When it comes to fruit, it’s really hard to pick a favorite, but mangoes place high in my rankings. I love their juicy fleshiness, their peachy pine flavor. When I first used my ice cream maker, almost ten years ago, the first thing I made was mango sorbet with lime. Because of the smooth texture of mangoes, they are perfect for sorbet. When I first got my copy of The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, I was really excited to try out his version. I’m not the only one.

So, I bought mangoes, pulled out the book and then, I don’t know, my mind wandered. I started thinking about the recipes he has for frozen yogurt. Blueberry, strawberry, vanilla. Everyone seems to be making them and raving. You see where this is going? Of course you do. I ditched the sorbet idea and instead used the frozen yogurt method on my mangoes.

The first time I made it, we ate it by itself in small bowls, one scoop at a time until it was all gone (well, I had one scoop at a time; somebody else may have had more). When I was planning for our trip a couple of weeks ago and needed to make a luscious dessert sans eggs (as you may recall my niece Jessica can’t eat them and it’s really not fun to serve a great dessert when your darling 6-year old can’t have any), I decided to kick it up a notch and used David’s recipe for salted butter caramel sauce and made some grilled pineapple (dipped in a mixture of brown sugar, lime juice and rum) to go with it. The mango frozen yogurt was a great foil for the pineapple, but the sauce, baby, really made it. By the end of the next day, my friends were drinking what was left of that caramel sauce, so make sure you have some people to feed if you make this, otherwise, be prepared to binge. I wrote to David and asked him if I could publish the recipe and he very generously agreed to it, but then I found it already written up elsewhere on Chubby Hubby, so look here for that recipe. I highly recommend The Perfect Scoop, it’s a brilliant book.

The last time I made this (so you all could see a picture of it), I didn’t have any limes, so I used the juice of half of a lemon, it may have been even better.

mango frozen yogurt

• 2 mangoes, peeled, pitted and roughly chopped
• 1 16 oz. container Greek-style frozen yogurt
• 1 cup sugar
• juice of one lime or juice of half of a lemon

Place ingredients into a blender and mix on high until smooth. Strain mixture through a fine mesh sieve (optional: it will give a slightly smoother texture). Chill, covered, for at least 1 hour or overnight. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions.

If you don’t have an ice cream maker and want to buy one, see David’s post, Meet your Maker. If you don’t have space or money for another kitchen tool, see his Making Ice Cream without a Machine.

Here’s one more for the sandwich files. Erik told me I have to write about it before we can go on to the next one. I’m keeping this short because I’m hungry and the refrigerator is not giving me any good ideas. Zingerman’s corned beef, lettuce, tomato & housemade Russian dressing on rye bread. It was so good, we almost ordered another one. There’s really not much more to say about it. Except for I have no idea where the name comes from, I see no connection to the canned stew or the author.

French toast is not French. I just needed to get that out of the way at the beginning, since that’s the recipe you’ll find below and the rest of this post is going to be a mish mash of family history and a small glimpse of the U S of A from the perspective of three French children. I’ll also tell you a little about our trip up north as they say here in Michigan, and because this site is about food, I’ll try to get around to telling you about some of the things we ate. In my last entry, I described my brother Ken as a shaggy dog story teller. I’m afraid that one might come back to haunt me with what follows.

I’m from one of those families where the door is always open, there’s always more room at the dinner table and a few extra people around was never a problem. This is how my parents ended up with three French women in their 20s staying with them in the summer of 1989. They were part of a group who had been lured to the states by a publishing company (whose name I won’t divulge) with promises of fast cash and fun in America. What they got was a cultish experience and virtually no greenbacks. And no place to stay. Can you believe they were told they could get a cheap room at the Salvation Army in downtown Detroit and survive on peanut butter? Friends of friends told them to knock on our door and they did and they stayed for three or four months. Laurence was one of them and the only one who has stayed in touch. That summer of ‘89, my mom advised ditching door-to-door book selling and found Laurence a job working (under the *cough* table) as a hostess in the fanciest restaurant in town. I was away for the better part of that summer, playing nanny for a friend, so I was there for only about a month of the French girl circus (which is a good thing, because they were in my bedroom). One of my memories of Laurence was that she had only one nice outfit that she fastidiously cleaned every day after work and put on again the next day. She must have confirmed all sorts of stereotypes her colleagues had about the French.

