Coco-Luxe

Mmmm...chocolate.

On what turned out to be a sweltering day in the city, J and I found ourselves in the Haight Ashbury, inappropriately dressed in thick sweaters and thirsting for a cold drink. I stumbled into Coco-Luxe, a sparse (excuse me--minimalist) but cute chocolate shop specializing in treats made just across the bridge in Sausalito. We shared a mint truffle shake and sampled some mocha truffles. Everything was really tasty.

The mint shake was thick enough to taste like chocolate but thin enough to still be thirst quenching, it wasn't too sweet, and it had a flavor that I can only describe as chocolatey, but in a musky, complex, savory way only adults like. It was definitely not a shake for Hershey's or Ghirardelli lovers. The compostable cup and paper straw were cute touches. The truffles have an especially silky center; and to me, they melt at exactly the right speed. If Coco-Luxe becomes more widely available, I might just become a real fan.

Tropisueno

More happy hour updates!

Tropisueno is one of newer restaurants along the revamped Yerba Buena Lane between Market and Mission Streets. Of of the handful of restaurants, it's the cheapest but maintains a chic, upscale vibe.

Happy hour specials take up two pages on the bar menu, but the highlights include $5 margaritas with two shots of El Jimador blanco and plenty of fresh lime juice, $3 beer, $2 taco truck style tacos, $3 fish tacos, and a bunch of other stuff we didn't order (fresh guac, salsa and chips, huge quesadillas, and more). The fish tacos were, hands down, the best I've had in SF and better than most in LA. I'm definitely going to be back for more (and for photos, naturally).

Popovers

Popovers are one of those charming breakfast foods that are impressive and yet deceptively easy to make. They are probably the easiest way to get hot bread on the table on short notice, and I think they’re a great way to get your toes wet if you’re thinking about baking bread but feeling a little wary of the whole process.

This recipe was named The San Francisco Chronicle’s best recipe in 1993, and it was pretty foolproof and easy.

For 10 popovers

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs (1/4 cup total)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon melted butter or vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. While the oven is pre-heating, put a well greased cupcake tin on top of a baking sheet and let it heat up in the oven. You can also use popover tins, but who owns those?

While the oven is preheating, whisk together all your ingredients until the better is very smooth. Let it sit for a few minutes, then whisk it again. You can add also pepper and/or herbs at this point. When the oven is hot, carefully open the door and slide the baking sheet and cupcake tin out. Fill the cups with batter to about half full. If you’re not sure what half is, less is more for popovers. The batter will at least triple in volume as it bakes!

Slide the baking sheet back into the oven, close the door, and DO NOT PEEK for at least half an hour. At the 30 minute mark, check on the popovers. If they look like they are forming a crust, carefully stab each with a long knife. This will allow some steam to start escaping from the interior of the popovers. Bake for about five to ten more minutes, until they are golden brown. Turn the oven off, open the door a little, and let the popovers cool down a little in the oven. This, along with stabbing them earlier, will keep them from collapsing. You can eat the popovers as is,, top them with butter and jam, or slice them open and fill them with meat, cheese, or other fillings. The possibilities are endless.

The interior of the popover is similar to that of a choux, or cream puff. It's soft and almost pudding or custard-like when hot, and flakey and bready when cooled down. And it's mostly air, so feel free to indulge in more than one!

Truffled Gorgonzola Pasta

White food is never much to look at, but if the Internet had a smell function you'd be going nuts right about now. I guarantee it. Gorgonzola cheese and white truffle oil is one of those pairings that always makes my mouth water. It's a classic pairing, like lamb and cumin or rosemary and chicken.

For 1 pound of pasta (3-4 servings)

• 1/4 pound of a very soft, very ripe gorgonzola
• 2 teaspoons white truffle oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• salt and pepper to taste

Cook and drain pasta, reserving a cup of the pasta water. Combine the hot pasta, milk, and cheese in a pan over medium heat, stirring until the cheese is melted. Cook until the sauce thickens to the desired consistency. Alternatively, add a little extra milk or pasta water if the cheese looks clumpy and won't melt completely. Pepper to taste (you won't need much salt because the cheese is salty). Enjoy! This dish is a real treat for those who like pungent pasta. I served it with a side of braised lentils, tomatoes, and kale.

