Katie at the Kitchen Door

Globally-inspired, seasonal recipes

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0 Breakfast

Blackberries

I mean, I have a post called strawberries and one called raspberries… I need to complete the trend, don’t I?  Next berry season I’ll have to get more creative with my post titling abilities – strawberries #2! – but until then, we’re golden.

I think the thing I like best about blackberries may be that they grow in the backyard and I can walk up the hill with my little berry basket swinging and pluck the beautiful little berries from the far-too-thorny bushes and feel all earthy and wholesome.  As well as like I’m cheating the grocery store out of all that money they charge for fresh berries.  But then, a basket full of berries picked and washed and set aside, I’m not sure what I want to do with them.  Mostly, I feel like they should be photographed, because they’re gorgeous, and nature created them, and they were free, and I felt picturesque when I picked them.  Partly, I just want to eat them, because it’s easy and summery, but I’m not sure that posting a recipe that goes “Pick blackberries.  Wash blackberries.  Eat blackberries.” would be all that pertinent on a food blog.  So I feel like I have to make something with them.  And lately, I’ve been having this problem where the first thing I want to do with fruit is boil it with a bunch of sugar and then mash it up.  I’ve been doing it with rhubarb.  I just did it with plums.  I’m considering doing it with wild Maine blueberries.  It’s a useful thing, because then you can just drizzle your sugary-fruity syrup-butter on ice cream, or yogurt, or pancakes, or mix it with tequila and call it a day.  It concentrates the flavors and colors of these fruits, lasts a long time in the fridge, and takes up less space.  But making so much fruit syrup is starting to make me feel boring.

Which is why you are not looking at pictures of blackberry syrup.  Nor are you looking at pictures of blackberry pie, or blackberry muffins, because, while perfectly delicious and viable options for fresh summer fruit, I JUST WANT TO BE ORIGINAL.  Therefore, you are looking at pictures of Blackberry Brown-Butter Financiers.  Sounds good, right?  Trendy, even?  Well they were pretty good.  I only use the modifier “pretty” because I’ve never had a financier before, so I’m not sure how these compare to other financiers, but I liked them – they were moist but eggy, nutty smelling, not too sweet, and the blackberry in the middle gave them a sweet juicy bite that was just right.  They’re so cute and easy to pop into your mouth that they disappeared within 12 hours of coming into existence.  I would definitely categorize them as more of a tea-cake or snack then a dessert, and I think that the perfect place for them would be on a tray of other bite-sized goodies at an afternoon party.  But if you don’t feel like throwing a tea party, you could probably just eat them for breakfast.  I did.

Blackberry Brown-Butter Financiers

From Gale Gand’s Just a Bite.  Makes 24.

  • 9 TBS salted butter
  • 1/2 c. almond flour or finely ground almonds
  • 1 c. confectioner’s sugar
  • 6 TBS flour
  • 4 egg whites
  • 1 tsp applesauce
  • 24 small blackberries, or 12 large blackberries
  1. Preheat oven to 375°F.  Brown the butter – heat butter in a saucepan over medium heat until fully melted.  As milk solids start to separate from the butter, use a wooden spoon to scrape them from the bottom and prevent them from burning.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until butter is golden brown and has a nutty aroma.  Remove from heat and pour through a metal strainer.  Discard solids and reserve the clarified butter.
  2. Sift together the almond flour, confectioner’s sugar, flour, and sugar.  Whisk to combine.  Add the egg whites, applesauce, and butter, and mix to combine.  Batter will be thin and pourable.  Pour or spoon into non-stick mini-muffin tins, or buttered financier molds.  Fill only about halfway – financiers will rise quite a bit.  Place a blackberry (or half a blackberry, depending on berry size, but in my opinion the more berry the better) into the center of each tin.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are golden brown.  The cakes should spring back gently when pushed, and a toothpick inserted into the center will come out clean.  Remove from molds and dust with powdered sugar to serve.

0 Breakfast

Plum Butter and Chocolate Crepes

When I saw plums for $1 a pound last week, I immediately grabbed a bunch with this recipe for plum-apple butter in mind.  I made this on a whim last fall, and it was one of the most memorable recipes of the year.  With the warm, wintery spices – nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon – it’s definitely a summer-into-fall type of recipe, but I’m enjoying it even though it’s the height of summer here.  Served cold on pretty much anything, from muffins to a spoon, or warm over vanilla ice cream, it’s incredible.  But my favorite way to eat it?  On a stack of chocolate pancakes, topped with fresh whipped cream.  Funny thing is, when I woke up this morning, I just couldn’t bring myself to make pancakes.  I didn’t want them.  It was weird, but something about them seemed … too much.  Too filling.  I knew I wanted something chocolatey, and preferably breakfast friendly, to go with the plum butter, but I couldn’t decide.  Chocolate muffins?  Chocolate cake with a plum filling?  Plum buttercream for chocolate cupcakes?  It all seemed delicious, but not quite right, when it hit me – why not pancakes’ skinny cousin, the crepe?  Perfect.