We’ve seen her on trips to Paris, but this summer she came back to visit for the first time and brought along her three children, Jean, Louis and Marie. I was once again reminded that I really wouldn’t mind having a child if it could be a French one. They help in the kitchen! They eat everything! They stay at the dinner table for hours with no complaints! They sit up straight - well, especially with their mother poking them in the back to remind them not to slouch over, I guess I’d have to be a French mother to have French children.

These kids were liking the soda and the beach and the big cars, but had lots of questions and some negative reactions. These are my favorites. On entering the house through the screened in porch Jean asked me, "Why all the screens on all the windows? Are there lots of bugs everywhere here? Don’t you get claustrophobic?"

At lunch after a crab salad stuffed tomato on Boston lettuce, Louis asked, "Can I help bring out the next course?" Poor boy, he thought that was just the starter and was expecting a roast and potatoes and then green salad and cheese and some sort of dessert. All he got were cookies and peaches.

Marie’s astonishment at not being understood by my nieces was charming, "They don’t know what babyfoot is? These Americans are crazy." I explained that while babyfoot is indeed a combination of two words in English, it is used in French to designate the game that here we call foosball. Hand smacks forehead.

Other highlights of the French monkeys include the following. Louis confided to me that he abhors smoothies. Jean’s zizi was hanging out of his bathing suit and Marie wouldn’t keep her suit on. She also complained about the fat on my arms.

Because Laurence and her brood lived for a time in England, they have good English skills, but not perfect. The biggest blooper of the weekend was when she asked my seven year old niece, "Jessica, give me a French kiss." You should have seen the look on that kid’s face. This obviously led to discussion of all of the things we call "French" here in the U.S., like French dressing, French fries, Frenched green beans and lamb chops, and Sunday’s breakfast, French toast. There’s a similar preparation in France, called pain perdu (lost bread, because you usually make it with the stale leftovers, this can sometimes be prepared like bread pudding as well). Laurence and her kids had never eaten it. "It’s peasant food," Laurence told us.

This is my niece, Jessica. After breakfast, we had a short rain storm and she’s pictured here belting out her rendition of singin’ in the rain. She was recently diagnosed with an allergy to eggs. It’s taken years for her parents to figure out why she was not interested in eating and why she’s in the smaller end of normal for her age. She seems to be thriving on her new egg-free diet. We’re trying to make meals with no eggs and that’s an awfully tall order for Sunday breakfast. I happened on a vegan recipe for French toast with a banana to replace the egg and thought we’d give it a try (I don’t remember where I read about it or I’d cite the source). The vegan recipe used soy milk instead of cow’s milk, so if you swing that way, feel free to make that substitution. If you like the flavor of bananas, you’ll love this one. We ate every last crumb. I’m left with a question. If there’s no egg, is it still French toast? Erik calls it monkey toast.

monkey toast (eggless French toast)

• 1 loaf white bread, sliced
• 1 banana
• 1 cup milk or half & half
• 1 t vanilla
• optional (and truly not French): a pinch of cinnamon or other flavoring of choice
• butter or cooking spray

Place banana, milk or half & half, vanilla and optional flavoring (if using) into a blender and mix until smooth. Place mixture in a shallow bowl. Heat skillet over medium-low. Place a small pat of butter in the middle of skillet or spray skillet with cooking spray. Take one piece of bread and soak it in the milk mixture, then put it in the skillet. Repeat with as many slices of bread as will fit in your skillet at one time. Cook until bottom of bread is golden brown, flip and brown the other side. You can put the finished slices on a platter tented with aluminum foil while cooking the rest, or dish them out to your monkeys as they are ready. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

P.S. We have my best friend Nancy to thank for opening her family lake house up to us for four days of swimming, boating, eating and general whooping it up. If you’d like to see more photos of our trip, they’re over here.

