Down from the trees

Even though I didn’t get a vegetable garden in this year, I still have some tasty things in my own back yard: Herbs, mostly done for the season; the raspberries I ate half the summer – and now, a good crop of Italian prune plums from the ancient (and, alas, ivy-infested) tree by the back fence.

I’ve eaten my fill of plums straight from the tree, and now it’s time to do some baking. Plum tarts are easy as can be, and pretty to boot. This is a variation on an ongoing theme, using what I had on hand, and absolutely delicious. You could easily substitute your favorite custard for the simple yogurt preparation – or use more plums and pack them into the crust without a custard base at all for a densely fruity tart.

Backyard Plum Tart

Ingredients

• Pie crust to fill a tart pan. Paté sucree is lovely, but refrigerator-case pie crusts work just fine, too.
• 6-8 plums, washed, pitted and cut in slices
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 1/4 cup plus 6 Tbps sugar, divided
• 3/4 cup plain yogurt, drained*
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp almond flavoring (or vanilla, if you prefer)
• 2 Tbps butter, melted
• 1/4 cup apricot preserves (optional, for glaze)

Method

Preheat oven to 400F Roll out pie crust to fit in 13″ tart pan. Prick with a fork and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven.

While the pie crust is baking, mix 6 Tbsp sugar, ground spices and flour; toss the plum slices in this mixture to coat.

In a bowl, mix drained yogurt, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, egg and flavoring until well blended. Spread on the baked crust. Arrange the spiced plums in concentric circles on top of the yogurt mixture. Drizzle melted butter over the fruit.

Bake for 35-40 minutes until custard is set and the plums are browned and bubbling.

Melt preserves in a small pan and brush over the fruit while still warm.

Serve warm or at room temperature (with or without ice cream!)

* Drained yogurt: Fold a length of cheesecloth and fit inside a strainer, with the excess fabric hanging off the edges. Set strainer over a bowl. Spoon plain yogurt (I like Nancy’s) into the cheese, fold the cheesecloth over the top and put the bowl in the refrigerator to drain for several hours until the yogurt is nice and thick. I often do this with an entire container of yogurt and use the resulting “yogurt cheese” as a tangy substitute for cream cheese.

It’s been a rough summer

… but I’m slowly starting to get back my sense of smell. Having learned way more than I ever wanted to know about anosmia, I’m thankful that my doctor’s initial diagnosis – a lingering, low-grade sinus infection left over from an awful cold I had in April and May – appears to have been the right one.

It’s been very little fun being unable to smell – or, really, taste – much of anything. Takes the fun right out of eating and cooking, I tell you; I haven’t even bothered going to the market for the past month.

That said, I do have one just-in-time-for-the-season treat to recommend, courtesy of my friend Lisa, who blogged about it:

Smitten Kitchen’s take on tomato pie

Tomato pie

Since I still can’t cook by taste, as is my habit, I made this last week following the recipe to the letter (well, OK, I used my food processor on the biscuit crust, and I did follow the advice of some of her commenters and drained the tomato slices before putting them in the shell, with a layer of cheese on the bottom to help seal against sogginess).

And then I invited a friend over for dinner, because while I knew there was nothing about this recipe I shouldn’t like, and it certainly looked wonderful, I couldn’t tell if it tasted as good as it looked – although the biscuit crust was wonderfully flaky and crisp.

My dinner companion, however, deemed it “fabulous.” And had seconds.

(Don’t be put off by the mayonnaise – it merges with the tomato-corn mixture and – again, according to my friend – isn’t identifiable beyond “yum!”)

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During the flavor hiatus, and particularly while on the antibiotics that appear to have killed off the sinus ick, I’ve found myself drinking a lot of Reed’s Extra Ginger Ginger Ale. I’m not much of a soda drinker, but ginger calms my stomach and stimulates my appetite, and Reed’s is pungent enough I could almost taste it.

However, it’s spendy, and the bottles aren’t refundable in Oregon. So I rummaged around my bookmarks and found a recipe for home-made gingerale that I’d been meaning to try.

