Citrus

Fortunately, I once worked with pastry chef Mary Canales. Unfortunately, our time together lasted merely a few hours. I was ending my tenure at Chez Panisse, and she was just beginning hers. But I liked her instantly, and we kept in touch. Years later, she decided to open an ice cream shop, Ici, in Berkeley, and I was thrilled when her ice creams became legendary in the Bay Area. Here’s the most popular flavor from her vast repertoire. Panforte is a Italian cake, a Tuscan specialty that’s so dense and delicious that it’s practically a confection. And like the best panforte, Mary’s ice cream has the perfect balance of spices, toasted almonds, and candied orange peel.

While navigating my way through the Barcelona train station, I was suddenly surrounded by a squadron of Spanish police, guns drawn, barking orders at me in Spanish. Aimed and ready, they gestured to me to open up the suspiciously overstuffed valise I was dragging. I carefully unzipped my bulky suitcase, revealing rows and rows of peculiar brown paper-wrapped bundles, all packed neatly in rows. An officer demanded that I unwrap one of the packages. I slowly tore the paper off the first one and held it high for all to see. The policemen let down their guns and had a good laugh. My crime? Smuggling home blocks of crispy Spanish turrón. This ice cream duplicates the taste of turrón with crispy almonds, honey, and a touch of candied orange, and it can be made, without raising any suspicions, in your ice cream maker at home.

When I first started to travel to France regularly, the French, when they found out I was American, would rhapsodize “J’adore le Philadelphia!” It took me a while to realize they were enthralled with our cream cheese, which is indeed worthy of international acclaim. They’ve adopted cheesecake too, calling it le gâteau fromage or simply le cheesecake.

This ice cream is for those who are nostalgic for those orange-and-cream-flavored popsicles. If you miss that taste, you’ll discover it again here.

A favorite Indian snack, batata vada are thinly coated by a batter made with garbanzo bean flour, which fries up crisp and then settles into a delicate chewiness. Inside, the cheery yellow potato filling (colored by turmeric) speckled by mustard seed bursts with flavor from chile, ginger, lime juice, and fresh herbs. Each one is a small eating adventure in trying to parse the individual elements while enjoying the synergistic whole. You can make the experience more fun with plops of chutney. Called bondas in Southern India and batata vada in Northern India, these dumplings are beloved all over the country. In Bombay, they are shaped as patties and served in a bun as a hamburger-like sandwich called vada pao. Garbanzo bean flour (called bésan in Hindi) is available at Indian grocery stores and health food markets. It has numerous uses in Indian cuisine, as a thickener as well as in batters for fried snacks.

Rice roll fillings are often precooked and reheated through steaming, but this popular one involves a filling of raw beef and orange zest that requires steaming to complete the cooking. For efficiency, professional Chinese cooks typically add the raw beef to the rice sheet about 30 seconds into cooking, but that is a difficult technique. Filling cooked sheets and then steaming them to cook the beef is easier and the results are the same. You do not have to use the baking soda in the filling, but some Chinese cooks use it as a meat tenderizer and to lend a silky texture. The beef should be hand- or machine-chopped so it isn’t too finely textured and clumpy (see page 158 for guidance).

Here is another of those very simple, very refreshing, and delicious dishes using lentils. This is a Lebanese recipe, but it could just as easily come from Greece, Turkey, or anywhere in the Middle East. Serve warm or cold with pita, feta, and olives.

This classic Greek soup is one of my favorites when I want to “lighten up” from a gustatory standpoint. It makes the perfect chicken soup substitute when you are just not feeling up to snuff, or a good light dinner when you’ve had enough of the restaurant-and-fine-dining circuit. It is traditionally made with chicken broth and small bits of chicken, but I think the meatless version yields even truer, clearer flavors. A touch of ground cumin adds yet another dimension to the flavor.

I make this marmalade in the dead of winter whenever my collection of confitures is running low, since, happily, good pineapple is always available. One pineapple yields a lot of jam—another thing to be happy about. The best way to judge if a pineapple is truly ripe is to take a whiff. If the fruit is ripe, it will smell strong and sweet and the flesh will be sweet, too. Using the old wives’ tale method of plucking a leaf from the top just means you’re going to get strange looks from the people in the produce department. And if you do it in France, where I live, you might even be reprimanded.

