Here’s the thing: I made some green chile posole from the The Homesick Texan Cookbook, and it was fantastic. In addition, TNS was featured on the Saveur site today, and now the unwashed throngs are clamoring for my “searing honesty,” “punchy sarcasm,” and “delightfully dark humor.” I mean, I assume there’s clamoring going on; I’m not really paying attention.

Problem: I am tired. Bone tired. It is 1:30AM, and I have been going non-stop since this morning. I’m certainly punchy right now, but not in a good way. And so the dilemma: stay up late and vomit out some words to sate the barbarians at the gate, or get some sleep and hit reset in the morning? Such are the quandaries that plague the more well-known among us; schlubs like you should count yourselves lucky that you don’t have these kinds of high-level problems.

If you know me at all, you know there’s only one right answer in the epic battle of sleep vs. hard work. If you don’t know me I’ll give you two guesses, but I bet you’ll only need one.

I may decide to sit down and write when I get up at 4AM to take a bright green shit but I may not, so I’ve inserted some placeholder haiku. Yes, I know that’s a massive cop-out and no, I don’t really care right now.

I invite you to share your best haiku celebrating Mexican food in the comments. Bonus points if it’s written in Spanish.

Hot chile peppers,
you should come with a warning:
Don’t touch your membranes.

Chile blasphemer,
burnt then eviscerated.
No freedom for you.

Small splotch of hot pink
is from our new kitchen chairs.
I totally win!

Hominy kernels.
Lye-soaked maize, why not? That’s how
I’d treat extra corn.

The weather forecast
calls for flames from the heavens.
Soup was a bad choice.

Might as well add cheese
to counteract the chiles;
equalize the crap.

I would recommend either Mountain Dew Live Wire or, if you still have a can in your Dew Cellar, a 2008 Voltage. Also yes, that is sausage wrapped in bacon (courtesy of Flickr member alaczek).

Here’s the thing: time for weeknight posting is likely going to be severely curtailed for the next couple of weeks, except for the Smackdown. I WANT to tell you why, but I can’t. Yet. Just know this: at the end of this period of trial and travail, life will either be Remarkably Better or Stunningly Fantastic. Either outcome is fine with me.

I know well the fertile imaginations of the TNS commentariat. To give you something to mull, here are some of the things I MIGHT try to do over the next two or three weeks:

• Take the plunge and start a family traveling band. Of course, as this is my family, we would be a heavy, melodic stoner-doom outfit; none of this Edelweiss bullshit. Our name will be “Pyrotechnic Flock Disruption” and our low-end will be so powerful it will loosen your bowels at 50 meters, so wear dark trousers to our shows.

• Fulfill a lifelong dream of living abroad and getting to spend more time with my family by moving to Italy and opening a school to teach idiomatic English to future exchange students. Intensive sessions will include “Intermediate Sarcasm Deployment” and “Carlin’s Big Seven: Making Them Your Own.”

• Study my ass off to re-take the New York bar exam – I let my 2004 results expire, because I am a genius – so I can sell my soul to a big firm for long enough to sock away a pile of gold bullion, at which point I will move to a small beach house and spend my days taste-testing every variant of Celestial Seasonings tea and writing crackpot letters to local weekly newspapers.

I’ll even give you a hint, because I like you so much: it’s not actually any of these things, so get to gossiping amongst yourselves like the biddies you are; I look forward to monitoring the speculation in the comments.

A final PSA: if you’ve arrived here via Saveur, allow me to answer your questions:

1. Yes, I pretty much am that much of a jerk.
2. Yes, I do actually write about food from time to time.
3. No, I don’t think I’m all that and a bag of chips, although my response to this question might vary based on the brand and flavor of the chips in question.
4. No, I don’t think that cursing on my blog makes me a less creative writer.
5. Yes, I am silently judging you right now. So are all my readers, because that is How We Roll.

Welcome!

