08.29.07
Posted in Chocolate, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Pies & Tarts at 9:52 am by julie
I bet you’ve all just been dying to know why I actually needed some milk chocolate, haven’t you? Well, today is your lucky day (a.k.a. Daring Baker Day)! This post marks my second month participating in the Daring Bakers challenges, and our project this time was a far cry from the fruity, jiggly mirror cake of last month: a Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart from Eric Kayser’s Sweet and Savory Tarts
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The recipe starts out with a rather unusually constructed chocolate shortbread pastry. For criminy sakes, it called for creamed room temperature butter, confectioners’ sugar, cake flour, and baking powder! Crisp flaky pastry, this isn’t. It also incorporates a small amount of ground hazelnuts (I whizzed up whole ones in the processor—quite a racket!) and calls for cinnamon, though we were allowed to omit the latter if desired, and I did so. Cinnamon on top of chocolate, hazelnuts and caramel seemed a bit much. The rather Playdough-like crust was divided and wrapped into three portions, and chucked in the fridge overnight to rest.
Last month I got the challenge made several weeks in advance, but this time I reverted to my usual state of procrastination, and made the crust dough just this past Sunday. Somehow I didn’t get around to baking on Monday night either, so it all came down to yesterday. In some ways, that was probably a good thing. You see, one of our ferrets passed away early yesterday morning—our oldest girl, a very sweet 8 1/2 year old named Pandora—and I think the baking helped me cope, a bit, with her passing.
So on Tuesday morning, I attempted to roll out the crust and shape it into my 10″ tart pan. I ended up having to crumble it into bits just to get it to roll, and even though I didn’t have sticking issues on my countertop, I did end up patching little bits into the pan—not pretty, but serviceable. My prior experiences with blind baking are pretty hit-or-miss; half the time, my crusts end up looking like useless shrunken Frisbees despite all the usual precautions of pricking, refrigeration and weights. So I was nervous about this one too, despite its outlandish “shortbread pastry” construction. I stabbed the heck out of it with a fork and weighted it with my pie chain and a pile of dried beans.
That seemed to do the trick. No shrinking, no swelling, no sticking to the parchment paper. All was well in tartland. But the part I had been dreading was next: the caramel. I was sure it would burn horribly, or boil over when I added the cream, or seize up and get all grainy and lumpy, or burn me beyond all recognition. I suspiciously eyed the very brief official instruction (”In a saucepan, caramelize 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar using the dry method until it turns a golden caramel color.”), and decided to use the alternate wet method instead. Hm, I appeared to be out of corn syrup. Nasty unhealthy stuff, anyway. I forged ahead without it and used just the water and sugar.
My caramel boiled and darkened beautifully, as you can see from my lovely photographic progression. The darker it got, the more worried I was that I should be doing something with it rather than just taking pictures, but I think I pulled it off the heat and added the cream (at room temperature, thank you) at just the right time. I wanted a deep dark caramel, to remind me of the sublime Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel caramels Jeremy brought back from San Francisco in March.
I didn’t have any problems with the caramel at all. The cream did boil up somewhat, but I kept stirring and it never seized. While it cooled to room temperature, I whisked the room-temperature eggs with a bit of flour—vigorously, to get rid of any lumps—and that was incorporated into the caramel without a hitch. Into the tart shell it went, looking rather full, and baked for nearly 25 minutes before it was set to my satisfaction. It had just enough time to cool before we had to toss it in the fridge and head back to work.
After dinner, I headed back in to make the chocolate mousse layer of the tart, the part calling for milk chocolate. Jeremy has been actively campaigning for dark chocolate ever since we found out what the August challenge would be. He’s hard to resist, especially since I actually prefer dark chocolate myself, but I steadfastly refused to break the rules. Milk chocolate it was. The mousse was incredibly easy to make. I dumped 8 oz of milk chocolate chips in my glass batter bowl and nuked it on 70% power for 2 minutes while whipping the cream. After a quick stir, it was melted and ready to drizzle into the cream a bit at a time as I continued whisking. Since that’s all there is to it, I had a hard time calling it mousse instead of chocolate whipped cream, but whatever. It was fluffy and light, and just barely fit inside the crust without overflowing. I have no pastry bag or piping skills, so I just swirled it on with a spatula.