In theory, crepes are one of the simplest things you can make.  The classic recipe, as taught to me be my high school French teacher, calls for only three ingredients, combined in a simple ratio – 2 parts milk, 2 parts egg, and 1 part flour.  But then you start adding things like butter, sugar, oil, flavoring agents, liquers, and cocoa powder, and experimenting with pan temperature and refrigeration time, and the simplicity quickly gets lost.  I’ve tried lots of recipes in the past few years, never finding the perfect one, and never able to find an explanation for why one recipe might work better than another.  I was happy, then, to stumble across this explanation about crepe texture and flavor, complete with 8 different recipes categorized by egg content and fat content.  Enlightening.  I decided to go for the medium egg, medium butter formula, because the middle seemed like a good place to start.  The verdict?  The texture was perfect – tender, but not so delicate that they fell apart.  The flavor was good, but a bit milder than I’d hoped – I wanted them to be both more chocolatey and sweeter.  The addition of some espresso powder, to bring out the chocolate flavor, or the replacement of a few tablespoons of water with a chocolate liquer would probably fix that.  But when filled with the tart, aromatic, oh-so-delicious plum butter and mascarpone cheese?  Pretty good as they were.

Now that I’ve satisfied my plum and chocolate craving, other plum recipes keep popping out at me.  Plum and red wine sorbet.  Baked plums with blueberries and mascarpone.  Plum tarte tatin.  In fact, I’m feeling kind of pressured to keep up with all the summer fruits that are at their peak right now.  The fact that there’s only a month or two when currants, blackberries, raspberries, watermelon, blueberries, peaches, nectarines, cherries, and plums are in their prime is both glorious and daunting.  All those recipes bookmarked in the dead of winter when nothing sounded as appealing as a juicy plum on a hot day are begging to be made, shared, photographed.  Currently, I have plenty of time – I could bake and cook all day, every day for the next three weeks and not have anyone say a thing about it.  The problem is, I don’t have the eating power necessary to consume all of the food I want to make.  Alas.  I will just have to pace myself, round up some hungry friends, and learn to freeze summer fruits.  Either way, expect at least a few more glorious, fruity, summery recipes from me before I’m claimed by Corporate America in three weeks time.

Plum Butter

Adapted from Kitchen Simplicity. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

  • 4 medium, ripe plums
  • 1 tart apple
  • 1/3 c. water
  • 3/4 c. sugar
  • 3/4 tsp cinnamon
  • scant 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • scant 1/8 tsp cloves
  1. Pit and quarter the plums.  Core and dice the apple into 1 inch chunks.  Place fruit in a medium saucepan with water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, and simmer fruit, covered, for about 15 minutes, until apple is tender.  Puree completely in a blender or food processor.  Return fruit puree to pan, add sugar and spices, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes to an hour, until the butter is the desired consistency.  A thick, spreadable consistency may take some time.

Chocolate Crepes

Adapted from Luna Cafe. Makes 10, 6-inch crepes.

  • 1 c. milk
  • 3/4 c. water
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 TBS butter, melted
  • 1 c. flour
  • 1/4 c. cocoa powder
  • 1/4 c. sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  1. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, sugar, and salt.  Whisk to combine.  In a large bowl, beat milk, water, eggs, and melted butter until fully incorporated.  Add dry ingredients to wet and stir to combine.  Batter should have consistency of heavy cream.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
  2. Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add a pat of butter – you only need to add butter for the first crepe.  When butter is fully melted, spoon or ladle about 1/4 c. batter into pan, and quickly swirl pan or smooth batter gently with ladle to create a circle.  (Think the motion that crepe makers on the street do to quickly pull batter out into a circle.)  Cook for 20 seconds, until color begins to change on exposed side, then flip, and cook for another 20 seconds.  Remove to a plate (or serve!), then repeat with remaining batter.  Stuff crepes with plum butter and mascarpone cheese or whipped cream.  Extra crepes may be stored flat, wrapped on a plate or in a plastic bag, in the fridge.

1 Cookbook

Cookbook of the Month: Antojitos

I have a cookbook problem.  I’m sure many of you can relate.  I add them to my Amazon cart compulsively.  I read the ones I own as bedtime stories.  I take 10 at a time out from the library and imbibe them, writing down every single recipe I want to try.  I have scans of recipes.  I have pictures of recipes.  I have scribbles of recipes.  I have 20 page word documents full of recipes.  And this isn’t even including the 200+ recipes I have bookmarked online.  I have too many recipes.  I need to stop collecting and start making.  In this vein, I have decided that before I open another cookbook, I must make at least three recipes from each of the books I own, or have photocopied, or have consumed/memorized/retained in any other way.  Hopefully this will go better than the time I banned myself from baking.  Which was only ten days long.  And I couldn’t do it.  Woe.  (By the way the enchiladas in that link are really delicious.)

However, there’s a perk – using cookbooks as intended (i.e. to make and consume food) allows for discovery of exceptional recipes.  And occasionally, a single book may be filled with exceptional recipes.  In which case, it should be highlighted.  On the other hands, some cookbooks have mouthwatering photos and intriguing flavor combinations and all the food turns out super blah/boring/crappy.  These books should also be highlighted, although hopefully with less frequency then the exceptional variety.  Thus, as I go through the 20-odd cookbooks I have collected and 300-plus recipes from them, I will highlight one book per month, for however many months I continue to feel like doing this.

