cooking

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.

Revisiting an old recipe

| Green Card Gardener

Looking at the abundance of green and opal basil in my garden today I remembered a cold basil cream sauce I used to make when I was a student. It was a quick and inexpensive dish (in Germany, unlike in the US, crème fraîche can be found in every supermarket, and it’s cheap). Yet the sauce tasted like gourmet food compared to the frozen pizza and other stuff on which I mostly survived.

I usually had it cold with warm pasta but it also goes well on a pasta salad, or can be served with slices of cold meat.

This is the first year I am growing opal basil so I used that but green is fine. Since I have so much of it, and it makes the sauce less rich, I use a full cup of packed basil leaves.

Cold Basil Cream Sauce

Crème fraîche is so pricey and hard to find in this country that I make my own (courtesy of Julia Child, The Way to Cook).

¾ cup heavy cream

¾ cup sour cream (low-fat or regular)

1 cup packed basil leaves, green or opal

¼ cup (1 ounce) freshly grated Parmesan

Freshly ground white pepper

Salt

10 ounces farfalle or other pasta

1. Whisk the heavy cream with the sour cream in a small container. Cover and let stand on the kitchen counter away from sunlight for 1 to 2 hours until it thickens.

2. Process the basil leaves with the crème fraîche in a food processor until the basil is finely chopped. Stir in the Parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Do not over-process, or the cream will separate. Refrigerate (the sauce thickens a bit as it stands).

3. Cook the pasta and run plenty of cold water over it to remove the starch. Drain well. Serve the warm pasta with the cold sauce. Or, for a pasta salad, let the pasta almost cool, then toss with the sauce until evenly coated, and refrigerate until serving.

Makes 4 servings

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.

Gooseberries: Delicious but vicious

| Green Card Gardener

There is no other way to say it: growing gooseberries is a pain. The bushes with their long thorns are outright dangerous. Wearing sturdy gloves when picking the small berries is not really an option so harvesting them often leaves me with deep scratches on my hands and lower arms. My husband still has a few scars on his calves from the time when he moved a row of raspberries nearby and the gooseberry thorns pierced through his jeans. Also, removing the minuscule blossom ends and stems takes forever but it has to be done, otherwise the pie, compote or whatever you make tastes grainy.

Wouldn’t you know it that of my three gooseberry bushes, the cultivar with the largest berries and the easiest to pick, Invicta, yielded exactly four (4) gooseberries this year. Meanwhile the other two cultivars, Hinnonmaki Red and Pixwell, are filled with tiny berries. They are tastier than the hairy Invictas so that’s at least one trade-off for being more labor-intensive.

Initially I was leaning towards tossing the entire 3½ pounds of gooseberries without any tedious preparation into the steam juicer to make gooseberry jelly. But then my culinary curiosity took over and I wanted to try something new, special, and hopefully delicious.

I have always wanted to make gooseberry chutney. When I saw that the recipe for Gooseberry Relish by food writer Edward Schneider in the The New York Times is made with only five ingredients, including elderflower cordial, I had found my inspiration. What a perfect reason to pop open the first bottle of my elderflower syrup!

For a moment I was slightly concerned about the relish being suitable for canning, as the recipe does not mention this option. After all, I want us to savor the relish in the winter and not now, in the midst of fruit cornucopia. But after consulting with my dietitian friend, I was reassured that the gooseberries contain enough acidity to make canning safe.

The other recipe I tried was Gooseberry Chutney, to which I added elderflower vinegar.

I have barely started to harvest from the third gooseberry bush. Soon I will be out there again picking, wincing each time I hit a thorn. But the fact that I can just walk into the garden, while other people hungry for gooseberries hunt them down at farmers’ markets, makes me appreciate more what I have. Also, with the taste of that delicious gooseberry relish and chutney still lingering on my tongue, I know again what I’m doing this for.

Gooseberry Relish

1 large piece of ginger (3 to 4 inches)

2 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds

2 pounds gooseberries, blossom ends and stems removed, washed

2/3 cup sugar

1 cup elderflower syrup

1-2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1. Peel the ginger, cut it in half lengthwise and slice it thinly. Tie it into a piece of cheesecloth, together with the mustard seeds, and secure the bag with butcher twine.

2. Place the bag in a heavy saucepan with the gooseberries, the sugar and the elderflower syrup. Stir to mix and slowly bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for about 1 hour, until the relish thickens. Stir every now and then, more often as it thickens, to prevent the relish from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Towards the end, check for sweetness and add brown sugar to taste.

3. Discard the ginger bag. Fill the piping hot relish in sterilized jars placed on a damp kitchen towel. Wipe the rims of the jars with a damp piece of paper towel to remove any drips. Place the lids and the bands on the jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

4. Let cool and set for 24 hours without moving the jars.

Makes 2 to 3 half-pint jars

Gooseberry Chutney

1 medium piece of ginger (1 inch), peeled and chopped

1.5 pounds gooseberries, blossom ends and stems removed, washed

1 medium yellow onion, sliced thinly

2 garlic cloves, crushed

3 fresh thyme twigs, leaves only

3 marjoram twigs, leaves only

1.5 cups sugar

1 cup elderflower vinegar

½ teaspoon yellow mustard seeds

½ teaspoon salt

1. Put all the ingredients in a heavy saucepan. Stir to mix and slowly bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the chutney thickens. Stir every now and then, especially towards the end, so it won’t scorch.

2. Process in boiling water batch as described in the Gooseberry Relish recipe above.

Makes 2 to 3 half-pint jars