Until this summer when my fascination with this lowly, creamy-golden fleshed rather large melon began.

I liken it to the experience a girl might have who finds the love of her life in the form of the boy next door, down the street, or in the adjacent cubicle that she's always felt a little sorry for.  One day she wakes up and he is now one of the most intriguing men on the planet.

Please note that this analogy is not to be correlated in any shape or form with my real life.

In the summer, peak season for local cantaloupe, my dad would buy a handful from the Dallas Farmers Market.  It was my mom's duty to cut them into large slices and store them in a large tub in the refrigerator.  Whenever the mood struck him my dad would enjoy a piece sprinkled with salt and pepper.

That memory was sparked when I passed by a display of cantaloupe in the grocery story and picked one up.  There must be a different way to enjoy this fruit I thought.

And there is.

I made a cantaloupe-ginger relish that garnished a pan-seared Moroccan tuna and served it with a cinnamon-spiced couscous.

Satisfying.  Very.

It was cooling to the tuna and also delicious when I stirred the remainder into a serving of the couscous.  I'll add it as an element of the couscous next time.

1 cup of cantaloupe, small dice

1/4 cup red onion, small dice

2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped

1 1/2 tablespoons grated ginger

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Combine cantaloupe, red onion, mint, ginger, lemon juice, and olive oil.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Chill.

4-6 oz. tuna filets

1 teaspoon peppercorns

2 teaspoons ground allspice

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons oil

Finely grind peppercorns and then stir together with allspice, cloves, and salt.  

Pat tuna dry and coat with the spice mixture.  Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in skillet and sear tuna.  Serve with Cantaloupe-Ginger Relish.

2 cups hot water

3/4 cup raisins

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, divided

3 tablespoons white wine

1 cup couscous

1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)

3/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Combine 2 cups hot water and raisins in a bowl.  Soak raisins until softened, about 15 minutes.  Drain water into a large saucepan; reserve raisins.  Add 2 tablespoons butter and wine; bring to a boil.  Stir in couscous.  Cover, remove from heat, and let stand until liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in medium skillet over medium-low heat.  Add onion, cover and cook until translucent and tender, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes.  Mix cinnamon, onion, reserved raisins and almonds into couscous. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

- The salad is a spicy orange, olive, and watercress.

From my third story bedroom window I have a view of a pub located just across the street.  

It has a large porch that surrounds a couple of old trees and two balconies both of which are filled with a variety of tables and chairs.  The music begins iate morning and plays till closing.  At night strings of lights glow yellow above the heads of the drinking, chatty, happy patrons and twinkle through the leaves of the trees.  Even if they aren't happy, really, they are momentarily, and the sound of their chatter, laughter, and low tones of the beating music mixes into one jumbled cocktail of sound and drifts up, across the street, and seeps just enough through the walls of my bedroom.

Oddly enough I like it. 

The merrymakers did not blink an eye on a recent Saturday night when I accidentally set off the house alarm and the police were promptly dispatched.  

When I opened the front door the cops, who by then knew I was not evil doing in the house and who had just climbed the full set of stairs to the front door which is on the second story, first wanted to know how I managed to carry all the groceries up the stairs.

Try living on the third floor I said.

After providing my driver's license as requested, the cop who was left standing with me while his buddy wrote out a warning for the false alarm said, so you live across the street from a bar, huh?  I hope your bedroom is at the back.  No, I said, as a matter of fact my bedroom overlooks the bar.  He rolled his eyes like he felt sorry for me.  I sleep with ear plugs I said.  It's really not that bad.  Truthfully, I confessed, I tend to wake up when the bar goes completely silent.  

This is an odd thing to do, I know.

About a month ago I cooked a dinner party for six.  As I cooked and served the chatter and laughter from the dining room floated into the kitchen.  It was like an aroma for my ears that made me smile.  

Great food, pleasing drink, and fab friends with chatter and laughter.  It is the sound of life.

True, I may feel differently about the revelry across the street when the weather cools and I sleep with the windows open.

But for now may we all make merry a little more often in our lives.  

This is the dessert I made for the dinner party.  They loved it.

The crepes are filled with a vanilla pastry cream and topped with a passion fruit caramel sauce.  The recipe for the caramel sauce follows.