Since one of the things I like about Reed’s is its citrusy base, I altered the recipe a little and came up with something pretty doggoned tasty, at a fraction of the cost of the bottled stuff. If you’re a ginger fancier, try it out. It’s very refreshing – and it also works as a great base for my favorite warm-weather adult beverage, the Gin Gin Mule.

Home-made Gingerale

Ingredients

• 1 hand ginger, about 4 inches worth, sliced into 1/8″ disks
• Juice of 4 Meyer lemons
• pinch salt
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup brown sugar
• Seltzer water

Combine ginger, lemon juice, salt and water in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, boil for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and strain into a bowl. Stir in sugar until it dissolves; allow to cool. Pour into a glass jar and refrigerate.

When you want ginger ale, mix a standard shotglass of the ginger syrup with 1 cup seltzer; serve over ice.

I was a little short on ginger last time I made this, so I substituted an inch or so of galangal I had in my freezer, sliced. It adds a lovely floral zing to the syrup.

Adventures in dairy

Dairy trio

“When denatured in acid conditions, with relatively little casein around, as in cheese whey, lactoglobulin molecules … bind to each other and coagulate into little clots, which can be made into whey cheeses like true ricotta.” – Harold McGee, “On Food and Cooking”

I’ve been having a week of dairy experiments. It all started with a pint of heavy cream bought as a treat for guests who take their coffee light (I take mine black). They didn’t use much of it, so I decided to use the rest to make créme fraîche, that thick, tangy, cultured cream that’s far superior to sour cream in almost any use.

It’s as easy as can be: Heat a pint or so of cream until steam rises from the surface and bubbles form around the edge, stir in a few tablespoons of cultured buttermilk, pour it into a glass jar and let it sit on the counter, loosely covered, until it’s thick (roughly overnight). Refrigerated, créme fraîche keeps for a week to 10 days, and can be substituted for sour cream in virtually any use; it also makes a superior base for cream sauces, because the culturing prevents it from separating and curdling when heated. And it’s lovely on a biscuit, with just a dab of jam.

However, that meant buying buttermilk, which around here comes in nothing smaller than a quart container. I don’t drink buttermilk. I do bake with it (buttermilk biscuits are wonderful!), but I wasn’t in a baking mood.

So I decided to experiment, and that led me to ponder the wonders of milk and milk products, and how the same basic ingredients, treated differently, can produce remarkably different results.

I could write a treatise on the subject, but I’d rather point readers to Harold McGee and his fascinating book, “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.” First published in 1984 and revised in 2004, McGee’s is not a recipe book, but it’s the text for the cook who wants to know why and how food behaves the way it does, from “why do beans cause intestinal distress” to “why can’t I make a decent meringue on a stormy day?” And the very first chapter is all about milk.

In short, McGee tells us that how milk behaves in cooking is based on its complex chemistry of microscopic fat globules and protein bundles, along with dissolved salts and sugars, vitamins, minerals such as bone-building calcium, and other compounds suspended in the water that makes up most of the fluid. The most important components to cooking are fat, protein and milk sugar, or lactose. (I’m among the majority of adults who no longer produce the enzyme necessary to digest lactose, and am grateful for the over-the-counter tablets that allow me to enjoy dairy products without unfortunate consequences).

A serendipitous aspect of milk is its relationship with a friendly little bacteria known as Lactobacillus. The bacteria renders milk slightly acidic, which helps keep it from spoiling – but it can also be introduced to fresh milk to increase the acid level and create cultured milk products such as yogurt and fresh cheeses.

I’d like to say a word here for whole milk, and against the reduced-fat varieties that threaten to crowd it out of the supermarket dairy cases. Drink 2 percent or skim milk if you must, but understand that cooking with it will produce inferior results. The *behavior* of milk in cooking depends to a large degree on its fat component, and how the tiny globules of fat suspended in the liquid interact with other ingredients. Among other things, McGee points out, “Interactions between fat globules and milk proteins are … responsible for the remarkable tolerance of milk and cream to heat.” A sauce made with cream can be simmered and reduced to velvet smoothness; make the same sauce using low-fat milk and it’s likely to curdle and develop a grainy texture.

