06.29.07
Posted in Appetizers, Chinese, Cuisines, Dinner, Meats, Pork and Ham at 9:16 am by julie
Since I got serious about cooking a few years back, I have mostly been concentrating on Italian cooking, which suits most of my tastes perfectly. I would like to branch out to other cuisines, and do so here and there, but my pantry has a strong Italian bent and I’m missing out on some of the equipment and basic cookbooks I’d need to really do justice to them. I’m building up slowly, so for now I’m just taking it one dish at a time.
For instance, on Tuesday night, following a trip to LifeSource for a few items, I decided to be brave and try making homemade pork potstickers for dinner. I based the meal on a recipe at Confections of a Foodie Bride, and for the most part, it worked out really nicely. The filling was easy to make and had great flavor, and although I doubt that I folded them into anything approaching a traditional potsticker shape, they held together pretty well on the stove. I prepped a plateful of potstickers, and got them going in my biggest skillet while I worked on the next batch.
When the time was up, I checked on them… and discovered they were all irrevocably stuck to my stainless skillet, despite the oil. Guess they don’t call these things potstickers for nothing! I ended up scraping viciously at the pan with a turner, dumping the mangled potsticker remnants on a plate and the wonton-encrusted pan in the sink. A taste-test of the broken ’stickers indicated that they would indeed be worth the aggravation of making more, so I gave it another go using my only nonstick skillet, a little 8″ guy
that worked perfectly for a much smaller batch of ’stickers (really need a larger nonstick skillet). I had some rice steaming away in the rice cooker while working on all this, and served the ’stickers with that and some sweet ginger chili sauce from Ginger People for dipping, although it turned out to be a little too spicy for me.
Were they worth the trouble? You better believe it! They were the best tasting potstickers I’ve ever had—even the broken, potstuck ones—and it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to know for certain what was in the meat filling I was eating: ground pork, Napa cabbage, green onion and chives, and a bit of soy sauce and sesame oil. I think I might be able to recruit Jeremy’s assistance with prep next time, and would even consider making a double batch and freezing them for future meals.
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06.27.07
Posted in Chocolate, Dairy, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream at 10:56 am by julie
After making banana pancakes last weekend, I still had a surplus of bananas to use up. Three of those are destined for banana bread, but there were still a few undesignated bananas, quickly moving past the brief yellow-ripe phase into mushiness. I also had half a tub of mascarpone cheese left from the pancakes, and the combination of the two was ringing a little bell in my head. Where had I seen that pairing recently?
Back in May, Helene of Tartelette posted a recipe for banana and mascarpone mousse parfaits, perfect little pyramids of creamy banana goodness topped with a waterfall of ganache and a sprinkle of chopped pistachio. As it turned out, I had all the ingredients for the frozen mousse on hand, so I decided to give it a go.
The mousse was not at all difficult to make, although the number of separately whipped ingredients meant dirtying a few bowls. I very gently folded everything together and scooped servings gingerly into my silicone muffin pan, which I thought would make a decent pinch-hitter for pretty pyramid molds. I still think it would have worked out beautifully…except that I couldn’t fit the muffin pan into my freezer. It’s not even that big, and I put it on my smallest baking sheet, but we have a vertically oriented freezer with a door that opens against a wall, and the #!@&% freezer door shelves were blocking the way. I tried transferring the pan to a plate, but no dice. Even the plate wouldn’t fit without serious angling, and meanwhile the mousse was sliding all over the top of the muffin pan and getting all over the undersides of the freezer door shelves.
Rather miserably, I admitted defeat and scooped the mousse from the muffin pan into the few ramekins I have, putting the overflow into some skinny juice glasses. So much for unmolding them for presentation, and so much for the fluffy texture I had so painstakingly worked to achieve. I was at least able to get the plate into the freezer by itself, and then added the ramekins one at a time; but when I turned around to put the glasses on another shelf, the plate tipped and one of the ramekins belched its contents all over the inside of my freezer before splatting on the floor. Now sobbing in despair, I stormed around the kitchen cleaning up the mess, and then retreated to the bedroom to drown my sorrows in a re-read of Harry Potter Book 6 (I wanted a refresher for next month).