While the “mousse” set up in the refrigerator, I bit the bullet and tried out the dry method of making caramel for my decorations. I’m supposed to be a Daring Baker here, after all, and now I’m not sure why I was so afraid of it. I dumped some sugar in a pot, turned the heat to medium, and stared at it for several minutes while it appeared to do nothing. Then it melted, and I turned down the heat a bit and tilted the pan around to promote even coloring. Once it looked like caramel, I used a spoon to drizzle it into curly shapes on my Silpat. It hardened up in no time, and voila!
This recipe was definitely more to our taste than the strawberry mirror cake, and now I am feeling a lot more comfortable with the idea of making caramel myself. The crust I could take or leave: it didn’t really taste like much of anything, and even the texture was indistinct. The caramel layer was lovely and rich, very flavorful and creamy without being at all drippy. The chocolate mousse was light and smooth, but I still would have preferred a smooth lake of dark chocolate with that caramel instead, maybe with a garnish of plain whipped cream for relief, or, better yet, a glittering sprinkle of fleur de sel for crunch and contrast. Still, this was very tasty in its official form, taken in small slices to prevent sugar overload, and I have no doubt we’ll polish it off before the week is out.
Make sure to check out the Daring Bakers blogroll to see everyone else’s stunning creations. Any ideas what to do with 2 tarts’-worth of bland chocolate shortbread dough?
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08.27.07
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Dessert at 6:28 pm by julie
When Jeremy was placing an order with Chocosphere a few weeks ago, I asked him to order me half a pound of milk chocolate for baking. He obliged with Guittard milk chocolate chips, but accidentally ordered two 2.2lb bags. We typically prefer dark chocolate any day of the week, but here I was with nearly four and a half pounds of milk chocolate to use up. We figured a good place to start would be with chocolate chip cookies, natch.
As I was reaching for my gold standard cookie recipe to get started, I remembered my still-pristine copy of Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and decided it was way overdue to be broken in. I went for a straight comparison and made her chocolate chip cookies.
My butter sat on the counter while I made dinner, so it was very soft when I was ready to start dessert. The batter consequently whipped up to incredibly fluffy proportions, even with the addition of chocolate chips and nuts. For the sake of full disclosure, I ended up using just over half whole wheat pastry flour because I ran out of all-purpose, no surprise in my currently barren kitchen. I used a little cookie scoop to drop rounds onto a silpat-lined cookie sheet, and in they went. Ten minutes later, they came out flat as crepes and much browner, but the dough was so pale I hardly think I can blame the whole wheat flour. I think it was all that sugar and butter caramelizing, because that’s what the cookies tasted like. The cookies were so flat that the chocolate chips in them look like boulders, and mostly stayed right in the center of the cookies, interestingly.
They tasted very good, and had a good crisp-chewy textural balance, but they tasted of butter in the extreme, so much so that I was constantly aware of how naughty they were to eat. Thank goodness for running out of AP flour, or I would feel altogether too guilty to eat more than a few of these. On the whole, I prefer my chocolate chip cookies thicker and slightly undercooked in the center, not to mention less obviously guilt-inducing. Even my favorite recipe doesn’t quite do it for me in that category, but it comes much closer.
They didn’t seem quite so decadently buttery after they had a chance to cool, and we had no problems taking care of this batch of cookies. Still, I think our next batch of chocolate chip cookies will mark a return to the tried and true.
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08.23.07
Posted in Dinner, Meats, Poultry at 11:38 am by julie
In my continuing effort to scrounge up interesting meals from my increasingly barren kitchen, I remembered some boneless chicken breasts in the freezer and decided to cook them up with a balsamic glaze. The marinade was very quick to throw together, and reduced down to a dark, sticky syrup while the chicken baked and a pot of accompanying quinoa perked on the stovetop.
I changed the recipe very little (left out the sesame seed garnish), so I won’t reproduce it here. If I make it again, though, I may well strain out the rosemary before reducing, because it seemed quite strong, at least to my palate. My chicken came out a bit on the dry side with the recommended cooking time, though the finishing glazed helped tremendously with moisture, flavor, and color. For a vegetable contrast, I chopped some snow peas and steam-sauteed them in a little skillet before tossing them through the quinoa, and was very pleased with the result. Not a bad little weeknight meal, but not particularly memorable. At least it was something new for the blog, though!