Enough chemistry. On with the buttermilk cooking. My little Donvier ice cream freezer has been sitting empty in the freezer for far too long, and the notion of buttermilk ice cream seemed appealing. I had a bunch of lemons in the fridge. So I tweaked my standard ice cream base recipe to come up with:

Buttermilk-Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients:

• Juice and zest of one large, well-scrubbed lemon
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 large egg yolks

Method:

In a small, non-reactive saucepan, combine lemon juice, half the sugar, and the finely grated lemon zest. Heat over medium-low heat and stir until sugar dissolves. Take off heat and allow to cool.

In a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the buttermilk, cream and remaining sugar. Heat until steam rises from the surface and tiny bubbles appear at the edge of the pan, stirring occasionally to keep the bottom of the pan from scorching. Remove from heat.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the eggs until well-blended. Keep whisking and slowly drizzle in about a cup of the hot milk mixture to warm the eggs. Pour yolk mixture back into the saucepan of milk, return it to the burner on medium-low heat, and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture has thickened slightly.

Strain into a bowl and place in a bowl of ice water to cool. Once cooled, whisk in the lemon syrup and stir well. Transfer to ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Makes about a quart of tangy, lemony ice cream that reminds me of lemon cheesecake. I can’t wait for strawberry season so I can try this again topped with fresh local berries!

I still had just over two cups of buttermilk remaining. What to do, what to do? A friend recently described a method for making home-made ricotta cheese, using lemon juice to acidify the milk and transform it into curds and whey. Hm. Buttermilk is acidic, too. Google revealed several recipes for buttermilk ricotta. Oh, hell, yes.

This is so easy you’ll wonder why you never tried it before:

Buttermilk ricotta

Ingredients:

• Four parts whole milk, or part-skim milk plus cream. Do not used ultra-pasteurized milk products for this recipe; the prolonged heating of the pasteurization process will prevent it from making curds. Reduced-fat milk will curdle, but it won’t produce enough cheese to bother with.
• One part cultured buttermilk
• Pinch of salt

Method:

Have ready a large bowl and a strainer lined with dampened cheesecloth. (Have you tried to find cheesecloth in a supermarket lately? I couldn’t – so I used a Handiwipe ™ having run it through the washing machine to get rid of the fragrance the manufacturer insists on adding to the things. Worked like a charm.)

In a large, heavy bottomed saucepan, combine all ingredients and cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly until the milk begins to steam and curds start to form. Stop stirring, but continue heating until the mixture reaches 175F and has formed fine curds. Remove from heat and pour carefully into the cloth-lined strainer. Allow to drain until most of the whey is drained off, then gather up the curds in the cloth and hang it from the faucet, or from a spoon laid over a bowl, to continue draining until it’s as dry as you want it. Pack into a clean refrigerator container. Keeps as long as commercial ricotta, but tastes sooooo much better.

The amount this makes depends on a lot of variables – the fat content of the whole milk, the acidity of the buttermilk, and other factors that are hard to judge in advance. I used a pint of buttermilk to two quarts of whole milk, and got almost two cups of cheese – enough for the artichoke-and-pea lasagne I plan to make tomorrow night.

What about all that whey? I confess that I tossed it, but there’s still a good deal of food value there, and I’ve used it before to enrich home-made soups, or to substitute for water in bread recipes.

These recipes would be even better with fresh, whole, local milk. Midway Farms, on Highway 20 between Albany and Corvallis, sometimes carries local milk. I’ve also heard that several local farms offer fresh goat’s milk, which also makes a nice ricotta, but I haven’t investigated.

Four weeks till the Albany Farmers’ Market opens!

Thanksgiving sides

I don’t really enjoy cooking turkeys. My oven is too small, for one thing; for another, as a solo cook with diminishing upper-body strength, I find wrestling the heavy, slippery bird – out of its bag, in and out of the brine, on and off the roasting rack – difficult and fraught with peril. And then there’s the carcass problem: To make stock or not? If so, when? And given that I still have turkey stock in the freezer from last Thanksgiving, is there really any point?

So when my friend Ellen volunteered to roast a turkey for our three-couple Thanksgiving feed, I was delighted. It means my oven will be free on Thursday – and it means I get to cook side dishes. And honestly, for me, Thanksgiving is all about the sides: Dressing, sweet potatoes, whipped potatoes, gravy – lots of gravy, please! – and an array of vegetables and relishes … all the lovely, rich, kitchen-intensive dishes I rarely bother with the rest of the year, when my cooking tends to one-dish meals with maybe a vegetable or salad on the side.