Right? I mean, that bottle of wine you picked? Not only does it NOT complement the jellied chicken and tarragon terrine at all, but a 1989? I give 1989 reds to the dog, and even he doesn’t drink them. All you’re doing here is embarrassing yourself and frankly, it’s a little painful.

Instead, give your gracious host or hostess something useful in the kitchen. To wit: salt made from tears of sorrow. You could opt for salt made from tears of anger or laughter, but I find that nothing adds the tantalizing but unidentifiable complexity that really makes a dish hum like tears of sorrow.

But then I saw this photo, in which an ailing Kirk Douglas heroically leaps to the stage to stop Melissa Leo from bludgeoning Angelina Jolie with an Oscar statuette during a live broadcast, and I had to go with it. At least, I assume that’s what’s happening here.

Oh, the humanity.

You have perhaps noticed that I have not produced any foodstuffs this week, and I’ve come to explain myself: you see, on cloud nine, there’s no need to actually eat food. You subsist on a steady diet of champagne and euphoria.

Why the euphoria? Because after eight years of doggedly working at a job that I knew didn’t make me happy but seemed like the most I could hope for, my last day is July 26th. Even better, my last day is July 26th because I’m pursuing  exciting new opportunities and not because I’m finally being fired for thinking that yoga pants and Birkenstocks are appropriate business attire.*

Here’s where you come in. Without your support, comments and encouragement over the past 4+ years, I wouldn’t have had the confidence in my writing and my voice to try and reach for anything bigger than what I had. You helped me see that there’s a power in what I have to say and how I say it, and that I can get people to sit up, listen, connect and engage. There are no words I can string together that would adequately show how deeply, incredibly thankful I am for that. It’s certainly not something I ever expected from this little project, but now I can’t imagine things being any other way. Ever since I was five, all I wanted was to be a writer. Now, thanks to you, I am. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, that’s major.

Now I’m all sincere and teary and verklempt and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT. I love you all, you crazy assholes.

Please know that if provided with adequate time and financial resources, I would take each one of you out to dinner and a movie and let you get to third base afterward. A few special people would be allowed to go all the way; you know who you are.

TNS readers: Great readers, or THE GREATEST readers? I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

*Dear New Employer,

Unfortunately for you, I still kind of think that.

Best,
Your Most Comfortable Employee

Granted, these “What’s for dinner” dice are run-of-the-mill six-sided dice, which are admittedly not as appealing to the aspiring Dungeon Master as their twenty-sided brethren, but still: when you can work a die roll into meal preparation, you’re four-fifths of the way to getting your Level 5 Chaotic-Good Rogue Eladrin of a spouse/partner/SO/roommate/etc to start making dinner for a change.

So okay, you’d have to keep a pretty wide variety of foods around to make use of the full set, but (1) you should be doing that anyway and (2) you’ll gain upward of an hour to read the new Hilary Mantel book about the life of Thomas Cromwell while your Eladrin tries to figure out how to break down fava beans without resulting to an arcane transmutation spell.

It’s a win-win. At least, it’s a win-win until you shit out the mass of undigested vegetable fiber from improperly-shelled beans, but I’m sure we can all agree that’s a small price to pay for fun with dice.

You may want a parent or guardian to do the scrolling for you and tell you when you can open your eyes again. I’ll wait a minute while you go get him or her.

. . .

Ready? Okay, SCROLL!

Yeah, that’s a rabbit. Brian’s been wanting rabbit for a while, so I obliged this Thursday with rabbit sausage from Cindy Pawlcyn’s Big Small Plates.

There’s really no good way to photograph a dead bunny. It was either a photo of the rabbit curled into the fetal position or this one, which, while admittedly kinda lewd, I still found to be less depressing. As between the Morton’s Fork of Snuff Film Thumper and The Velveteen Fetus, I went with my gut. Hey, I TOLD you to scroll.