Grand Cafe Happy Hour

Happy hours are popping up all over SF as restaurants make a concerted effort to get patrons in the front door during these tough times. Grand Cafe may just have some more of my business in the future! Every night of the week they feature an entree plus wine or beer for $18, and on Monday the bar menu is half off. That means you can get fifty cent oysters, $6 steak tartare, $10 steak frites, or $5 mussels. Sounds pretty tempting to me! I had a peach infused bourbon cocktail tonight just to kill some time and quell some cramps, but I'll be back!

European Mish Mash

We had a little bit of France, Ireland, and Italy in our dinner tonight. I know, weird. But who's being picky? It was all very delicious.

Sliced duck confit (more on that later) on a bed of relatively healthy colcannon. Colcannon is usually full of butter and heavy cream, but my version is mostly cabbage and potatoes with a lot of 2% milk so it's healthy but hearty.

It was kind of a carb heavy dinner (have I mentioned I've been starving every day this week? Running 2.5 miles and hiking up s 70 degree incline for another mile today did not help) but we had sandwich rolls spread with a homemade mix of tomato sauce, basil, garlic, olive oil, and a little butter. This was an explosion of flavor that I recommend everyone try before the summer produce is all gone.

Chocolate Almond Milk

I told S about my recent insatiable food cravings, and she made a great suggestion: chocolate milk! All the volume of a dessert, plus nutrients, minus all the sugar. Plus, it's been sunny so a post lunch icee was the perfect snack.

For this, I combined about three tablespoons of cocoa powder with just enough hot water to melt it. Then I put it in a blender with half a cup of ice, a cup of almond milk (or regular milk), and a dash of almond extract. I didn't add sugar because almond milk is slightly sweet, but a teaspoon of sugar would be very nice in this.

Breakfast Sandwich

I've woken up starving every single day this week. So far I've tried to keep things under control with oatmeal or yogurt in the morning, but today I said to hell with it and made myself a breakfast sandwich.

Guacamole, lightly fried ham, and an egg over easy in all its gooey glory. What's scary is that I felt full after eating half of this monster, and ten minutes later I was hungry enough to eat the rest of it. Oh well, at least it's cool enough today to go for a run.

Buckhorn Grill

Met up with J for lunch before getting my flu shot today. Yup, it's that time of year, boys and girls!

This is a Little Buck sandwich. Four ounces of sliced tri-tip with thick bands of grilled onions, with au jus and a container of mustard and horseradish. Yum! It's still just high end food court fare, but the sandwich was meatier than I thought it would be, and very pink and flavorful. Unfortunately, I didn't move the onions aside before taking a photo. You'll just have to believe me!

Apo Apo

Mochi lovers and shaved ice lovers listen up! Hie thee to Apo Apo in Rowland Heights (in the Little Bean/Newport Seafood/Happy Family plaza on Colima and Azusa).

I've always loved shaved ice made with what's known in Taiwan as black sugar. In its best form, black sugar is barely processed cane sugar that is both wet and very dark brown. It has a deep burnt caramel flavor while at the same time not being as saccharine as sugar. The concept has been catching on. And while I'm not sure if places in the US are actually importing black sugar or just cooking down brown sugar, I'm happy that black sugar shaved ice is gaining in popularity.

This weekend, after a morning in the sun, I found myself at Apo Apo for the first time, sitting in front of a gorgeous bowl of shaved ice. Apo Apo's biggest selling point: they do something called hot n' cold ice! The mochi poured into the middle of the mountain of ice is hot, so when the bowl's brought out it's actually steaming quite fiercely. The mochi eventually cools down, but while they're warm the pieces are extra soft and delicious.

The price for a bowl of ice, black sugar, and condensed milk is $3.50, plus fifty cents per topping. My sister and I shared a bowl with pink and white rice mochi, purple and orange taro mochi, peanuts, and red beans. Next time I would add grass jelly, because Apo Apo makes their own mochi instead of using canned.

There was also a bowl of mango shaved ice at our table.

And a plate of fresh mochi rolled in crushed peanuts and sugar ($4). These were amazing. If you order them, eat them as soon as they arrive at the table because they're hot and best before the steam from the mochi makes the peanut powder soggy. I haven't had so much soft, chewy happy making fresh mochi in a long time. Even though I think the black sugar at Life Plaza and the mango snowflake ice at 301 Class are better, Apo Apo wins the blue ribbon for mochi creations.