The next day, I grudgingly peered at the surviving mousses in the freezer, and decided that I might as well finish the job. Since I used up the last of my cream in the mousses themselves, I decided to make the lean chocolate sauce in The Perfect Scoop rather than a chocolate ganache, and topped the parfaits with toasted sliced almonds because they caught my eye on the shelf.
The chocolate sauce was easy to make. I used Droste cocoa and Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips, and made a half batch because that was all the corn syrup I had. It still made plenty and we will be happily topping our ice cream with the leftovers, which did thicken up gloriously in the fridge as promised, almost to pudding consistency.
The finished parfaits were actually really tasty. The mousse itself is a sort of semifreddo, and for all my concerns about rock-like consistency, they came out tasting remarkably like banana ice cream. To be honest, we hardly even minded the lack of a fancy presentation. I’ll be very happy to move on to the next batch of ice cream, though…
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06.26.07
Posted in Cuisines, Italian, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Soups at 10:30 am by julie
Jeremy hasn’t been feeling quite 100% for the past few weeks: we thought for a while that he might be developing allergies, but as far as I am aware, allergenic sniffling and sneezing isn’t usually accompanied by a cough. As a result of his cold, such as it is, he’s been requesting some “sickie” food from time to time (read: cereal and plain poached eggs on toast). This weekend, he caught me completely off-guard by asking for chicken noodle soup.
I’d be more than happy to make my sniffling husband some homemade chicken noodle soup, but I didn’t have all the right ingredients on hand, and he didn’t feel like grocery shopping. I was not about to let a soup request pass by unfulfilled, though. I love soup, but Jeremy is usually not the biggest fan, so I limit my soupmaking instinct to a cream of tomato here or a potato with fried almonds there, whenever occasion arises. This weekend, I turned to Marcella for guidance, thinking perhaps of a homemade tortellini soup. Instead, I ended up making a delicious and rather simple lentil soup with pasta and bacon.
Lentil Soup with Pasta, Bacon, and Garlic
I’ve transcribed the recipe as it appeared in the cookbook, but I did make a few adjustments out of necessity. My bacon was from a packet of ends that I picked up at the local farmer’s market, thinking I was getting actual slices; it worked perfectly diced up in this soup. Rather than using fresh tomatoes, which aren’t in season here yet, I used a 14-oz can of diced tomatoes and their juices. My pasta of choice was a protein-enriched macaroni.
I also took advantage of Marcella’s suggestion that after cooking the lentils, the soup could keep for a while before adding the pasta. Freyja was dying for a walk and Jeremy didn’t feel up to it, so I set him to watching the liquid levels in the soup-pot as the lentils cooked, and took the pup out for her afternoon jaunt. When the timer went off, he covered the pot and took it off the heat for me, and when I came back, everything was still warm and just needed a revived simmer for the macaroni.
Although pasta has that habit of soaking up most of the soup’s liquid during an overnight sit, we thoroughly enjoyed the (rather denser) leftovers reheated for lunch the next day.
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 T for cooking, plus more for stirring into the soup
1/4 lb bacon chopped very fine
1/2 C chopped onion
2 tsp chopped garlic
1/3 C chopped celery
2 T chopped parsley
1/3 C fresh, ripe, firm tomatoes, skinned raw with a peeler, all seeds removed and chopped; or canned Italian plum tomatoes, cut up with their juice
1 C dried lentils
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 1/2 C short tubular pasta
1/4 C freshly grated romano cheese
Choose a saucepan that can later contain the lentils and pasta with sufficient water to cook them. Put in 2 T olive oil, the chopped bacon, onion, garlic, celery, and parsley, and turn on the heat to medium. Cook, stirring and turning the ingredients over often, until the vegetables become deeply colored, about 15 minutes. Add the chopped tomato, stir to coat it well, and cook for a few minutes until the fat floats free of the tomato.
