Fruits

Confessions of a raspberry hoarder

| Green Card Gardener

When it comes to raspberries, I turn into a combination of a hoarder and the food police – at least when the harvest is scarce in mid-summer. It ticks me off when someone pops a handful of freshly picked raspberries in their mouth after I have spent so much time picking (needless to say, I am particular about letting someone else pick the raspberries in my garden).

I admit that sometimes, I even leave the raspberries in the garage and wait until I’m alone in the kitchen so I can spread them on a baking sheet and freeze them.  I keep hoarding until I have a couple of 1-gallon bags in the freezer to make cakes, pies and desserts when the children are home so everyone gets their equal share of raspberries. The addictive Raspberry Almond Vacherin from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte is everybody’s declared favorite.

Now that I have reached my raspberry target for 2010 and I am still harvesting raspberries, I can finally relax! I used half of the two pints I picked today to make a custard pie just for my husband and me to splurge on.

One remark about shortening: Until I discovered the organic Jungle brand, shortening was a big no-no for me.  This is the only shortening I will use. It is non-hydrogenated and makes a great flaky pie crust.

Raspberry Pie with Crème Anglaise

Pie crust:

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1/3  cup (about 2½ ounces) shortening, at room temperature

¼ cup ice water

Crème anglaise:

¼ cup sugar

2 egg yolks

¾ cup + 2 tablespoons low-fat or whole milk

1½ teaspoons cornstarch

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Filling:

1 pint fresh raspberries

You also need:

A pastry blender

Wax paper

A 9-inch pie pan with removable rim

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2. For the pie crust, mix flour, salt and shortening with a pastry blender until crumbly. Add water by tablespoons until the dough holds together in a ball. Blend briefly to get rid of any lumps.

3. Roll out the dough to an 11-inch circle between two sheets of wax paper. Remove the top layer of the wax paper and flip the wax paper over to fit the circle into a 9-inch fluted pie pan with removable rim. Carefully remove the wax paper. You might have do this by ripping off strips of paper in order to leave the dough intact (sorry, no recycling). Let the dough come up to the height of the rim. Trim the dough along the rim with a sharp knife.

4. Loosely line the crust with lightly greased aluminum foil (shiny side down) and fill with pie weights. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, remove the pie weights and the aluminum foil and bake for 10 to 13 more minutes, or until the crust has a golden brown color. Let cool on a wire rack.

5. For the crème anglaise, beat the sugar and the egg yolks with an electric mixer until thick and pale yellow. Cook with ¾ cup milk in a small heavy saucepan over very low heat for 5 minutes, whisking constantly. Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons milk and whisk into the mixture. Cook a few more minutes until it thickens. Make sure it doesn’t boil or the eggs will curdle.

6. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract. Let cool to room temperature, whisking a few times to prevent a skin from forming.

7. Whisk the crème anglaise, then spread it evenly on the cooled pie crust. If it is lumpy, strain through a sieve before spreading.

8. Set the raspberries into the custard and refrigerate until the custard has completely set and the pie is chilled, about 1 to 2 hours.

Finally here but not for long

| Green Card Gardener

Within a few days, the Charentais French breakfast melons that I started indoors in the spring have become super ripe. They are so juicy that I have to cut them over a bowl. It was worth the long wait and effort, which included turning part of my office into a greenhouse.

The melons are fairly small so just eating the daily harvest of two to three melons is tempting and easy to do. But I love to capture the wonderful flavor and bright color for grey winter days so I use the ripest melons, even the ones that are a tad overripe, to make sorbet.

There is not much to this recipe other than using only very ripe melons and chilling all the ingredients very well before processing. If you have an ice-cream maker with an open freezing bowl, try to find the coolest spot in your house, even if it’s the hallway or the bathroom, because in a warm or hot environment the end result will be rather crystalline and less smooth.

Cantaloupe Sorbet with Lemon Balm

4 ounces water

5 ounces sugar

14 ounces pulp from very ripe fresh cantaloupe

6 sprigs fresh untreated lemon balm

1/3 cup fresh lime juice

1. Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved, scraping down the sides as it boils. Remove syrup from the heat and let cool. Put in an airtight container and refrigerate for 24 hours.

2. Puree the pulp to a smooth consistency. Mix with the lime juice.

3. Strip the leaves off the lemon balm and chop them finely. Mix with the pulp. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

4. Strain the pulp through a fine sieve. Use a silicone spatula to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

5. Measure 8 ounces of syrup and 12 ounces of melon liquid. Mix well. Process in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

6. Fill sorbet in airtight freezer containers and freeze for 12 hours, or until solidly frozen.  Take sorbet out of the freezer 15 to 20 minutes before serving to soften, but not much longer because it melts quickly.

Makes 6 servings

Vitamin booster

| Green Card Gardener

In the past few days, each time I walked down to the garden, the sight of the elderberry bushes bending under the weight of the dark, shiny fruit has jumped at me. Elderberries are usually one of the latest berries to ripen but this year everything is a few weeks early. I hope the elderberries are as ripe as they look because I want them now! I have a cold and elderberries are packed with vitamin C.

Elderberries are rarely grown in the US (despite American elderberries being native shrubs) and hard to find, that’s why I planted several bushes, mainly to satisfy my cravings for my grandmother’s elderberry soup (the recipe can be found in my cookbook Spoonfuls of Germany).

If I could do it all over again, I would plant the elderberries in a different location, not on the wind-battered hillside where the soil gets extremely dry. Elderberries prefer moist soil and thrive near a brook or a pond. At this point the bushes are too big to move so in dry weather they need a good soaking every now and then.

Extracting the juice from the elderberries was cumbersome until I bought a steam juicer last year. It is the #1 equipment I would recommend to everyone who processes larger amounts of berries of all types, not only elderberries. I am so happy with my acquisition, and have shown the steam juicer to so many visitors, that my husband starts rolling his eyes when I head to the pantry to make yet another demonstration.

I can the elderberry juice with sugar (¼ cup sugar for 4 cups juice) in 1-quart canning jars and process them 20 minutes in a hot water bath.

Dressing up for harvest

| Green Card Gardener

Since I started freelancing and working from a home office ten years ago I can count the times I have bought pantyhose on two hands. But now pantyhose is on my shopping list – not for myself but for the Charentais melons in my garden.

After a short bout of panic the other day when I thought that the cucumbers, melons, zucchini and winter squash were affected by pests and disease, things are looking great now. I can almost watch the melons grow on the trellis. When they reach the size a bit smaller than a baseball, I place them in pieces of pantyhose (recyclable year after year) tied at the bottom and attach the top to the wire of the trellis with string. This way the weight is taken off the vines and the precious fruit is off the ground and off guard for groundhogs and other predators.

I cannot wait to pick the first melon, especially since there was basically no harvest in the rainy summer of 2009. The sure indicator that the melons are ripe is the fantastic sweet scent all over the garden.

I would write down my recipe for melon sorbet but I am going to wait on that. I don’t want to jinx things with too much optimism. Meanwhile I’ll go out and buy some inexpensive flesh-colored pantyhose.