Bang San Thai

Today, I revisited what I consider an under appreciated local gem: Bang San Thai on Jones near O'Farrell. A lot of Tenderloin restaurants develop cult followings despite their seedy digs, but for some reason Bang San's never caught on. I suspect they might suffer a little from consistency (as in, they have one bad cook or occassionally suffer because a cook is sick or something). However, when they're on their game, they are really phenomenal. I hate mediocre, overly sugary Thai food, which there's a lot of. But good Thai food has really unique, dare I say zingy, flavors that my mouth isn't used to. Sweet, sour, salty, spicy, all working in balance with a variety of textures--what's not to like?

One of my favorite dishes, and one by which I judge Thai restaurants, is tom ka gai soup. A good version should be creamy but not thick or gloppy, have just a hint of heat and sugar, and have a nice tang to it. Chicken, mushrooms, and tofu should all be present in my perfect version. And the broth, like the one at Bang San, should have a savoriness and depth that comes from using a rich herbed chicken broth as its base. Poured voer some rice, it's one of my favorite comfort foods.

Nothing from Nothing...

A lot of times, a pretty decent dinner can be made from nothing.

This looks like a lovely bowl of noodle soup with vegetables, fish balls, and duck innards. But in truth, it was a desparate attempt on my part to use up every last bit of fresh food in my refrigerator. I think I did okay.

Let's Be Frank

Despite San Francisco's recent cycle of thunderstorms and heat waves, I've been trying to keep in the habit of running outdoors a few times a week. What works best for me is determining how many miles I want to run that day and then finding a tempting destination roughly that distance from my starting point.

Today's winning destination was Let's be Frank on Steiner, roughly 2.5 miles from my apartment. Not only do they have tasty all beef franks, I had a coupon. Two dogs for $6 instead of one for $5! I win. For those who want to give these dogs a try, dogs are $8 for two on Tuesdays. There are a handful of choices: all beef, bratwurst, turkey, spicy Italian, and veg.

I brought a dog home to J. Let's Be Frank serves their extra long dogs with grilled onions and a side of homemade bread and butter pickles. At the condiments stand you can get grainy mustard, relish, and some really tasty saurkraut.

Dukk Bok Gee

A few weeks ago, I realized it's been months, maybe even a year, since I've made Korean rice noodles. Which is crazy, because it's one of my favorite foods.

Don't worry, I fixed up a great big pot tonight, after referring to some of my previous posts for reminders about how to get it right.

I tried something new today: chol noodles. I read about them a few weeks ago, and a couple of friends said they are fantastic additions to dukk bok gee. And they were right! These noodles are sort of like spaghetti, but are more chewy and bouncy. They added a nice texture to the thick chewiness of the rice noodles.

I usually like my dukk bok gee with some slices of pork or pieces of fish cake, but I had neither today so we went vegan. For two meat eaters, we do tend to go completely vegan fairly regularly. A saucy noodle dish with plenty of kimchi and gochujang is one of those things that can survive meatlessness pretty well. Plus I had a ton of vegetables tonight: zucchini cut into wide ribbons, spinach, red bell peppers, shimeji and shitake mushrooms, onions, green onions, garlic, and napa cabbage kimch. It was a great meal, with plenty left for tomorrow.

No-Knead Bread

A great loaf of bread is a thing of beauty. I've had really bad luck with bread lately, partly due to my reluctance to throw out a batch of old yeast, and partly due to my curiosity about what turned out to be some pretty bad recipes. Last night, I decided to kick my losing streak to the curb with Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread, which created quite the sensation in Mark Bittman's The New York Times column a few years ago.

As expected, the bread turned out perfectly. This is probably the most perfect loaf of No-Knead bread to come out of my oven. Not only is it beautifully rustic, it's strongly scented with rosemary and sage from my family's house in LA. It's taken me awhile, but I'm ready to write down the recipe for myself in case the NYT article disappears from the internet. I've added adjustments, which were mentioned in a follow-up article by Bittman.

• 430 grams or 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting (I substituted in about a cup of whole wheat flour)
• 350 grams or 1 5/8 cup tepid water
• 1 gram or ¼ teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 gram or 1¼ teaspoons salt (overwhelming consensus is that this bread needs more salt, especially if you use kosher salt. Two to two and a half teaspoons is a good amount)
• Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed (I always use flour because I don't like hard cornmealm, and wheat bran tends to burn)

Combine everything but the cornmeal/bran in a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until it all comes together in a shaggy mess. There's no need to scrape down the bowl or make the mix even. Just make sure there aren't lumps of dry flour. At this point, you can add things like a handful of fresh or dried herbs, chopped olives, toasted or raw chopped garlic or onions, nuts, raisins, whatever you like. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel, and leave for 12-24 hours.

