Desserts

Catching up with an old flirt

| Green Card Gardener

Since I was given Lidia Bastianich’s Lidia’s Italian Table as a wedding gift more than a decade ago, I have been flirting with her Blueberry-Apricot Frangipane Tart every so soften. Yet I never made it because either I did not have fresh blueberries and apricots at the same time, or no almond flour at hand, or not enough time, or all of the above.

Today was finally the day, thanks to an extended trip to the blueberry patch yesterday and the last apricots from County Line Orchard, my favorite source for locally grown fruit.

As I was lining up all the ingredients, I started revolting. One whole stick butter for the filling, in addition to the stick already required for the crust… that is too much butter for my taste in a tart where fresh fruit should be the star. So I concocted an alternative batter, substituting the butter with milk and using confectioners’ sugar instead of sugar to make it smoother. I also separated the eggs and beat the whites stiff for a fluffier consistency. Finally, since I did not have ½ cup apricot jam for the glaze (since I make our own jam, I try to avoid buying any), I made my own using two extra apricots.

If you have great expectations in a book or a movie, and then it turns out not to be what you expected, you are more or less stuck. The great thing with recipes is that you can tweak and fit them to your taste so you are still happy and satisfied at the end!

Blueberry-Apricot-Almond Tart

Crust:

¼ cup sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

1½ cups flour

Pinch of salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 stick chilled butter, cut into small cubes

1 large egg yolk

1 tablespoon ice water, more as needed

Apricot glaze:

1 to 2 ripe apricots, halved and pitted

¼ cup water

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon honey

Filling:

1 cup (4 ounces) almond flour

½ cup (2 ounces) confectioners’ sugar

2 large eggs

½ cup milk (2%)

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 pound ripe apricots, halved and pitted

1. Put the sugar and the lemon zest in the food processor and process until the lemon zest if finely chopped (doing this infuses the sugar with the lemon flavor). Add all the flour, salt, baking powder, butter and egg yolk and process until the dough starts holding together and detaches form the sides of the food processor bowl. Add 1 tablespoon ice water and pulse until the dough almost holds completely together. Remove it from the bowl, picking up all the crumbs, and gently press it together to a compact ball. Place in a container with a lid and refrigerate for 1 hour.

2. In the meantime make the apricot glaze. Puree the apricots with the water until smooth. Mix in a small saucepan with the sugar and honey and cook over low heat until tick and sticky, stirring often to prevent scorching. Set aside to cool.

3. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Butter and flour a 10-inch cake pan. Roll out the dough between two large sheets of wax paper to fit the bottom of the pan plus 1 inch rim all around. Lift the top wax paper, flip the dough over and fit it into the pan. Even out the rim (if you are a bit short in some spots, patching is OK, this won’t be visible later).

4. Prick the crust with a fork several times and place in the freezer for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

5. In a bowl mix the almond flour and the confectioners’ sugar. Separate the eggs. Add the yolks to the batter together with the milk. Beat until smooth. In another bowl beat the egg whiles until stiff. Fold them into the almond batter.

6. Remove the cake pan from the freezer. Using a pastry brush evenly coat the bottom and the sides of the crust with apricot glaze. Scatter the blueberries on top.

7. Gently spread the almond batter over the blueberries, taking care not to lift them up, and even the top with a spatula.

8. Arrange the apricot halves on top with their cut sides down, starting with a circle all around, then forming additional smaller circles.

9. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is light golden brown and set. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Coat the apricots with the remaining glaze and cool completely.

Summer bliss, bumps notwithstanding

| Green Card Gardener

In the winter, there are days we get stuck on our hilltop. With the Internet working and the pantry stocked, we are fully operational but cabin fever hits easily. Once, after three days, my husband and I decided to hike to the post office to get our mail. Halfway, he wisely turned around with our dog. He did not want to risk an injury on the icy roads, and the poor skinny dog was shaking terribly from the cold (Vizslas don’t have undercoats). I moved on and walked the four miles to the post office and back. Until that day, I had no idea what shin splints are. The next day, I knew.

Winter can be dreadful but then comes summer, and all is forgotten. Every year it hits me again how beautiful this area is. I have biked and driven on those country roads a thousand times, yet every year I find it breathtakingly beautiful: the rolling hills where farm fields alternate with wooded areas, the many small creeks, the tidy farms with their red barns and corn storage bins, and happy cows.