Source: Giada de Laurentiis, via Confections of a Foodie Bride
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08.19.07
Posted in Lamb, Leftovers, Meats, Pastas, Sides at 8:28 pm by julie
We don’t seem to be able to help ourselves. I made another batch of lamb keftedes this past week. This time, I actually made a double batch in the hopes that they’d last a little longer, but somehow I don’t think they did. That would be because Jeremy asked me to make some linguine and marinara sauce so we could have pasta and meatballs from the leftovers.
It was a great idea. I threw together an easy marinara sauce and tossed in some of the leftover meatballs when I dropped the pasta, which was a whole wheat linguine. Everything was tossed together and topped with some Parmesan, and it was like a whole different dish.
Since I seem to keep making the same recipes over and over lately, I’ll throw you a bone and pass on the recipe I frequently use to make baby potatoes when I have small ones of a relatively uniform size. I originally found it at Coconut and Lime, but there is a similar recipe for braised potatoes with fresh bay in All About Braising. If your potatoes are large, or a uniform size, you can fudge this recipe a little and chunk them, but whole is definitely preferable. For the ones I made along with this batch of keftedes, I used some leftover organic beef broth.
Transplendent Potatoes
1 1/2 lbs baby potatoes (about golf-ball sized)
1 1/2 C low-sodium chicken or beef broth
1 T olive oil
1 T butter
1 T rosemary or 2 fresh bay leaves
salt and pepper
Heat the butter and oil over medium high heat in the bottom of a wide nonstick saute pan just large enough to hold the potatoes in a single layer; add the potatoes, rosemary or bay, salt (if needed) and pepper, and broth. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium low and partially cover with a lid. Boil about 20 minutes: The broth should have evaporated some but the potatoes should still be surrounded by broth up to the halfway mark, and just soft enough to pierce with a fork.
Carefully use the back of a spoon to gently crack or flatten each of the potatoes; do not mash. (I’m still working on my technique for this bit.) Raise the heat back to medium high and continue to cook until the broth has evaporated and the potatoes have browned nicely on the underside, about 10 minutes. Flip the potatoes and cook the other side for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, and allow to sit about 2-3 minutes before removing the potatoes from the pan and serving.
Source: Slightly adapted from Coconut and Lime.
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08.17.07
Posted in Soups at 1:03 pm by julie
When I don’t feel like riffling through magazines and cookbooks, I turn back to my old favorites and comfort foods. Hits the spot, but makes for a boring foodblog because I’ve already written about a number of the meals I’ve been making lately. Here’s a childhood favorite of mine that has yet to make an appearance, though.
My mom has had this one cookbook, titled something like “Cooking For Two,” almost from the time she got married in the early 1970’s, and there were a few recipes in it that got made over and over when I was growing up, like meatloaf and chili and porcupine meatballs, and when I got married myself and moved away, I made darn sure to copy those recipes down for myself. The meatloaf and porcupine meatballs are subjects for another day, once the weather cools down more. But this weekend, chili just sounded good, and this recipe produces the only chili I’ve ever been completely happy with. It’s very American, with lots of ground beef and kidney beans, and it’s mildly spiced, which suits me to a tee. (Of course you can adjust the heat to your own tastes.) It reheats beautifully too.
Mom’s Easy Chili
1 T unsalted butter
1/2 C onion, diced
2 lb ground beef
1/4 C celery, thinly sliced
2/3 C ketchup
1/2 C water
2-3 C tomato juice
1 can kidney beans
1/4 tsp mustard powder
1-2 tsp chili powder, or to taste
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 T lemon juice
1 tsp cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 T brown sugar
Saute onion in butter until translucent; add beef and brown. Drain off excess fat, and add remaining ingredients. Stir thoroughly, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve with a garnish of Cheddar cheese and some cornbread muffins.