6 passion fruit (about 1/2 pound)

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Halve passion fruit crosswise and scoop flesh and seeds into a bowl.  In a heavy saucepan combine sugar and 1 tablespoon water and cook over moderately high heat, undistrubed until sugar begins to melt.  Continue cooking mixture, stirring with a fork, until sugar is melted and and syrup is golden.  Remove pan from heat.  Carefully add remianing water down side of pan and stir in passion fruit (caramel will bubble up and steam).  Return pan to heat and simmer sauce, stirring until caramel is dissolved about 5 minutes.  Add butter, one piece at a time, stirring until incorporated and sauce is smooth.  Sauce may be made two days ahead and chilled, covered.  Reheat sauce over low heat before serving.

-I use a non-stick pan for this.  It's e-a-s-i-e-r that way.

-The passion fruit seeds really make this sauce interesting.  Don't exclude the seeds!

When she was eight she asked me to teach her how to make them, so I did.

On Saturday mornings when I relished sleeping late or at least later than my 5:30 am work-week rising time, she made pancakes.

She would pull a chair up to the kitchen counter, gather up the ingredients, mix, griddle, flip, and soon have a plate full of warm, delicious pancakes.  

It was fun for her and it was heaven for me:  a Saturday breakfast that I didn't have to make.

Her waking up early on Saturday mornings and pancake-making days soon gave way to the boredom of having conquered the pancake and her preteen years of sleeping in.  After that I rarely laid eyes on her before noon on the Saturdays when she didn't have a soccer commitment and I haven't had a Hannah-made pancake since. 

Now she's grown, married, and lives out of state.  I don't have any photos of her pancake-making days, but this is one from her wedding.  The one above is obviously from her pre-pancake making days.

Even though pancakes aren't high on her list of favored breakfast foods anymore (a little too syrupy sweet for her), I'm betting that she has some pancake-making days in her future.  

I never made these while she was at home.  Wish I had.

1 cup AP flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup milk

1 cup ricotta cheese

2 eggs

juice of one lemon

zest of one lemon

Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.  In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the eggs.  Add the milk, ricotta, lemon juice, and lemon zest to the eggs and stir to combine.  Add  the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir just until combined.  Ladle 2 oz. of the mixture onto a hot griddle.  Cook until one side bubbles, then flip and cook on the other side, a minute more or until done.

Makes 12 pancakes.

- If you like fluffier pancakes, add up to one tablespoon of baking powder.

- I added some pepper to the batter just for the heck of it when I made the last pancake.  I think I'll give that a whirl next time I make them.

This day in November 1967 is like other historical moments that pass unmarked by any fanfare at the time, but is later recognized for the great event that is was.  The Beatle's released their Magical Mystery Tour album this same month, but who cares?

This was the month that the chocolate crinkle cookie entered my family's lives and, indeed, has become my family's official cookie.

My mom has made who knows how many dozens of cookies of various shapes, sizes, and flavorings over the years, but this one has endured.  It's been there for holidays, birthdays, and just plain 'ole let's get together and eat gatherings.  And she's baked them and shipped them off to both of my daughter's during their college years extending her cookie fan base to all their friends as well.

Hannah is the one person in the family who will forever be associated with this cookie.  Perhaps in a not so good way.  A handful of days after a tonsillectomy a few Thanksgivings ago, she helped herself to a cookie while I was gone from the home.  This was the first time I had left her since surgery and left only after she insisted that she was feeling better. 

The cookie didn't sit so well on her stomach, and shortly thereafter, realizing that she couldn't make it to the bathroom on time, she threw up into the baggie from which she had taken the cookie thereby ruining the dozen or two remaining and perfectly baked chocolate crinkle cookies.  

Ariel who was with me during this never-to-be-forgotten-moment-in-chocolate-crinkle-cookie-history and who had a hankering for one of these melt-in-your-mouth-chocolate-goodness-cookies while we were gone has never forgotten her utter disappointment with the fate of the remaining cookies.

Having shied away from ever trying to match my mother's skill in baking this cookie, I took a shot at it for the first time for Hannah's college graduation party.  She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Ouachita Baptist University with a double major in Mass Communications and French.  Yes, she is both beautiful and smart.   

My cookies were good, but my mom's are better.  

Thanks Mom for the legacy of the chocolate crinkle cookie.  But this in no way let's you off the hook for future batches of cookies.