I made Brian do the main rabbit breakdown; I just diced up the boneless meat to ready it for the FoPro. Along with the rabbit, the sausage also has chicken thighs and pancetta, presumably to up the fat content a bit. Like I always say, why eat just one kind of animal when you can eat the whole barnyard? Maybe I can use this recipe as the jumping-off point for a truly all-American dish. We’ll take the rabbit-chicken-pig sausage, stuff it into a butterflied turkey breast, wrap it in strips of prime beef, deep fry it and cover it with cheese sauce. Ooh, maybe we should inject the turkey with ranch dressing to keep it moist. Thanksgiving reinvented!

(You may think I’m being hyperbolic. But we live in a world in which people bake whole pies into cakes, then frost them and sprinkle candy on top and put them out on the dessert table next to the Oreos stuffed into chocolate chip cookie dough and used for ice cream sandwiches, and these are thought to be good ideas. At least my idea is Atkins friendly, if you leave out the ranch.)

Once all the meat is diced into half-inch cubes, it goes into the freezer for a while before being ground. I don’t have a meat grinder, so I used the FoPro, pulsing until I had a course grind. FYI, frozen bunny is really hard to clean out of a FoPro. Along with the meat trifecta, the sausage is flavored with golden raisins, pistachios, fennel, cumin, garlic and brandy; the add-ins don’t get processed with the meat, just folded in.

Willingly adding the raisins was a big step for me, because I normally hew to the belief that cooked raisins are the devil’s spawn and I didn’t want to ruin a whole batch of rabbit sausage. Especially a batch made from a D’Artagnan-brand rabbit, also known as the “Why does a fricking rabbit cost so much goddamn money? Rabbits are EVERYWHERE?” brand. But it’s D’Artagnan, so I assume the cost pays for the stylish pied-a-terre in which the rabbits are housed and the petit fours they raise them on.

I wasn’t sure the finished sausage mix would hold together well – which was necessary, as I can’t be bothered to make sausage that requires casing – but with enough mashing, it did. I formed a bunch of small patties for dinner for the two of us, then rolled the remainder into a log for possible weekend grilling.

While the patties chilled, I made a batch of cheese grits for the fried grit cakes that were to accompany the sausage, mixed up some horseradish mustard and threw together the pepper relish topping.

It’s a good thing I read cookbook instructions so carefully and saw that the peppers for the relish were supposed to be roasted before being julienned and tossed with onion, basil and a simple vinaigrette. Oopsie! Thank god this is a cookbook-specific foible, and not one that applies to the rest of my life.

If I may switch gears for a moment, I have an announcement to make. Recently, I was flipping through an Avon catalog while taking a shit at my in-laws’, and noticed that they’ve introduced a line of “breakthough” skin creams called “New Genics.”* (Avon, not my in-laws.) No, really; they did. I guess the Avon higher-ups are committed to the idea that we live in a post-racial society.

Anyway, it inspired me to start my own series of goods and services. For example:

• Tired of the signs for your upcoming garage sale always falling off the telephone pole outside your house no matter how much tape you use? For longer-lasting hold, try our new heavy duty Pole Tacks!
• To curb excessive drinking, my new liquor store allows a maximum purchase of three bottles of spirits; we call it the Three Fifths Rule.
• Hey, parents: is little Joey having trouble focusing at school? Our summer program will improve his performance. Enroll him in Concentration Camp today!**

I might write Avon a letter and see if they want to back any of these. What? They’re only offensive if you believe in all that politically correct crap, am I right? I mean, we elected Obama, so it’s time to discard any pretense that oppression is still a relevant social force.

*Hi, Avon? Breaking it up into two words does not make it better.

*Okay, that was off-sides. But I live on the fourth floor now, so good luck throwing a brick through my window.

Right, I was making sausage. Here it is, perched on its bed of grits and accented with the not-roasted-pepper relish.

