I’m still swooning.

New Orleans, New Orleans, your hot, steamy mornings, washed away by afternoon lighting, thunder and pouring rain. Your avenues lined with sprawling live oaks and tall Victorian houses iced with curls of white and pink and purple paint. Your summery libations inside dusky, cool old bars with peeling paint walls, elegant gray-haired waiters wearing bow ties, Luciano Pavarotti wailing over the sound system, and $5 cocktails. Your parked bikes and street musicians and tarot card readers on every other corner. Your beignets and cafe au lait whisked to a table by a tiny Asian man wearing a paper hat. Your free ferries. Your haunted, affordable hotels. Your streetcars. Your meaty, medium-rare hamburgers! And, yes, your Katrina-ed neighborhoods and your questionable government and your complicated, tangled problems. You’re bewitching and fascinating, old and mysterious and like no other place on earth.

For a cook and a writer, and an urban planner-to-be and a photographer, this was the perfect place to be. Kelly and I ate and we gawked at old houses and buildings, walked until the blisters came, took a cocktail break, then ate and walked and gawked some more.

We got to New Orleans late on a Tuesday afternoon, weary from a long drive off the interstate winding through the Louisiana swamps that we hoped would be more scenic, but was probably just more, well, long. After we checked into our hotel (”There’s sherry every afternoon form 3 to 6, but longer if I’m here,” the receptionist drawled charmingly), we stumbled around the French Quarter, half-heartedly looking for a bar that wasn’t full of screaming co-eds hoisting daiquiris. We rounded a corner, and walked into Napoleon House, and discovered Pimm’s Cup.

The foundation of Pimm’s Cup is Pimm’s No. 1, a gin-based liquor flavored with citrus and spices from England. The color of claret and slightly syrupy, its origins were in the name of health, but its evolved to become a popular tipple with the cricket, regatta and garden party set. God knows how it arrived in New Orleans. But I pity the weary, hot traveler who didn’t have access to it around 6 p.m. on a May afternoon. There are other drinks in New Orleans - we had some hefty hurricanes as a prelude to our hamburgers one night, rum mixed with rum they were - but nothing in my mind goes down as refreshingly. Sipping a Pimm’s Cup is like sitting in a glider on a front porch, watching a July thunderstorm pass by.

I found Pimm’s No. 1 easily in New Orleans, $19.95 at a crowded, dusty liquor store in the upper French Quarter manned by a woman eating popcorn off a paper plate. I haven’t had the heart to seek it out more locally - yet. I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed, and then I’ll have to slog through the rest of summer, hot and sticky. However, if you can’t find it, there’s hope. According to Wikipedia, “a close approximation to Pimm’s No. 1 can be prepared by mixing one measure of gin with one Orange Curacao and one red vermouth.” Good to know. Hope I don’t have to try. And hope that you don’t, either.

Pimm’s Cup adapted from Napoleon House

Take a tall glass (about 12 oz) and fill with ice. Add 1 1/4 oz. Pimm’s No. 1 and 3 oz. lemonade. Finish with a generous splash of 7-up or Sprite. Garnish with a slice of cucumber. The British prefer to add borage leaves, strawberries, lemon and orange slices. Take out onto a porch or in the backyard. Sit, stir and sip.

We’ll be New Orleans-bound in a few days, and I’m trying to use up what we have in the fridge. Well, and the garden.

I’ve been quite fussy about my mesclun, giving it a long, cold drink of water every evening. This is my first shot at growing delicate leafy greens. A few weeks ago, they were a palm full of speckish seeds. Trouble is, this North Carolina spring has been fickle - chilly, then blazing hot, then freezing. We turned the heat off, giddily, only to have to crank it up again the first week of May. Now, it’s off for good. I hope. The weather this week has stayed solidly in the 70s, sunny and dry. But I have this gut feeling that the mercury will creep up while we’re gone next week. My pretty ruffle of green will deflate like an ironed shirt on an August day. There’ll go our salads.

In the fridge I found the remains of last Saturday’s farmers’ market haul: some young radishes, small, with the just a hint of heat in their crispy white flesh, and half of a tangy white goat cheese crotin from Goat Lady Dairy . I snipped some greens from the garden (for very tiny salads; microgreens, how chic are we), grabbed some sea salt, olive oil and a shallot from the pantry, and some good butter from the fridge, et voila, ten minutes later - supper. Radishes with butter and salt, salad, cheese, bread. Waste not, want not.

This is one of my favorite vinaigrettes. It’s snappy and tart, but also one of the quickest if you have shallots and champagne vinegar already on hand - and you really should. They’re indispensable friends to salads, and this time of year, you’ve got to treat your salad right.

Shallot vinaigrette makes enough for two good-sized salads, maybe more

About two tablespoons minced fresh shallot
2-4 tablespoons of good olive oil
4-5 tablespoons of champagne vinegar (depending on your taste)
Salt, pepper and brown sugar, to taste. Mix vigorously with a whisk to combine.

On another note…if you’ll have any recommendations for your beloved beignet, or your crawfish crush, let me know. We’re also heading toward Mobile, taking a swing at oysters on the Gulf Coast, then zipping over to Louisiana’s southwest corner for cracklin’ and boudin. Memphis (dry-rubbed ribs) and perhaps Oxford will come a little later in the week.

So this was the aftermath:

This folks, is not the first year that I made a birthday cake for one of my dogs, but the second. The first time. we threw our pug a party because he was turning 10, an accomplishment for any canine, but especially if you are a stubborn, funny, slightly-deaf but so sweet old man dog. The word pugnacious comes to mind. If Mr. Loomis was a person, he’d wear smoking jackets and take long trips to Vegas, where he’d get comp rooms and steak dinners and strippers at the Bellagio.

