CHILLED TREATS
Icy drinks, desserts can be simple, yet indulgent.
An icy treat on a blazing day calls us like an oscillating sprinkler draws neighborhood children, sirens of summer that lure without mercy. Resistance is futile, so stop trying and start enjoying. Summer might feel like it lasts forever when it’s 100 degrees and the mercury is climbing, but it’s fleeting. Eat your sweet tea while you can.
That’s right. Charlene Honeycutt is such a sweet tea fan that when she saw a recipe for lemonade granita, she adapted it.
“Oh my gosh, it is so good,” she said. “I made the lemonade one and wasn’t crazy about it, so when I started talking about it, someone, I don’t even remember who, said ‘Why not make it with sweet tea?’
“I’m known for always having a pitcher of sweet tea in my refrigerator, so it made sense.”
She started playing around with the amount of tea and sugar that would deliver not only the right taste, but also the right consistency. Granita is little more than fluffy ice, but for ice to take a light texture, it needs sugar.
While Honeycutt’s recipe calls for only a half-cup of sugar, it’s enough for texture and adds plenty of sweetness, she said.
“There is nothing decadent about it, but it’s so good it seems like it should be,” she said. “It’s also about the most Southern thing I can think of.”
Of course, it’s easy to slip from virtue to vice on this slope. A little sugar is fine; when we start adding cream and eggs, our treats can become an indulgence. Oh well. Such guilt. At Strano Sicilian Kitchen and Bar in Cooper-Young, chef/ owner Josh Steiner recently added affogato to his summer menu. It’s an Italian dessert that at its essence is coffee ice cream, but because it’s deconstructed coffee ice cream — vanilla gelato covered with espresso — there’s a lot more going on.
“It’s smooth and bitter, calming and refreshing all at one time,” he said. “I absolutely love it.”
Refreshing summer treats can be simple, indulgent
Steiner makes the vanilla gelato, his family’s recipe, extra sweet.
“I like it a little on the sweet side because it works so well with the espresso,” he said.
Want to make affogato at home? There’s no need to pull out the gelato machine when you can pick up a pint of Sweet Magnolia Ice Cream at various locations around town (Whole Foods and High Point Grocery among them) and support a local business; Hugh Balthrop makes his ice cream, gelato and sorbets in Clarksdale from milk he gets from Brown Family Dairy in Oxford and other local products.
If you want blueberry sorbet, you have to wait for the blueberries to come in; same with sweet potato gelato.
For affogato, serve a scoop of hard-frozen vanilla ice cream and pour espresso or very strong coffee over it. Dessert is served.
Some mornings, it’s already too hot to enjoy coffee — unless it’s cold. Consider brewing overnight, which also makes a much smoother brew, something that requires little sugar. Magical Coffee is a popular drink that will perk you up every day without raising your temperature; the recipe is at the end of the story.
Of course, you don’t have to make anything. Jerry’s Sno Cones, 1657 Wells Station, and La Michoacana (several locations, including 4091 Summer) are immensely popular spots to find a cool snack; the lines at Jerry’s are long, and the crowd at La Michoacana always milling. And sometimes you have to have the wedding cake supreme (a cake-flavored snow cone with soft-serve ice cream in the center), so you know you’re going to make the best of the line at Jerry’s. If it’s a mango-chile paleta you want, La Michoacana is your place.
But if you’re open to something new, the The Peanut Shoppe at 4305 Summer makes a nice snow cone (and it’s next door to a Baskin-Robbins, if anyone is up for ice cream). It’s one of several places Facebook commenters mentioned when asked where they find a cool treat during the summer. Other mentions include:
Milkshakes at Oshi (94 S. Main), with alcohol or without; Parker’s Water Ice, 7825 Winchester (there’s also a food truck); and the very popular Mama D’s Italian Ice, which can be found at the Memphis Botanic Garden Farmers Market on Wednesday afternoons or at 305 New Byhalia Road in Collierville.
Marsha McGee Chance keeps her favorite cool treats so simple a child could make them — but not eat them. She makes watermelon lollipops with triple sec and Tipsy Tomatoes with pepper vodka.
“I made the watermelon with vodka for years, but one time I didn’t have any vodka, so I used the triple sec,” she said. “Besides, everyone uses vodka with watermelon, and I wanted to do something different anyway.”
It’s simple: Cut watermelon about 1-inch thick, remove the rind, and use a biscuit cutter to make rounds. Place them in a single layer in a pan and cover with triple sec. Let marinate for about 2 hours, then flip for another 2 hours. Refrigerate overnight and serve on a lollipop stick with a sliver or two of mint.
Stick with the rounds, she said. She first tried this for a party using a star cookie cutter. Her late husband intervened.
“He came in the kitchen, and he said, ‘Honey, why don’t you do something else, because you’re using every word in the book.’ He was the one who suggested I use the biscuit cutter, and that works great.”
For Tipsy Tomatoes, Chance pricks cherry or grape tomatoes with a fork, just enough to pierce the skin. She leaves them overnight in a plastic bag, covered with pepper-flavored vodka.
“If I’m feeling like it, I might go to Lucchesi’s and get a good mozzarella and put them on a stick with basil, like a little caprese salad,” she said. “But no one has ever complained if I just put them out with salt and pepper on top. Everyone loves them.”