There are some people who it is just plain good to know. When you're in college, for example, the guy with a truck is incredibly helpful, and when you go in to business, the understanding accountant and the slightly unethical lawyer are almost necessities.

A few years ago, my friend John became one of these fabulously helpful people. A lifelong resident of southwest Virginia and a trained chemist, John had a skill set that was uniquely wonderful: he knew how to get hold of moonshine, and he knew how to test it for impurities. While the grain liquor (or "likker," if you prefer) that I got from John wasn't all that cheap, it was completely flavorless, and I soon discovered that it made the perfect carrier for various fruits. Within a couple of months, I had a collection of incredibly delicious infused cordials that I would mix with seltzer or tonic water to produce light, moderately alcoholic spritzers with insanely pure tastes.

Forget fancy, overpriced organic cleaners. You can do plenty with just a squeeze of citrus.

The other day, I blogged about my awesome Big Book of Backyard Cooking. In the review, I mysteriously mentioned my favorite iced tea recipe, but I didn't want to go into detail until I could share pictures of all the tasty ingredients. So, over the weekend I ran to the store twice (because I lazily didn't check my food supply before going the first time), and whipped up a nice batch of my absolute favorite iced beverage: Julep Iced Tea.

Instead of bourbon, which keeps many a folk sauced at the Kentucky Derby, this recipe uses a super-potent batch of English Breakfast tea. It takes a little more effort than your usual iced tea, but it's well worth the effort. Julep Iced Tea is super tasty, with that immediate kick of fresh mint and the sweet, sugary aftertaste of lemony tea. Check out the recipe after the jump and the gallery below.

I know this sounds difficult, but a lemon napolean really would be a simple and elegant dessert to make for mom this weekend. All you need is store bought puff pastry sheets. I'd cut the sheets into whatever size you want while the dough is raw. You should use three layers of puff pastry for each napolean. Bake the puff pastry according to the package instructions. Once the puff pastry is cooled down, spread each of the first two layers with lemon curd and stack the three layers together, with the plain one on top. You can spread vanilla icing on top and use chocolate frosting or chocolate sauce to create the design or just sprinkle them with chocolate jimmies. Here's a recipe for lemon curd, or a high quality store bought curd would be great.

Mom will think you spent all day in the kitchen making these beautiful things, and she'll think you're the best (which you are).

I roasted my first chicken sometime in the spring of 2002. I was 22 and living on my own for the first time in my life. I bought the chicken at Reading Terminal Market, for the extravagant price of $13 (it seemed awfully spendy at the time since I was making approximately that much an hour). When I got it home, I rinsed it with cold water, patted it down with paper towels and perched it in a battered, shallow roasting pan that I had picked up at a thrift store. Following my mother's instructions, I sprinkled the outside with salt and garlic power. Inside, I slipped a halved lemon, a sprig of rosemary and a small, roughly chunked onion.

I've only very slightly improved on this method in the last six years. These days, I slip herbs under the skin, scatter whole cloves of garlic in the pan around the bird and rub the skin with a little butter in the final half hour in order to help crisp the skin. However, I always slip that halved lemon in the cavity. Over at the Kitchn, they've tested two roasted lemon chicken methods in an attempt to find a superior method. In one they perch lemon slices over the skin of the bird and in the other they put the lemon inside. Check out the post to see what they discovered.

What's your chicken roasting technique?

Back in the early 1970's my parents lived in Santa Cruz, CA. They had a neighbor who would make a yeasted lemon bread for prosperity and good luck in the new year. My mom remembers it as being small round loaves that were sweet but not cake-y, with raisins and chopped nuts. At the time she did get the recipe, but in last 35 years, the scrap of paper on which the recipe was written has walked away.

She has an itch to make this bread again this year, but after much googling and flipping through cookbooks, we haven't been able to find anything that seems quite right. We know that this bread was traditional to whatever area of the world that this neighbor's family originally came from, but again, we don't know for sure. So, does this New Year's bread ring any bells for any of you out there? If so, we'd love to see your recipe! (Or, if you just have a really good recipe for a yeasted lemon bread with fruit and nuts, that would work too).

OK, here it is June 25th, so I know I'm a little late getting this info out to you, but June is National Iced Tea Month. My question is: why?

