My Darling Clementines

Standing by to make citrus reticulata sherbetus

Clementines are that bit of sunshine that gets you through the winter, I’ve decided.

For years, when I’ve spent winter weeks in Paris, I’ve loved that I could buy bottles of deep orange clementine juice at the corner grocery. At home, clementines are everywhere come December, in their cute little crates, making them a great fruit treat to take to a dinner host (surpassed for me only by the pineapple).

I’d bought a crate for myself and had been enjoying daily salads made of sunflower sprouts tossed with clementine wedges and toasted almonds, drizzled with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then a family crisis forced me to be out of town for some weeks. When I returned, the clementines needed to be consumed or we’d have to just say goodbye.

Before the crisis, I’d though I might try making clemoncello–a variation on limoncello with clementines. But I wasn’t in the mood to bother with it. Life had already become too difficult, at least for the moment.  I was exhausted just by the thought of trudging over to the liquor store to buy Everclear.

So I decided to make a simple sherbet with my aging clementines.

Variations on a Snow Cream

A bowl of snowy goodness

I’ve never understood the attraction of snow cream. In my experience, it always turned out a watery, milky mess.  Once I tried pouring maple syrup over snow, the way they did in Little House on the Prairie (the book is one of my major culinary influences, by the way), hoping to get some kind of frozen candy effect. Nothing.

A snowy day in the South is always a holiday.

Over Christmas, my mom was recalling the joys of snow cream in her youth. “We didn’t have ice cream all the time, so it was a real treat for us,” she said. Today, we have plenty of snow to burn, so I decided to set past disappointments aside and give it a go. I mixed sugar and a bit of vanilla bean into milk. I scooped up a big bowl of snow from my backyard. Then I combined to make a slushy. It was pretty decent, sort of a milky granita.

Which got me thinking about other possibilities.  How about espresso and snow?  Or bourbon and snow?  A day of experimenting lay ahead…

Souffle to Lift the Spirits

A souffle to banish the "my car's been towed" blues

I skipped down the steps of the hair salon, tossing my mane and feeling saucy….only to discover that my car had been towed.

Well, that little boost to the spirits was short-lived. Now, sleek hair be damned, I was trudging over to pay off parking tickets I didn’t know I had, then walking to my next appointment, then catching a ride to pay even more money to get my ride back.

By the time I got home, I needed some cheering up, the sort one might get from a quality bourbon, or, yes! A dark chocolate souffle!

Souffles, if you’ve never tried whipping them up, are surprisingly easy to make.

As Mr. DeSpoon can vouch, I’ve been known in restaurants to turn to my dinner companion and say, “let’s skip dessert and go to my house. I’ll make souffle.” Within 30 minutes or so of getting started, I’ll  take a few eggs from the fridge and a couple of pantry items and deliver a precious puffed-up-but-gooey darling.

So, forget a sensible dinner. Tonight’s meal is rising in the oven even as I type. Take that she-whose-name-will-not-be-mentioned and 30 Minute Meals!

Cafe Du Monde Mystery

What is it about this place?

Cafe Du Monde is a destination for any tourist in New Orleans. And yet, I go there. Keep going there.  I like it. Wouldn’t miss it.  How is that? How can that be?

Mysterious, don’t you think?

I realized on this last visit that I’ve been coming to Cafe Du Monde since I was 14, when I made my first trip to New Orleans with my high school French club. I had chocolate milk and beignets back then.

And I was hooked.

The classic: cafe au lait and a plate de beignets

Adult Doughnuts

Their slogan: The Magic is in the Hole

I once worked with a woman from a conservative “think tank” who was outraged that her children were exposed to Horny Goat Weed at the convenience store checkout counter.  “Why should I have to explain that?” she wanted to know.

I recommend that she never take her darling daughters to Voodoo Doughnut.

The official doughnut of Portland

In case you haven’t heard of it, Voodoo Doughnut is a popular destination in Portland, Oregon. It’s also a great example of how you can take your average doughnut, tart it up with a rude name and junk food toppings, then create a sensation.

My friend Adora Adeel and I were working in Portland. She’d brought her daughters along on the trip.  They, like every other visitor to Portland, had been urged to go to Voodoo Doughnut. So we did, on a Friday night around 8:30.

Whoopie Pie Yay

Let them eat whoopie pies!

You go ahead and eat your of-the-moment cupcakes. I’m already on to the next small thing: whoopie pies.