And when several cooks are pitching in, each bringing the dish without which it would not be Thanksgiving for them, the odds of discovering something new, or a new variation on something familiar, is high.

So. I’ve offered to make baked dressing (although Ellen will likely stuff the bird as well, but nobody objects to two varieties), sweet potatoes, smashed potatoes … and a pecan pie, because I need pecan pie on Thanksgiving, whether anyone else does or not.

The dressing and sweet potatoes will be variations on old favorites, tweaked just enough to have new interest without offending the tastes of anyone who’s got their heart set on the standards. And yes, containing local ingredients, from the final weekend of our farmers’ market, local farmstands and my garden: The yams, potatoes and onions, the herbs, the mushrooms, the eggs.

Cornbread dressing with sage and wild mushrooms

Ingredients

• 6 cups cornbread (I like this flourless Epicurious recipe, which is solid and less sweet than my usual recipe. It makes about 12 cups; I halve the recipe.)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 3 Tbsp butter
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 pound fresh wild mushrooms (chanterelles), coarsely chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2-3 stalks celery, diced
• 2 Tbsp fresh sage, minced, or 2 tsp dried
• 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, minced, or 1 tsp dried
• 1 Tbsp fresh thyme, minced, or 1 tsp dried
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2-2 cups low-salt chicken stock
• Salt and pepper

Method

Bake cornbread the day before and allow it to cool completely. Cut into 1-inch cubes and place in a big mixing bowl.

Melt 1 stick of butter in a large skillet. Add the onions, mushrooms and garlic and stir well to coat with butter. Sautee over medium heat until the onion and garlic are translucent and the mushrooms have shrunk and absorbed most of the butter. Remove from heat and allow to cool enough to handle.

Preheat oven to 375F. Add the mushroom mixture – including any liquid in the pan – celery and minced herbs to the cornbread; use (clean) hands to toss well (I don’t know any other good way to do this). Taste; if salt is needed, add some now, along with a good deal of black pepper, and toss again.

Beat the eggs with a fork and add to the dressing, tossing again to coat. Melt the butter and drizzle it over the dressing, toss again. Finally, add stock, slowly, stirring to combine. You should wind up with a very moist mixture. Heap into a 9×13 baking dish or large casserole and bake until lightly browned and crisp around the edges, about 45 minutes. If the rest of the meal isn’t ready (does anyone actually manage to get everything ready to serve at once on Thanksgiving), cover loosely with foil, slash a vent in the top to let some of the steam escape and set aside until dinner is ready. If necessary, tuck it back in the oven to reheat while you carve the turkey.

Maple Sweet Potatoes with Candied Ginger

Ingredients

• 4 pounds sweet potatoes (use canned if you must. But they won’t be as good)
• 1/2 cup real maple syrup (Tip: If you like a stronger maple flavor, see if you can find Grade B syrup)
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 3 Tbsp candied ginger, chopped
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) cut into pieces

Method

Preheat oven to 375F. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into 1-inch chunks. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil; add sweet potatoes. Once water returns to a simmer, parboil for about 5 minutes. Drain.

In a small saucepan, combine maple syrup and allspice. Bring to a simmer.

Place sweet potatoes in a 9×13-inch baking dish. Sprinkle candied ginger over the top. Pour on the hot maple syrup, and dot with butter. Bake for about 45 minutes, until yams are tender. Can be kept, covered, on the counter until ready to serve.

This is less sweet than the standard candied sweet potatoes, and the ginger and allspice add a nice zing. If you like it even less sweet and more zing-y, substitute chopped fresh ginger for the candied ginger. If you have a bigger sweet tooth than I do, try combining the candied ginger with an equal amount of chopped pecans, a couple of tablespoons of flour and a half cup of brown sugar and sprinkling that over the top for the last 15 minutes or so of cooking for a crunchy, streusel-like topping.