For July, I’m cheating a little and using a cookbook I already wrote about this month – Antojitos.  But it’s one of the good variety, in fact, one of the really good variety, and since I’ve cooked more than 3 recipes from it this month, I think it deserves the spot.  Plus, these mango-grapefruit palomas might be the best drink I’ve ever tasted.  Which may not be that convincing, coming from someone who has just graduated from Franzia, Busch Light, and Pink Panty Punch, but my parents agreed that it was great, and they have considerably more experience.  I couldn’t find the mezcal (a single-distilled tequila) that the recipe calls for, but regular tequila works just fine.  It’s simple enough to put together – frozen mango pureed with citrusy Italian soda, and mixed with Tequila and cilantro (optional) – and the end result is sublime: fizzy, refreshing, not too sweet, fruity, and, duh, there’s tequila in it.  Just this recipe itself might make snagging a copy of this cookbook worthwhile, but there’s a whole lot more to recommend it.  You can see my earlier comments here, but in a nutshell, this book is full of unique and authentic Mexican recipes that are fairly simple to put together and pack a whole lot of flavor.  You won’t find overdone Tex-Mex recipes here, but I can almost guarantee you’ll find something you’ve never heard of before (and that sounds/is delicious), which is pretty much the number 1 thing I look for in a good cookbook.  Now that I sound a little like I’m obsessed with this book, I will lay it to rest, and leave you to get your tequila on.

Mango-Grapefruit Palomas

Adapted from Antojitos.  Serves 4.

  • 2 c. frozen mango cubes
  • 1 1-liter bottle grapefruit or blood orange italian soda
  • 8 oz. tequila
  • 4 tsp chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
  • ice cubes
  • 1 lime
  • margarita salt, or 2 TBS kosher salt mixed with 1/2 tsp chile powder for chile salt!

Note: this is more of a flavor as you go sort of recipe, so the quantities used here are approximately what I used to get a drink with the flavor, consistency, and strength that I like.  Feel free to adjust to your taste!

  1. In a blender, puree the mango cubes and 2 cups of the grapefruit soda until smooth.  The consistency should be that of a thick applesauce.  Add more soda as needed.
  2. Quarter the lime and rim the edge of each glass with its juice.  Roll the glasses on a plate full of margarita salt or chile salt to coat the rim of each glass.  To each glass, add 3 to 4 ice cubes, 2/3 c. mango puree, and 2 oz. (1/4 c.) tequila.  Top off with grapefruit soda, and stir to mix.  Add a tsp of fresh cilantro if desired.  Serve cold and enjoy!

0 Pasta

Mint Ravioli

Thyme, small and delicate.  Mint, robust and refreshing.  Sage, soft and lingering.  Rosemary, lavender, parsley, cilantro, basil – summer is a time of herbal abundance.  One of summer’s tiny joys is being able to step out into the garden and snip off a sprig of thyme here, a handful of basil there.  For one, it certainly beats paying $2 per ridiculously tiny package at the store.  More importantly, it allows for constant inspiration in the kitchen, as the summer herbs lend freshness and subtle aroma to everything from salad to bread to cocktails.

Recently, I’ve been trying to incorporate more fresh herbs in my cooking, both to ensure that our herb garden doesn’t go to waste, and to push the boundaries of simple recipes.  Basil in lemon sorbet added a subtle undertone of elegance.  Sage provided a lovely counterpoint to strawberries in these muffins.  And now, fresh pasta gets a delicate makeover with tiny flecks of mint worked in.  Thinking of one of my favorite treats in Prague, sweet pea and mint soup, and a delicious sweet pea and goat cheese ravioli I made with Trevor a few years ago, I combined the two.  And voila, these lovely, subtle, sweet ravioli.  The filling is really delicious – petite peas, cream, mascarpone, goat cheese, and garlic for a hint of bite – and the mint gently enhances the flavors.  Personally, I love making fresh pasta – I find kneading therapeutic and it’s so rewarding when you pull a long, impossibly thin sheet of pasta from the roller.  However, if you’re in a hurry or not feeling up to the homemade pasta thing, these are still worth making with frozen pasta sheets or wonton wrappers – just add a bit of fresh chopped mint to the filling.

Mint Ravioli with Sweet Pea and Goat Cheese Filling

Adapted from here and here.  Makes about 20 ravioli – serves 2 or 3.

  • 1 1/4 c. frozen petite pois (baby peas)
  • 1/4 c. heavy cream
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 garlic clove, smashed
  • 3 oz. fresh goat cheese
  • 2 TBS mascarpone
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 c. fresh mint leaves
  • 2/3 c. flour
  • pinch salt
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp. olive oil
  1. Prepare the filling:  In a medium saucepan, combine the peas, cream, sugar, and garlic.  Bring to a gentle boil, and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes, until peas are tender and warm.  Remove from heat, and process or blend to desired consistency – it’s OK to have large pea pieces if you don’t want your filling smooth, but make sure you fully blend the garlic.  Mix with the mascarpone and goat cheese, and season with salt and pepper.  Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.
  2. Prepare the pasta dough: Bring a small pot of water to a boil.  Blanch the mint leaves – drop in boiling water for 30-60 seconds, and remove with a slotted spoon, transferring directly to a bowl of cold or ice water.  Squeeze water from leaves, and finely chop.  In a small bowl, beat the egg with a pinch of salt and the chopped mint leaves.  Mound the flour on your work surface, making a deep well in the center.  Pour the egg mixture and olive oil into the well.  Working from the outside in, pull the flour into the center with your hands, trying to keep the well from breaking as long as possible.  Then, knead the dough with your hands until it comes together.  Once it comes together, knead for 10 minutes.  It should be beginning to develop elasticity, smooth, and not sticky.  Lightly oil a piece of plastic wrap and wrap the dough in it.  Allow to rest for 45 minutes to an hour.
  3. Fill the ravioli: Work the pasta dough into thin, square pieces.  Run through a pasta machine, starting on the largest setting and moving down.  (My pasta machine goes from 7 to 1, with seven being the largest, and I found that the thickness of this dough was best at level 4.)  Place a teaspoon of the filling half an inch from the end of the pasta sheet, and cut the sheet about 2 inches from the end.  Fold the dough over and crimp the edges with your fingers to seal the filling.  This dough was wet enough that I did not need water to seal the edges, but if you are having a tough time crimping, run a wet finger along the edge of the dough before attempting to seal.  Continue until all filling and dough has been used.  If cooking immediately, bring a large pot of salted water to a gentle boil, and gently lower the ravioli in batches into the water.  Cook for two minutes, and remove with a slotted spoon.  If freezing, lightly dust the ravioli with cornstarch and place flat in a freezer bag.  Press air out of bag, seal, and freeze on a level surface.  Boil straight from freezing.  Serve with melted butter, mint sprigs, lemon zest, and fresh parm.

