Vanilla

I recently happened upon a sand dollar cookie stamp at Der Kuchen Laden, Frederickburg’s topnotch kitchen store, and snapped it up, thinking what a great hit beach-themed cookies would be during Gulf Coast getaways. For kids summering on Bolivar Peninsula, a day at the beach meant a fistful of sand dollars, sugar shells, and colorful beach glass as smooth and opaque as Texas honey. Sand dollars were the hardest to find because the disk-shaped marine creatures habitually burrow into the sand. We’d swim out to the sand bars and dig for dollars by burying our feet a few inches into the sand and sliding along until our toes hit the critters’ hard internal shells. We’d pluck them out of the sand and haul them home. Popular legend holds that sand dollars are really mermaid’s coins. If I’d heard that as a little girl, I surely would have gathered even more. This recipe is a variation on the common shortbread cookie, without eggs or other leavening, because, according to the cookie stamp people, the rising of the cookies obscures the pattern left by the stamp. Makes sense to me. Although it is expensive, I like to use vanilla bean paste because it has little flecks of vanilla seed in it, giving the cookie a sandy, beach look. It is available at kitchen specialty stores and at many upscale grocers.

When I spent a day making jams with Stefano Frigerio, a chef-turned-food-producer, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. Frigerio, who sells his Copper Pot Food Co. jams, sauces, and pastas at Washington, D.C., farmers’ markets, resisted set-in-stone recipes and instead cautioned me that the most important thing is to taste, especially if you don’t want the jam to be too sweet. In the true spirit of preserving, use only fresh, local, in-season berries for this jam. (There’s really no reason to preserve something that you can get all year-round, so why use supermarket strawberries?) Without any added pectin, this jam has a slightly loose consistency, which I like, given that my favorite use is to stir it into yogurt.

You must use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment to make this filling. It only takes a minute, but it makes all the difference in the homogenization and smooth, silky final product. I repeat: a hand whisk and a bowl or a granny hand mixer will not produce the same results. Also, keep the mixer on low speed through the entire mixing process. If you try to mix the filling on higher speed, you will incorporate too much air and your pie will not be dense and gooey—the essence of crack pie.

When we were in the Spanish Harlem rental kitchen for the summer of 2010, our cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookie just wouldn’t bake up right in the busted convection ovens we were forced to use. So we stopped our crying, stopped making the cookie for a while, and took the opportunity to bring a new cookie into creation. The confetti cookie combines the technique of a snickerdoodle (cream of tartar makes all the difference in telling an average cookie apart from a snickerdoodle-inspired one) with the flavors of funfetti cake mix.

I am neither brave nor bold enough to make just a chocolate chip cookie. Everyone’s mom or grandma makes “the best” chocolate chip cookie. And every one of those chocolate chip cookie recipes is different. So, out of respect, we dared not compete. Instead, we made a delicious chocolate chip tribute cookie—one of our most popular cookies—by accident. In the Ko basement one day, Mar overtoasted the cornflake crunch for the cereal milk panna cotta. She was pissed. I was pissed. But we refused to let it go to waste. I was already well versed in making a cookie out of anything left in the pantry, and we needed a dessert for family meal anyway. So we made cookies with the cornflake crunch, and we threw in some mini chocolate chips, just to make them appealing to the cooks in case the overtoasted cornflakes were a bust, and some mini marshmallows, because we were eating them as a snack, and why the hell not. It was just family meal. The cooks freaked. They requested the cookies for family meal every day after that. And so the cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookie was born—love at first bite and a shoo-in on Milk Bar’s opening menu.

My friend Damon Fowler, chef and author, taught me the importance of using freshly grated nutmeg. The difference is remarkable, so please don’t substitute ground nutmeg from ajar. Grate the nutmeg on the fine side of your grater, being careful that you don’t include a little knuckle! Fresh nutmeg can be found right next to the ground nutmeg in your local supermarket.

Wonderful but very rich, eggnog is best served in small portions. Though good hot or cold, I always serve it hot in the winter. This can be made a day ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator.

This soufflé uses the pastry-cream method as the base. Pastry cream (crème pâtissière) is a very stable custard thickened with flour or cornstarch, and it provides an excellent foundation for dessert soufflés. Vanilla is the bean of a variety of tropical orchid. Use the whole pod if possible to allow the tiny seeds to flavor and speckle the dish. As a substitution, use 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract.

When my grandmother became ill with cancer, I thought my heart would break. I never knew anything could hurt so badly—the pain actually seemed to make it impossible to breathe. I was living in New York, working in Connecticut, and would fly home to see her as often as possible, at least every other weekend. When I was home I would make her this soft, rich custard that she loved. The cause of death on Meme’s death certificate is actually starvation, not cancer. The cancer prevented her from swallowing, and the only solution was to feed her through a tube, something no one wanted, or needed, to face. It was a cruel irony for a woman who made so many meals with so much joy and love.

I’ll admit that my favorite selection from the shiny white Good Humor jalopy that cruised our neighborhood was simply called Toasted Coconut: vanilla ice cream on a stick, coated with lots of sugary-sweet coconut. On the last fateful day that I’d ever see the Good Humor man, the bully next door decided to spray him with water from a hose as he slowly circled our block. He beat a hasty retreat and never came back. Being blackballed by the Good Humor man made that the worst summer of my life. I don’t know what happened to the neighborhood bully, but now that I’m an adult I can have Toasted Coconut Ice Cream whenever I want. And I do. This ice cream is pictured marbled with Mango Sorbet (page 108).

Many apartment buildings in Paris, including mine, have a gardienne. Although their official duties are accepting deliveries and overseeing maintenance, they’re equally famous for being a steady (and remarkably reliable) source of gossip about your neighbors. My gardienne is Madame André, who has young children, so she was always quite happy to accept ice cream while I churned out recipes for this book. Of all the ice creams I gave her, this was her absolute favorite, and she went into Gallic raptures whenever she saw me for days and days afterward. I should probably recommend her for a job as my publicist too, since shortly thereafter I got a reputation in the building as being L’Américain qui fait des glaces, toujours! (the American who makes ice cream, all the time!). If you’re a rice pudding lover, this is the ice cream for you. And be sure to spread the word.

Do you know how tin roof ice cream got its name? Neither do I. Nor does anyone, it seems. I’ve tried to find out but have always come up empty-handed. I do know that it’s one of my favorite ice cream combinations, and I guess I need to be content with that. Tin roof sundaes are traditionally made of vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate sauce and a scattering of red-skinned Spanish peanuts. I couldn’t resist using chocolate-covered peanuts instead and folding them into the ice cream, where they become embedded between layers of fudge ripple.

I really like frozen yogurt, but only if it’s homemade. So don’t expect this to taste like the frozen yogurt that squirts out of the machine at the mall. That kind is loaded with so much other stuff that any similarity to real yogurt is purely coincidental. Homemade frozen yogurt has a delightful tanginess and is a bit lighter than traditional ice cream. I choose to keep mine pure, relying on good whole-milk yogurt to provide much of the flavor. If you do want to make a dense, richer frozen yogurt, see the variation below.

The Aztecs were such trendsetters. Although it’s become fashionably chic, from Soho to South Beach, to spice up chocolate with a bit of chile pepper, in fact it’s a custom that goes back more than a thousand years. And I wonder if, even back then, there were paparazzi stalking luminaries in Central America, hoping to catch them in spicy situations. When your guests taste this decadent, zippy chocolate ice cream, you’ll understand what all the fuss is about—and perhaps develop a few overzealous followers yourself.