Cardamom Gelato

One thing that I'm thankful for these days is that the food world has expanded exponentially in my lifetime.

And for a second thing, oddly related to the first: that Bruce has taught me over the years that the secret to great cooking is the same as the secret to a happy life--to embrace the mess.

We're back in Dallas, visiting my parents. I grew up in the '60s and '70s. Convenience ruled. I'm not sure we cared about real food back then. I'm pretty sure we dumped things out of cans. (But, as you know, canned things can be real. There's certainly real canned broth out there. I'll bet a lot of us Americans will be using it in the next couple of days, as Thanksgiving approaches.)

These days, there's a new flavor, a new food, a new way to do things always on the horizon. There's a new mess just ahead. Fantastic!

For me, lately, it's all about cardamom: warm, better than cinnamon, a little earthy, quite complex. Sure, I've known about the spice for a while. But I've only really gotten into it lately. I want it in soups, in stews, in sweets--and in gelato.

So as a Thanksgiving treat, I'd like to share my latest passion with you. Let's get to it:

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Chilled Apricot Soup

I'm about to start a war. Ready?

I put on a sweater yesterday.

I realize these are incendiary words since half of the United States is sweltering in August heat. But not here in New England. It's freezing this morning, rainy and blustery. The maples are tipping orange at their tops. And the garden is certainly the worse for wear. I was just thinking yesterday evening--in my sweater--that I'll soon need to chop out the hostas for the year.

So. I'm all about grabbing the last bits of summer. And nothing's better than a chilled fruit soup to do just that.

In case you haven't checked it out, there's a whole science/art break-down of these lovely summer favorites in COOKING KNOW-HOW, available here. And one of the very first recipes in our book about getting off processed food, REAL FOOD HAS CURVES (available here) is a chilled peach soup. But since apricots are quickly disappearing from the farm stands around us, I thought it best to give them one last go. Here's how:

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Pistachio Cardamom Cookies

Lately, I've been obsessed with cardamom, my new favorite "warm" spice (as in "warm in the body," like cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace--not hot, and not herbaceous).

I've been putting it in chocolate cake, in ice cream, in chicken sautés, in just about everything. I was reading some cookbooks this morning and found a recipe for sour cherry cardamom clafouti. I almost passed out.

Last week, probably to stifle my cardamom whining, Bruce morphed the Indian sweet, kaju makrum (cashew macaroons) into ridiculously crisp wafer cookies with pistachios and, yes, cardamom. I swear, all week I didn't eat any sweets during the day so I could have a small stack of these with a glass of milk after dinner, my little-kid dessert while the Olympics were on. I was undone. They're that good. Try them. Promise.

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