2 Breakfast

Strawberry-Sage Muffins

It’s been hot.  Really hot.  I don’t like it.  All I want to do is lie spread-eagled on the floor so as to sweat as little as possible and occasionally eat a handful of cherries.  Seeing as how I currently have no worldly commitments, I could probably actually spend the entire day doing this, but I think it might make me feel pathetic.  Instead, I have been inventing errands that involve driving in the air-conditioned car to air-conditioned buildings.  Yesterday, I went shopping so as to be in the air conditioning.  Today, I am going to the movies so as to be in the air conditioning.  I’m thinking that going to the movies for air conditioning is going to be much more cost effective than shopping.  Whoops.  Cute and broke is what I aim for. Now, you might be wondering why, if it’s so bloody hot, there are pictures of muffins in this post.  Don’t you need to use the oven to make muffins?  Isn’t the oven hot?  Why, yes, the oven does generate quite a bit of heat.  But I bought strawberries.  Strawberries for muffins.  I had a plan, and I am into plans.  The blog must go on.  Besides, once the muffins are baked, it is really easy to eat them at any point over the next three days.  Minimal motion, thought, and heat required.  Therefore, I am not a nutcase. Actually, when I baked these this morning, it was really quite pleasant.  There was still a bit of morning breeze, and, bonus, it only took the butter 2 minutes to come to room temperature.  In fact, it was so pleasant that I decided to make 2 different batches of muffins, because I really like knowing the absolute best way to make something.  And also eating in the name of science.  The first batch was adapted from The New Best Recipe‘s recipe for blueberry muffins.  I generally trust this book because they seem to have made at least 30 versions of every recipe possible and taste tested them, side by side.  Man would I love that job.  The second recipe is from the blog A Recipe a Day, which had received rave reviews from more than 50 other bloggers/bakers/internet fiends like myself.  The recipes were quite similar, there being only three significant differences between them: 1. The New Best Recipe uses sour cream and A Recipe a Day uses milk, 2. The New Best Recipe uses a quick bread method and A Recipe a Day uses the creamed butter method, 3. The New Best Recipe uses a longer baking time at 350, and A Recipe a Day uses a shorter baking time at 400.  Let the science begin. After thoughtfully alternating bites of the two muffins, I came to a conclusion: they were both really, really good.  However, I thought the New Best Recipe muffin had a slight edge over the other – it had a moister, more delicate crumb, held the delicate flavors of sage and strawberry better, and had more of a melt-in-your mouth texture.  Out of curiosity, I quickly calculated the calories per each type of muffin based on my yields (17 for the New Best Recipe, 15 for A Recipe a Day), and found that, despite varying amounts of butter, sugar, and the type of dairy in each recipe, they had exactly the same caloric value.  One further point of interest – the muffins that baked at 400 degrees for a few minutes less, which included a few of both types, puffed up significantly higher and had a more golden brown crust, making them more attractive overall.  However, I preferred the “crustless-ness” of the slow-baked muffins.  My final verdict – both recipes make a really delicious muffin, but personally, I’m sticking with the folks over at America’s Test Kitchen.  I think they know what they’re doing.

Strawberry-Sage Muffins

Adapted from The New Best Recipe.  Inspired by these biscuits.  Makes about 18 muffins.

  • 2 c. AP flour
  • 1 TBS baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 4 TBS butter, melted and cooled slightly
  • 1 1/4 c. sour cream
  • 1 1/2 c. diced fresh strawberries
  • 6-8 large leaves of fresh sage, finely minced
  1. Preheat oven to 350.  Line muffin tins with paper muffin cups.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.  In a large bowl, briefly whisk egg until pale yellow.  Whisk in sugar until slightly cream.  Whisk in melted butter in 2 additions.  Whisk in sour cream in 3 additions, until batter is just uniform in color and texture.  Try not to overmix.
  2. Add diced strawberries and sage to the flour mixture, and toss gently to incorporate.  Now add flour/strawberries to wet ingredients, and gently fold together until just combined.  Some remaining clumps of flour are OK, and the batter will be quite thick.  Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling almost to the top, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until they are a light golden color and a toothpick comes out clean.

0 Latin and Mexican

Salsas!