Sure, I moan and groan like everybody else when the temperature reaches 95 degrees and it is so humid that you have to store bread in the fridge so it doesn’t mold. And then all those itchy bumps from insect bites… I get stung even through clothing. This year is particularly bad, maybe because the winter was so mild.

I remember sitting in a sub-zero air-conditioned office in New York City on a hot summer day and dreaming of being in the country. Now I am in the country, and I am fully enjoying it – despite the bugs.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

During strawberry season, I tossed all the not-so-pretty strawberries from the garden in the freezer for jam. After making jam last week I had some leftover strawberries so I made a variation of my Berry Frozen Yogurt.

I like cooking the strawberry puree first  – it gives the frozen yogurt more flavor, and the strawberry puree keeps longer if you don’t use it right away. But you can also use the raw puree and add the whole amount of sugar at once.

1½ cups strawberry puree, passed through a food mill

1 cup sugar

2 cups sour cream

½ cup heavy cream

1. Put the strawberry puree in a small saucepan with ½ cup sugar. Bring to a quick boil while stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and let cool. Chill thoroughly.

2. In a bowl mix the chilled strawberry puree with all remaining ingredients well with a wire whisk until the sugar dissolves.

3. Process the frozen yogurt in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

4. Fill frozen yogurt in plastic containers with tight lids and place in the freezer until solidly frozen. To soften, remove from the freezer 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

Rhubarb wrap

| Green Card Gardener

Rhubarb wrap1

There were quite a number of food rules in my German childhood: don’t drink water after eating cherries, don’t reheat spinach nor fish dishes, don’t go for a swim after eating – and don’t eat rhubarb harvested after St. John the Baptist Day on June 24.

Over time I found out that most of these rules have no scientific foundation. I have happily reheated countless slices of spinach quiche and leftover salmon without ever getting sick and broke all the other rules too – except for the one about rhubarb.

What supposedly makes rhubarb so dangerous is the oxalic acid, which is highly concentrated in rhubarb leaves and roots and makes them toxic. The stalks contain only insignificant amounts of oxalic acid, red stalks less than green ones. To harm your body you would have to eat a lot of rhubarb, and I imagine that even before having rhubarb-related health issues, you would get a sugar shock from all the sugar that is needed to make so much rhubarb palatable!

The reasoning behind that tenacious rhubarb deadline of June 24 is that supposedly rhubarb contains an elevated level of oxalic acid as the season progresses. The real reason, however, is that after the end of June the plant goes into regeneration and regrowth for next spring. Harvesting rhubarb later in the summer depletes it of its energy.

My two rhubarb plants had a slow start this year, I was able to cut very little, and only in the past two weeks do they seem to grow. There is no way I will keep my hands off rhubarb after tomorrow, and I will cut some more during the next week or two. And then, when I stop harvesting, I will do it because it’s bad for the plant (besides, in the summer heat, the stalks become fibrous), and not because of some old wife’s tale.

Orangey Baked Rhubarb

Adapted from Alice Waters’ recipe for Baked Rhubarb Compote in Chez Panisse Fruit, this is one of the most flavorful rhubarb compotes I ever made. Cooking rhubarb in the oven concentrates the juices to thick syrup, while the pieces don’t fall apart yet they are so soft they melt in your mouth. And the combination of rhubarb and orange is fantastic.

Rhubarb should not be cooked in metal dishes, which reacts with the oxalic acid (here’s another rule, yet this is one based on facts). Neither should the dish be covered with aluminum foil. I used parchment paper and butcher twine.

Rhubarb wrap2

2¼ pounds trimmed rhubarb, cut into 1-inch chunks

½ teaspoon natural orange extract

1¼ cups sugar

½ cup orange juice

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Mix the rhubarb with all the other ingredients. Evenly distribute it in the baking dish. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper and secure it across the top with butcher twine.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes, then uncover and cook for 10 more minutes. Let cool, then transfer to a jar or a container with a lid and refrigerate.

Makes 4 cups

Strawberry mission accomplished

| Green Card Gardener

Finally, after taking all sorts of measures to protect strawberries against critters, there are enough strawberries from the garden to make Rote Grütze, the German red berry dessert that was my favorite as a child. The recipe can be found in my cookbook Spoonfuls of Germany.

Rote Grütze can be served with vanilla sauce, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, liquid heavy cream, or plain milk. My favorite has always been vanilla sauce made from scratch – lots of it, therefore I often double the amounts.