Shauna James Ahern

So all day, I was dreaming up this blackberry sauce atop sauteed salmon. I had it all planned in my mind for dinner.

I know I'm not supposed to say this, because I'm the one who made up the recipe, but my god that was good. It needed a little time to rest and thicken up on its own before putting it on the fish. But it exploded in my mouth with joy, just the way something with blackberries should.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 pint of fresh blackberries
1/4 cup of water
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup of brown sugar/less of high-quality honey (like the chestnut from Tuscany)
two teaspoons of cornstarch
pinch of cayenne pepper (for punch)
splash of balsamic vinegar

PREPARATION
1. Cook the blackberries and water in a saucepan until the berries are soft and starting to fall apart. Take off the burner and put the blackberries into a sieve. Push through until you have extracted all the liquid.

2. Put the liquid back into the saucepan and bring to heat. Throw in the lemon juice, the cornstarch, the sweetener of your choice, the chili pepper, and the tiniest splash of balsamic vinegar. (I'm going to try the fig balsamic vinegar on my shelves.) Heat until it's thickened, slightly, and you sense it's done. Immediately spoon over sauteed salmon.

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So I stood in the kitchen with my brother, and Elliott standing on a chair, cutting up fruit into uniform pieces and putting it all in a large, plastic bowl. Andy and I both cut, quickly. Elliott’s sole contribution was to reach into the bowl, grab a piece of banana or orange, and say, "Can I eat this?" By the time we were finished, we only had half a fruit salad, because Elliott had eaten the rest.

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These brownies are adapted from one of the best brownie recipes in the world. That is, if you like a fudgy brownie, unadorned with any fillers. These have a crackly top, with a discernible texture as your teeth bite down. And beneath them? Pure, smooth chocolate, as rich as flourless chocolate torte. These are rich, and only to be indulged in once in a while. (In fact, when I made the one-year anniversary dinner for the Chef and me, I made these brownies instead of flourless chocolate torte. He didn't mind.)

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We believe in celebrating. This celebratory lemonade was inspired by a stroll through the farmers’ market with Tea. After a long talk over paper plates piled high with groundnut stew and braised collard greens, we sauntered through the stalls, admiring the produce. She said, “Where is everyone getting the lemonade?” We saw little glass bottles with milky yellow liquid in every kid’s hands. The stand for Woodring Farms had a blue cooler filled with ice and little bottles. We had to buy one.

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A few weeks ago, I took a little jaunt to ChefShop, one of my favorite food resources in the world. A fabulous online store, ChefShop is physically located in Seattle, just five minutes from our home. That makes me one lucky girl. Among the other delectables and goodies I found on their shelves, I spotted a Sorrento lemon olive oil from Italy. When the knowledgeable staff member put it into my hands, and began to tell me the story of how the olives and lemons are crushed together, my brain snapped to attention.

Lemon olive oil cookies.

I'm certain that some of the magic of these cookies comes from using that particular type of Sorrento lemon olive oil. It's green and fruity, and it truly smells like lemons. I recommend that you order a bottle. If, however, you don't have that type of oil, I think this would still work with a high-quality extra virgin olive oil. Just bump up the lemon zest and juice.

I originally used plain, non-fat yogurt in this recipe, which is what this version calls for. This allows the cookies to crisp up a bit, and at least give the illusion of being healthy. However, in subsequent batches, I used sour cream instead. Yum, yum good. Those cookies are a bit chewier and far richer. If you are making this for a treat, I would use sour cream. That's what the Chef recommends as well.

SERVINGS
Makes nine large cookies or twelve rather smaller ones

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup plain, nonfat yogurt (make sure it's gluten-free) or sour cream
1/4 cup lemon olive oil (or the best quality olive oil you can afford)
1 egg
zest of one lemon
juice of one lemon
1/2 half cup white rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup fresh ground almond meal (fresh ground tastes best)
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder

PREPARATION
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. First, combine the yogurt and olive oil well. Stir in the egg, then the lemon juice and zest, to make a coherent mixture.

3. Next, combine all the dry ingredients together. Slowly, fold the wet ingredients into the dry. The dough will be sticky. In fact, you might have dough all over your fingers by the time this process is done. Oh darn.

4. Form small balls with the sticky dough and roll each ball into sugar. This will make the finished cookies crunchy and shimmery. Place on a baking sheet covered with a silpat, or a layer of parchment paper.

5. Cook for twelve minutes, approximately. The cookies will be soft at this point, but they will feel fully formed. Let them sit on the baking sheet, on the top of the oven, for about five minutes.

6. Carefully, move the cookies to a cooling rack. Let them sit there for another five minutes, during which time they will harden in the air.

Now, try not to eat them all in one sitting.

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Our friends Nina and Booth had us over to their lovely home for dinner the other night. The Chef loves it when other people cook for him, so he can sit back and relax. But what made me happier still is that, sitting in their kitchen, I knew I didn’t have to explain anything about how to make food for me safely.

You see, the two of them have a gluten-free kitchen now too. And just that week, she had invented chocolate chip cookies that made them both howl with delight. Hands grabbed for them that night, and then reached in for more. These weren’t specialty cookies. These were just damned fine.

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Potatoes, cream, sour cream, good white cheddar, salt and pepper. That's all he needs to make something that makes everyone moan with pleasure. They can taste his particular heart in these.

When I asked him to jot down a recipe for me, as we drove to the restaurant, so I could post it here today, he scrawled in the big black notebook I keep for food ideas, his sideways scrawl in rushed Chef chicken scratch. Rather than trying to translate for him, I'm going to write this one (nearly) as he did. (I'll spell out potatoes instead of pots.) He rarely works with recipes anyway, mostly with his hands and muscle memory.

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Somehow, the name frittata intimidated me for years. It just sounded complicated. As soon as I went gluten-free, however, I started experimenting with every recipe that sounded beyond my reach. If it didn’t have gluten, I wanted to try it. Now, I make frittatas every week, at least. With fresh snow peas and goat cheese, they can be the quintessence of spring. Try chopped tomatoes, oregano, and fresh mozzarella for a pizza frittata. Or, you can make this one, which I threw together for our class picnic. There are endless variations on frittatas, the same way that any combination of eighteen students can add up to a different class.

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I’d love to hear your opinions on this cake. As I made it, pretty straight from the recipe (with one cup of hazelnut flour instead of all almond, as they suggested), these cakes were spectacular. Moist and dense, they danced on the tongue with citrus-goodness toes. After a day of sitting out, they were even better. They won rave reviews from two-year-olds and forty-year-olds alike.

But part of me wonders if they wouldn’t be better if I cut one of the cups of almond flour with a cup of gluten-free flour (probably a sorghum/white rice/tapioca combination). After all, they were so moist and dense that few people could eat more than a slice. I could have waited to test this new idea before I showed this to you. But I’m wondering if someone else wants to try it and let me know.

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