weekend project

Red, White and Blue Dessert

maki — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:48:36 +0200

(From the archives. If you’re planning a big Fourth of July party, consider this very colorful, cool dessert, which I made for a party 2 years ago. There are a lot of steps involved, but you can cut corners with storebought meringue and sugar cookies if you prefer.)

I love outdoor parties (except for the bugs!), especially when it means a barbeque. July the 4th barbeque parties are the best, and I miss them sorely when I am not in the U.S. This year though, we are going to have a July the 4th party on Sunday (since the 4th is not a holiday here), complete with grilled hamburgers, wurst, and chicken. Someone else is going to do all that grilling, so I am making the dessert.

A good dessert for a barbeque party is ideally something that you can make in advance - or at least, make most of it in advance and then just assemble it before serving. Ice cream or other frozen desserts fit the bill, but I wanted to do something a bit different. Since this is a July the 4th party, even if it will be a bit early, I needed to have something that looked all-American. And what’s more American than the flag? I think that the two nations most obsessed with their national flags are the Swiss and the Americans, so I’m sure my Swiss friends will appreciate the symbolism of red, white and blue.

Right now, local strawberries are in full season and really delicious. So that’s the red. The only edible blue I can think of short of using food coloring is blueberry, so though they are a bit early they had to do. And the white? Whipped cream and meringue. I even added a few star shaped cookies, made from a typically Swiss cookie recipe.

This red, white and blue bowl of fruity creamy goodness is a variation of a very English dessert called Eton mess. Eton mess is crushed strawberries and meringue folded together with whipped cream, and originated at the famous public school of that name where Prince William and (as far as I know) all royal family boys went to. I didn’t crush the strawberries - I sliced the big ones and left the little ones whole. I also gave them my favorite treatment: a short marinade in balsamic vinegar and a bit of sugar, which really seems to bring out the soul of the strawberry. Instead of dark balsamic though, I used white balsamic vinegar, which is mild, sweet and colorless. This left the redness of the strawberries without darkening it as the regular dark brown balsamic does. (If you can’t find white balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar is a good substitute.) Finally, instead of all whipped cream I used half whipped cream and half creme fraiche, just for a bit of added tartness and depth.

The most time consuming part of this is making the meringues. I’ve given a recipe for them which is easy to do if you have an electric beater. If you can find readymade meringues though, by all means use those.

The cookies are a type that is very popular in Switzerland called Mailander. I guess that means they originally come from Milan (Mailand is German for Milan), but they seem to be a part of Swiss culture now. They’re usually just served around Christmas, cut into little shapes. Here I have cut out tiny little stars and sprinkled them with sugar to give them sparkle. The cookies are so delicate that they crumble into the creamy, fruity, delicious mess.

The meringues and the Mailander cookies can be made way in advance (up to a week) of when you intend to make this. Here’s a rough schedule:

Day before or earlier: Make the meringues and the cookies, using the same eggs.
Night before: Prepare the strawberries and let them macerate in the balsamic vinegar.
1 hour before serving: Wash the blueberries and whip the heavy cream. Put them in the refrigerator.
Just before serving: Assemble.

The one I made and took a picture of is the rehearsal for the actual party - and of course, the model for this article! It’s not too sweet, and is really nice to eat. Don’t ask about the calorie content though…

Red, White and Blue Mess for July 4th

1 small carton of ripe strawberries
2 Tbs. granulated sugar
2 tsp. white balsamic vinegar or rice vinegar
1 small carton of blueberries
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 carton creme fraiche
2 Tbs. powdered (icing) sugar
About 3 cups of roughly crushed meringues
Cookies for garnish

Wash and hull the strawberries. Slice the big ones and leave the small ones whole. Put in a bowl with the vinegar and sugar and mix. Cover and refrigerate several hours or overnight.

Whip the heavy cream until soft peaks form, then whip in the sugar. Fold in the creme fraiche.

Drain the strawberries, reserving the liquid.

In a large bowl, put in half the blueberries and strawberries, the cream mixture and the crushed meringue, and rapidly fold together with a large spoon. Put into a glass serving bowl and put the rest of the fruit on top. Drizzle with the reserved strawberry liquid. Decorate the top with the cookies.

Serve immediately.

Meringue Kisses

3 egg whites
3/4 cup granulated (or castor, or superfine) sugar
A pinch of cream of tartar (optional: I find I don’t really need this)

Equipment needed:

electric egg beater/mixer. Whipping meringues by hand may be a rite of passage in a fine French restaurant but not for a warm summer day in a home kitchen.
a plastic bag
scissors
baking sheet
parchment paper
mixing bowl, spatula, etc.

Preheat the oven to 120°C/250°F.

Line two baking sheets with silicon baking pads or parchment paper.

With an electric mixer/beater, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add the sugar a spoonful at a time, whipping all the time, until the whole thing is shiny and very stiff.

Put the meringue into a plastic ziplock bag, and squeeze the mix towards one corner. Cut off the corner with scissors to make a small hole. Pipe out the mixture into little mounds onto the baking sheets. (You can also make the little mounds with two spoons, but I find the bag method way faster.)

Bake for 40 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave there for an additional 5-10 minutes. Take out and let cool.

This will make more meringues than you need for the mess, but meringue kisses are great just as cookies.

Lemony Mailander Cookies

225g / 8 oz. unsalted butter
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbs. lemon juice
2 Tbs. grated lemon zest
2 1/2 cups plain white regular flour (all-purpose)
Extra granulated sugar (or if you can find it, decorating sugar is nice; it’s more sparkly than granulated.)

Equipment needed:

baking sheets
rolling pin
silicon baking pads or parchment paper
small star shape cookie cutter
mixing bowl, spatula, etc.

Note: I do this in a food processor - it mixes up in no time. You can mix by hand too.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolks and mix. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest.