You would think that the powers that be in the iced tea world (or whoever names these holidays) would wait for the much warmer/hotter/more humid months of July or August for this holiday. June is always a strange month (depending on where you live, of course). Some days can be 90, some days can be 60. Some days we can have torrential downpours, some days nothing but blue skies and heat. But even when it's warm and sunny it's never as warm and sunny as July and August.

But that's OK. Iced tea is my summer drink and I don't mind starting out the summer this way. I don't like real iced tea though (it just tastes like, well, cold tea to me). I need lots of sugar and lemon.

Now that you have been hearing for a couple of days about the Second Annual Clément NYC Cocktail Challenge and the St. Clémentine Sour I thought you should have a chance to taste it. Check back here on Slashfood to find out more about the competition. Cheers and have a great weekend!


St. Clémentine Sour
Created by Jonathan M. Forester


2 Oz. Clément Première Canne Rhum Agricole
3/4 oz. St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
2 oz. fresh squeezed Clementine orange juice (or Satsuma, Mandarin, or Tangerine. Approximately the juice from one Clementine)
1 oz. fresh squeezed Lemon juice (Approximately the juice from half a lemon.)
1/4 tsp. of Stirrings Blood Orange bitters (If using Regan's or Fee's Orange Bitters then just 1 dash / 1/8 tsp.)

Cold (and wet, depending on where you live) winter weather tends to make us crave hot, hearty foods, but that doesn't do anything to diminish the appeal of something light for dessert after a heavy meal. In fact, a bright cirtus dessert can serve as a reminder that spring is still on the way - and the Lemon Cream Tartlets from Helene at Tartelette are very spring-like, indeed. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's newest book, Baking: From My Home to Yours, and it is rumored to be one of the best lemon tartlet recipes out there, with an intense lemon flavor and silky smooth texture. The texture is due to the fact that an entire cup of butter is used to make the filling for only a handful of tarts, making it anything but light in fat and calories. One bite should make you be enough to forget the nutritional stats and just let you enjoy the heavenly flavor of the tart.

Last year, we rounded up eight great pancake recipes for a Fat Tuesday celebration, but even though eight new pancake recipes are enough to get you through several breakfasts without getting bored, there are always going to be more recipes out there to try. So, without further ado, here are eight delicious new pancake recipes to try:

• Nosheteria's Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes (pictured) are light and tender, with the bright flavor of lemon backed up with a little crunch from poppyseeds. They're a great alternative to lemon poppyseed muffins.
• Keeping the seasonal citrus, but moving in a slightly different direction, we have Lemon and Ricotta Pancakes, which are delicate and just melt in your mouth when eaten.
• Oatmeal pancakes are hearty, but perfectly satisfying on a cold winter morning - although with a fresh berry topping like the one Elise used, they will satisfy in summer, as well.
• A giant Baked Apple Pancake can be served as breakfast or as dessert, but due to its size and addictive taste, it is best to save lots of room for it.
• A little bit of zest and spice can take a plain, buttermilk pancake to a whole new level, as they did in these Orange and Cinnamon Buttermilk Pancakes. Use any spices you like (ginger would be nice)!
• For those of you who are health-conscious when it comes to breakfast, you might want to try making a batch of No-Flour, No-Sugar Crepes to start your day.
• Pork-lovers will probably get a kick out of having their favorite breakfast side inside their pancakes, rather than next to them, so Bacon Pancakes should be particularly appealing to them
• Nutella is often spread on top of pancakes or used as a filling for dessert crepes, but mixing it into the batter for Nutella Pancakes eliminates that pesky extra step before consumption. Opt for chocolate sauce as a topping if you like your pancakes for dessert, otherwise stick to maple syrup.

Dubbed "lollipops for the new generation" by the company, Jelly Belly's LolliBeans are one of the company's newest products and were promoted at the SF Fancy Foods Show along with their new pomegranate jelly beans. Lollipops are hardly innovative, as far as candy goes, but the company seems surprisingly excited about these pops. Each one is shaped like a very large (over 1 inch long) jelly bean and is embossed with the famous Jelly Belly logo, and 10 flavors - very cherry, watermelon, sizzling cinnamon, strawberry cheesecake, cotton candy, blueberry, tangerine, bubblegum, grape and lemon - all of which are as true-to-life as the original Jelly Bellys are.