I’ve never felt very strongly about rabbit one way or the other; I grew up eating it because my Italian family often cooks it, but I can take or leave it. But I will say that if you’re going to eat rabbit, this is a damn good way to eat it, raisins and all. The fennel gave it a definite sausage feel, but the raisins and pistachios lent sweetness and texture that made it more interesting. I can understand how roasting the relish would have been an improvement, although I was fine with it the way it was. Brian was a HUGE fan and announced that he likes rabbit MORE THAN CHICKEN, and if you know Brian you know what a sea change that is. We smoked the leftover sausage over the weekend – also great, although I think the meat mix could have used a little more fat for the smoking process.

Unfortunately for Brian, we’re never having this again unless we find a cheaper place to buy dead bunnies. It was good, but it wasn’t THAT good.

(Eventually, I called it a night and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.)

I’m on vacation this week. I guess you could call it a “staycation,” except that that particular portmanteau makes me want to throw hot milk into a kitten’s eyes.

Vacations that don’t involve travel usually involve two things for me: (1) a random act of body modification and (2) needlessly ambitious cooking projects, undertaken despite the fact that all I really want to do is sit on the sofa with a baguette, a hunk of good cheese and a never-ending flow of French 75s while watching the Tour de France. (Phil Liggett, you complete me.*)

I already have all the tattoos and piercings I might want, so this time I made due with merely butchering my hair. The theory was a sound one, but my stylist got a little too far into the zone with the clippers and razor, so possibly I now look a little…severe. Yeah, let’s go with “severe,” which, while not optimal, is still warmer and fuzzier than the reality of “contemporary neo-Nazi” or “tragic Flowbee victim.”

*Color commentary quote of the day: “If we were to stop the race right now – which we WILL NOT do – this rider would be the new leader.” I like that he thinks 40 years of Tour commentary have given him the power to change the life of the race at will, and that he’s doing us a favor by NOT exercising it.

But that was yesterday. Today rolled out before me a day completely free of any set plans other than trying to practice my best non-threatening faces in the bathroom mirror so I don’t frighten my new buildingmates in the elevator. So: cooking.

Brian has been talking a lot about fried squash blossoms lately, so I thought I’d give them a whirl. Usually, they’re stuffed with ricotta before frying, but as Jersey City is apparently now located on the surface of the sun, the idea of a fried cheese dinner was too much for me. (At this point, anything other than absorbing nutrients from the air and drinking vats of ice-cold tea is too much for me.) Lighter and more appealing: a stuffing of crab and fresh sweet corn, with some orange bell pepper and chives thrown in for good measure.

Luckily, I’d read a few recipes for the cheese-stuffed variety before I started so I knew that I’d have to emasculate the blossoms before stuffing them (I had male blossoms).

I don’t want to get too blue here, but this process requires one to get a little more intimate with squash blossoms than I was prepared or had any desire for. Their little penii are, of course, way at the bottom of the blossom, so you’ve gotta get in there. But you don’t want to rip the petals, so you must approach with caution. And when you’ve got a finger down in there, the damp, filmy petals kinda suck at your finger, and… I’m sorry, it’s too much. I’m overcome. Hey, squash blossoms: in America, dinner and a movie is customary first.

(Also: Yes, I took this photo because I am puerile.)

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together like the smart, capable, professional thirty-something I am and ripped out the flower dongles with clinical detachment and minimal giggling. I filled the blooms with crab filling as best I could, twisting the ends of the petals shut to keep everything together.  Note to self: there is a reason people stuff these with soft cheese; it’s much easier to stick the tip of a pastry bag than a spoonful of crabmeat into a long, thin flower. Lesson learned.

I stuck them into the fridge to chill for a few minutes while I contemplated a sauce. A few roasted yellow peppers, fresh mango, coconut milk, lime juice, a teaspoon of chile-garlic paste and a blender later, full condimenthood was achieved. For a little extra zing, I channeled my inner Bobby Flay by whipping up some cilantro oil, then berating a sous chef and one-upping a bunch of local small business owners for no good reason.