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08.16.07
Posted in Pastas at 8:32 pm by julie
So I really need to sit down and come up with a menu for the next week or two so that we can hit the grocery store, because we are really down to the nubbins in the kitchen. I’m talking no eggs, no onions, no butter. It’s pitiful. But somehow whenever I don’t seem to have the ingredients to make anything else, I can always throw together a pasta dish. I suggested as much to Jeremy the other night, and he immediately requested pasta with sausage, vegetables and marinara sauce. After scrounging deep in the bowels of my freezer, I came up with some Italian sausage and spinach, grabbed the last leek from the crisper, and boiled up some pasta.
Rotini with Sausage and Spinach
1 lb sweet Italian sausage
1 T extra-virgin olive oil
1 leek, sliced and rinsed off
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes (I used Italian-flavored)
1 tsp sugar
Salt and fresh pepper to taste
1 C frozen spinach
1/2 lb whole wheat rotini
Saute the leek and garlic in the olive oil until softened and fragrant. Add the sausage and brown; pour off any excess fat. Add the crushed tomatoes, sugar and seasoning to taste; simmer uncovered over low heat for at least half an hour.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. When you put the water on, add the frozen spinach to the pasta sauce (I use bagged frozen spinach instead of boxed because it is loose, rather than in a giant block) and stir through. Cook the pasta according to the package directions; when it’s drained and the spinach is cooked in the sauce, combine everything together and eat topped with plenty of Parmesan.
Jeremy thought this came out pretty well and scarfed down his plateful. I didn’t care for it at all, perhaps because I’m not altogether a sausage fan (sometimes they are too heavily seasoned for me, and sometimes the texture is suspect); Jeremy happily took care of my plate as well. So I went back in the kitchen and whipped up another plate of pasta for myself, about the easiest and quickest I could manage.
Breadcrumby Pasta
This one doesn’t have any measurements, just a general idea. Cook some rotini or egg noodles. While it drains, put the pot back on the stove and melt a couple tablespoons of butter or heat some olive oil. Dump in some fresh breadcrumbs (or frozen, as I did, to no detriments) and some minced garlic and salt. Stir it through and let it brown up just a bit, then add the pasta back in and toss it all together. Serve with lots and lots of freshly ground pepper and grated pecorino romano cheese.
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08.11.07
Posted in Lamb, Meats at 11:53 am by julie
Jeremy’s status as a lamb fiend is well documented on this website, so it will surprise no one that he hovered over the legs of lamb at Costco until I agreed to cook one for him. He specified a braised dish this time, so after a cursory perusal of Epicurious turned up nothing but roasts, I turned to the tried and true: All About Braising.
Stevens includes a recipe for the rather traditional seven-hour leg of lamb, a braised dish so tender that it is possible to eat with a spoon (à la cuillére). I had to adapt the recipe slightly upon discovering that my leg of lamb was a boneless one, but I just turned down the oven and proceeded. Served with mashed potatoes, jus, and the tender carrots and onions that braised with the meat, it was indeed tender enough to eat with a spoon. (I know this for a fact because we ran out of forks and I decided to test the theory rather than doing dishes. I know, I know…)
Seven-Hour Leg of Lamb
One 4-5 lb boneless leg of lamb
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 C dry white wine
2 C beef stock
2 fresh bay leaves
2 large sprigs of fresh thyme
15 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 C chopped canned peeled tomatoes, juice reserved
5 small yellow onions, about 2 lb total, peeled and halved
6 carrots, cut crosswise in half and then halved lenthwise into fat sticks
Preheat the oven to 225F.
Trimming the lamb: If there is a whitish dry parchment layer on the top side of the lamb (known as the fell), trim it off by inserting a thin knife under it to loosen and peeling back this thin layer. Trim any excessively thick layers of fat from the outside of the lamb, but don’t be overly fastidious, and certainly don’t cut into the meat. You want to leave a thin layer of fat to protect the meat as it braises. Season the lamb all over, inside and out, with salt and pepper, reroll it into a cylinder, and truss it snugly with kitchen string.
Browning the lamb and building the braise: Heat some olive oil in a large enameled Dutch oven on medium high heat. Lower the lamb into the pot with tongs and brown it thoroughly, turning to get even color, 10 to 12 minutes total. Remove the lamb to a plate; add the wine to the Dutch oven, set the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Reduce wine by about half, 5 minutes or so. Add the stock, bay leaves, thyme sprigs, garlic and tomatoes with their juices, and bring to a boil.