After about 12 hours, your dough will look like a very wet mess. It's up to you to determine when you want to continue to the next step.

A good rule of thumb is this: if the glutens have formed long strings, you're ready to move on. Tilt your bowl. If the dough pulls away and you can see some stringiness clinging to the sides, that's perfect. If the dough moves as one mass or just site there you need to let the dough rest longer.

This part gets tricky. Rub a lot of flour into a silicon mat, then sprinkle generously with more flour, cornmeal, or bran. You can do this in a bowl or on a towel too. Whatever you do, make sure you also cover your hands in plent of flour. Scrape the sticky dough onto the mat, then using your floured hands quickly fold the dough over itself a few times. You will probably feel like this is a futile task, because the bread will retain its shape of a giant blob no matter how much you tug at it. Just try to get it into a circle or an oval. Dust the top generously with flour, cornmeal, or bran. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour. If you remember to, come back from time to time and lift the plastic gently off the dough and then put it back. This will help prevent sticking at the end.

Forty-five minutes into the second rise, turn your oven on to 450 degrees and put in a 5-9 quart pot with a lid. Cast iron, enamel, or Pyrex are best, but any oven safe casserole or pot will work. The smaller your container, the taller and rounder your bread will be. A 9 quart pot will result in a very flat, wide loaf. I used a 5 quart ceramic casserole this time and loved the shape.

Tricky step: when your oven and pot are heated, carefully remove the pot from the oven and take off the lid. Take the plastic wrap off your dough, then carefully but quickly flip the dough into the pot. There will be some sizzling, and the bread might all end up on one side of the pot if you have bad aim. Shake the pot a little, but don't worry. Usually the bread's shape evens out as it rises. Put the lid back on the pot, put the pot back in the oven, and don't open the oven door for half an hour. Then remove the lid from the pot and bake the bread for 20-30 more minutes, until the outside is golden brown and the internal temperature hits 190.

Remove the pot from the oven and put it on a heatproof surface. When the bread is hot enough to handle, put it on a rack to complete cooling. DO NOT cut into a hot loaf of bread fresh from the oven! Not only will you probably burn yourself, you will end up with gummy bread. Bread needs to cool down for at least half an hour so some moisture can escape and leave behind airy goodness. The really cool thing about No-Knead Bread is that as the bread cools, you can hear the crust crackling. It sounds delicious.

It's really best to let the bread cool for an hour or more after you take it out of the oven, but I confess I cut into it after waiting only 30 minutes. A little butter is all this bread needs, though of course the possibilities are endless.

Stir Fried Tomato and Eggs

I promise, the next post won't be about tomatoes. Cross my heart.

This dish isn't much to look at, but it's easy comfort food that I've been eating since I was a kid. I don't know why it took me so long to realize I should give it a try with heirloom tomatoes. I guess it's usually something people make with tomatoes that aren't too good! The Chinese name of this dish is tomato fried eggs, so it's pretty obvious what the two ingredients are.

To make a big plate, slice two tomatoes into very thin wedges. Some people like to use chunky tomatoese, but I don't like the outside edge of my slices to be thicker than a quarter inch. Sautee the tomatoes over medium heat in a tablespoon of olive oil, and add a sprinkling of salt along with about a teaspoon of sugar. Yes, sugar! Stir the tomatoes until they are cooked through and the juices that come out of them have started to evaporate off. Then push the tomatoes to the side of the pan so there's a doughnut hole in the middle. Put a teaspoon of oil in the middle and pour in two beaten eggs. Let the eggs cook for five or ten seconds, then scramble them without touching the tomatoes too much. When the eggs are more than halfway cooked, stir the tomatoes back into the center and combine everything evenly. Top with some black pepper, and eat over rice.

Note: there are a million ways to do this. My mom liked to scramble the eggs halfway, set them aside, use the same pan to cook the tomatoes, then add the eggs back in at the last second. I've seen other people do the opposite. I think my mom's way makes for the neatest presentation, and I do it if I have to serve it to other people. But my way really gets the tomato and egg flavors to combine and makes for a great sauce to mash into rice. Try it both ways!

Tomatoes Three Ways

Today's lunch was grownup versions of a classic American combination: tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich.

The soup was easy. All I did was heat up a quart of the tomato sauce I posted about yesterday, and stir in half a quart of lowfat milk once the soup was heated through. The key is to not cook the milk too long, and to whisk it as it goes into the sauce so the milk doesn't curdle in the acidic sauce. A little salt and pepper with the addition of milk is good too.