I often serve small glasses of vin d’orange as a warm-weather aperitif. Anyone who enjoys Lillet is likely to enjoy this fruity and slightly bitter fortified wine. But be careful—it’s quite potent. To stay true to its humble Provencal roots, I use very inexpensive vodka and dry white wine. I’ve even made it with wine from a box—with excellent results!

Figs have two seasons—the first figs appear in late summer and the second batch shows up around mid-autumn. If you miss the first one, not to worry—the second is usually more prolific and the figs are even tastier. Don’t be put off by fresh figs with skins that are split and syrupy; those are the ones that taste the best. For jam making, I like black Mission figs, which are the most common variety, but this recipe will work with others as well. Figs are high in natural sugar, which means that the jam cooks relatively quickly.

Thin strips of soft-candied citrus peel enliven the flavor of desserts and look beautiful as garnishes for cakes, fruit compotes, sherbets, custards, and, especially, Champagne Gelée (page 114). Although it’s convenient to have a jar on hand to use on a whim, they’re quick and easy to make.

There’s no reason to ever buy candied orange peel since it’s so much better when you make it at home. I can’t bear throwing away anything remotely edible, so when I have rinds left over from juicing oranges or tangerines for sorbet, I always make a batch of candied peels and serve them alongside. Finely chopped bits of candied orange peel enliven a batch of cookies like Gingersnaps (page 199) and add an unexpected, but delicious, twist when tossed into a fruit dessert such as Apple-Blackberry Crisp (page 101). This candied orange peel is thicker and more substantial than Soft-Candied Citrus Peel (page 253). In addition to being used an an ingredient or garnish, it can be enjoyed on its own as a confection.

This sauce bridges two seasons—it marries the citrus fruit of winter and spring’s rhubarb. Its delicate color and bright flavor makes it the ideal accompaniment to Ricotta Cheesecake with Orange and Aniseed (page 55).

Even when they’re in season, fresh apricots aren’t always easy to find, so I turn dried apricots that are available everywhere and at any time of the year into this delightfully tangy apricot sauce. I always use California dried apricots, which have a much deeper flavor than imported ones, and I highly recommend you do the same.

I make this sauce with blood oranges when they’re available because I like the deep, vivid color their juice adds. One of my favorite and simplest of desserts is a platter of chilled navel and blood orange slices scribbled with this tangy-sweet sauce and sprinkled with chopped pistachios. But this sauce is also good drizzled over a neat slab of Gâteau Victoire (page 32) or a serving of Ricotta Cheesecake with Orange and Aniseed (page 55).

With the addition of sprightly tangerine juice, this twist on traditional butterscotch sauce goes very well drizzled over Buckwheat Cake (page 44) paired with orange or tangerine sections instead of the cider-poached apples, or spooned over Pâte à Choux Puffs (page 232) filled with Caramel Ice Cream (page 144) and topped with toasted or candied nuts.

These cookies are like supersized biscotti, but, unlike biscotti, they’ve never gained wide acceptance outside their native Italy, probably because their name is a bit more of a challenge to pronounce. Thankfully, they’re just as easy to make, and every bit as good.

It was as if someone hit the switch one day and all of a sudden, a flash of electric-green took Paris by storm. You couldn’t walk past a pâtisserie without seeing something sweet and shockingly green standing out among the more traditional-looking pastries in the lavish window displays. Although the deluge of green tea desserts spread far and wide throughout the city, the best can be found at the shop of Sadaharu Aoki, a Japanese pâtissier who wows normally blasé Parisians with his classic French desserts made with a twist. He incorporates ingredients like black sesame seeds and sweet red beans into his pastries, creating a marriage of flavors that would’ve stunned Escoffier. I came up with my own recipe for these flavor-packed almond teacakes flecked with a bit of salt and sesame seeds because I was certain that the staff at his shop was tired of wiping my nose prints off the windows.

These lacy cookies have an exotic appeal thanks to the tiny sesame seeds inlaid in the surface, as well as the spoonful of sesame oil in the batter that adds a toasty sesame scent. Black sesame seeds make the tuiles especially striking. They’re great paired with tropical fruit desserts such as Passion Fruit–Tangerine Sorbet (page 159) or Tropical Fruit Soup with Coconut Sherbet and Meringue (page 112). Like the Pecan-Butterscotch Tuiles (page 214), they can be shaped into tubes or cookie cups.