Add the flour gradually and mix until a soft dough forms. (If using a food processor, pulse to mix.)

Put the dough into a plastic bag and chill until firm.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F. Line two baking sheets with silicon baking pads or parchment paper.

Roll out the dough to about 1/4cm / 1/8th inch thick (or fairly thin..it’s not an exact science!) on a lightly floured surface. Working as fast as you can, cut out your star shapes and put on the baking sheets.

Bake for 10 minutes or until very lightly browned. Take them out and sprinkle with the sugar. Let cool.

This will make a lot more cookies than you need for the garnish - just pass out the rest, they are sure to disappear. Or, keep them for yourself to enjoy later.

Poached and marinated pork (Nibuta)

maki — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:34:52 +0200

With summer just around the corner, I like to think of food that can be made well ahead and tastes great served cold, or at least cool, to keep me out of a hot kitchen. The vegetable part of this is usually taken care of with seasonal vegetable salads and the like. If the protein part means meat, I like to have pre-cooked pieces tucked away in the freezer.

One of my favorite cold meats is poached and marinated pork, or nibuta. (Ni means to cook in liquid, and buta is pig.) It’s very easy to make, stores beautifully in the refrigerator for about a week or much longer in the freezer, and of course, tastes great - savory, slightly sweet, and very juicy. It can be sliced very thinly or julienned for one-dish meal salads or in sandwiches, or chopped up and added to stir-fries, wraps, and so on. It’s a great addition to a bento box. It can be cubed or coarsely ground and used instead of char siu (roast pork) in steamed buns or bao. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

There’s one unusual ‘secret ingredient’ in the poaching liquid, umeboshi or pickled plum. You can omit this if you like, but adding just one umeboshi seems to de-fat the meat a bit more than just poaching, plus making it taste a bit cleaner and fresher in an interesting way.

Poached and marinated pork (Nibuta)

One 1 kg (2.2 lb) or so lump of pork roast that is not too lean

It’s best to make this with a cut of meat that isn’t totally lean, so don’t use an expensive cut like tenderloin or filet. It should have a little marbling, just like ham. Quite a lot of the fat will end up in the poaching liquid, which you can just throw out or skim off.

Kitchen twine to tie up the meat (optional)

For the poaching liquid:

1 bunch of green leek tops
1 big piece fresh ginger, sliced
1 umeboshi (pickled plum) (somewhat optional)

For the marinating liquid:

2 cups regular dark soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar (or sugar substitute)
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup sake
1 tiny bit (not a whole piece) of star anise

If you want your pork to be nicely shaped, tie it up with the kitchen twine neatly. You don’t have to do this if you can’t be bothered.

In the meantime, put the green leek tops, ginger slices, and umeboshi in a pot with enough water to cover the pork. Bring to a boil, then put the meat in. Lower the heat until it’s barely simmering, put on a lid, and poach for 90 minutes. Let cool a bit in the liquid.

In the meantime, combine the marinade ingredients in a smaller pan and bring to the boil. Let cool.

Put the marinade and the still warm, drained pork into a plastic bag. Close tightly, and place in a bowl to catch any leaks. Let marinate, turning every so often, for about an hour or more. Store in the refrigerator until cold.

It can be kept like this in the marinade in a tightly closed container in the refrigerator for up to a week. Or, take out of the marinade and store in the freezer (optionally cut into smaller pieces for easy use and defrosting). Best served cold and thinly sliced.

Notes

The marinade itself can be defatted (put it into the refrigerator until the fat has congealed, then strain) and used as a sauce, either on the meat or for other dishes. It keeps for about 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

You could try to use the poaching liquid as a soup base, but I don’t find the flavor that good somehow (the ginger and leek combo make it too strong) so I just throw it out.

[Edited to add:] Ideally defrost nibuta in the fridge overnight, rather than in the microwave which can dry it out.

The umeboshi idea is one I originally read in one of Katsuyo Kobayashi’ many cookbooks.

Slightly bitter apple preserves

maki — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:07:12 +0200

Whether you are picking them from your own trees or at orchards, getting bushels of them in CSA boxes, or just buying them at your local market, you may possibly be swamped by apples at this time of year. Who can resist those cheeky little things after all? I live in an area with a lot of apple orchards, and seeing the little red or greenish-red fruit bobbling on branches just does something to me, and I end up buying bags and bags of it. A lot of them just get eaten out of hand, but cooked apples are also great, of course.

I love to make all kinds of jams and chutneys and preserves, but I think these apple preserves are my favorite, and they are a great way of dealing with a glut of the fruit. These preserves have a slightly bitter taste to them under the sweet-tartness, which comes from the whole lemons that are thrown in as well as the fact that it's cooked for a long time until it starts to caramelize a bit. I like this marmelade-like bitterness, but if marmelade is not your thing don't chuck in the whole lemons, but just use the peel.

I prefer to use eating apples rather than very sour cooking apples for this, since they disintegrate faster and you need a bit less sugar. It can also be interesting to use a mixture of different kinds of apples.

This goes very well with plain yogurt, as well as on hot buttered bread. If you put it up in smallish jars, they make great gifts to take along when you are invited somewhere.

Since jam-making does take its time, this is designated as a Weekend Project. Incidentally, the smell that will fill your kitchen during the cooking of this is heavenly.

Slightly bitter apple preserves

The amount of sugar and other ingredients depends on how much cut-up fruit you have. It's best to use a scale for this, since cup-measurements are inaccurate (not everyone cuts their apples up the same size after all).

You don't need pectin, since the apples themselves and the lemon peel have a lot of it, and you do cook this for a few hours to allow it to caramelize.

I usually make about 2 kg (4-5 lb or so) of apple at a time, but scale up or down according to what you feel comfortable with. If you do scale it up, you may need a bit more sugar, and if you make just a bit, you may need a bit less.