Whoopie pies may be old news to the people of Maine and Pennsylvania Dutch country, but in the South, I still have to explain what they are. Odd, isn’t it, since a whoopie pie sounds pretty danged Southern, right up there with the Moon Pie and Cheerwine.

Despite our being Southerners, my nieces and I have made baking whoopie pies into something of a summer vacation tradition. I first learned about whoopie pies while visiting Rockport, Maine, with my friend Beans Somegood. Beans insisted we stop at a gas station and pick up a couple of homemade ones. “They’re everywhere,” she promised me. And they were.

Whoopie pies, if you don’t know, are two small rounds of  cake (a bit like mini hamburger buns) sandwiched around a cream filling. The story on the name is this: Amish wives packed the easy-to-hold desserts in their farmer husbands’ lunches. When the husbands would find the cakes, they’d cry “whoopie!”  True? Who cares? Let the cupcake top that story, I say.

Paris by Chocolate

Yes, he wrote the book on Paris chocolate

If you’re going to be in this romantic city on Valentine’s Day without your true love, I reasoned, a tour of chocolate shops might help.

If that tour is led by David Lebovitz, the day looks even better.

Lebovitz is a pastry chef who trained at Chez Panisse. He’s written several books, including The Great Book of Chocolate and The Sweet Life in Paris.

What are the sweet spots for a chocolate-lover in Paris? I’d cobbled together a self-guided tour the winter before using Patricia Wells’s A Food-Lover’s Guide to Paris.  I rather smugly wondered if Lebovitz could best my DIY trek.

I’d visited Berthillon for ice cream, then walked to the Left Bank for Debauve & Gaillais, La Maison du Chocolat, and Richart.  I’d finished my mind-buzzing afternoon back on the Right Bank at Angelina—famous for its Chocolate Africain, hot chocolate made by melting a great deal of chocolate in a speck of moo juice.

Not bad, I thought–until I went on a Lebovitz tour. I was a chocolate amateur.

Cake: It’s What’s for Dinner

Turkey cake at Publix

My friend Smilen Seychees and I were talking about Cake Wrecks. Smilen, a photographer, said “I’ve got to send you pictures of two cakes I saw in Atlanta.”

And here's the ham

The cakes were fabulous—and kind of ridiculous.  It’s Thanksgiving and after you serve the turkey, you serve the turkey cake? Maybe for vegans, a ham cake fills a void. But wait, there are eggs and dairy in there. I’m still fuming over the natural foods store checkout guy who glared at my milk, yogurt, and eggs, then snipped, “No one’s going to mistake you for a vegan.”

Yes, I need to let that go. Back to cake. I’m in awe of cakes like these. But after watching Food Network contests, seeing how much people handle those cakes, I don’t want to eat them. My ideal is made-from-scratch, for eating not ogling.  After months of craving, I baked one to start the new year.

Ice Cream Before the Freeze

Fresh mint and other herbs, gathered before the freeze

We’re expecting our first freeze of the winter tonight.  So along with the obligatory pot of soup, today I made something slightly less predictable but reasonable nonetheless –mint chocolate chip ice cream.

So here’s my reasoning: I clipped all my herbs this morning before Jack Frost could beat me to it. And though I like a Mint Julep as much as the next girl, I had more mint than I could julep and still get my work done.  Fresh mint ice cream, I’m thinking, was the only sober option.

I had my first fresh mint ice cream about 12 years ago in San Francisco and tried recreating it as soon as I got back in my own kitchen.

Over the years, I’ve played around with adapting different recipes.  And I added chocolate chips.  Then later, bourbon.

Today, with minimal fuss, I believe I nailed it.  Here’s how.

Dessert Donuts

Donuts at Rustic Canyon Wine Bar

Hold onto your canned biscuits Paula Deen:  fried dough has gone upscale.

I’ve been to at least three restaurants recently that offered donuts on the dessert menu: Local in Dallas, the chic Stephan Pyles Restaurant also in Dallas, and Rustic Canyon Wine Bar in Santa Monica.  At Stephan Pyles and Rustic Canyon, on the hearty endorsement of wait staff, I ordered them.

Both were served with fancy-shmancy cups of hot something for dipping—espresso at Stephan Pyles, hot chocolate at Rustic Canyon.  It didn’t matter.  Gorgeous though the presentations were, the fried nuggets of dough came up short.  “They’re our favorite,” my waiters promised.

But I kept thinking: my white trash donuts are better.  Was I wrong?