We had a good time last year. So we did it again. Now we have no excuse. But, we have to serve our guests something besides a dog-friendly cake that to humans tastes in fact like a very, very bland carrot cake, a sweet that suspicious requires no sifting, or even very precise measuring.

So, with that in mind, I turned to a trusty source, Cupcake Bakeshop, where I’ve spent many hours reading, drooling, and just generally admiring things.

It’s a clearly written, clean-looking blog, with beautiful, precise photography and tidy directions. They are lessons for a lifetime of fussing with flour and sugar, these are. I’m ashamed to admit that I’d been baking for quite some time before I learned, for example, that eggs and butter should be really both be at room temperature (unless, of course, you’re making pastry). It was a revelation.

Cupcakes themselves are trendy, but even the fanciest, Beverly Hills-born bakeries - or should we call them cupcakeries - sticks to the old vanilla, chocolate and red velvet standbys, maybe with some coconut and carrot thrown in just to mix things up. Here is a woman who, recipe after recipe, plays with green tea matcha and homemade marshmallows, toffee and Madeira and lavender ice cream and lemongrass-coconut buttercream, a woman who dreams up a late summer cupcake combination of peaches and blueberries and thyme. In January, she made Himalayan Goji Berry Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache and Himalayan Pink Salt. In December, it was time for cute-as-buttons pomegranate grapefruit cakes, filled with cheese cream and wearing a jaunty scarlet pomegranate jelly beret. I’m speechless.

Since then, I’ve systematically down-sized, so to speak, many a birthday and a celebration. Cakes are fine, but there’s something infectious about a version in miniature. They’re more effort, and then they aren’t, in part because you don’t have to slice them and dirty up a bunch of plates, and in part because they are rewarding in a nostalgic way that cake just quite can’t copy.

Loomis’ party fell on Cinco de Mayo - orchestrated quite on purpose by his owners, I would add - so I spent a lot of time in the kitchen pureeing tomatillos and smashing up garlic for salsas. Then there was ceviche, tostadas with smoked chicken and avocado crema, empanadas stuffed with potatoes, red peppers and chorizo, lots and lots of margaritas. At one point during the party, I was in the backyard, and I realized the blender was going off about every ten minutes.

Mr. Loomis’ cake was frosted with strained, plain yogurt and peanut butter. You wouldn’t have wanted to eat that. But, my friends, you missed out on the chocolate-chile cupcakes that I so carefully concocted from Cupcake Bakeshop’s files. I even tracked down some of the special white paper cups she likes to use instead of traditional cupcake papers. I like them, too. They are modern and professional looking. The chocolate cupcake recipe is hers, too. The hefty doses of cayenne, cinnamon and chipotle chile powder are what I added (here I go again with the chipotle chile powder - I can’t get enough of the stuff). The frosting is a mish-mash of two of her recipes, a fluffier, spicer love child of buttercream and ganache.

Only the best for Mr. Loomis. He knows his pastry and his cakes. It’s rumored that he was a French exchange student in college. We have had a hard time getting him to stop smoking Gauloises. Toujours le pug!

Chocolate-chile cupcakes, adapted from Cupcake Bakeshop. Use the recipe for Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

To the chocolate-butter mixture, I added 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract.
To the dry ingredients, I added 1/2 tablespoon chipotle powder, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper and a dash of cinnamon, probably about 1/8 teaspoon.

My yield was about 18 cupcakes.

Frosting
enough for 35-plus cupcakes

2 sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature
2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup whole milk
22 ounces good quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I splurged and used Callebaut)
about 1 package powder sugar
1 package cream cheese
chipotle powder, cayenne and cinnamon to taste - don’t be shy, you should really taste the chile.

Next time I make these, I’m going to tinker with the frosting recipe. I tinkered with it as I was making it, and didn’t write anything down, of course, and I think it would be easy to cut back on the cream and leave out the milk altogether. I’ll post updates.

Warm the cream on the stovetop until bubbling but not boiling, then pour over chopped chocolate in a metal bowl. Let sit so that chocolate can melt, then stir so most of the chocolate is melted. Cream butter and cream cheese in mixer, then add chocolate mixture and vanilla, then milk. Add powder sugar, a little at a time, until the frosting starts to thicken up. It won’t get thick enough to pipe until it spends about two hours in the fridge, or more; before then, you’re looking for something the consistency of thick gravy. Add spices. Mix for on medium for a good 10 to 15 minutes, then refrigerate until thick. Taste the frosting throughout the time that you are adding sugar - you don’t want it to get too sweet.

Store these cupcakes in the refrigerator. They’ll keep a few days.

Some glorious spring Saturdays are just made for being inside with blocks of European butter, drifts of flour, and the biggest mixer I have ever seen. The dough hook alone was the size of an antelope horn.

I’ll post with pictures soon. I’m still swooning over one of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever had (it was very belated). Thanks to my sweet pea.

From Johnson and Wales - Charlotte continuing ed cooking class listing

Sat, April 28, 2007, 09:00am to 02:00pm
The Organic Baker class size:20 remaining seats: 4
“Organic” is a federally regulated term that refers to how agricultural products are grown and processed, denoting an ecological system of farming that relies on healthy, fertile soil to produce plants resistant to disease and pests. In this class environmental responsibility will be featured as we create an assortment of delicious breads, rolls, and pastries. You’ll bake with organic preferments that include vegetables, grains, seeds and organic cheeses; you’ll also savor the flavor of superb farmhouse pastries that combine organic apples and other fruit with organic flour. Join us as we journey back in time to when all agriculture was organic and taste the difference in baked goods created with ingredients that have not been exposed to toxic chemicals or genetically modified organisms. You’ll learn what many others already know, that organic ingredients yield better tasting products!