We had a fine weekend in northern Michigan, and I’ll tell you a little more about it once I can find the time.

For now, I will sing the praises of my older brother, Ken.

Ken is a beer brewer and cocktail connoisseur, an IT guru and a shaggy dog story teller who also was once a short order cook. This was at the same place where I was the waitress in the pink dress with white lace trim and a name on a plastic pin, I think for a while I didn’t have my own, so it said Betty.

He’s also the one who makes the fantastic salsa. This foodie thing seems to run in families, doesn’t it?

When Ken confirmed that he’d be coming with us along with my nieces Claire and Jessica (they’ve been begging for more face time on the blog, there you go girls), I asked him to bring cocktails and snacks for Saturday afternoon and breakfast for Sunday morning for twelve people.

For Saturday afternoon, he brought his salsa and we were going to make guacamole, but the avocados turned out to be all black inside, despite the fact that they felt just right to the touch. I hate that.

In any case, he also brought along a bottle of 1800 Silver Tequila, another of Cointreau, lots of limes, kosher salt and his drink shaker. That is all you need to make a superior margarita.

Don’t cheap out on the liquor if you don’t have to, make sure your salt is kosher so you don’t get the iodide flavor, please use cointreau and not grand marnier in mine and no sugar people, m’kay? These were also the only ingredients needed to get me feeling really happy on Saturday afternoon. Lucky for me, someone else was making dinner. Actually, I planned it that way.

recipe for one true margarita

• 1/2 lime
• kosher salt
• 2 shots tequila
• 1 shot cointreau
• ice

Slice one wedge off of the lime half and use it to rim your glass. Place about 1/4 cup of kosher salt in a plate. Lay the top edge of the glass in the salt and turn to coat outer rim (Ken says that it’s better this way, because if you just dip the whole top of the glass in, the salt gets in your drink). Place tequila and cointreau in drink shaker along with the juice of the rest of the lime half and a little ice and put a few cubes of ice in your glass. Shake well and pour. Repeat as desired.

Buying little plastic bottles of water is for chumps. It’s not only bad for the environment and a threat to the public water supply, it’s really expensive. I was happy to see the short editorial “In Praise of Tap Water,” in last week’s New York Times. I’ve always been one to snag a plastic bottle from a friend and re-fill it umpteen times before tossing it for a new one. Some people say that re-using a plastic bottle is not good for your health, so I was worrying about that one, just not enough to stop re-filling my bottle (after cleaning it, of course). Last year, I noticed a trend among my cool socially aware students; they have started re-purposing glass jars (from say pickles or canning) for their water. I’ve adopted their habit and I’m really happy I did. Now I don’t have to worry about the plastic at all and I get to drink out of glass, which always tastes better.

While I’m fretting about the environment and saving a few dimes by not purchasing bottled water, some people writing blogs have money to burn. I’m talking about Ashwin Khanna who is giving away $2500 in order to get more blog traffic. If you want to participate, just post this to your blog:

Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!

In the next few days, I’ll be taking a break. I’ll be soaking in a large spring-fed lake in northern Michigan, some of the best water in the world and dreaming about winning this money. That would really be wild, right?

I’ve been holding out on you people. I spent a great deal of time in the Balkans in the nineties; I learned how to speak Macedonian (I even learned the Cyrillic alphabet!). In 1992, I was in Zagreb during the war in Croatia and in Albania shortly after they opened the borders to foreigners. I don’t know why I haven’t written about it before.