Add the lentils, turning them over 3 or 4 times to coat them well, then add enough water to cover by 1 inch. Adjust heat so that the liquid simmers gently, and cook until the lentils are tender, about 25 to 30 minutes. Whenever the water level falls below the 1 inch above the lentils you started with, replenish with as much water as needed.
You can make the soup up to this point several hours or even a day or two in advance. Reheat thoroughly, adding water if necessary, before proceeding with the next step.
Add salt and several grindings of pepper, put in the pasta, and turn up the heat to cook at a brisk boil. Add more water if necessary to cook the pasta. When the pasta is done—it should be tender, but firm to the bite—the consistency of the soup should be more on the dense than on the thin side.
Taste and correct for salt and pepper. Add the grated cheese and about 1 T of olive oil, stir thoroughly, then take off heat and serve at once.
Source: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan
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06.25.07
Posted in Cake, Dessert, Foodblog Events at 2:30 pm by julie
When I read that the theme of this month’s Sugar High Friday was “your favorite, most craved dessert,” I was stumped for a while. As much as I love desserts, I really couldn’t come up with a favorite, and even as I write this post, I’m still scouring my brain, trying to decide if something is so obviously my favorite dessert that I was taking it as a given. Nope. I like having New Orleans Sheet Cake around my birthdays in October, but I don’t think I’ve made one for years (so much for most craved, but maybe I’ll do one this fall). I love my great-grandma’s butterscotch pie, but Jeremy’s not a butterscotch fan, and in any case I’ve never gotten it to set up quite right (but neither have my mom and grandma, so I’m in good company. The problem may lie with the lower fat milks these days.) But really, as long as I can have a little sweet something after a meal, I’m happy. So I turned to my husband, and asked him to tell me his favorite dessert.
Jeremy is a man who knows what he likes. That’s not to say that he won’t try new things, but once he finds a winner, he sees no need for further experimentation. (One of these days, very soon, I’ll post my banana bread recipe and delve into that a little further….there are some ripe bananas on the counter asking for it.) So I knew what he would say almost before he said it: For quick breads, his favorites are my pumpkin chip muffins and banana bread; for cookies, oatmeal carmelitas, lemon bars and chocolate chip cookies with toffee; for pies, apple with a crumb crust (or apple crisp, forget the pie); and for cakes, German chocolate and carrot.
Most of those desserts just weren’t ideal for this SHF, though. For instance, Jeremy always wants German chocolate cake for his birthday, and I just made him a lovely one this February that sadly went unphotographed. The oatmeal carmelitas are generally a holiday treat, and we had lemon bars not too long ago. The pumpkin muffins, banana bread and chocolate chip cookies are all on regular rotation. I’m working on apple crisp, but haven’t hit on the perfect recipe yet, and plan to do some serious research this fall. That leaves carrot cake.
Good carrot cake is homey and moist and spicy, topped with a lush pile of cream cheese frosting and full of crunchy nuts and shreds of carrot for some much-needed contrast. Many carrot cakes call for raisins or chunks of pineapple, but I find such fruity mushiness appalling and unnecessary. The carrot cake recipe I’ve been using since we got married has no sugar in it, opting instead for honey and pineapple juice, but it seems to be a little hit-or-miss. When it comes out well, it is excellent, and when it doesn’t… well, I can think of one occasion where all the honey appeared to have sunk to the bottom of the cake, making it dried out on top and like a whacked-out fruitless fruit cake on the bottom. I blame my oven for that, incidentally. 
This time around, I tried a new carrot cake recipe, and thank heavens, because now I’ve got a new dessert to crave. It was my ideal carrot cake, in every way: It employed both honey and grated apple for flavor and moisture, along with lots of carrot and some finely chopped hazelnuts; it ended up with a lovely fluffy texture and lots of flavor; and the honeyed cream cheese frosting was delicious and easily spreadable. I adapted the recipe for a 13×9 pan since I don’t have a good means of storage for layer cakes, and consequently I ended up with a container of extra frosting, which is just a terrible burden, let me tell you. 