The stuffed blossoms I dipped in egg and flour, then pan-fried in olive oil for a few minutes.

The finished plate is pretty, ain’t it? Too bad I didn’t really like it. As it turns out, I don’t like squash blossoms. I find their texture unappealing, and if I wanted zucchini flavor – which I rarely do – I would just buy a damn zucchini, which would save me money AND sexual harassment charges. The sauce and crab filling were delightful; fresh and light, with a mix of textures and a good balance of sweetness, heat, acid and richness. So I scraped out the stuffing and gave the empty blossoms to Brian, because I am eight years old.

(Brian, who’s a bigger zuke fan than me and does not share my squeamishness about textures, really enjoyed this and ate seven blossoms.)

To sum up:

• Unfortunate haircut.
• Unsatisfying dinner.
• No one bringing me bottomless French 75s.

This vacation had better GET ITS SHIT TOGETHER in a hurry.

Crab-Stuffed Squash Blossoms
16 squash blossoms
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 ear fresh sweet corn
1 orange bell pepper
1/3 c. diced chives
1/2 lb. lump crabmeat
1 + 2 large eggs
1 tbsp. mayo
3 tbsp. panko breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
1 c. AP flour
olive oil for frying

Emasculate your squash blossoms. While you’re poking around in there, check for bugs that may be along for the ride.

Prepare the filling: Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. While it’s melting, cut the kernels off the corn cob and dice the bell pepper. Toss the corn and pepper into the skillet, add a pinch of salt and saute until just tender, 2-3 minutes. Remove to a mixing bowl.

Add the chives and crab to the veg and fold to combine – you don’t want to break up the crab too much. Make a little well in the center of the mix and add one egg and the mayo. Beat them together, then fold into the crab. Sprinkle over the panko and white pepper, and fold that in. If you’re not scared of raw egg, taste it and check for seasoning.

Stuff ’em: Using your fingers or a little spoon, gently hold the blossom petals open and spoon a tablespoon or two of filling into each flower. Twist the ends of the petals together to keep everything inside where it belongs.

Fry ’em up: In a heavy, high-sided skillet, heat a quarter-inch of olive oil to 350. While it heats, set up a dredging station: beat the remaining 2 eggs together in one bowl, and put the flour in another.

Dip each blossom into the egg, let the extra drip off, then run it through the flour and add it to the hot oil. Fry for about 2 minutes per side, until golden. Serve hot.

Yellow Pepper-Mango Coulis
2 yellow bell peppers
1/2 c. peeled & diced mango
1/2 c. coconut milk
1 1/2 tbsp. fresh lime juice
1 -2 tsp. Thai chile-garlic paste (depending on how much you like heat)
salt

Roast the peppers as per your favorite method: on the grill, directly over a gas burner on the stove, under the broiler. When well blackened on all sides, put ’em in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Let them sit and steam for 10 minutes, which will make them easier to peel. Peel off the charred skin, remove the stem and seeds and roughly chop.

Put the roasted pepper, mango, coconut, lime and paste into a blender and puree; if it’s too thick, add a little water. Add salt a pinch at a time, tasting as you go. Run the puree through a sieve to excise any lumps.

You’re done! Serve at room temp. Would be great with crab cakes, shrimp, and all kinds of firm, white-fleshed fish.

A foodie-type email list to which I subscribed recently commended the Herriott Grace e-shop to me, and while browsing it, I found this spoon.

I read the listing very carefully, noting that the TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY DOLLAR price tag is for a single spoon only, meaning that this spoon costs $18.46 per inch.

No where in the listing did it indicate that:

1. This spoon was carved from a piece of the True Cross.
2. This spoon was carved from a branch pruned from the White Tree of Gondor.
3. This spoon comes with a trained monkey butler.