On the Fourth of July, I celebrated Cinco de Mayo.  So I’m a bit behind – that just means I’ll get to go to the fireworks on the Third of September, right?  My excuse: for the past month I’ve been mulling over the recipes in Antojitos: Festive and Flavorful Mexican Appetizers, a cookbook I received last year in a giveaway, but hadn’t given any serious perusal time.  Once I started looking, I couldn’t stop bookmarking recipes.  Soon I had a plan for a whole dinner party – I just needed someone to eat it.  That’s where the Fourth of July came in: everyone around and in the mood to celebrate, a whole day to cook in Maine (not that I’m particularly pressed for time on all the other days of the summer…), and permission to open up the tequila.

So while the rest of the country had hamburgers, potato salad, and red white and blue angel food cake, we had a fiesta.  The menu consisted of hibiscus margaritas; jicama, melon, and pineapple salad; grilled corn on the cob dipped in lime juice and chile-laced parmesan cheese; corn masa chalupas filled with guajillo spiced chorizo; and three dips to top everything off – charred serrano salsa, tomatillo guacasalsa, and chipotle crema.  Everything.  Was.  Delicious.  Seriously, this cookbook has recipes for some of the most flavorful and original food I’ve ever eaten.  My favorite was the corn – juicy sweet with a burst of hot from the chipotle and tangy saltiness from the lime and cheese, I couldn’t stop eating it.  The cooling jicama fruit salad was a close second, and both of these recipes may appear on this site sometime soon, but for now, the only thing I had time to take pictures of before everything was gobbled up were the salsas, which really tied all the food together.  The charred serrano salsa was both vinegary and hot with a beautiful color, the tomatillo and avocado guacasalsa was tangy and creamy with just a hint of heat, and the chipotle crema was just straight up delicious.  Since, in my opinion, the chipotle crema was the easiest, the tastiest, and the most versatile, I’ve chosen to include that recipe.  If you like it, or are intrigued by any of the other recipes mentioned here, I’d definitely recommend checking out Antojitos – it’s one of the best cookbooks I’ve used in a long time.

Chipotle Crema

Recipe adapted slightly from Antojitos: Festive and Flavorful Mexican Appetizers.  Makes about 2 cups.

  • 1 c. sour cream
  • 1/2 c. heavy cream
  • 3 chipotles in adobo
  • 1 tsp lime juice
  • 1/4 tsp cumin
  • 1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro, optional
  • kosher salt
  1. In a blender or food processor, pulse chipotles and lime juice until a smooth puree.  In a medium, non-reactive bowl, whisk together sour cream and heavy cream until smooth.  Add in the chipotle paste, using a spatula to scrape the sides of the processor.  Whisk until smooth and uniform in color.  Whisk in cumin and cilantro, if using.  Season to taste with the kosher salt.  Refrigerate for several hours before serving to allow flavors to blend.

8 Dessert

Lemon-Basil Sorbet

Or “U-box, the saga.”

Now that summer is in full swing, it’s ice-cream time.  For my birthday this year, my parents got me the cuisinart ice cream maker – one of those cute bright red ones – that had been at the top of my kitchen wish list.  Soon after my birthday (in April it was already summer in North Carolina), I made the inaugural batch of frozen goodness, a lemon-basil sorbet with such a strong, refreshing flavor that if I ever have a fancy-schmancy restaurant, this will be the palate cleanser I serve on a spoon between courses.  It was awesome, and I was super proud of it.  Then came graduation, and May, and I packed up the ice cream maker along with the rest of my belongings and tucked it away into the U-box I had ordered, which I had been assured I would receive within 5-7 days of putting it in their hands.  (If you don’t like frustrating customer service stories that might also be construed as plain old whining, skip to the recipe now.)

Ha.  Hahaha.  That did not work out exactly as planned.  Or at all as planned.  From the moment I arrived home from Miami and saw that Megan’s box was still sitting in the parking lot 5 days after it was supposed to be picked up, I had a bad feeling about U-box.  Then I called the office and they had lost the online reservation I had made a month in advance.  Now I had a really bad feeling about U-box.  Then they didn’t drop it off until 5 minutes before closing time.  Then, when I called and really needed them to pick it up by 1 in order to make my flight home, I spent half my moving day on hold, and the guy with the trailer didn’t show up until 5 minutes before my cab arrived to take me to the airport.   Not to mention the fact that every time I did manage to speak to a person they said, “now this is getting stored in Chapel Hill, correct?”  “No,” I would answer, “it’s getting shipped to Massachusetts.”  By the time they drove away with all of my personal belongings, U-box was pretty much at the top of my least favorite companies list.  After Time Warner Cable and The Belmont.

About 10 days later, after several more calls to remind them that it was supposed to end up in Massachusetts, I received an email saying my box had arrived.  “I guess I should have given them the benefit of the doubt,” I thought.  Upon arrival at the storage facility, the guy clipped off the lock (I forgot my keys), opened the bolts, swung open the door and… voila!  It was not my stuff.  My name was written on the box in sharpie.  The serial code matched the one on my order.  But the belongings were not mine.  Luckily, I had snapped a picture of the serial code on my actual box just before it pulled away.  So, in an ideal world, they should be able to track it down pretty quickly.  Sigh.  Not so much.  To make a long story just a little bit less long, it took them 5 days to find the box in Texas, another 10 days to actually ship the box from Texas (so much for expedited), and 3 days in transit.  All told, it took over a month from the day the box left to receive my stuff (I really started missing my shoes, man), probably over 8 hours on the phone with 6 different offices, and a whole lot of headache before the issue was resolved.  You, too, can have this experience for only $800!  Ugh.