For every 1 lb /450g of peeled, cut up apple -
11-13oz / about 320g-370g sugar - more if you have sour apples, less if you have sweet
1 whole lemon, organic/unwaxed

Equipment needed: a large, heavy-bottomed, non-reactive (stainless steel or enameled cast iron work great) pot.

Peel and cut up the apple first, removing any bruised/brown bits. A vegetable peeler is the best for peeling a ton of apples, unless you have one of those apple-peeler gadgets or are a wizard with your paring knife. Weigh the apples at this point.

Cut the lemon(s) in half and juice them. Keep the squeezed halves.

Put the apple chunks, sugar and lemon juice in the pot and mix. Leave it for about 30 minutes until the apples exude their juice and the sugar starts to melt. Turn on the heat, and bring up to a boil while mixing.

Once it is bubbling, toss in the lemon peel halves. (If you don't like the bitterish marmelade taste, don't put in the lemon halves but just peel off some of the outer peel, leaving behind the white pith, and put that in.)

Turn the heat down to low and simmer for at least 4 hours, if not more. I have a ceramic-top electric/halogen type stove, so I feel safe in leaving this to simmer overnight on low heat, but if you have gas and feel uncomfortable with that you can try putting it in a lowish (280°F/140°C) oven too. The objective is a amber-colored, jammy, slightly caramelized mixture.

In the meantime, prepare your canning jars following the instructions here.

Once you have cooked the preserves to your satisfaction, take out the lemon halves and put the jam in the canning jars. If you've made just 1 lb. worth or less, you can just store it covered in the refrigerator, and use it up within a couple of weeks.

Variations

Cook for less time, without the lemon peel, for a fresher-tasting apple jam. In this case you want to cut up the apples very small.
Add a cinnamon stick or two in while cooking.
Add two de-seeded and chopped up habanero peppers for an interesting spicy jam.

Other things to do with your apples

Knittykat's busy day apple pie, via Amber
Erin's apple butter
Elise's baked apples - I love baked apples!
Also from Elise: Apple Chicken Quesadillas
If you like savory dishes with apples, these Cinnamon Apple Pork Tenderloin is a bit sweet but very nice (maybe a good side dish might be Mookie Wilson's candy yams)

Ratatouille

maki — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 16:18:29 +0200

Although ratatouille seems synonymous with summer, perhaps because it comes from sunny Provence, I think it's really a dish to make right now, in early fall. This is when the essential ingredients - eggplants (aubergines), fresh tomatoes, zucchini (courgettes), sweet onions, and peppers - are all at their peak. You can get all of those things year-round nowadays of course, but vegetables in season are always just a bit sweeter.

Even the humble eggplant, which doesn't seem as season-sensitive as tomatoes, are at their peak in the fall. In Japan, there's a saying, akinasu yome ni kuwasuna which means "Don't let the daughter-in-law eat fall eggplants". There are two theories to where that saying came from: one is that eggplants are so delicious at this time of year that the poor daughter-in-law shouldn't be allowed to partake. The other theory is that eggplants are considered to be "cooling" vegetables, and women who want to become pregnant should not eat food that cools the body. In any case, fresh, tender eggplant that isn't over-mature and full of hard seeds is really delicious.

A really great ratatouille is not a vegetable stew, as some cookbooks say - it's more like a vegetable casserole. Each vegetable is pre-cooked, then brought together for the final simmering. Because of the preparation involved, making a proper ratatouille takes about 3 1/2 hours from start to finish, making it a great weekend project. Get the freshest ingredients you can in the morning, and put them together as ratatouille in the afternoon, to eat for dinner or for lunch the next day.

The smells that fill the house while you're cooking this are irresistible.

This recipe has the traditional Provençal flavorings of thyme and oregano, but you can also give it all kinds of twists, some of which I've described in the variations.

Ratatouille is very versatile. It can be a condiment, a side dish, a pasta sauce, or even a sandwich filling. Here I have made a ratatouille sandwich with brebis, a kind of fresh sheep's milk cheese. Goat's cheese also works very well.

My version of ratatouille is a bit less oily than some other recipes, since I pre-salt three of the vegetables to expel some of the moisture before cooking. I also pre-roast the eggplant and the peppers instead of sautéing them. This has another benefit - while those two vegetables are cooking in the oven, I have the stovetop free to deal with the three others. There are a lot of steps to follow, but it's not technically challenging to do.

Incidentally, I am really looking forward to the Disney/Pixar movie Ratatouille next summer. If you haven't yet, go watch the trailer now! Then come back and read on for the recipe below the fold...

Ratatouille

This is the easiest amount to make for me since I don't have a very large kitchen. It makes about 5-6 cups of ratatouille. You can double the amount if you want to - I wouldn't make less, since it seems a bit pointless to put so much effort and time into making a tiny portion. (Ratatouille will last in the refrigerator for at least a week, and freezes pretty well too.) The point is to have an equal amount, in weight, not volume, of the five vegetables. I've given approximate volume amounts in case you don't have a kitchen scale and want to eyeball it.

500g / a bit more than 1 lb. eggplant (aubergines) (About 8 cups raw after slicing)
500g / a bit more than 1 lb. zucchini (courgettes) (I like the green ones for color contrast) (About 4 cups raw after slicing)
500g / a bit more than 1 lb. large sweet onions (About 3 cups raw after slicing)
500g / a bit more than 1 lb. sweet red or orange peppers (About 4 cups raw after slicing)
1-kg / a bit more than 2 lbs. of ripe red tomatoes (this will become less once it's skinned and de-seeded) (After skinning and de-seeding and chopping, about 3 cups)
4 garlic cloves
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. dried oregano
2 bay leaves

Equipment needed/recommended:

A kitchen scale
A saucepan or pot
A large sauté pan or wok
A sharp knife and a chopping board
A spatula
5 bowls or receptacles large enough to hold your 5 basic vegetables
A glass oven casserole dish, or a shallow oven-safe pan with a non-reactive surface (enamel, ceramic or glass)
Paper towels or clean kitchen towels
Cooking parchment paper
Aluminum foil
A large spoon, or a turkey baster

Fill the pot/pan with water and bring to a boil.