Thus, I am forced to conclude that this spoon cannot rightfully command its $240 price tag, and respectfully suggest that the people who think the cost is somehow justified disclose what it is that they are smoking. Would that I could partake of the magical drug that would allow me to sleep at night knowing I made my living selling a spoon that costs the equivalent of 33.1 hours, or roughly 4.1 days, of minimum-wage labor. Also, doing all this math makes me cranky.

In other words:

Dear Herriott Grace,

Seriously? That’s fucked up.

Sincerely,
Me

I mean, it’s the last week of June already! One-third of the summer is gone, and all I’ve done is line Haagen Dasz’s pockets. UNCOOL. Strawberry season is practically gone, and I was seriously deficient in butterfat at my last checkup.

My efforts were further stymied by the dogs, who took out the bag of peaches bought with ice cream-making designs. See, we thought we’d put up a gate blocking the front hall of the new loft for occasional dog segregation purposes. They’ve spent the past six years passing their days in an empty hallway blocked off with a gate, so you’d think having access to an entire loft to hang out in – there are SEVEN unique upholstered surfaces on which to sleep, not counting their own bed – would be a step up the ladder.

I guess leaving my laptop on the coffee table during the day was a bad idea, because they seem to have researched Brown v. Board of Education and feel VERY VERY STRONGLY that a human-only front hall, even one only occasionally enforced, is incredibly offensive. I tried explaining that (1) the front hall is not a public space; (2) this apartment does not have its own constitution and (3) THEY ARE DOGS, but despite my reasoned discourse they’ve launched a full-scale gate offensive.

TNS dog mayhem is a zero-sum proposition. Either they are perfectly behaved all day and nothing is ruined, or they go total berserker. So on the first day of Project Front Hall Freedom, several cardboard boxes were also liberated from a utility closet and six ripening peaches were selflessly emancipated from their brown paper bag countertop prison. Sadly, two then fell prey to friendly fire and were abandoned partially mauled because Felix does not like slimy and/or fuzzy foods.

(I should mention that when I say “they” go berserker, I mean “Felix goes berserker.” Chester merely watches the descent into entropy, then gets incredibly nervous about it and stress-poops on the floor. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving.)

Later in the week I bought more peaches from the bodega around the corner where the fruit is always just on the verge of over-ripening and is thus uber juicy and sweet. The plan: roasted peach and creme fraîche ice cream. If you’re gonna wait this long for homemade ice cream, you better start with a bang; am I right?

I sliced up four peaches, tossed them with some brown sugar and a little lemon juice and roasted them off in the oven. Once they cooled down a bit, I pureed them in the FoPro and set the puree aside to cool some more while I made a simple ice cream base of heavy cream, a bit more sugar and egg yolks.

Note that I did think briefly about peeling the peaches first. Then I thought about the peeling process – the slicing of the “x,” the boiling water, the shocking – and about all the other things I could use that time for, things like eating aged gouda with honey and rosemary crackers while watching Olympic swimming trials and scheming about how to convince Brian to let me paint the new kitchen chairs a high-gloss hot pink. That seemed like time more profitably spent and besides, I strained the peach puree anyway.

Seriously, those pink chairs would pop like nobody’s business.

I stirred the peach puree and egg-thickened ice cream base together and left it over the ice bath a bit longer before whisking in a cup of creme fraîche and dumping the whole lot into the ice cream machine.

Make no mistake: I love my on-board compressor ice cream machine, which can keep churning out batches of ice cream with no need for re-freezing or, heaven forfend, hand cranking. I mean, what are we, pioneers? But I do miss the fact that my old frozen-bowl Cuisinart had an opening in the top big enough to stick a spoon into. You know, for testing purposes. Let it be known that I did not abuse that privilege, and if I did it was totally the ice cream’s fault for leading me on. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO DELICIOUS, ICE CREAM?

Since I had to occupy forty whole minutes before being able to eat ice cream, I thought I’d make a crunchy topper. Pine nut brittle with thyme and salt? Sure!

There are two basic kinds of brittle recipe: the one with butter, known as “brittle,” and the one without butter, known as “Why bother?” I’ll let you guess which one I made.