In the meantime, I’ve been craving this sorbet.  Every time I walk by the basil and get a whiff of it I think, mmm, sorbet.  Too bad I can’t make any.  But, the past is the past, all’s well that ends well, forgive and forget, etc: I have my ice cream maker, and ice cream has been made!  Like I said, made at full intensity, this sorbet is too strong flavored to eat a full bowl of it – it makes a better amuse bouche or palate cleanser.  Watered down a bit though, it’s infinitely refreshing.  The basil really comes through and adds a little bit of herbal intrigue to every bite.  So here’s to summer, fresh herbs, ice cream makers, and having my shoes back.

Lemon-Basil Sorbet

Makes about 4 cups.

  • 1 c. sugar
  • 2 c. water
  • 15-20 large leaves fresh basil
  • zest of one lemon
  • 1 c. lemon juice
  1. In a medium saucepan, heat water and sugar over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is completely dissolved.  Remove from heat, and add basil and lemon zest.  Let steep for 10-15 minutes, then remove and discard the basil leaves and mix the lemon juice into the syrup. Place the mixture in the fridge for at least 2 hours, until completely chilled.  Set up ice cream maker, then pour the chilled mixture into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.  Note: for stronger flavored, but slushier sorbet, reduce the water to 1 cup and the lemon juice to 1/2 cup.

0 Dessert

Strawberries

Every spring, people begin waxing poetic about strawberries.  Tiny, perfect, juicy wild strawberries.  Up until now, I didn’t really get it.  Pretty much every time I get strawberries at the store they’re the same – big, very red, a little lumpy, pretty sweet but nothing to write home about, with about 20% too overripe to enjoy.  Just regular old strawberries.  Then, my mother brought these beautiful berries home from Mann Orchards, the 130 year old local farmstand and orchard (that, for me, is synonymous with absolutely perfect apple pie), and I got it.  These berries are beautiful.  They’re tiny.  They’re incredibly sweet.  Every single one was perfectly red all the way through.  They are deserving of starring in a very special dessert.  Which I’ll tell you about soon.  After I talk about strawberries some more.

More strawberries: I am on a mission to salvage the strawberries in our own, struggling orchard.  It was sort of a nice surprise when I came home and was reminded of all the things already growing at our house in Andover, especially after the trauma of leaving behind my well-loved shoebox garden in Durham.  Sure, the Andover garden is hiding under loads of weeds and none of the trees in the orchard have ever produced a piece of fruit that wasn’t munched by deer, but with my new-found farming inspiration and my father’s instruction, I’ve been slowly loving the garden back to a more attractive state.  The zucchini are planted, the cilantro survived my rather rough transplanting process, and the dill seems to have recovered from losing all the weeds that were holding it up.  The strawberries, however, are a bit of a battle, seeing as how they’re planted up in the orchard way behind the house, where each new strawberry is eaten just before it’s ready, and I cry a little when I go up to check them and they’re all gone.  The current solution is to place a sawed-off soda bottle over each bunch of green berries to protect them.  I don’t know when I got so good at loving plants, but I really love them.  Maybe it’s the absence of children under the age of 5 in my life these past two years – now I have excess love for small things.

Back to dessert.  These strawberries were begging not to be mashed, macerated, stewed, or otherwise transformed.  They were very vain. They wanted to stay whole.  And who am I to mush up something so naturally beautiful?  So I decided to make a tart, one of the pretty kinds you see in pastry shop windows with magically perfect fruit arranged on the top that cost twice as much as you’re willing to spend, but you buy them anyways.  And then the pastry cream is always a little too thick and flavorless and the crust is soggy and you’re disappointed, unless of course you’re in Paris in which case your tart is undoubtedly perfect… but I digress.  I wanted to make a tart equally as pretty as the pastry shop ones, but also delicious.  I had had a recipe for a strawberry almond cream tart for over a year, but upon closer inspection (it’s the Cooking Light one that you’ll find all over the web) I decided it was a little too pre-packaged for me, with the graham cracker crust and cream cheese filling.  Still, I loved the sound of the flavor combinations, so I took the idea my own route, baked a shortbread crust, filled it with almond pastry cream, and topped it with the berries as well as a strawberry-orange glaze.  Success!  Pretty, delicious, strawberry-y.  And, happily, the day the strawberries were really needing to be used happened to coincide with Father’s Day, so I got to dedicate and share this lovely treat to my papa.  Happy Dadhood to you!  And to all father’s everywhere; we (your children) love you.

Strawberry Almond Cream Tart

Serves 8.  Pastry cream recipe from The New Best Recipe.