The braise: Return the lamb to the Dutch oven, and scatter the onions and carrots around the meat. Crumple up a piece of parchment paper and place on top of the meat and vegetables inside the Dutch oven, then cover with a snugly fitting lid. Place on a rack in the lower third of the oven, and braise for 6-7 hours, gently turning it over every 2 hours until the meat is butter-tender and falling apart. If you worry that your oven runs hot, or the liquid is at more of a boil than a slow simmer, turn the heat down to 200F after the first two hours.
The finish: Carefully transfer the lamb and veggies to a platter and cover with foil to keep warm. Let the pan juices sit for a minute, then skim off the accumulated fat (there may be as much as half a cup or more). Bring the juices to a simmer over medium heat, skimming a bit more as the remaining fat coalesces on the surface. Taste and adjust for seasoning if necessary.
Serving: Spoon some warm juices over the lamb and veggies. You won’t need to carve the lamb because it will be collapsing. Instead, serve with a meat fork and large spoon, putting a few veggies on each plate and spooning over a bit more sauce.
Source: Adapted from All About Braising, by Molly Stevens (p. 426-428).
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08.10.07
Posted in Dinner, Fish, Leftovers, Seafood at 9:27 am by julie
Since it’s just the two of us, the pesto salmon recipe left with at least a pound of excellent baked fish, much too nice to go to waste. I have never really been able to get excited about the very Pacific Northwest combination of salmon and scrambled eggs, so I decided to look for other inspiration. My first thought was a salmon chowder, but Jeremy isn’t a huge soup fan, and I didn’t really want to eat chowder all week either. I decided on salmon croquettes, and they did an admirable job of using up all that leftover fish. My recipe was based on one from New York Magazine, but adapted for use with fresh salmon rather than canned. I also added a bit of chopped red pepper, and since I needed to roast peppers for white bean dip anyway, I whipped up a little roasted red pepper aioli to accompany the croquettes. Jeremy seemed satisfied with the croquettes, but commented several times on how good the aioli was.
Salmon Croquettes
1 lb leftover wild salmon, cut into small chunks
4 tsp unsalted butter
1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 of a red bell pepper, finely diced
4 tsp all-purpose flour plus 1/2 cup for dredging
1 1/2 C milk
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 T mayonnaise
2 C fresh bread crumbs
3 eggs
1 C vegetable oil
Place the salmon in a large bowl. Heat the butter in a nonstick frying pan over medium heat, add the onion, garlic, and pepper, and sauté until soft. Stir in the 4 teaspoons flour using a wooden spoon; when the flour and butter are combined, slowly add 1/2 cup milk, stirring to prevent lumps from forming. Bring the sauce to a simmer and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until thickened. Pour the sauce over the salmon and stir until all the ingredients are combined. Season to taste with salt, pepper, Old Bay, and Worcestershire. Stir in the mayonnaise and about half a cup of bread crumbs, cover the bowl, and place in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
With the palms of your hands, form the salmon mixture into small patties, about 1-2 inches in diameter. Beat the eggs in a bowl, put the remaining milk in another bowl, sprinkle 1/2 cup flour on a plate, and spread the remaining bread crumbs on a cookie sheet. Quickly dip each croquette first in the milk, then in the flour, then in beaten egg, and finally coat with bread crumbs, making sure each croquette is completely covered with bread crumbs; set on a tray. It will be less messy if you use one hand for touching the dry dredges and one hand for the wet.
Heat the oil in a 10″ cast iron skillet over medium heat; there should be enough to cover the bottom of the pan around 1/4″ deep. When the oil is hot, place 6 or 7 of the croquettes in the pan and sauté for about 3 minutes on each side, or until bread crumbs turn golden. (Make sure the oil does not smoke and discolor or the bread crumbs will burn.) Place the croquettes on paper towels to drain; sprinkle with kosher salt while hot. Serve warm with roasted red pepper aioli.
Source: Adapted from New York Magazine.
Roasted Red Pepper Aioli
About 1/2 C freshly roasted red bell pepper, skin removed
1/3 C mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
In a bowl, combine the peppers, garlic and mayo; use a stick blender to puree until almost smooth. Season the aioli, to taste, with salt and pepper. This can be made 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Giada recommends this on garlic buschetta with a seafood boil.