We’ll manage somehow.
Honeyed Carrot Cake
I’ve adapted this recipe from a layer cake to a sheet cake out of necessity. I also just grated the carrots and apples, rather than additionally pureeing them in the food processor, because is that really necessary? It seems to me that carrot cake is really a lot about the texture (just not squishy raisin/pineapple textures, thank you very much). And if you’re going to puree them, why bother grating them first? I used some lovely fresh organic carrots, and grated everything in my Cuisinart, which is absolutely a lifesaver for a recipe like this. And I didn’t bother toasting the hazelnuts this time, because it was getting late.
For the carrot cake:
1 ½ C sugar
½ C honey (I used a combination of wildflower and mesquite)
1 C canola oil
4 eggs
2 C all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp mace
½ tsp ginger
4 C finely grated carrots
2 cups finely grated apples, preferably Granny Smith
1 cup hazelnuts, toasted and finely chopped
Note: Measure carrots, apples and hazelnuts each after grating or chopping.
For the honey frosting:
2 8-oz packages cream cheese, room temperature
½ C unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1-lb bag powdered sugar
¼ tsp salt
½ C honey
2 tsp vanilla extract
Prepare the cake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 13×9 baking pan.
Beat sugar, honey and oil together in a large bowl. Add eggs one at time, beating after each addition. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking power, baking soda, salt and spices. Preferably working by hand, add dry mixture to the oil mixture and blend well. Fold in carrots, apples and hazelnuts, making sure to get rid of any clumps.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until cake is golden and springs back when touched or an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.
Prepare the frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter together until creamy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar and salt until fluffy. Add honey and vanilla and beat until the frosting reaches a smooth and spreadable consistency. If frosting is very soft, chill until firm enough to spread. There will likely be leftover frosting, so make sure to keep that for midnight snacking…er, I mean another use.
Serve frosted cake immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. (I preferred it cold; Jeremy liked it both warm and cold.) Both cake and frosting can be made up to 3 days in advance. 10-12 servings.
Source: Adapted from The Gilded Fork
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06.23.07
Posted in Breakfast, Quick Breads at 10:30 am by julie
For breakfast this morning, I decided to spoil Jeremy and make him a batch of his very favorite muffins. I’ve been making these pumpkin chip muffins for years, and the reason they are so good was originally a bit of a fluke. You see, the first time I made the recipe, I meant to cut it in half for just the two of us, but I accidentally used a whole can of pumpkin. I decided to try baking these double-pumpkin muffins anyway, and they came out incredibly moist and tender; I’ve been making them that way ever since, along with a few other adjustments, such as a decrease in oil.
Jeremy is always requesting these muffins, to the point where I started getting a little bored making them. If I put off making a batch, though, he just goes in the kitchen and makes them himself. They are never quite the same as when I make them, though, and I think the difference may just be a lighter touch with the whisk. So take this as fair warning: once you start making these muffins, you may not be allowed to stop!
Pumpkin Chip Muffins
2 eggs
1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
1 C sugar
1/2 C canola oil
1 1/2 C AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 400F. In a large batter bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the pumpkin, sugar and oil. Meanwhile, in a smaller bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and soda, cinnamon and salt. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just until combined, then fold in the chocolate chips. Scoop into a prepared muffin pan (I use a silicone pan and a cookie scoop for this) and bake for 17-20 minutes, until tops are starting to brown and spring back when pressed, or an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Makes 12-15 muffins. These are fantastic warm from the oven, but remain nicely moist for several days, if you can restrain yourself. My husband usually asks me to double this recipe, so we get the extra-large cans of pumpkin.
Update 7/8/08: I made a fresh double batch of pumpkin muffins for Jeremy last night, and made a few minor adjustments for health’s sake. I used half white whole wheat flour, and subbed a quarter of the sugar with Sucanat. Two tablespoons of the oil were also flax oil, although I don’t know whether the baking process would destroy the health benefits of it. They were just as delicious as always, maybe even better, so I might push them a little farther in that direction next time.