You’ll note that these two dishes call for the same oven temperature. The recipes I based mine on called for a 350-degree oven for the dressing and 400 for the sweet potatoes; I split the difference and adjusted the cooking times so I can bake these at the same time, one on the bottom oven rack and one on the top. Midway through cooking, I’ll swap racks so they cook evenly. Of such adjustments are big meals made.

The pie? I’ll bake that the day before. From my mom’s recipe – the one printed on the label of the Karo syrup bottle.

Confession: I hate pumpkin pie

Roasted pumpkin

I know, it’s almost un-American. And a little illogical, since I’m a huge fan of pies in general, pumpkin and other winter squashes, and the usual pumpkin pie spices – cinnamon, nutmug, cloves, ginger.

But so many of the pumpkin pies I’ve encountered – and even made – have turned out heavy and wet and so sweet as to disguise the subtle flavors of the squash. Not very appetizing, frankly.

I blame canned pumpkin, in part. It always seems so high in water content, no wonder the pie filling so often winds up turning even a perfectly good pie crust into sodden mush. Using whole pumpkin helps, as long as you get a variety that’s bred for eating, not carving, cook it simply and blend it to a puree. But pumpkin pie still isn’t high on my list of favorite desserts.

Still: Pumpkin, spices – nothing to dislike there. So every year when pumpkin season rolls around, I experiment with other ways of combining them in not-pie form. I’ve made pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin custard, pumpkin fudge and cute little puff pastry turnovers folded around diced cooked pumpkin and drizzled with caramel sauce. All tasty.

This year it’s ice cream. I have a second-hand Donvier ice-cream maker, the sort with the metal cylinder you keep in the freezer and then pop into its plastic housing whenever the urge for ice cream strikes. It’s very handy, and way less fuss than traditional churn-till-your-arm-falls-off freezers.

As usual, I looked at a bunch of recipes, borrowed a bit from this and a bit from that, and came up with what a rich, flavorful ice cream that has all the good qualities of pumpkin pie, and none of the objectionable ones. I chose an eggless ice cream base, because it makes a slightly softer ice cream that doesn’t fight back when you’re trying to scoop it, doubled the spices other recipes called for and reduced the sugar, because I wanted the pumpkin to shine through. And to give it added texture interest, added nuggets of pralined pecan for a little sweet, nutty crunch – and turned the pumpkin seeds into a spicy garnish. The resulting ice cream is rich and spicy, not too sweet and very pumpkin-y, and would make a great Thanksgiving dessert. Even alongside pumpkin pie.

Spicy pumpkin ice cream

Ingredients

• 1 small pie pumpkin
• Light-flavored oil (I used peanut oil)
• 6 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice (optional)
• 1 tsp powdered ginger
• 1 Tbsp bourbon (or good vanilla)
• 2 cups heavy cream

For praline

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 Tbsp water
• 1 cup pecan pieces

Method

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare the pumpkin by removing the stem and quartering the squash. Use a big spoon or ice cream scoop to remove the seeds and fibrous material; set aside. Lightly oil the cut surfaces, place on a baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes or until flesh is very soft and edges have begun to brown, turning the pieces once during cooking.

While the pumpkin is cooking, make the praline:

In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup sugar and 2 Tbsp water. Stir to blend and bring to a boil. Without stirring, continue cooking over medium-high heat until the sugar melts and turns dark golden-brown, about 5-7 minutes. Watch carefully at the end, and when done, remove from heat. Add pecans, stir to coat and turn out onto a piece of buttered foil or a silicon banking sheet. Let cool completely, then peel off the foil/baking sheet and break into nuggets . A rubber mallet or the handle of a heavy tableknife is useful for this task. Set aside.

When pumpkin is very tender, remove from oven, allow to cool, and remove the peel (it should come off the flesh easily; if not, use a spoon to scrape all the good pumpkin from the skin. Allow pumpkin to finish cooling to room temperature.

Using a wand blender or food processor, puree pumpkin flesh until smooth. Add the sugars, spices and bourbon, and stir well to blend. Whisk in the cream and pour the mixture into your ice cream maker. Chill according to manufacturer’s recommendations.*

When the ice cream is almost firm, stir in the praline pieces. Spoon the finished dessert out of the ice cream maker and into a lidded freezer container; return to freezer overnight to allow it to “cure.”