If you have very large eggplants, cut it into half or quarters lengthwise. Slice about 1/2cm - 1/8th inch thick. Put into a bowl, and sprinkle with a little salt all over. Toss.

Slice the zucchini to the same thickness, more or less, as the eggplant. Put into another bowl, sprinkle with a little salt and toss.

Slice the onions very thinly. Put into yet another bowl, and sprinkle with a little salt all over. Toss.

Leave all of the above vegetables about 20 minutes.

Put the tomatoes whole into the boiling water. Take them out after about 40 seconds. Peel off the skins, halve and scoop out the seeds. Chop roughly and weigh them.

De-seed and slice the peppers. Spread on a paper-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle with a little olive oil. Prepare another baking sheet with paper, for the eggplant.

Peel and then chop the garlic very finely.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F.

Drain the eggplant. Take handfuls at a time into a clean kitchen towel or several layers of paper towels, and squeeze out the moisture. Spread on the other baking sheet that you've prepared, and sprinkle with a little olive oil.

Put the eggplant and the peppers in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, until tender but not crispy. Stir around once or twice during this time. (The peppers may need an additional 5-10 minutes, depending on how thinly you sliced them.)

Drain and squeeze the zucchini and the onions in the same way as the eggplant.

Heat up your sauté pan or wok with a little olive oil. Fry the zucchini in the oil until lightly browned. Remove.

Add the onion to the pan (plus a little more oil if needed), and sauté until limp and translucent. Remove.

Put in the garlic, and sauté briefly. Add the tomato pulp, and break it up with a spatula. Add the bay leaves, thyme, oregano, and freshly ground pepper. (No salt -remember you've already used quite a lot to draw out the water in the vegetables.) Simmer for about 10 minutes over medium-high heat. Take out the bay leaves.

In the meantime, your roasted vegetables should be done. Remove them from the oven. In your glass or ceramic casserole dish, put in half the onions in a layer. Follow with a layer of zucchini, then eggplant, then pepper, then the tomato pulp. Repeat for the rest of the vegetables. (You can reserve a few of the eggplant and zucchini slices to decorate the top.)

Cover the casserole dish loosely with foil, and place on a baking sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes at the same temperature (180°C / 350°F).

Take the foil off, and make a flat ball out of it. Carefully put it under one corner of the casserole dish, to tilt it up slightly. Make a dent in the opposing corner. It will quickly fill up with liquid. Take that liquid with a spoon or a turkey baster, and baste the vegetables (meaning, pour the liquid back over the top of everything). Put the dish and baking sheet back in the oven. Continue baking and basting every 15-20 minutes until the liquid is has reduced down to less than half of what you started out with. This may take an hour or more, depending on how juicy your vegetables were. A glass casserole dish makes it easy to see how much liquid there is. If the top starts to get too brown, put a piece of foil loosely over it. This basting and reducing is the most tedious part of the whole process, but it really helps to concentrate the flavors.

Take out of the oven. Carefully tilt the dish and pour off as much remaining liquid as you can. Put the liquid into a small pan and reduce over a high heat, stirring, until it's syrupy. Pour back over the vegetables.

Let stand for at least 20 minutes before serving. It's also delicious at room temperature or chilled.

Variations and serving ideas

Asian-flavor ratatouille: omit the thyme, oregano and bay leaves. Add a piece of ginger when you sauté the garlic. Season with a little soy sauce, and sesame seed oil. Alternatively, add about 1/3 of miso loosened up with some hot water to the tomato mixture before assembling for baking.
Add some cooked bacon pieces to the baking dish (this makes a great one-dish meal served on pasta)
Make some small round croutons from a slice baguette by spreading them on a baking sheet and sprinkling with oil. Serve the croutons with the ratatouille.
Serve with rice - either plain or a pilaf.
Add some lemon juice to well-chilled ratatouille, and serve with greens of your choice (arugula is great)

For the ratatouille and brebis or chevre sandwich, halve a crusty loaf, sprinkle the cut sides with olive oil, and toast or grill. Pour a couple of tablespoons of any liquid that you can scoop up from the ratatouille onto the bread. Pile on the ratatouille (room temperature is best), and add some pieces of cheese. (The one I used here came in little balls.) You can grill this if you like at this point, or just have as-is. You can also press it into a panini. To bring to work or on a picnic, press together well and wrap tightly in wax paper. The ratatouille flavor will have penetrated the bread nicely by lunchtime.

Summer berry and lemon verbena jelly

maki — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:59:04 +0200

The tall, willowy plant with the long, narrow leaves waved around in the breeze, behind the rows of neat balls of mini-basil. Wondering what it was, I stretched out a hand and rubbed a leaf.

Immediately, my senses were filled with a lemony, refined aroma. It was like a lemon scented geranium, but not quite. It was like lemon balm, but not as minty. The sunburned, kindly faced owner of the market stall said that it was verveine. He went into a long explanation, of which I understood perhaps half, about how to care for the plant. I nodded ernestly and took notes.

The vendor almost hidden by the verveine plant.

I wasn't sure what verveine was, but I knew I had to have this plant. It was so tall that we had to stick the branches out of the rear window of the car lest we broke them. We carried it home like that, all the way from Provence to Zürich.

Once I got home I looked up verveine. It was lemon verbena. I'd read about lemon verbena but never encountered it before. Lemon balm, called zitronenmelisse, grows wild in our unkempt garden, but this lemon verbena had a much more intense, citrusy, sunny aroma. (As it turns out, lemon verbena is also called verveine here in the German speaking part of Switzerland.) I planted it in a sheltered corner of one of the flower beds right next to the house, together with a couple of other herb plants purchased at the Velleron market. It was my little corner of Provence.

In July, the night before we were due to leave for a working trip to New York, there was a tremendous thunderstorm - the kind we get a couple of times a summer here, reminding us that we are after all surrounded by mountain ranges. In the morning all was calm again. As we hauled our bags from the front door to the taxi, I stopped in dismay in front of my precious lemon verbena. The strong wind had completely stripped all the leaves from the plant. All that were left were some forlorn looking light brown stems.

"I have to get a replacement", I muttered over and over in the taxi. "As soon as we get back from New York..."

Two weeks later we arrived back home. After hauling the now much heavier bags to the front door, I went to inspect my little herb patch. Those slender stems that had looked dead when I left, were now sprouting tiny little new leaves again! I could have hugged that plant. Its ancestors had survived many seasons of the Mistral, so why wouldn't this sturdy little plant survive a thunderstorm?

Now in late August, the verbena has enough leaves on it that I can clip some off to use in cooking. I thought of adding the marvelous aroma to this summer berry jelly. This kind of jelly, called gelée or schlée, is a very popular way to process the berries of summer here. It's made from a mixture of summer berries, whatever is available - I used raspberries, red currants, and a few blackberries, which give it a beautiful dark claret-red color. Fresh berries are better of course, but you can even use frozen berries. The addition of the verbena adds a very intriguing, lemony-zesty, "what is that?" quality to the jelly. Making preserves from summer fruit is like capturing a bit of the soul of summer, and this certainly qualifies in that respect.

I have given an amount that is enough to fill a couple of jars, so you don't necessarily have to go through the whole canning/sterilization process - you can keep it covered in the refrigerator. You can of course double or triple the amount if you would like to have a neat row of dark red jelly jars. It's wonderful on bread or crackers or scones, alone or with butter or cream cheese, and is perfect on plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream.

(This is my entry for Sugar High Friday: Preserves hosted by delicious.days! It's also designated as this week's Weekend Project.)

[Edit:] I forgot to add a couple of things asked for by Nicky. Firstly, my favorite preserving books are: Mes Confitures, by master preserve maker Christine Ferber. I also have a book called Jams, Preserves and Edible Gifts, published by the National Trust in the U.K. I believe that the British make wonderful jams and preserves, so this book, filled with historical and traditional recipes as well as modern ones like raspberry vinegar, is one I turn to a lot.

For packaging - I usually don't do much to jars I give away, but this is a quick and easy special touch to add. Just make a tiny photograph of the contents of the jar, with text above or below it indicating the contents. Print this onto a nice, fairly sturdy paper on your inkjet printer, and cut it so that it falls on the right side of a rectangle. Fold it in half to make a tiny gift card. Poke a hole in the left upper corner, and thread through some hairband elastic. Cover the top of the jar with a piece of fabric cut with pinking shears, or any scissors if fraying doesn't bother you. Secure the elastic over the lid. You can write a personal message inside the gift card.

The fabric used is an inexpensive sacking cloth. The font is Apple Chancery.

Summer berry and lemon verbena jelly

500g / 1 lb plus about 2 oz. berries - any or all of the following: raspberries, tayberries, blackberries, red currants. I used a mixture of about 70% raspberries, 25% red currants, and 5% blackberries, harvested from the garden.
450g / 1 lb white sugar
1 tsp pectin (see Notes)
1 large handful, or a couple of sprigs, of lemon verbena leaves

Equipment needed:

a large, heavy bottomed, non-reactive pan (stainless steel, ceramic, enameled cast iron are ideal)
Canning equipment, if you will be canning this
a wooden spoon
A ladle or large spoon
a plate
A sieve, strainer, or chinois

Wash and sort the berries. If you are using red currants, carefully pick off all the stems.

Put the berries and sugar into the pan. Mix and let it macerate for about half an hour.

In the meantime, put the plate into the refrigerator to make it very cold.

Mix in the pectin. Turn on the heat, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to low, and cook for at least 45 minutes, stirring up the bottom periodically to keep from burning. Scoop off the scum that forms on the top.

For the last 10 minutes of cooking, drop in the lemon verbena.

Drop a bit of the jammy liquid onto the cold plate. If it forms a skin almost immediately, it's done.

Fish out the lemon verbena. Pass the jammy mixture a ladleful at a time through a time through a sieve or strainer, taking out all the seeds.

Can using your favorite canning method. If you will be using the method I described in my recipe for apricot preserves, heat up the strained jelly to boiling point again before proceeding.

Notes:

In this recipe I have used pectin, which is a natural jellifiant. Berries in general don't have much pectin, and it's needed in this case to make it 'jell' enough. You may also be able to find something called sugar for jam making, which has pectin already mixed in. My version (with 1 teaspoon per 500g fruit) results in a fairly runny jelly, which is great for using on yogurt and ice cream, but if you prefer a firmer jelly you will need more pectin. Follow the package directions.
If you don't mind the seeds, especially if you don't use red currants which have rather large seeds, you can skip the straining step. In that case you will have a jam rather than a jelly.

[Update:] The jam and jelly roundup is now up on delicious.days. Lots of delicious sounding recipes to try!

Weekend project: Peaches poached in red wine

maki — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:49:33 +0200

Summer is slowly drawing to a close. Sure it's mid-August, and the weather here has actually warmed up since the cold spell we had around the beginning of the month. But I can tell that summer is now an old lady because the taste of some produce is already changing. Peaches for instance. They were so sweet and juicy just a few days ago, but the ones I've bought the last few days are already either a bit too hard, a bit too sour, or rather mushy (showing they've been 'ripened' after being picked).

One of the best ways to deal with fruit that is just a bit off peak is to poach them in wine. Of course, fruit at their very peak can be poached too, and they will be absolutely luscious, and even fruit that's hard and unripe can be made edible.

This is a very basic method for poaching fruit, that should come in handy time and time again, but it's also rather time consuming, so I am suggesting this as a weekend project. You'll need to figure a total of 3 hours cooking time plus the time needed for cooling the fruit. The good thing is that it's quite effortless. Cooking it so slowly in a low temperature oven infuses the fruit with the wine as well as making it meltingly soft.

Note that I do not use any sugar in the recipe. If the fruit has enough natural sweetness, that should be quite enough. If the fruit you can get is very hard and sour though, you can add some sugar to the poaching liquid. See the notes below the recipe for more details.

The wine you use will also determine the sweetness. I prefer to use a dry red wine for poaching, since it adds a beautiful burgundy color as well as a slight tannic bitterness that makes it very adult. You can use any wine that you like however. A sweet dessert wine such as Vin Santo or an Eiswein may overwhelm the fruit a bit (besides, these wines are rather too expensive for me to anything other than sipping) but by all means experiment.

Peaches oven-poached in red wine

4 regular peaches, or 8 donut peaches, that are ripe but not in peak condition
1 1/2 cups (or more) of dry red wine (I used a Pinot Noir)
1 1/2 cups (or more, equal amount to the wine) of water
Store-bought best quality vanilla ice cream, or your own homemade

Equipment needed: a non-reactive (enameled cast iron, glass, ceramic or stainless steel) casserole or pan with a tight fitting lid. Do not use an aluminum or uncoated iron container.

Preheat the oven to 120°C / 250°F.

Wash the peaches, and if using regular peaches cut them in half and pry out the stone (or leave it in, and scoop it out later). Donut peaches can be left whole. You do not need to peel them at this point. Place in the casserole or pan, cut side down.

Mix together the red wine and an equal amount of water, and pour over the peaches. The wine/water mixture should just cover the peaches, so use more if needed.

Put on the lid, and let cook in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. Take off the lid, and let it cook further for another 30 minutes.

Remove the peaches with a slotted spoon carefully and let cool. Put the pan back in the oven, lid off, and let cook further until the cooking liquid has reduced to about half, and is syrupy.

Cool the peaches and the syrup separately, well covered, in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight. The peaches will exude more liquid as it cools, but don't drain this off - just let the fruit sit in it.

To serve, carefully take off the peel. This is an optional process since the peel can be eaten, but it does look a bit better unpeeled. It should come off quite easily.

To serve, drain the peaches and place 2 halves (or 2 whole peaches if you used donut peaches) in a bowl or on a plate. Drizzle with the syrup. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Poaching other fruit

Soft stone fruit like nectarines, plums, and apricots can be poached in the same way as peaches. They don't need to be peeled at all - the peel will just soften and blend in. If you are unlucky enough to have some hard peaches, add a tablespoon of sugar for the whole batch to the poaching liquid. (Hard peaches are usually sweet enough after cooking like this.)

Naturally harder fruit like apples and pears should be peeled before poaching. Apple peel does add some flavor, so you might add the peel to the poaching liquid. Sour apples will need sugar - add 1 to 2 tablespoons per apple. Don't use this method for the really sour apples that are meant for cooking - use eating apples.

Pears also taste great with a cinnamon stick added to the poaching liquid.

Weekend Project: Garlic, garlic, garlic!

maki — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:56:40 +0200

Weekend Project is an ongoing series of slightly more involved recipes or food projects that are best tackled on the weekends.

I love garlic. It's hard for me to even conceive of the notion that someone can actually not like garlic. But indeed, there are a few lost souls who don't like garlic that much.

The thing that non-garlic people most object to about garlic seems to be the little, sometimes raw bits that get caught in their teeth if they are eating a salad or something. I guess I can reluctantly concede that point. (Although one of my favorite pizza toppings is thinly sliced raw garlic...)

Here are two ways of making garlic that even non-garlic people can love. One is a method that's popular in Japan, though it probably originated in Korea, to 'pickle' them in soy sauce. This not only makes tender, flavorful garlic that can be nibbled on as-is or chopped up and added to stir-fries and so on, but an intensely garlic-perfumed soy sauce that's great on meat, fish, or anything you like.

The other is a Provençal staple called garlic confit. Garlic cloves are poached gently until tender, then mashed into a paste. This paste is wonderful just spread on bread, or used to flavor pasta sauces, soups, and so on.

Peeling massive quantities of garlic easily

Each recipe calls for six whole garlic bulbs. That's bulbs, not cloves! The easiest way to peel a couple of cloves of garlic is to simply bash them with the side of a knife - the skin comes right off. But when you want to peel a big amount of garlic like this, what do you do? Especially when you want the cloves whole as for the garlic pickled in soy sauce?

Right now, I'm starting to see fresh garlic bulbs at the markets. Fresh garlic has a softer skin than the garlic that has been allowed to dry out on the outside. I find fresh garlic to be a bit milder than the dried-out kind and prefer it over the regular dried-off kind when it's available. However, it can be even harder to peel.

The answer is to nuke the garlic bulbs. By microwaving them for a couple of minutes, the moisture in the bulbs evaporates a little bit and creates a space in between the skin and the bulb. The skin then comes off quite easily. Also, this avoids the problem of the skin on your hands getting irritated from raw garlic juice. I picked up this Helpful Hint from one of the "urawaza" videos that I've mentioned before. The garlic video is here (Japanese). The skin doesn't come off as easily as in the video in my experience, but it still comes off a lot faster than trying to peel unprocessed bulbs.

So - to peel six whole garlic bulbs, cut off the bottom of the bulbs, place on a plate cut side down, and microwave on High for 3 minutes. Let cool completely, then peel. Easy! Be sure to get off the thin inner skin too.

Garlic pickled in soy sauce

A jar of garlic cloves in soy sauce makes a great gift for anyone who loves garlic and Asian food.