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06.22.07
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Italian, Meats, Pork and Ham at 10:39 am by julie
Last night’s dinner was a dish I’ve been wanting to make for some time now: pork and ricotta meatballs in tomato sauce, from the April edition of Food and Wine. I had a half-container of fresh ricotta that we used to make some ricotta pancakes, but it was a new brand for me, and of a much coarser consistency than expected. That’s not a bad thing at all for a savory dish like meatballs, but was a bit odd in my fluffy pancakes.
In any case, we got a packet of organic ground pork from LifeSource this weekend for the purpose of making meatballs, and I’ve been waiting most of the week for the right weather and timing to present itself. Last night wasn’t ideal, as we went for gelato after work with a good friend and then took Freyja to Bush Park for a brisk walk, but I was determined to have meatballs for dinner even if it didn’t happen until 10pm. Fortunately, we only had to wait until 9:30pm to eat, which almost seemed like a bonus.
The recipe was pretty straightforward. I made sure to start my dawdling oven well in advance and snipped some fresh parsley from the garden. My basil plant is an especially sad, droopy thing this year, so I went with dried basil and just stirred it into the tomato sauce. It took about 2 hours from start to finish: 30 minutes to roast the meatballs and 90 to slow-cook them in the sauce, during which I turned them every half an hour. In the home stretch, I put on a pot of whole-wheat spaghetti to boil (as requested), and drizzled some olive oil over the pasta before topping it with some meatballs, sauce, and grated pecorino romano.
They were delicious, moist and very flavorful, with just enough sauce. I would be hard-pressed to decide between these and Joyce Goldstein’s Sardinian meatballs, but I guess it would just come down to a matter of time. These ricotta meatballs take much longer to cook and involve the oven, so if I was craving meatballs in the dead of summer (and no, Oregon really hasn’t gotten there yet), I’d have to go with the Sardinian meatballs. But I think the combination of pancetta and ricotta added to these meatballs gives them an edge flavor-wise, and I’m sure the oven-roasting only adds to that depth, so with a surfeit of time and cool air, I would definitely choose these instead. Both recipes make a lot of meatballs, and we are looking forward to leftovers for lunch today: I knew there was a reason I grabbed a bag of pitas!
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06.20.07
Posted in Cuisines, Eggs, Mediterranean at 11:57 am by julie
Well, I may have gotten started too late to participate in any of the End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganzas, but any time of month is good enough for an Eggs and Toast Extravaganza at our house. We have eggs whenever the fridge is looking empty and Jeremy wants some protein without waiting for a trip to the store or for a packet of frozen meat to thaw. And—who are we kidding?—sometimes eggs just sound better than that other stuff anyway.
I’m going to make a periodic running series of our egg adventures—though, admittedly, many of these meals are more comfort foods than culinary stretches—so I thought I would start things off with a bang, in a garlicky puddle of Greek yogurt.
Jeremy has been on a poached egg kick lately, so good thing my technique is improving. It’s really not as intimidating as it seems, provided you use the freshest eggs you can. I’ve deposited them on pan-roasted asparagus with Parmesan and balsamic reduction, braised Belgian endive with cream and prosciutto, fantastic hash browns from the Good Enough to Eat cookbook, and even on plain buttered toast when he wasn’t feeling so well. So when he asked for poached eggs again on Sunday, I scratched my head and tried to come up with something I hadn’t made before.
The answer was Turkish poached eggs with yogurt and spicy sage butter, a recipe introduced to me by Molly of Orangette several years back. It was one I mentally filed away to try sometime when I was feeling brave, because the plain yogurt made me nervous. I usually keep vanilla yogurt at home for snacks instead, and that works beautifully in desserts, but now we always have at least one tub of plain yogurt on hand also (sometimes in multiple varieties, since Jeremy likes Greek-style yogurt and we always have Nancy’s to supplement the puppy’s meals). While the eggs poached, I scraped the bottom of a container of plain Greek Gods yogurt and stirred it up with some salt and minced garlic, and spread it (a bit nervously, I admit) into rounds on two plates.