Spicy pumpkin ice cream

Serve with a garnish of spiced pumpkin seeds (see below). Makes about 1 quart.

* If you don’t have an ice cream maker, it’s possible to make ice cream in a steel mixing bowl or even a baking pan: Just pour the mixture into the metal container, put it in the freezer and every 15 minutes or so take it out and use a rubber spatula to scrape the frozen bits from the side and bottom into the center of the mixture to break up the ice crystals. Continue this procedure until thoroughly frozen. The texture won’t be as smooth, but it’ll still taste good.

Spiced pumpkin seeds

Ingredients

• Pumpkin seeds (however many your pumpkin holds
• Oil
• A couple of teaspoons of sugar
• Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, ginger (any or all of these)

I never throw pumpkin seeds away. Cleaned and toasted, they make tasty snacks and garnishes. The only difficult part is cleaning them completely of the fibrous material that they grow in. I dump them into my big colander, set it in a bowl of water and go them with both hands, squeezing the seeds from the stringy stuff and tossing it into the garbage disposal as I go. Once you get most of the orange stuff out, you can rub the rest out through a coarse strainer. Lay the seeds out on a dish towel, pat dry with another.

Preheat oven to 250F. Toss the seeds with a small amount of oil to coat, then toss with sugar and spices. Spread the mixture out on a baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the seeds are crisp, dry and golden brown. Cool, then store in an air-tight container until ready for use.

Experiments in ice cream

Oatmeal ice cream

Summer fun – houseguests, festivals, travel – have kept me from foodblogging for the past couple of weeks, and also made me miss a couple of weeks at the market. I made up for the latter yesterday with a market run that netted summer squash, turnips, lemon cucumbers, a fistful of fiery cayenne peppers, a big white onion, poppyseed cake, smoked bacon – and a mixed half-flat of berries: blueberries, raspberries (I still can’t get enough) and two varieties of blackberry, including intensely sweet Hoods (which grow on virtually thornless canes, making for scratch-free harvesting).

I’ve been craving ice cream, and a serendipitous Livejournal entry by a friend in Califormia gave me two inspirations: Blackberry puree, and (no, really) oatmeal ice cream.

Hm. Blackberries and oats: That, plus some sweetening, is my basic recipe for a very tasty blackberry crisp. The thought of turning those flavors and textures into ice cream … hmmmm …

Lacking an actual recipe, I improvised, using ingredients on hand and a variation on the the basic cooked-custard French Vanilla ice cream recipe that came with my Donvier ice cream maker (the sort with a cylinder that sits in the freezer just waiting for the ice cream impulse to strike, and requires no laborious churning – just a few turns of the paddle and it’s done).

Even using reduced-fat milk, the oatmeal provides a lush, silken texture that’s absolutely decadent. With plenty of cinnamon and a vein of deep purple berry goodness running through it, this is a fabulous summer-time ice cream. You could probably even pass it off as a healthy(ish) alternative to regular ice cream, although “healthy” is not one of my concerns when I want ice cream.

The oatmeal does give this ice cream a good deal of texture. People who, like me, love oatmeal will probably like it. People who find chewy ice cream off-putting may not – but it strikes me that you could run the cooked custard through a food processor and get it close to silky smooth, if you liked, before proceeding to freeze it.

Oatmeal ice cream with a blackberry swirl

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk (I normally use whole milk for ice cream, but I had 2 percent in the fridge; in this recipe, there’s no loss of creamyness.)
• 1/2 cup raw oats (I like steel-cut Scottish oats, but regular old Quaker oats would be fine. Just don’t use the instant stuff)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or more, to your taste. I used about a tablespoon, but I really like cinnamon).
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups cream or half-and-half (I used 2 percent milk enriched with three-fourths of a cup of home-made creme fraiche).
• 1 pint fresh blackberries (reserve a few nice ones for garnish)
• Sugar and/or fresh lemon juice (optional)

For optional topping:

• 2 Tbsp raw oats, toasted in a dry skillet until fragrant and golden-brown. Careful not to let it burn!
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar

Ingredients

Method:

In a lidded saucepan, combine milk and salt; bring to a boil. Add oats and cinnamon, reduce heat, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. When cool, beat eggs and sugar into the oatmeal. Return to burner, cooking over a low heat and stirring constantly until the mixture is thick and creamy enough to coat the back of the spoon. Cool, then add cream and vanilla. Refrigerate several hours to overnight.

When thoroughly chilled, pour mixture into your ice cream freezer and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions.

Meanwhile, heat the blackberries in a small saucepan, breaking up with a wooden spoon, just until they begin to disintegrate and give up their juice. Press through a sieve set over a small bowl to remove seeds, pressing with a wooden spoon to get all the blackberry goodness. You should end up with an all but seedless blackberry puree. Taste; if too tart, add a little sugar; if too sweet, add a squeeze of lemon juice. Cover with plastic wrap and chill. Don’t be surprised if the puree gets quite thick; blackberries are packed with natural pectins.

When the ice cream is mostly frozen (scoopable but not hard), transfer to a lidded freezer container with a bit of extra space: spoon in a layer of ice cream, add some of the berry puree and continue alternating, running a spoon or spatula through the mixture a couple of times. Your goal is not a uniform blend, but ice cream with veins of berry running through it. Return to freezer for at least two hours to ripen. (Note: If, as I did, you use reduced fat milk instead of cream, the ice cream may freeze up too hard to scoop. Just let it sit outside the freezer for a few minutes before serving, or give it a few 10-second bursts in the microwave).

When ready to serve, mix the toasted oats with the brown sugar; place a scoop (or two!) of ice cream into a dish, sprinkle on some of the oat/brown sugar topping and crown with a perfect blackberry.

Makes a little over over a quart of ice cream. Share it with friends.

Early cherries

While cool weather slows the progress of some of our usual late-May/early June crops, Rick Steffens Farm continues to provide us with glimpses of things to come, thanks to their extensive cold-frame operation. This weekend, in addition to strawberries and tender sugar-pod peas, they brought perfect, ripe Bing cherries, weeks ahead of season, harvested from dwarf cherry trees they keep under cover as part of a crop test they’re doing with the clever agriculturists at Oregon State University.

Cherries always make me think of clafouti, that easy, classic French country-kitchen dessert that’s a cross between a tart, a flan and a light, eggy cake. Served warm with dollop of creme fraiche (or, if you can’t find that, unsweetened whipped cream), it’s a lovely, not-too-sweet, not-too-heavy dessert that shows off the flavor of the fruit. While you can make clafouti with other fruits, cherries make the definitive version.

My recipe comes from my dog-earned, food-stained copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking, which was the second cookbook in what is now a large collection (after the Joy of Cooking my mother gave me when I left home). After three decades, it’s still one of the books I return to again and again for basic techniques and excellent recipes. I’ve tweaked this one over the years, but it’s still faithful to the original, and absolutely delicious.

Cherry Clafouti

Ingredients:

• 2 cups ripe cherries, pitted. I have a nifty little cherry-pitting utensil, but for years I got by with the rounded end of a hairpin – scoop the loop of wire into the stem end of the cherry and down around the pit, give a tug and out it comes.
• 1/4 cup kirsch or brandy (optional)
• 3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted.
• 1 1/4 cups rich milk or cream
• 1/3 cup sugar, plus 2 tsp for topping. For this purpose, I dip into my canister of vanilla sugar (sugar in which a couple of split and scraped vanilla beans have been buried)
• 1 tsp vanilla (if you don’t use vanilla sugar)
• zest of one lemon
• 3 eggs
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup sifted, all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup almond meal*

Method:

For a classic Clafouti a la Liqueur, soak the cherries in kirsch or brandy while making the batter; drain before adding to the dish.

Use 1 Tbsp of melted butter to grease the bottom and sides of a glass or ceramic pie pan or baking dish. Reserve the rest.

Combine the remaining ingredients in the bowl of your mixer and beat on high speed for a minute or so until thoroughly blended and foamy. (I use my wand blender when I don’t feel like messing with the KitchenAid). Let the batter rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Drain the cherries and arrange them in the bottom of the baking dish.

Blend remaining melted butter into the batter and pour over the cherries. Place in the middle of the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Sprinkle reserved sugar over the surface and return to oven to bake for another 20-30 minutes, until the top is puffed and browned (it will deflate as it cools). Remove from oven. Serve hot or warm, with creme fraiche or unsweetened whipped cream.

* In France, the cherries often go into the dish unpitted, for the delicate almond flavor the pits impart to the batter. Having just gone through several thousand dollars worth of dental work, I choose to pit my cherries and add a little almond meal (sold as “almond flour” in the Bob’s Red Mill brand at several local supermarkets) instead.

Two things to do with strawberries

I managed not to eat them all straight from the pasteboard box, and as promised, here are some nifty things to do with really good strawberries. You know the ones I mean: Red and tender all the way to the heart, so fragrant they smell up your whole refrigerator, and sweet as a May morning. If you can’t get fresh, local berries, my condolences. Don’t bother with these recipes, or (for the panna cotta) substitute good preserves. Anything but those hard, red-on-the-outside, white-on-the-inside excuses for strawberries most supermarkets stock. They’re marginally acceptable when piled on shortcake and smothered in whipped cream, but not for any recipe that’s meant to show off the delicate strawberry flavor and fragrance.

The first dish was yesterday’s lunch, inspired in part by a desire to finish off the wonderful spinach I’d bought the week before. The second is a happy coincidence: I’m providing food props for a local theater production, and among them is “creme caramel” – but I’ve been substituting panna cotta, because its gelatin-and-cream base is more refrigerator-stable than the egg custard of real creme caramel. I had a couple of extras, so …

Spinach salad with strawberries and balsamic vinegar

Ingredients:

Spinach
Ripe strawberries, sliced
A few spears of fresh asparagus, the smaller the better
Good balsamic vinegar
Freshly ground pink peppercorns
Sea salt

Method:

Tear greens into bite-sized pieces and spread on a plate. Arrange a few spears of asparagus, lightly steamed or roasted, on the greens. Top with a few sliced strawberries (I got cute and made strawberry fans by slicing from the tip not quite to the stem and then fanning out the pieces). Drizzle with a balsamic vinegar – less is better than more, here. Sprinkle with ground pepper and a tiny bit of sea salt.

If you’re not the kind of person who keeps pink peppercorns on hand, fresh-ground black pepper is good, too, but the pink variety has a subtle, floral flavor that goes wonderfully with berries and other fruit.

Panna cotta with caramel and strawberries

My recipe for this luxurious Italian dessert is adapted from one by Lynne Rosetto Kasper, host of the wonderful public radio cooking show, The Splendid Table. Hers makes enough for a big dinner party, so I’ve jiggered the proportions, and I’ve upped the gelatin-to-cream ratio just a bit to make them easier to unmold.

Ingredients:

1 tsp unflavored gelatin (that’s about half an envelope)
2 Tbsp cold water
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup all-dairy sour cream. Make sure to get the kind that lists “cultured cream” as its only ingredient. You don’t want agar or other thickeners in this. (Or ever, really).
Caramel sauce (make your own if you want, but I use Mrs. Richardson’s Butterscotch Caramel Sauce, which is to die for)
Strawberries, hulled

Method:

Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water in a small bowl. Let it stand for 5 minutes.

In a small saucepan combine the cream, sugar, salt and vanilla and warm over medium-high heat. Do not allow it to boil. Stir in the gelatin until thoroughly dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

Put the sour cream in a medium bowl. Gently whisk in the warm cream until smooth and thoroughly combined.

Rinse a half-dozen small ramekins, pyrex custard cups, or coffee cups with cold water. Place a spoonful of caramel sauce in the bottom of each, and then fill with the cream mixture. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours (can be made a day ahead of time, and if covered with plastic wrap once it’s chilled, it holds up well for a couple of days in the fridge).

When ready to serve, run a knife around the edge of the panna cotta, place a dessert plate on top of the ramekin and invert. It should plop right out onto the plate; if not, carefully run the knife up the side and gently pry it loose. Make sure to get all the caramel sauce out of the ramekin and onto the custard (a spoon may be needed). Top with ripe strawberries. Makes six small desserts.

I’ve got house guests coming this evening, and plan to ply them with berries and panna cotta. I don’t think they’ll mind