I did let the ice cream chill in the freezer for a while before eating, just to firm up the texture.

Just so you know, I almost didn’t write this post because I got completely distracted by a movie on the SyFy channel called “Mega Python v. Gatoroid” starring Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. A few thoughts:

1. Seriously?
2. I’m glad Tiffany is getting work.
3. But really, seriously?
4. I hope no one invested more than $75 dollars to get this made.
5. Possibly this is a harbinger of the apocalypse.
6. Holy shit.

Eventually, I had to turn it off because the scene of Mega Python sucking down someone’s pet dog was just too upsetting. Also, the alligators were angry because of the Mega Pythons decimating their population and NOT because of their severe hemorrhoids, as the title led me to believe.

You should be sitting down now, because I’m about to reveal something that will rock you to your very core: roasted peach and creme fraîche ice cream is excellent. Not too sweet, and with a lovely balance between the tartness of the creme and the natural sweetness of the roasting-enhanced fruit. It’s peaches-n-cream ice cream all grown up. The brittle, in addition to adding texture, has a savory edge that adds a nice complexity.

I have extra heavy cream, creme fraîche and eggs, so the ol’ Lello Gelato  4070 can look forward to making up for lost time.

(Also: Whoa, I get wordy when I don’t write for a while! Sorry about that!)

Roasted Peach and Creme Fraîche Ice Cream
4 ripe peaches
1/2 c. packed light brown sugar
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 c. heavy cream
1/4 c. granulated sugar
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 c. creme fraîche

Preheat your oven to 375.

Cut the peaches in half, remove the pits and cut each half into four slices. Toss the cut peaches with the brown sugar and lemon juice until well coated. Dump into a baking pan and roast for 15 minutes until nice and tender. Set aside to cool. When the peaches are room temp, whiz ’em up good in the FoPro (along with any juices that accumulate during roasting) and run the resulting puree through a strainer. Set the peach puree over an ice bath to stay cold.

Heat the heavy cream and granulated sugar over medium heat. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together. When the cream is barely simmering, choose your own adventure:

1. Gradually pour the yolks into the pan with the hot cream, whisking constantly. This is the gutsier (and time-saving) move.
2. Pour a third of the hot cream into the yolks, whisking constantly, to temper them. Pour the eggs back into the pan with the rest of the cream slowly, still whisking constantly.

Keep the cream and eggs on the stove, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or spatula, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Pour the thickened mix through a strainer into the peach puree. Stir to combine, then leave over the ice bath until nice and cold (or stash in the fridge).

Just before pouring the mix into your ice cream machine, whisk in the vanilla and creme fraîche.

Freeze as directed by your ice cream machine’s manufacturer. Transfer the finished ice cream to a container and freeze for at least 4 more hours.

Sweet & Savory Pine Nut Brittle
with thanks to Food52 and Gina DePalma
2 c. sugar
2 tbsp. light corn syrup
2 tbsp. honey
4 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 tsp. fresh thyme leaves
2 tsp. kosher salt
2 c. pine nuts

Line a baking sheet with a silpat or with parchment coated with butter.

Combine the sugar, corn syrup, honey and butter in a good-size saucepan over medium heat and clip on a candy thermometer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is a rich brown and reaches 350 degrees; it will bubble up quite a lot, which is why you need an oversized pan.

(If you’re still feeling gutsy from making the ice cream without tempering the eggs, you could do this without a thermometer and just go by color.)

When it hits 350, turn the heat down to low and add the thyme and one teaspoon of the salt and stir – it’ll spit a little. Cook for 2 more minutes.

Take the pan off the heat. Stir in the nuts, making sure they’re all coated with candy. Pour the hot brittle onto the baking sheet, spread it into an even layer and sprinkle over the remaining teaspoon of salt.

Let sit out until cool and hard, then break up into chucks and chow down. Store in tupperware for a week or two.