My last rotation in culinary school was working the pizza station in the school restaurant.

Score!  What a way to end my class time at Le Cordon Bleu Dallas. 

My cooking partner Jimmy taught me how to toss pizza dough.  By the end of the week, I could toss the dough like the guy on the Visa commercial who rolls it along one arm, across his shoulders, and down the other arm. 

Ok, not really, but I did get a nice round of applause from my fellow culinary students one day for my tossing ability.

As for bread, making biscuits was my thing. 

And my biscuits (as in the flour, butter, and milk kind) did indeed rock.

The customers loved them, which was nice. 

But the real test was in the palates of my fellow students.  When they were over the top excited about my biscuits I knew I was on to something good.  One student suggested I earn my living making biscuits.  I could be the biscuit lady he said.

Not a bad way to make a living, really; making people smile with great-tasting-hot-right-out-of-the-oven biscuits. 

I think I’m on to something good here… 

10 oz bread flour

10 oz pastry flour

1/3 oz salt

1 oz sugar

1 1/4 oz baking powder

7 oz. butter

13 oz milk

egg whites

Mix together the flour, salt, baking, powder, and sugar.

Cut the butter into chunks and toss in the flour mixture.  Using your hands, break the butter into smaller chunks.

Add the liquid and bring the dough together.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and press down and turn 4-6 times. 

Roll dough out to between 3/4 inch and an inch.  Cut into rounds.

Place rounds on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Brush tops with beaten egg whites.

Bake at 425 until golden brown.

 -You can add any spice to the dough mixture.  I used a combination of rosemary, cheese, and jalapeno.  It was all good.

-Don't overwork the dough.  Once it comes together, it's done.

-I leave visible chunks of butter in my dough, some of which are larger than pea size.

-Remember that all ingredients in the bake shop are best measured by weight.  The measurements above are according to weight.  Invest in a scale!  

-Have fun with this!

 

-Measurement is not my strong suit at the moment.  If I took the time to measure and figure out quantities or perfect the sauce before writing about it, I’d probably never write.  Let your intuition be your guide.

-The addition of the beer was an emergency fix to the lack of any suitable liquid except water when I first made this dish In December 2009.  It was a nice fix.  I also spooned some of the jus from the cooked chicken into the sauce.  Yum.

When I was a kid I tooled around on a Sting-Ray bicycle. It was the epitome of cool back then although I admit that I didn’t know how cool until I was an adult.

My bike had fringe on the handlebars and it would whip around in the wind along with my red hair when I rode. I’ve owned a few bicycles here and there since then, but will never forget my Sting-Ray. It was adventure, freedom, and excitement all rolled into one beautiful piece of molded metal. Of course, at that time in life my sense of adventure ended with a return to an evening meal and warm bed provided by a pair of loving parents.

If only life could be so simple now.

I think of those times, wind in my face, wheels turning, bike and body headed somewhere fun to explore, and wonder if that’s where the seed was planted that eventually bloomed into this life of mine that is never quite satisfied with the status quo; willing to take risks to satisfy a longing for a sense of adventure in life and love that can’t be met with the routine of everyday life.

My observation is that in everyday life I have a tendency to live just on the edge of total chaos. I plan for and commit to just enough to keep me on the edge. I like it and seem to thrive on it. Otherwise life might be boring. When I reach the end of my days I want to look back with no thoughts of "what if?".

This mindset is evident when I gave not a second thought to turning my mid-life years upside down in May 2009 by committing to culinary school, selling my house, and putting everything in storage. It was a career change and a sabbatical from my life as a single parent all rolled into one.

I’ve enjoyed every moment of it even with my occasional bouts of thinking I must be crazy. I have no solid plans for where I’m going and what I’m doing after culinary school which definitely speaks more to chaos than just standing on the edge of it.

I spent some time over spring break in the kitchen with limited ingredients on hand, sesame seeds, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, honey and a tuna steak. I started cooking with the “I’m not sure where this is going, but I hope it ends well," feeling.

My cooking adventure ended well and tasty, if I must say so myself: sesame crusted pan-seared tuna with a honey and soy sauce glaze with hot chili oil. I served it with a field green salad dressed with a lemon vinaigrette, toasted almonds, grapes, and bleu cheese.