6 large garlic bulbs (bulbs, not cloves), peeled following the instructions above
1 1/2 cups soy sauce

Equipment needed: a small pan, a bottling jar and lid

Sterilize the jar and lid following the instructions on this page.

Heat the soy sauce in the pan over medium heat until it's hot but not boiling. Lower the heat to low and put in all the garlic. Simmer for 5 minutes. Put the hot liquid into the sterilized jar, and close the lid tightly.

Put in a cool, dark place for at least 2 weeks. The garlic is ready to eat after that. Store in the refrigerator after opening. The soy sauce can be used for meat, fish, fried rice, etc, but make sure the garlic cloves stay completely immersed in the soy sauce in the jar.

Garlic confit

Garlic confit on whole wheat bread, with olives

6 large garlic bulbs (bulbs, not cloves), peeled following the instructions above
1 cup cream
2 cups milk
1/2 tsp. salt (optional) Equipment needed: a small pan

Heat the milk and cream together in the small pan until it's hot but not boiling over. Lower the heat to low, and put in all the garlic. Simmer for 20 minutes, until the garlic is soft and can be mashed easily. Drain the garlic.

Mash the garlic finely (a fork works great for this) or purée it in a blender or food processor to a paste. Mix in the optional salt. (I prefer not to put salt in mine, and to salt as needed when using it.)

Store in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze one- or two-tablespoonfuls at a time, wrapped well in plastic. Defrost each tablespoonful at room temperature or by dropping into your sauce or soup.

Important: This cannot be put in a jar and stored at room temperature, unlike the garlic in soy sauce.

Note: You should not store the drained cream and milk that the garlic was cooked in. It can be used the same day however, for an amazing garlic-perfumed pasta sauce. Simply reheat with a knob of butter and a tablespoonful of the confit, mix in some shredded smoked salmon, chopped parsley, and a shot of vodka, season with salt and pepper, and serve on fresh pasta such as fettucine. Delicious! And bad for you!

Weekend Project: Poach a chicken (or two)

maki — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 14:53:38 +0200

The weekend project is back after a brief hiatus! Before I proceed however, I'd like to alert you to the charity blogging efforts of Ms. Sam over at Becks and Posh, who is participating in the Blogathon charity fundraising event tomorrow (that's Saturday). She is even offering prizes! If you're in the San Francisco area in particular, be sure to go over and donate.

After you have donated to a worthy cause and are basking in the glow of your own goodness, it's time to focus attention back on your own (and your family's) food needs. As I've mentioned in the past few days, the summer heatwave makes it hard to get up the appetite, let alone cook anything. One thing I can always eat is a fresh, cool chicken salad. The key ingredient for a good chicken salad is homemade, moist poached chicken. The best tasting poached chicken is made by cooking a whole, preferably organic bird, or two of them if you want and have a big enough pot. The chicken(s) can then be stored in the refrigerator for a few days or for longer in the freezer. You'll also end up with a bonus potful of chicken stock.

Poaching chickens is quite easy, but if you overcook it you will end up with stringy, tough, dried out meat, which is not too nice. The method I use results in very moist meat every time. I think I read the method of leaving the chicken to cook in the residual heat of the pot first in Today's Cooking, my favorite Japanese food magazine.

The flavor of the chicken is controlled by the aromatic ingredients you put in the pot with it. In my case I always use onion, celery, ginger, bay leaf, parsley, and lemon: this gives a very clean and fairly neutral tasting chicken and stock that can be used for any dish that calls for cold chicken. Note that no salt is used, because salt can toughen up the meat. The good thing is that you don't have to watch the pot after the first few minutes, thus getting you out of your hot kitchen. Don't forget to set the timer so you go and do what you have to do to the pot when called upon.

The one messy part of the process is de-skinning and de-boning the chicken, which is most easily accomplished with your hands. Other than that it's very simple to do. And once it's done you have enough meat ready to go for several meals, depending on the size or quantity of the birds you cooked. Some ideas for using cold poached chicken include:

Salad, with the classic mayonnaise, or with any other dressing (Try chicken salad as a filling for choux buns...delicous!)
On hiyashi chuuka instead of ham. The sesame dressing for hiyashi chuuka makes a great salad dressing, by the way!
For sandwiches
For tacos and wraps

You can also heat up the chicken briefly and toss it into spaghetti sauce, etc.

How to poach a chicken (or two)

1 large or 2 small, organic and happy chickens (I use 2 1.5kg or approx. 3 lb each organic free range chickens)
1 celery stalk, including the leaves
1 large onion
1 bay leaf
1 thumbsize piece of fresh ginger
1 bunch of parsley
1/2 organic lemon

Equipment needed: a pot that is large enough to hold the chickens plus water to cover, with a tight fitting lid. An enameled cast-iron or heavy stainless steel pot are ideal.

Remove any giblets, etc. from the birds and wash them under running water. (If your birds came with neck pieces you can add that to the water for additional flavor to the stock.) Place in the pot.

Peel the onion and cut into quarters. Slice the ginger fairly thickly. Put all the vegetables. bay leaf and lemon into the pot. Fill with water enough to completely cover everything plus about 2 cm / an inch.

Bring the pot to a boil on high heat. When it's come up to boiling point, lower the heat to medium-low (it should still be bubbling but not rolling). Skim off all the scum that comes up for 15 minutes. At the end of that time, turn off the heat and cover the pot with a tight fitting lid, and let it sit for at least 1 hour, up to 90 minutes. (If you are using a ceramic or electric stove, pull the pot off the heat.)

Open the pot and cut into your bird around the legs. It should be perfectly cooked through, with no red or pink, but still moist. If it still seems raw, put the pot back on the stove, bring up to a boil again, then turn the heat off and leave with the lid on for an additional 30 minutes.

