Blender

While I was in college (along with 49,999 of my closest friends at the University of Texas at Austin), I was one of the many nonvegetarian fans of Mother’s, an iconic vegetarian restaurant in Hyde Park, where I’d pretty much always get a smoothie and a huge spinach salad with this pungent dressing. Besides cashews, the main ingredient is tamari, a richer version of soy sauce that’s traditionally (but not always) made without wheat. Decades later, Mother’s is still going strong, reopening after a 2007 fire and still serving this dressing (bottling it for retail sale, even). Thanks to the glories of Google, I was able to track down a recipe for it from Rachel MacIntyre, a personal chef in Austin who blogs at thefriendlykitchen.com and used to work at Mother’s precursor, West Lynn Cafe. I lightened it a little bit, but it’s as addictive as ever. I toss it onto spinach and other salads, of course, but also baked potatoes, broiled asparagus, steamed carrots, and more, including Charred Asparagus, Tofu, and Farro Salad (page 144).

This one is for the beet lovers out there. It’s also for the not beet lovers out there. I am not a beet lover, but this ganache is delightful.

Believe me, I had never even had celery root, let alone become infatuated with it, before we started experimenting with root vegetable ganaches. But, in case you haven’t got the point by now, you can trust me on all sweet things that are delicious. I’m not trying to throw a nasty curve ball your way.

This mother recipe is a breeze as long as you follow the steps and understand when ingredients are added and why. Melted together, the white chocolate and butter create a basic bond. The addition of glucose, needed for the texture it imparts, then breaks that bond. Cold heavy cream comes to the rescue, emulsifying the broken bond and forming a new, stronger bond. The pumpkin puree and seasonings are added last for flavor and additional body. Note that you must use a hand blender in this recipe, and for the other ganaches in this chapter.

We made this dessert because of our love for Thai tea sweetened just the way the Thai do, with sweetened condensed milk. We got so many compliments on it that we left it on the Ssäm Bar dessert menu for over a year, which we almost never do. To this day, we still get requests for it. While the ingredients here are off the beaten path of your average pantry, they can easily be found in Chinatown or a Latin market or at amazon.com.

This recipe is simple yet magical. It will make you look like you paid $30,000 for a fancy culinary education when you dip the guava sorbet in it. It must be made right before you are going to use it, or it will set hard in your fridge, and trying to melt it back down and get it back to the perfect temperature will be the bane of your existence—the opposite of setting yourself up for success.

At our East Village Milk Bar, we have two big-boy soft-serve machines that churn ice cream day and night. To keep ourselves entertained and to keep customers interested, we change the flavors every six weeks, basing each flight of flavors around a theme. This recipe was part of a suite of ice creams flavored liked baked goods, and, true to its name, it tastes just like cheesecake. The twist with it and our key lime pie ice cream was crazy good!

We use cake scraps in our kitchen for just about anything. Really. Even ice creams, where they add body, texture, and depth of flavor. We put chocolate cake scraps in the red velvet ice cream because we want it to taste like red velvet cake. We also like to take it too far and swirl red velvet ice cream with cream cheese frosting ice cream.

One of our favorite things to do is to make a frosting with an unexpected flavor. For this one, we puree graham crust down to a liquid form and then paddle it into whipping butter with a little seasoning.

This recipe is similar to the grapefruit pie’s Grapefruit Passion Curd (page 68), but with slightly different ingredient proportions. It also makes a larger batch so there’s enough to fill the chocolate chip cake.

You have to plan ahead for this one. Buy bananas that are ripe and then let them get nearly black/brown before accepting them as the rrrrrripe bananas needed for this recipe. Another great option: at the bakery, we peel just ripe bananas, freeze them, and let them finish developing flavor in the freezer for 2 days or up to 2 weeks. Said rrrrrripe bananas are the difference between having your banana pie tasting like banana Laffy Taffy and the most delicious, deep banana cream pie ever.

Passion fruit puree can be found in Latin grocery stores and online at amazon.com.

Cereal milk is made. Panna cotta, conquered. Easy, right? On to ice cream. Scoop the ice cream into your favorite pie crust (see page 59 for our Cereal Milk Ice Cream Pie), sandwich it between your favorite cookies (mine is the Cornflake Chocolate-Chip-Marshmallow Cookie, page 55), or scoop it into a bowl and decorate with your favorite breakfast cereal and jam or jelly.

Like the original, fruity cereal milk ice cream can be used to fill any of the pie crusts in this book or in a milkshake (fruity cereal milk blended with fruity cereal milk ice cream will change your life). We like it best straight out of the freezer, or scattered with Fruity Pebble Crunch (page 52) on top.