I then snipped and rinsed a few sage leaves from the garden, happily tossing them into the melted butter with a healthy sprinkle of my current favorite spice, smoked Spanish paprika. By the time I had some slices of lovely spinach-onion sourdough bread toasted and buttered, the eggs were ready, and the paprika-butter had started to brown a bit.
This was a fantastic meal. I can always tell when I’ve made something Jeremy really likes because he starts suggesting I should open a restaurant or bakery: dear man. In any case, the garlicky yogurt was perfect with the eggs, and topped with a drizzle of that melted butter, made everything taste really decadent. It was so wonderful that even I was compelled to sop up every bit on the plate with my toast, and I’m absolutely not the toast-sopping sort. This will definitely be one to keep in regular rotation, even with more mundane toast.
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06.19.07
Posted in Breakfast, Fruits, Quick Breads at 5:04 pm by julie
Jeremy and I just took a few days off to celebrate our eighth anniversary. Yesterday we took Freyja for a hike and a splash at Silver Creek Falls, and today we took her on her very first trip to the beach at Lincoln City. Despite these plans, we didn’t have any set schedule, and with the pup being an early riser, I had plenty of time to make some special breakfasts before we headed out.
We are nothing if not creatures of habit. Of a typical weekend or holiday morning, Jeremy asks for one of three things: a cinnamon flop, a bowl of oatmeal, or some variation of eggs and toast (about which, more to come soon). But clearly our usuals would not suffice for such a special occasion.
Yesterday morning I broke out the trusty King Arthur cookbook and hit on a crumb cake recipe that was just the ticket. Because there were only two of us, I halved the recipe and baked it in my stoneware pie plate. It ended up taking nearly 45 minutes to finish baking, but I think that is partly because my oven seems to take over an hour to heat up to temperature, despite what the screen claims. I really need an oven thermometer. In spite of the oven issues, the crumb cake came out buttery and lovely, and quite filling.
For this morning, I already had a plan in place. Ever since I first tried making ricotta pancakes, those have been our special occasion breakfast standard (and sometimes a good light dinner too). But I came across a new pancake recipe last week that sounded right up our alley: Banana pancakes with hazelnut mascarpone cream and a Nutella drizzle. So that was our anniversary breakfast today.
The pancakes came out nice and fluffy. I didn’t taste them by themselves, though, because they were all made up into lovely little stacks glued together with hazelnut mascarpone cream and slices of ripe banana. The finished stacks were topped with more bananas and a healthy drizzle of a sauce made of Nutella thinned with milk. Now, I’m not a fan of bananas, which I frequently find to be mushy and mealy and rather slimy. But these just happened to be at that sweet spot between green and squishily overripe, and because they were masked with fluffy pancakes and Nutella-flavored mascarpone, they didn’t bother me at all. It was an impressive presentation, and would make a nice breakfast for company.
Jeremy liked them also and had two stacks. But when I asked him whether he preferred these or our usual ricotta pancakes, I bet you can guess his answer. Some habits just aren’t worth breaking.
Update 2/23/08: I made this crumbcake again, almost exactly the same way and with the same result: a very long bake time that ended with me upping the oven temp out of frustration. Very tasty cake, though, and a nice change every so often, as long as I can remember that it will need extra time to cook. I used half white whole wheat flour to good effect.
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06.18.07
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Dips & Spreads, Greek, Italian, Veggies at 6:51 pm by julie
For those Salemites who have an interest in unusual or organic foodstuffs and mourn the lack of a nearby Whole Foods, Wild Oats, or Trader Joe’s, LifeSource is a great resource. Of course, we may have been about the last people in town to figure that out, but now that we have a car, we’re trying hard to make up for the neglect. This last week we were fortunate enough to find a pile of fresh fava beans in the produce section, which for me was a big deal, because I’ve never found them for sale before, despite hopeful scouring of the farmer’s markets in May. I decided to use them to make up a bit of fava bean ‘hummus’ from Sunday Suppers at Lucques.