I have a host of recipes that I cook on a regular basis that I learned there and from people who’ve immigrated to the U.S. from there. I think I haven’t written about it before because most of them are simple, rustic dishes. Nostalgia for the food I ate in Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia overtook me today. The first thing I ate when I first landed in Sophia, Bulgaria was a cold soup. We had arrived at the airport and headed to the city to spend the night before going on to our destination in Macedonia. The restaurant we went to was a large brasserie-style establishment, full of art nouveau tile work, polished brass and red leather. This was a worn-out communist version of the kinds of places you see in Paris. The gorgeous porcelain had cracks and chips, the 100% linen tablecloths were threadbare and mended in spots. But we were hungry, it was supremely clean and most importantly, the staff was as good as the fanciest places in the rest of Europe. You could feel their pride in what they did. I didn’t know anything about the food, so the meal was ordered for me. The first thing to arrive, in a small two handled Austrian porcelain bowl, was taratur. Cold cucumber and yogurt soup. This one had garlic and dill in it and had walnuts sprinkled on top. I think the yogurt at its base was made from sheep’s milk.

I’ve had many versions of taratur in many places in the Balkans, from a resort on the Dalmatian coast to the humblest grandmother’s house in the hills just north of Greece. It always has yogurt and cucumbers. The yogurt can be from goat, sheep or cow’s milk. The cucumbers are sometimes in large cubes, sometimes shredded finely. There is usually garlic, sometimes dill and it occasionally has chopped walnuts or hazelnuts sprinkled on top. It is a refreshing first course in the summertime, but it is not always served on its own. When the yogurt is thicker, it can be served like its Greek counterpart, tzatziki, as a side dish alongside things like lamb patties, grilled chicken, fish or simply sliced tomato. It can also be used as a dip or a spread with bread.

taratur: cold cucumber and yogurt soup

• 4 cups lowfat yogurt (goat’s or sheep’s milk if you can find it)
• 1 large English cucumber, peeled and shredded (use the large holes of a box grater for this and the onion)
• 1/4 cup shredded sweet onion
• 1 small clove garlic, minced (optional)
• 4 T chopped dill (optional)
• 2 T red wine vinegar
• 2 T olive oil, plus more for garnish
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup walnuts or hazelnuts, toasted and chopped

Place all ingredients except walnuts or hazelnuts in a large bowl and mix well until the yogurt is smooth and creamy. Taste and add more salt if desired. Divide among 4-8 soup bowls and garnish with walnuts or hazelnuts. Drizzle with a little more olive oil.

I spied them in the produce aisle; tiny globes, smaller than ping pong balls. I put one package in my cart. I looked back at the rest. I put another package in my cart. A third one called and I picked that up too. Three packages of baby artichokes. Not just little artichokes, but miniatures. Adorable. Why is it that small versions of things are so cute?

I peeled off all of the outer leaves, cut off the tops and sliced around the bottom. I steamed them with a half of a lemon and then marinated them all day long in a combination of balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, olive oil and the juice of the other half of a lemon. I chopped up more cloves of garlic than usual for this batch and I was happy I did. Just before serving them, I dumped the artichokes and their marinade into a smoking hot cast iron frying pan to brown them and reduce the sauce. Next time I won’t use quite so much oil. These are highly addictive.

marinated sautéed baby artichoke hearts

• 1-2 lbs baby artichokes (the smallest you can find)
• 1 lemon, halved
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 5 cloves garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
• salt
• garnish: chopped parsley, chervil or chives

Trim artichokes by removing touch outer leaves, cutting off the top and peeling any tough parts away from bottom. Place artichokes in a large pot of water with half of the lemon and a pinch of salt. Bring water to a boil, lower heat to simmer and cook, covered, for 6-8 minutes, until artichokes are tender when pierced with a knife. Drain. Put artichokes in a large Ziploc bag with the juice of the other half of the lemon, olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic. Let marinate at least 4 hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Just before serving, heat frying pan to high. Pour everything from the plastic bag into the pan and sauté until artichokes are browned and sauce is reduced. If artichokes are bigger than bite sized, they can be sliced in half. Serve hot or at room temperature with a sprinkle of chopped herbs. These can be served as a first course or piled in a bowl and served with toothpicks.

sweet tart concoction
make key lime gimlet sorbet
take cold little bites

(key) lime gimlet sorbet

• 1 cup key lime juice (or regular lime juice)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 T gin

Combine ingredients and let sit, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves. Chill for at least one hour or overnight. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions.