Nothing says spring like strawberry-mezcal ice cream

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I don't know what inspired this exactly. Except it's spring, so I'm jonesing for strawberries. And it's spring, so I'm jonesing for mezcal. A friend was coming to lunch last weekend, and I wanted to cook Mexican. But dessert . . . strawberry shortcake? Nah. A big ol' Pavlova smothered in strawberries and cream? Nah. Almond cake with strawberries? Nah. None of it felt right to follow the lamb barbacoa tacos I'd planned. 

But ice cream! Who makes strawberry ice cream, anyway? I would! 

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I figured I'd roast my strawberries, as they weren't exactly peak-season Harry's Berries (the fabulous ones I'd buy at the farmers market if I happened to be in Santa Monica). Roasting the supermarket berries would concentrate their flavor a bit. For some reason, when I thought about roasting them, I thought of hitting them with a little mezcal. In the back of my mind, I was remembering a wonderful nieve de naranja (orange ice) con mezcal my friend Michalene and I had when we were in Mexico City in February, at a restaurant called Fonda Fina. "Aha" moment! I thought mezcal might work well with the brightness of the berries. 

And so it did! Making the custard base is always easier than it sounds; just take it slow. Best to do this the day before you want to serve it, so the ice cream can set up in the freezer overnight – or at least for a few hours. In any case, you want to have time to chill the custard before it goes into the ice cream maker.

Want to leave out the mezcal? Just substitute half a teaspoon of vanilla. Or a teaspoon of aged balsamic vinegar. I served the ice cream with a couple of (store-bought) almond crisps.

Want the recipe? Here you go . . . 

The kid comes home from college: guacamole time!

Funny story about my molcajete – the mortar and pestle, made of rough volcanic rock, that I feel is essential for making great guacamole. Grinding onion, chiles, cilantro and salt together to a paste in the molcajete makes a base that gives the dip superb, deep flavor.

I've had my molcajete for decades – so long, I can't even remember where I got it. I was definitely living in New York, and it was before I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, so pre-1995. Somewhere along the way, after moves to Los Angeles and then Dallas, I lost the molcajete's pestle. I continued making guacamole, natch, but had to muddle along improvising with a wooden spoon or the pestle that belonged to my smooth marble mortar. Not good with that rough volcanic stone. At some point, I found a molinillo — a wooden tool, with a broad bulb of wood on the end, used to mix champurrado, chocolate-flavored atole. Somehow I thought I'd live the rest of my life that way, smashing chiles and cilantro and avocado with a molinillo. Feeling stupid about it one day, I started nosing around online and in cook shops. But (holy guacamole!) – a nice molcajete can cost $40.

Last summer, I happened to be shopping in a Fiesta supermarket in Austin, Texas, and found reasonably priced molcajetes for sale. That wasn't a huge surprise: A gentleman working in a restaurant supply had pointed me in that direction. What was a surprise was that Fiesta also sold the pestle part individually – for about three bucks! Eureka! But how silly I felt: Doing without something that could have been so easily and inexpensively obtained if I had just used my brain!

So now I have both parts – mismatched, to be sure – but I'm happy every time I see them together on my countertop.

So. The kid -- who just started in college this fall in Southern California – is  home for winter break, and what does he crave? My guacamole – every few days. Easily done. I'm going through avocados like they're going out of style.