For dipping in the soup, we had grilled cheese sandwiches with sliced heirloom tomatoes. There's just something about dunking a melty sandwich into a bowl of creamy soup that works for me.
And, just to really get some overkill on the tomatoes, we had a bowl of raw tomatoes too. In case you couldn't tell, the $15 case I got is really going far around here. I've made more than three quarts of sauce and we've had raw tomatoes almost every night since Wednesday. And we still have at least half a dozen to go! Luckily, neither of us is really tired of tomatoes yet.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Cold, foggy weather after a morning of thunder and lightening storms kept us indoors all day today. We Californians can't deal with the scary wet weather! J and I started some really cool kitchen projects though, so stay tuned. I'll post Deborah Madison's roasted tomato sauce first, because it's truly a keeper. I never knew tomato sauce from scratch could be so delicious or so easy; I'll never make sauce from canned tomatoes again (at least not during the summer). I understand buying pasta sauce in a jar because it's a great pantry item for a 10 minute meal. But if you have time to make sauce from canned tomatoes, you have time to make sauce from raw tomatoes!

To start, take 2-3 pounds of tomatoes and slice them into fairly large chunks. It really doesn't matter how big as long as your pieces are roughly the same size. Add whatever you like. I threw in a sliced onion, five cloves of crushed garlic, some bay leaves, salt, pepper, generous tablespoons of dried sage, oregano, and thyme, and drizzled plenty of olive oil over the whole mixture. Bell peppers, basil, parsley, mushrooms, or whatever else you like in your sauce can also go in at this point. Make sure everything is evenly coated in olive oil, and put into an oven heated to 375 degrees. The temperature isn't crucial, so feel free to pop it in the oven with something else.

After an hour or two, your tomatoes will start to shrivel up and look charred around the edges. The more you dry them out, the more concentrated the flavor of your sauce will be. You can decide if you want more of a fresh, raw tomato taste in your sauce or if you prefer a thicker, more concentrated flavor akin to that of tomato paste. Let the pan cool, remove any bay leaves or hard herb stems, then pour everything into a blender. Make sure you scrape in any juices, olive oil, or bits that collect at the bottom of the pan.

Tada! Easy tomato sauce without any stirring, straining, or worrying about something burning on the stovetop. The color of the sauce will vary depending on what tomatoes are used, but don't let the orange color trick you into thinking this is inferior to a deep red sauce. If anything, this is better! Deborah Madison, you are a genius. This sauce is so delicious I've made it three times this week with nary a fail. I ate one quart, froze one quart, and tomorrow I think I'll make part of the last quart into cream of tomato soup. Because the flavors are so bright and fresh, this sauce was best lightly warmed through with pasta instead of being further cooked in a complicated sauce. But some peas, basil, or Parmesan are a simple and delicious addition to what has become a go-to recipe for me.

Humphry Slocombe and Flour + Water

Girls' night out! After a nice (read: hungrymaking) workout with N this evening, we headed to the Mission to pick up her sister and have some good eats. Unfortunately, it was too dark for food photos, so use your imaginations!

By the time we were ready to eat, it was 8:30 and we were in danger of missing Humphry Slocombe's closing time of 9:00 p.m. Not to be deterred, we decided to change things up and eat dessert first. I had the McEvoy Ranch olive oil ice cream, which was super delicious with a strong citrus flavor and maybe tiny bits of orange peel in it. N had the hibiscus tea sorbet, which was zingy and refreshing but not tart enough for me. C had ancho chocolate, which was a really deliciously rich chocolate with just a hint of pepper. I also had a taste of the peanut butter curry, which was mostly just an extremely dense peanut butter ice cream. Tasty, but not something I could eat a whole scoop of. I think next on my list to try is salt & peppa, but I've been warned not to try the Jesus Juice (red wine + cola, ew!). For $2.25 for a very large "kids" scoop, I think Humphry Slocombe is a real winner. I'll definitely be back.

With cones in hand, we lucked out with parking right around the corner of flour + water, one of the newest pizza joints to hit the city. While the Margherita pizza had a great, smoky, crackly crust with nice dough flavor, the real winner of the night was the lavender smoked duck breast appetizer with fresh figs, pine nuts, raisins, and arugula. The de-fatted crust was super crispy, and the juicy duck was perfect with the sweet figs. The special of the night, a dumpling-like pasta filled with slow-cooked pork, was tasty but really heavy. It was probably not smart for us to order it after eating ice cream. Our very light dinner for three ended up being $17/pp after tax and tip, so all in all we had a lovely girls' night out for under $20 a head. Hopefully it won't be the last great meal of the weekend--here's hoping everyone else out there has happy eatings too!