Source: Adapted from Everyday Italian, with Giada de Laurentiis.
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08.09.07
Posted in Dinner, Fish, Seafood at 9:24 am by julie
We renewed our Costco membership last week, and happily wandered around the store, remembering things we used to buy all the time (giant muffins! trail mix! huge boxes of Ziplocs!) and noting the new additions, primarily a number of organic selections and a refrigerated room for perishable produce. It’s amazing how much our eating habits have changed since we last shopped at Costco, before we sold our Jetta and sent Jeremy off to school: I don’t think we’ll be buying many of the prepackaged meals or frozen raviolis anymore. What we will continue heading for, though, is their meat selection, which is better by far than any of the grocery stores around Salem.
On our inaugural visit, we picked up some pork tenderloins, chicken-apple sausages, a boneless leg of lamb, and a huge fillet of wild sockeye salmon. This last item was situated next to a pile of packaged farmed salmon, and despite the fact that the latter was labeled “color added,” the color difference between the two was so pronounced, I’m not sure why anyone in their right mind would choose the farmed over the wild, even for a $2/lb difference.
The recipe I chose for the salmon is one I’ve made a few times before. It’s quick and easy, and always tastes great. I forgot to grab a bunch of fresh basil at the farmer’s market, so I ended up using a tube of puree instead, and it still tasted fine. My 2-pound fillet barely fit in my 9×13 casserole; I had to cut off a piece at the end and tuck it along the side.
Salmon with Spinach Pesto
2 C fresh baby spinach leaves
1/2 C basil leaves (or a tube of basil puree, if you must)
1/4 C fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 T olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
3 garlic cloves, peeled
2 lb wild sockeye salmon fillet
Preheat oven to 400°F. Place the first 6 ingredients in a food processor or blender, and process until smooth. Spoon 3 tablespoons pesto into bottom of 9×13 glass baking dish coated with cooking spray. Top with the salmon fillet, and spread with the remaining pesto.
Bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Serve with rice, quinoa or fresh corn on the cob.
Source: Adapted from Cooking Light, April 2001.
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08.08.07
Posted in Cake, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream at 10:46 am by julie
Yes, I am still cooking… I’ve just got some catching up to do here, that’s all. So I’ll get things started with another dessert, made last week (or was it the week before?). You see, I decided to give apricots a shot this year. I love nectarines, but I’m not a fan of peaches, so when I brought home a bag of fuzzy little apricots from the farmer’s market, my method of choice for consumption was baking. I find that I’m more inclined to try new things if they are hidden in an otherwise familiar baked good, although ice cream is emerging as another front runner in the enabling department. So I started looking through apricot cake recipes, and settled on the apricot-almond upside down cake found here, in the San Francisco Chronicle. I like almond cake, and it sounded beautiful and promising.
The cake did indeed turn out beautifully. Thanks to the parchment paper insert, I had absolutely no issues with sticking, and learned that an ordinary dinner plate will fit in the opening of my new springform cake cover (there’s a big hole in the bottom where the glass bottom of the springform is meant to fit). The cake was tasty and almondy, and the apricots… were sour and vaguely unpleasant. I didn’t like them at all, and Jeremy ate more of the cake than I did, though I noticed that after a few days, he was picking apricots off the cake as well. I’m willing to concede that perhaps my apricots weren’t ripe enough—although they were quite soft—so maybe I’ll give it a year and make some apricot ice cream instead.
Jeremy requested olive oil ice cream as the next venture for our machine, and since David Lebovitz’s recipe for it suggests roasted apricots as an ideal accompaniment, I decided to serve it alongside the cake. I used a fruity Greek olive oil for the ice cream, and it was a very strong flavor to my taste, enough that I didn’t care for it at all. Fortunately, Jeremy thought it was great, and had no problem taking care of the quart himself. He didn’t think the ice cream worked with the apricot cake, but it was impressive to describe nevertheless: Apricot-Almond Upside Down Cake with Olive Oil Ice Cream. That’s a mouthful!
To come: Some savory dishes, I promise! Wild salmon with spinach pesto, pork tenderloin braised with leeks, and seven-hour leg of lamb…
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