Perhaps if I had picked up a Strawberry Cheesecake pop instead of a lemon I would have been more impressed, but this was simply a good - not fantastic - piece of candy.

The Lollibeans are available at candy and gourmet stores nationwide and will probably be more widely available as we head into Easter.

California has been hit by an unusually bad cold snap this year and the effects of the freezing weather have really taken a toll on crops - and the bad weather isn't even over yet. Some estimates say that at least 75% of the citrus crop has been destroyed and others say even more, drawing from the more than 80% that was ruined the last time the state suffered a severe cold snap. The weather is so bad that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the 10 agricultural counties that have been hardest hit by the weather.

86% of the lemons and 21% of all the oranges sold in the US are grown in California, which makes it the largest citrus-producing state in the country. The loss of crops is devastating to the farmers, but it will also hit consumers hard at the grocery store. Orange and lemon prices are already increasing and the wholesale price has more than doubled in the last seven days alone. Juice prices will increase as well. "The price spike is expected to hit supermarkets in the next two weeks, when the present inventory dwindles."

While citrus is taking the biggest hit, basically every winter crop in California has been damaged, from avocados to lettuce, and consumers across the country will feel the effects of doubling and tripling prices in the produce department, especially if they want to buy US-grown fruits and vegetables.

I love making pudding cakes. I find them to be both easy and satisfying, especially on a cold evening where the dessert can really warm you up. A basic recipe for one will have egg whites folded into a flavored batter, much like a souffle. Unlike a souffle, however, pudding cakes are baked in a water bath that keeps the bottom portion from puffing up as it cooks, leaving a thick pudding at the base of your baking dish. The top portion of the cake, uninhibited by the insulation of the water bath, bakes into a light, moist sponge cake that provides a perfect contrast for the pudding below.

I baked this batch in individual ramekins, which makes them look a little more elegant than a pudding cake baked in one large dish and scooped out for serving. As an extra touch, I also used Meyer lemons in place of regular lemons. They add a lot of lemon flavor without any of the sharpness that is usually associated with lemons and lemon juice.

Popular ingredients to combine with chocolate include mint flavoring, peanut butter, crisped rice, nuts, dried fruits and cacao nibs. Some chocolates even add chilies and cinnamon for extra flavor. The combination of lemon and pepper, however, is one that would seem to suit fish or chicken better than chocolate. Nevertheless, Swiss chocolate maker Frey used that very combination in their Citron & Poivre Chocolate Bar.

I was gifted a bar of this chocolate for Christmas and was somewhat hesitant to try it. The mild burn of chilies suits cocoa, while pepper can be more aggressive. Would the lemon be too bitter? The promise of high-quality extra dark Swiss chocolate made me set aside my doubts and taste the bar.

Surprisingly, it was delicious. The lemon flavor came through as very zesty and bright, not at all bitter and with a much cleaner flavor than orange, which tends to linger in the mouth long after you have finished a piece of orange chocolate. There was only a hint of pepper, although if you were to eat the whole bar in one sitting it would probably be more noticeable. The chocolate itself was excellent, with a silky smooth texture that melted right into your mouth. I would definitely buy it again (it is sold at some select Target stores) and plan to keep an eye out for the brand's other unusual flavors, like Rhubarb & Aloe Vera (in white chocolate), Coeur de Macadamia (caramelized macadamia nuts in milk chocolate) and Pécan & Caramel (pecans and crunchy caramel pieces in milk chocolate)

Pairing lemon with other fruits in desserts is a great idea, as the bright, tart flavor of lemon really helps to highlight other flavors. Bea, from la Tartine Gourmande, used this strategy when making her luscious Blackberry Tartlets with Lemon Cream. The tarts are quite easy to make because the elements are made separately and combined before serving. The tart shells are made with pâte brisée and are prebaked, a step that you could easily do a day or in advance if you want to try the tarts during the holidays and need to save time. The lemon cream, which is really like a light and rich lemon-flavored custard, can also be done ahead of time. Before serving, the cream is spooned into the tarts and garnished with fresh berries. It looks like Bea gave some a sprinkle of confectioners' sugar and garnished others with small sprigs of mint.

Although she used blackberries in her tarts, Bea is quick to point out that you should use whatever type of fruit is seasonally available - strawberries, raspberries, etc. We're suspect that the tarts will taste just as good without any fruit topping, too.