  • 1 qt. strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced lengthwise
  • 1 1/4 c. flour
  • 10 TBS butter, room temperature
  • 1/3 c. powdered sugar
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 c. half and half
  • 1/2 c. sugar
  • pinch salt
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 3 TBS cornstarch
  • 4 TBS cold butter
  • 1 1/2 tsp. almond extract
  • 1/2 c. strawberry jelly
  • 1 TBS water
  • 1/2 TBS orange liquer
  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Butter and flour a 9 inch tart pan.  In a large bowl, mix together flour, 1/4 tsp. salt and powdered sugar.  Cut in room temperature butter.  Mix together with a pastry cutter or the back of a fork until dough sticks together in pea sized crumbles.  Press dough evenly into tart pan, pushing up around the edges to form sides.  Poke the bottom of the crust several times with a fork, to keep dough from bubbling.  Bake 15 minutes, until just turning golden brown.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.
  2. In a medium sized saucepan, bring half and half, pinch of salt and 6 TBS of the sugar to a full simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching.  In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks and remaining 2 TBS sugar until dissolved.  Whisk in cornstarch until the mixture is pale yellow and slightly thickened.
  3. When half and half comes to a simmer, slowly pour into the egg yolk mixture, vigorously whisking the egg yolks all the while, to temper the yolks.  Pour custard back into pan, and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and just beginning to bubble, about 2 minutes.  Remove from heat, stir in almond extract, and cut in chilled butter, stirring until it melts.  Strain through a fine-meshed sieve into a clean bowl, and allow to cool to room temp.  Press a piece of plastic wrap tightly against the surface of the custard and refrigerate until well chilled, about  2 hours.
  4. Use a spatula to spoon the chilled custard into the tart crust and smooth evenly across the surface.  Decorate with sliced strawberries.  Bring the jelly, 1 TBS water, and liquer to a boil, then gently spoon over fruit to create a glaze.  Chill tart until ready to serve.  Best served soon after being assembled.

0 Latin and Mexican

Colorado/Calabacitas

Yes, I’ve been home from Colorado for almost two weeks.  Meaning to write about my trip.  Meaning to make this great new side dish I discovered there.  But now that my life has slowed way down, to a level where for the first time in years, I have to create tasks for myself rather than do the ones that other people have assigned me, I’ve been lacking in inspiration a little bit.  I’m happy to be at home, happy to feel so calm, and very happy to spend a perfect June afternoon napping in the hammock, just a little bit directionless.

Anyway, I’m still here.  Ready to blog.  And I really had an incredible time in Colorado.  Almost my entire extended family on my mom’s side lives there – my grandparents, 3 of her sisters, her brother, and 8 cousins – and I used to go out to visit every other year.  Sadly, that ended after my freshman year in high school, when my school vacation calendar diverged from my brothers’, and so this was my first trip out there in 7 years.  They live in Grand Junction, a medium-sized city on the Western Slope encircled by the Mesa to the North, the Rockies to the East, the Colorado National Monument to the South, and Utah only 20 miles to the West.  It’s a beautiful place, with pretty much all the outdoor activity you could want right at your fingertips.  Heaven.  I was thrilled to be able to hike almost every day, with just a 5 minute drive bringing me to several different trailheads for the monument.  Actually, the hikes I went on were one of the highlights of the trip – particularly the trip to Royal Arch in Boulder with my friend David and to Liberty Cap on the monument with my brother and cousin Alex.  Luckily, I was there right in the middle of the desert wildflower season, and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the flowering cacti and other scrappy mountaintop flowers.  Or the sweet lizards.

Other highlights included a drive up and over the mesa with my Aunt Lynn to the site of their future yurt, during which we startled a herd of deer in the most picturesque, sun-dappled stand of aspens I have ever been privileged enough to encounter.  I’m pretty sure the pictures I took there are the best I’ve ever taken.  Photography career, you may begin.

Of course, I should probably mention that a big part of the reason I headed out to Colorado now, as opposed to any other time of the year, was that Trevor was competing in the college Ultimate Frisbee Nationals in Boulder.  I’d never seen him play before, and to be honest, I was a little skeptical about how compelling watching a frisbee tournament was going to be.  Let’s just say I’ve had a frisbee-riddled past and have not always taken the sport seriously.  However, it ended up being awesome.  With the help of my brother, who plays for Cornell, I picked up the rules, and by Tufts’ final game vs. Harvard, one of their biggest rivals, I was really into it.  Like holding my breath on the sidelines into it.  And also really impressed by how athletic the play is.  So, I stand a little bit corrected when it comes to Ultimate.  It should be stated, however, that it is still not, nor shall it ever be, more important than me.  Take note.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, it was so good to spend time with my family.  Just being able to sit around the dinner table swapping stories with aunts and uncles and cousins, to call up in the morning and make hiking plans, was a luxury.  And, to bring things back to food, at one dinner in particular, my Uncle Mark’s girlfriend, Julie, contributed the most delicious vegetable dish I’ve had in a long time – a mixture of summer squash, zucchini, corn, green chile, and a little bit of sharp cheese, a traditional New Mexican recipe called Calabacitas.  Not usually a fan of squash in any form, I loved the sharpness of the cheese and chiles against the soft freshness of the zucchini and corn, and immediately decided it needed to be added to my repertoire.  Julie shared her recipe with us, and I’ve pretty much followed that to the T here, although there is a lot of wiggle room to adjust for personal taste.  It’s a great summer side dish, especially given that gardens and farm stands always seem to overflow with zucchini in late summer and it’s always good to have another way to prepare it.

Calabacitas – Cheesy Corn and Zucchini Salad

Serves 4 as a side dish.