Going to culinary school has been like being on my Sting-Ray; adventure, freedom, and excitement except now I have to deal with the realities of providing for the comforts of life. When people ask what my plans are for my culinary degree I say I don’t know. But two things I do know. I like to cook and I like to write, both of which I need to do more of.

I'm on a journey with the same type of feeling as my spring break cooking adventure: I'm not sure where this is going, but I hope it ends well.

Regardless it's full speed ahead, my red hair still whipping in the wind.

Before there was Cognac, before there was Calvados, and even long before Christopher Columbus was a twinkle in his father’s eye, there was Armagnac.

Ar-muhn-what, you say with a crinkle of your nose.

Ar-muhn-what, you say with a crinkle of your nose.

My favorite French eau-de-vie, spirit, brandy, I say. It’s the oldest French spirit yet the least known in the land that Columbus landed upon in 1492.

Having never achieved the notoriety of Cognac, Calvados, or other spirits those familiar with palate-pleasing, soul-warming essence of Armagnac are few and far between.

Sad I say.

With hints of pear, prune (think dried plums, not Grandma), notes of floral with linden, and perhaps oak, toast, smoke, coffee, and cocoa imparted by the barrel aging, Armagnac is a lovely finish to a satisfying meal.

Like Cognac, only brandy from a very specific region in France can be called Armagnac and only brandy that has met very rigorous production standards. Everything from maximum grape yields, vinification, distillation, and ageing are strictly controlled.

Unlike Cognac where large production houses dominate and where uniformity of taste from bottle to bottle is desired, there are 5,000 Armagnac producers who collectively produce 6 million bottles yearly.

Recent French research claimed that drinking Armagnac has the same health benefits of red wine. Prior Vital Dufour, Doctor of Medicine, and ordained Cardinal in 1313 wrote this about the medicinal benefits of Armagnac:

“This water, if taken medicinally, and soberly is said to have 40 virtues…

It cures gout, cankers, and fistula by ingestion, restores the paralysed member by massage, and heals wounds of the skin by application.

It enlivens the spirit, partaken in moderation, recalls the past to memory, renders men joyous, preserves youth and retards senility.

And when retained in the mouth, it loosens the tongue and emboldens the wit, if someone timid from time to time permits himself…”

Medicinal or not, the French love their Armagnac. Forty percent of what they make never leaves the country.

And despite the swirl of change that has brought most of the world into the modern age, Armagnac is still produced very much like it was hundreds of years ago: on single estates that make use of traveling stills, alembics, the design of which was patented in 1818.

Chateau du Busca Maniban is one such Armagnac producer. Located in the Tenareze region of Armagnac, the chateau is listed as a French historical monument.

Following a private lunch and tour of Chateau du Busca with the Chateau’s owner, we stood outside on the beautifully manicured lawn on a crisp January afternoon and surveyed the gentle, rolling hills of the Tenerze region of Armagnac.

Very little has changed of this view, she commented. This is the same view that my grandmother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother and so on for many generations have looked upon, she said.
 

I took a deep breath.

This I have never experienced: a sense of history, connection, and respect for the people who have come and passed before us, and of the earth that gives wonderful gifts to those who care for it and love it.

The land has remained virtually unchanged from generation to generation. There are no housing developments, no retail developments, no parking lots, no freeways. There’s no motivation to change the inherent beauty of life and land that has produced a spirit in the same way for hundreds of years.

Winston Churchill once said, "There's nothing wrong with change, as long as it is in the right direction." Seems to me then that if you're going in the right direction, there's no need for change.

I am thankful that the French are only 40 percent stingy with their Armagnac.

Sandra's Notes:
-Photos from my France trip can be viewed here. The trip was an amazing immersion into the world of Cognac and Armagnac, meeting the producers, learning how the grapes are grown and made into wine, then witnessing first-hand how the grapes are transformed into spirit. In addition to Chateau du Busca, I toured the Darroze Armagnac cellar and lunched with Marc Darroze. I toured the Vicard Tonnelleries and learned about the business of making wine barrels from the felling of the tree to the finished, toasted barrel. I couldn't leave the Bordeaux area without a couple of wine vineyard tours. Mine included Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte and Chateau Pitray. The history and charm of the French countryside is hard to describe. Take a look at the photos and see for yourself why I sometimes daydream about taking myself and my new French culinary skills to France for a very, very long stay.