Waffled Sandwich

I've decided a lot of things taste better when they're cooked in a waffle iron. Today's lunch was a sandwich of whole wheat bread, hot salami, heirloom tomatoes, and Beecher's Marco Polo cheese which has large black peppercorns in it. The side was a simple sliced tomato and cucumber salad with some salt and balsamic vinegar.

Blueberry Buckle

Mmmm...blueberry buckle.

I have had intense sugar cravings for a few days now, so I decided to give in and bake a blueberry crumble. In the process I used up some frozen blueberries that've been begging to be eaten for months now. The recipe I used from chow.com turned out like a light and fluffy coffee cake.

I'm not sure what makes a buckle a buckle, but that's the name I got off the recipe and that's what I'm calling it. Maybe it's named for the topping, which is a crackly topping made of butter, sugar, flour, and walnuts.

Kalbi and Cucumbers

As those nearest and dearest to me know, beef is my favorite meat. I'm almost always willing to eat beef for dinner, but once in awhile the craving is more than whimsy driven. We ate a lot of seafood this weekend. And while it was tasty, I noticed I was getting really hungry but not really being satisfied by anything. My brain couldn't even really hone in on what I was craving, until I thought about beef.

Sure enough, three slices of short ribs later and the gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach went away. I blame a series of fairly brutal workouts a few days ago. Bodies need repairing, and nothing gets the job done better than protein (plus a little garlic marinated cucumber salad on the side to balance out the flavors).

El Super Burrito

El Super Burrito is a fairly large taqueria smack on the corner of Sutter and Polk. I've passed by it almost every week but finally went in today.

J and I shared a shrimp cocktail ($10.99). It's not full of different kinds of seafood like the kinds in East LA, but there were plenty of shrimp in it and the shrimp they used were big and crunchy. The sauce itself was a little on the sweet side, but still pretty good.

I had a carne asada hard taco with rice and beans ($4.50). Pretty standard. Everything could have used a little more spice, but at that price I don't expect anyone to be carefully gauging the herb levels in my food.

J had a lengua (tongue) taco and a tripe taco. I hd a piece of the tongue and it was extremely tender. Again, these were very lightly spiced and could have used more seasoning. They were $2 each, which made me long for the days of $1 taco truck tacos in LA. But still, not bad at all.

We washed everything down with a large cup of cantaloupe agua fresca ($2.50). Nice bright fruit flavor, though I have no guarantee any fresh fruit was used. All in all a decent but not fantastic meal. El Super Burrito is fine, but I think I like the two smaller taquerias closer to our apartment better.

Tequila Passionfruit Sorbet

A warm long weekend calls for a treat. But at the same time, a heavy dessert doesn't always hit the spot, so today we had a passionfruit sorbet. I didn't want to make a big batch or actually whip out the ice cream machine though, so I made a small sorbet-slushee in the Vita-Mix. If you don't have a super powerful blender, you'll have to settle for a slightly more watery concoction that's equally tasty.

For one cup:

• 1/3 cup frozen passionfruit pulp
• 3 tablespoons simple syrup (or other sweetener)
• 1/2 shot blanco tequila (feel free to use rum or vodka)
• 1/4 cup ice cubes
• 1/8 cup water, plus more just in case
  

Combine everything in a blender, and pulse until everything is broken up. Turn off the blender, stir everything, and then turn on again. If you have a blender that you can gradually turn higher and higher, it will work better. With the blender on, drizzle in more water until the mixture just starts to loosen up and blend freely. Because this is a thick, almost solid frozen dessert, you want the blades to slowly churn and break up the ice. Turning it up to high won't work because a pocket of air will form around the whirling blades, whereas slowly turning blades will allow the mixture to fall back down around the blades and get blended. If you want, pop the mixture into the freezer for awhile. I suspect it would get too hard after awhile, but an hour or two while you eat dinner would make it a perfect sorbet.

Note: my mixture has seeds because I also added a few cubes of frozen fresh passionfruit. It's pretty to look at, but I think a seed-free sorbet would taste better. Juice from half a lime or lemon would also be a nice addition.