I’d heard an awful lot about what a pain fava beans are to shell, so I decided to document the process, just for fun. The pods are big and velvety, containing just 5 or 6 beans if you’re lucky. Many of them were lined with cottony fluff, as if to cushion the precious contents. I had a heck of a time getting the beans out of the pods, though; most of them refused to split open along their seams and just tore willy-nilly instead.
When I was done shelling, I had a sad little pile of bean left, just enough to cover the bottom of my bowl. I got some water boiling and blanched the beans for 2 minutes, then chilled them off until they were cool enough to touch.
At this point, the outer skins needed to be removed from the beans, the extra step that is the source of so much complaint. It actually didn’t bother me at all, though, and I got a pretty good rhythm going. All they needed was a bit of a tear in one spot with my fingernail, and a gentle squeeze would pop them right out of their skins, very much like slipping the skins off of Concord grapes.
Of course, removing the skins reduced the volume of bean remaining pretty considerably, and I barely had a handful of beans left for my recipe. Since the two of us only needed a little bit of spread to go with our dinners, that still worked in my favor.
The spread itself was very easy to make: a quick simmer in some rosemary-garlic infused olive oil and then pureed and sprinkled with more oil and feta cheese. We had it with garlic-rubbed sourdough crostini.
Oh yeah, and there was also some delicious lamb souvlaki and garlicky tzatziki from The Food and Wine of Greece. Details…
I’ve never eaten fava beans before, and I liked them enough that we will certainly seek them out again, even if we’ll now have to wait a year for another opportunity. They had a very pleasant earthiness that was nicely complemented by the other flavors in the spread: olive oil, rosemary, garlic, and salty feta. I know favas are much more classically Italian than Greek, but I figured the olive oil and feta would bridge the gap nicely, and everything did taste good together.
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06.17.07
Posted in Dairy, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream at 10:54 pm by julie
It’s June in Oregon, and that means one thing: strawberries. Their season, and that of cherries, is unmercifully short, so we have to take advantage of it while we can. We went to the Saturday market with Freyja again this week, and came home with a half-flat of juicy little jewels for $15. I got a pint of cherries (which look like Rainiers, but are not as sweet) and a pint of raspberries (which I don’t really care for, but keep trying), but the real treasure was four pints of Hood strawberries.
Our introduction to Hoods was two summers back, and once you’ve tried them, no other strawberry ever measures up, in color or sweetness. But once you bring them home, they don’t last more than a day or so fresh. In past years, we’ve sometimes macerated them with sugar and balsamic in order to keep them a few days longer and pour over slices of pound cake. This year, after eating a pint or two right out of the box, I whipped up a fluffy batch of strawberry-sour cream ice cream, pink as bubble gum.
I don’t care for store-bought strawberry ice cream, which can be so artificial tasting, but this—from my favorite ice cream book—was something else altogether. Aside from a fleeting wish that I had pureed the sugared strawberries by themselves and strained them before mixing in the heavy and sour creams, it was perfect: just the right level of sweetness, and a pure strawberries-and-cream flavor. It had more overrun than any other homemade ice cream I’ve tried, and matched up perfectly with some cacao nib meringue nests I made a few days before. Thank goodness for strawberry season!
Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
3/4 C sugar
1 T vodka or kirsch
1 C sour cream
1 C heavy cream
1/2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Slice the strawberries and toss them in a bowl with the sugar and vodka or kirsch, stirring until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring every so often.
Pulse the strawberries and their liquid with the sour cream, heavy cream, and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until almost smooth but still slightly chunky.
Refrigerate for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Source: The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.
Update 6/18/07: We had a small scoop of strawberry ice cream as an afternoon refresher after getting back from Silver Creek Falls today. After dinner, Jeremy said that although he’d never much cared for strawberry ice cream in the past, he’d rather have that for dessert than the LifeSource German chocolate brownie or some squares of chocolate that I had suggested. I think that makes us converts!
Update 7/10/07: Another batch of this ice cream was called for to commemorate the end of strawberry season 2007. It’s not going to be easy to wait until next year for another batch!
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