiding the pink cardboard boxes from your coworkers in the bottom drawer of your desk, no snatching the paper-wrapped delights out of a little girl’s hand saying you just want a bite…

My cupcake conversion began while I was an editorial assistant at Harper Collins in New York City. I had left my job managing Le Zinc, a TriBeCa bistro owned by Karen and David Waltuck of Chanterelle fame, to become an editor. I wanted to cultivate poets and edgy fiction writers over two-martini lunches, but ended up answering phones and writing flap copy for books I had never read and didn’t want to. I struggled to pay my rent with the smallest monthly paycheck I’d earned since manning the Moonbounce on a ranch in the eighth grade, and dozed at my desk after waiting tables until 3 a.m. in an effort to make ends meet. I toiled under the flickering fluorescent lights 12-hours a day, even though I finished my work in six, filing, answering phones and writing rejection letters. And I watched intently as the people I wanted to be, the Editors, shuffled miserably from marketing meeting to marketing meeting, lunched with agents, ate dinner with writers and used vacation days to actually edit the books they bought. I could see my workaholic life unfolding before like an origami prison. In fact, there were only three things I liked about my job—the audio department, my proximity to the cookbook editor’s office, and afternoon forays to Buttercup Bake Shop on 2nd Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street.

I liked Buttercup better than Magnolia, then considered the Holy Grail of New York cupcakeries. Where Buttercup cupcakes were moist and airy, Magnolia cupcakes were sweet and dense, the kind of confection that makes your teeth feel like 80 grit sandpaper. Paired with a hot cup of coffee or a cold glass of milk a Buttercup cupcake could make you forget your boss yelled at you in front of dozens of people for something you didn’t do, forget that you hadn’t written or read anything of substance in months, forget that you were much happier working 70-hour weeks at the restaurant where you were, surprisingly for an industry that’s known for its brutality, treated with some respect.

These days I don’t need a cupcake to wipe out the gloom of my workaday life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t crave them now and then, dream about them even. About a month ago I dreamt about these deliciously light, not too sweet, pistachio persimmon cupcakes. And since that dream I’ve been trying to figure out how to make them.

The first trick was picking the right persimmon, which are in season right now. I generally prefer the Fuyu, which looks a bit like a dusty tomato and doesn’t have the astringency of the Hachiya, another common variety. But I also like it for its firmer texture so pureeing it didn’t seem to make sense. I used pistachio flour from the Santa Barbara Pistachio Company, but you could also grind pistachio kernels to a fine powder on your own. For my first batch of cupcakes I chopped it up and folded it in like apple cake, but they tasted much more like a quick bread. I needed to get more lift out of my batter and I wasn’t quite sure how to do that, so I talked to Alan over at the Cook’s Library and read up on leavening. In the end I decided to increase the baking soda and add another egg. I was also careful to fully cream the butter and sugar and to fold in the dry ingredients by hand, so as not to overwork the cake. On my fourth attempt I finlly hit the jackpot. I iced them with a simple buttercream (using real butter and just a little almond extract) and fresh chopped pistachios (which are deliciously fresh, having been harvested over the past few months).  But be warned: these slightly fruit cupcakes are addicting. I ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner until they were gone.

Pistachio Persimmon Cupcakes

4 large eggs, room temperature
1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup), room temperature
¾ cup persimmon puree
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
¾ cup sugar
½ cup pistachio flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
½ cup toasted, chopped pistachios

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two cupcake trays with your favorite cupcake cups.

In a medium bowl sift together the dry ingredients (except the sugar) and set aside. Then, in another bowl, combine the persimmon puree, milk and vanilla.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. By hand, alternate folding in the flour mixture and puree until just incorporated; be careful not to over mix.

Fill cupcake cups about three-quarters full and bake in the center of your oven about 20-25 minutes, until lightly golden and a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.

Let cupcakes cool before icing with a simple buttercream or cream cheese frosting and roll in toasted, chopped pistachios.

Vietnamese Cinnamon

Share a meal with Diane and Todd from White On Rice Couple and you know you’ll learn something or eat something you’ve never tried before you leave. So when Diane excitedly handed out mottled grey branches at a dinner party a few weeks ago and told us to nibble on them, I went with it. I bit, rabbit-like with my front teeth, slowly breaking down the small, fibrous piece, mixing it with my saliva as instructed. Slowly my mouth filled with a sweet heat. The branch I was eating tasted exactly like the cross between an Atomic Fire Ball and Red Hots. I was struck at first by the spicy, lingering flavor, then by the idea that Fire Balls and Red Hots actually tasted like anything in nature.

What we were eating was real Vietnamese cinnamon, Diane told us, brought back from a recent trip to see her family in Vietnam. Often called Saignon cinnamon, the name is a misnomer since the trees it comes from grow in the highlands of central and northern Vietnam, nowhere near Saigon. It comes from c. loureiroi, an evergreen related to the laurel and is very closely related to cassia, which is the kind of cinnamon we usually get here in the United States. (There is also something called “Ceylon cinnamon,” also known as “true cinnamon,” that is lighter in color and subtler in flavor, but that’s another post.) Its amazingly robust flavor is why Vietnamese cinnamon has long been prized for its high essential oil content. The pieces Diane and Todd proffered were still slightly soft, like they had just been peeled from the tree, with a fullness of flavor I had never experienced with any other cinnamon in powdered or stick form.

Fortunately for me (and the other guests present that night), Diane and Todd had packed their suitcase full with enough Vietnamese cinnamon to share with friends. I left with four foot-long pieces of bark that night and kept biting off little pieces on the drive home, mulling the flavor over in my mouth and my mind, infusing every possible mental recipe with the spice. It would be perfect for baking, of course, and in curries, and for the Mexican Day of the Dead treat Calabaza en Tacha, candied pumpkin. But all of these dishes were like Cream or the Yardbirds, both great bands made better by a common ingredient: Eric Clapton. I wanted my Vietnamese cinnamon to be like Eric Clapton, just as good on its own.

And so I turned to my stand-by culinary media of late—ice cream. A simple mixture of cream, milk, sugar and eggs would be my Vietnamese cinnamon delivery system. And I set out to conjure of the recipe below.

The Vietnamese cinnamon ice cream was subtly spicy and deliciously refreshing. The flavor was almost nutmeg-like at first, though after a few spoonfuls the warmth would build and simultaneously cool because of the frozen cream. Perfect on its own, with the last of the season’s figs roasted with olive oil, or with next month’s pumpkin pie, Vietnamese cinnamon ice cream is simple staple worth keeping in your freezer this holiday season.

Vietnamese Cinnamon Ice Cream

2 c whole milk
3/4 c sugar
pinch of salt
Five 3-inch pieces of Vietnamese cinnamon
1 c heavy cream
5 egg yolks

Heat the sugar, milk, salt and cinnamon pieces in a medium-sized saucepan. When the mixture is warm and the sugar is dissolved remove from heat and cover. Let steep for an hour.

In a medium bowl, beat the egg yolks. Reheat the milk mixture and remove the cinnamon sticks. Slowly pour the milk mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Then pour the custard mixture back into the saucepan. Warm over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until thickened and coats the back of a spatula.

Pour the cream into another bowl and place a strainer over it. Pour the custard through the strainer into the cream. Refrigerate overnight. Freeze according your ice cream maker’s instructions.