  • 2 zucchini, 1/2 in. dice
  • 1 yellow summer squash, 1/2 in. dice
  • 2 TBS olive oil
  • 2 TBS water
  • 1 1/2 TBS minced garlic
  • 10 scallions, finely chopped
  • 1/3 c. diced green chile (I used the pre-chopped canned kind)
  • 2 ears fresh corn
  • 1 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp. onion powder
  • kosher salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/2 c. cheddar jack cheese
  1. Heat olive oil and water over medium-high heat.  Add washed, diced zucchini and squash, and sautee for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add garlic, green chile, scallion, dried thyme, onion powder, salt, and pepper, and cook for another 2 minutes.  Add kernels from corn cob.  Lower heat, and cook until everything is soft, about 5 minutes more.  Remove from heat and stir in cheese, allowing to melt completely and spread evenly throughout dish.  Serve warm.

0 Dessert

Nutella and May and Stuff.

Oh, May.  What a month you were.  I flew six different times in May.  That’s a lot of planes.  I also graduated, moved, spent at least 5 hours on hold with U-haul trying to orchestrate said move, hung out in Miami with my dad, hung out in Denver with my cousin, hung out in Boulder with some stellar Ultimate players I know, hung out in Grand Junction with my baby bro, and got pedicures/shot guns with my grandmother within 4 hours of each other.  Busy times, yo.  Hence, not a lot of blogging.  Or cooking for that matter.  Eating, yes.  Cooking, no.

However.  I did take some time to make these super delicious nutella-raspberry mousse hybrid whoopie pie-ice cream sandwich things.  They were kind of an experiment, and an experiment gone right.  See, Ryan and I are still chilling in Colorado, where my Aunt Deanne has very graciously allowed us to use her house (and her car.  I’m totally staying here: everybody spoils me and I have a car to drive with a working suspension system.  Plus my skin loves it here and I can go hiking every day.  Win, win, win.)  So, in a few hour break from Aunt Lynn’s wonderful social calendar (God, Lynn, a gap?  You slacker), I decided to make some dessert to bring along to fajita night at Grandma’s.  Because spending a few hours baking is super appealing if you happen to be me on vacation.

The reasons that the nutella-raspberry combination came about?  One: Ryan and I spent a lot of last week hoofing it from point a to point b with lots of stuff on our backs, and in order to minimize fainting spells due to lack of nutrients as well as overdrafting our bank accounts, we needed snacks.  Portable, cheap snacks.  But, lame, he’s allergic to peanut butter, my favorite snack.  So nutella it was.  (As a side note, I just realized that not once in my two years living in my own apartment at Duke did I buy nutella.  Not because I don’t love nutella, just because I was terrified of how quickly I would eat it if it appeared in my cupboard.  Is that self-control or complete lack of it?)  Two: raspberries cost $1 here.  This is miraculous to me.  I’m tempted to eat raspberries for every meal just because I will probably never be able to afford this many again.

Not to brag, but these were really pretty awesome.  The cookies themselves – decent.  The mousse – pretty tasty.  Together?  Way better than the sum of their parts.  I love it when that happens.  All of the family members present seemed to heartily approve, although to be fair, half of them were teenage boys.  In any case, I would absolutely make these again.  And again.  They’re pretty quick, easy to store in the fridge or freezer, and a good summer crowd pleaser.  And don’t worry, Deanne, I stuck four in your freezer as a tiny thanks for your generosity this week.  Also, we didn’t kill your fish, so there’s that too.

Nutella and Raspberry Mousse-wiches

Nutella cookie recipe from Rock Recipes.  Mousse recipe original.  Makes about 14 sandwiches.

For nutella cookies:

  • 2 sticks salted butter, room temperature
  • 2 c. sugar
  • 2/3 c. nutella
  • 2 tsp. vanilla
  • 3 c. flour
  • 2/3 c. cocoa powder
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 2/3 c. milk
  • 6 oz. chocolate chips
  • sea salt
  1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla extract and nutella and mix until well combined.
  2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder.  Stir until fully incorporated.  Add flour and milk to nutella mixture in two or three batches – starting and ending with the flour mixture, and stirring to incorporate between each addition.  Add chocolate chips and mix in.  Cover dough and refrigerate for half an hour.
  3. Preheat oven to 325°F.  (340 if you’re in Colorado!)  Place spoonfuls of chilled dough on baking sheet and flatten into rounds with your fingers.  Sprinkle a tiny bit of sea salt on each cookie, if desired.  Bake for 11-13 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly on the pan, then remove to a wire rack or plate to finish cooling.
For the raspberry mousse:
  • 1 6 oz. container fresh raspberries, gently washed
  • 1/2 stick unsalted butter
  • 1/3 c. sugar
  • 3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
  • pinch of salt
  • 1-2 tsp. lemon juice
  • 3/4 c. heavy whipping cream, well chilled
  • pinch cream of tartar
  1. In a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat, melt butter.  When fully melted, add raspberries, sugar, egg yolks, and salt.  Stir constantly (to avoid scrambling the yolks) for 10-15 minutes, gently crushing raspberries against the side of the pan.  When custard has thickened and is bubbling gently, remove from heat and allow to cool completely.  Press through strainer if desired (I left mine with the seeds in).  When cool, add lemon juice and stir to incorporate.
  2. In a cold bowl, whip cream and cream of tartar until it holds stiff peaks.  Mix in raspberry custard with a whisk.  Place a heaping spoonful of the raspberry mousse between two nutella cookies.  If serving within a few hours, keep cookie sandwiches in fridge.  If keeping longer, place in freezer, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.  Allow to thaw 20 minutes before serving.