Take the chickens out of the pot, letting the liquid drain back into the pot (careful, it's very hot!). Let cool enough to handle. Remove the skin, and take off the meat in as big chunks as you can manage.

Store the meat, well covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or freeze it.

If you want to keep the stock, fish out the flavoring ingredients and put it in the refrigerator until it's cold and the fat has congealed on top. Strain and store in the freezer until you need chicken stock in a recipe.

Weekend Project: sweets from the archives

maki — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 18:59:15 +0200

I hate to do this just after starting it, but I won't be able to post new Weekend Projects (where I suggest a food project that takes a bit of time to accomplish) for a couple of weeks, since I'm on the road. (I have a kitchen to use...but I can only find a couple of battered pots here.) There are several Just Hungry articles from the past that are great for trying out over a weekend though. Since the weekend always seems like a great time to have something sweet, here are just a few suggestions.

This mousse au chocolat recipe is still the best I've tried, provided fresh, organic eggs are available. We tried it a couple of weeks ago in a two-color version. Just use white chocolate instead of dark in the same recipe. This is really not hard to make at all...but we can't afford, calorie-wise, to have it all the time. So it's reserved for special occasions, like, um, Sunday afternoons.
Cream puffs, filled with custard cream are cool, smooth and delicious. If you don't want to bother with the custard though, ice cream is a wonderful filler. Make your puffs on the small side, using this very hard to screw up choux pastry recipe, and fill each with a small scoop of vanilla or flavor of your choice. Optionally drizzle some store-bought chocolate syrup over it.
If you want smooth, creamy and sophisticated for the perfect end to an adult dinner, try this Vin Santo syllabub with almond tuilles. Vin santo is a sweet Italian dessert wine; you can substitute any white dessert wine for it if you can't find it. You can use thin store-bought cookies instead of the tuilles if you can't stand the thought of baking right now.
If nothing but chocolate will do, how about home made dark chocolate peanut butter cups? This is a really fun project to do with kids. And you barely need to heat up anything at all - all you need to do is melt the chocolate, which can be done in the microwave.

Technorati Tags: chocolate, cookies, dessert, cream puffs

Weekend Project: Apricot Preserves, Capturing Summer in a Jar

maki — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:22:18 +0200

I'm going to try to bring a little order to this 2 and a half year old site by posting certain themed articles on certain days. On Fridays, I plan to post slightly more involved recipes or food projects that are best tackled on the weekends. The first one is this really rather simple recipe for apricot preserves. It's easy to make but the preparation and cooking do take some time - a perfect project for a day off.

Making jam and preserves may seem like an out of date thing to do. The idea of having a pot of boiling sugar and fruit simmering away in the kitchen on a swelteringly hot summer day may seem to be a rather masochistic and unnecessary ritual. If we need to preserve the bounties of a garden, there's always the cooler option of freezing. Besides, nowadays we can just buy delicious jams and preserves from a variety of sources.

Still, I love to make sweet or savory little pots of preserves, pickles and liquors from fresh fruit and vegetables. It goes back to memories of my late oba-chan, my grandmother, making pickled umeboshi plums every summer (which I wrote about a few years ago); or my mother when we used to live in England making gooseberry preserves for the first time. Above all, each pot of jam or preserves seems to capture a little bit of the warm summer months in them, something that impersonal frozen bits of fruit and vegetable can't do.

Last week on on our next to last day in Provence, we went to the amazing Marché Agricole (farmer's market) in Velleron, a small town near Carpentras. One of the purchases we loaded into our car for the trip back home was a 5 kilo (about 11 pounds) crate of "Class II" apricots.

Now I must confess - I am not a big fan of fresh apricots. While they smell like heaven, to me their texture is inferior to that of their cousins, peaches and nectarines. Cooked apricots are another matter though. Once they are heated, the fruit turns golden, fruity and luscious.

As soon as I spotted those large flats of smallish apricots, I was determined to turn them into preserves. Another advantage of making your own preserves is that you can control the amount of sugar in them to some extent, and that's what I did. These preserves are just a bit less sweet than commercial varieties, and are also a bit chunky in texture. I love it on plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream, though it's also terrific on a thick slice of fresh buttered bread.

The great thing about this recipe is that the apricots don't have to be perfect. They can be a little bruised, or even just a bit hard. The cooking will soften them and bring out their flavor. (But please make them when apricots are in season in your area. They will be cheaper then too!)

I've scaled down the recipe to a manageable quantity - just scale it up for larger amounts. If you don't want to go through the bother of properly sterilizing the jars and lids, you can store this in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a month or so, or in the freezer for longer.

Apricot Preserves

1 kg, or 2 lbs plus a few more apricots, of fresh apricots
1 1/3 cups of granulated sugar (see notes below)
1/4 cup water
2 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice

Equipment:

a heavy bottomed non-reactive pan (an enameled cast-iron pan is ideal, or a heavy stainless steel pan. Don't use aluminum or uncoated cast-iron.)
canning jars with rubber-seal jar lids.

Melt the sugar and water in the pan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until clear and slightly syrupy. (Watch the pot at this stage or you might end up with a potful of hard crystallized sugar!)

Carefully sort and wash the apricots. Halve them and discard the pits, making sure to get rid of the stem end. (To halve them I just rip them apart with my fingers - far easier than cutting them with a knife.)

Optionally, crack open a few of the pits ([edit:] just a few, no more than a small handful! see the comments) with a nutcracker or hammer (wrap them in a cloth and smash!), wrap them in some cheesecloth and put in the pot. This imparts an intriguing almond flavor to the preserves.

Put about half of the apricots in the sugar syrup and simmer until the fruit is almost falling apart. Put in the rest of the apricots and continue simmering until they are almost falling apart, but not quite. The whole procedure will take about an hour or more, depending on how soft your apricots were to start with.

Add the lemon juice and stir. Simmer an additional 5 minutes, then take off the heat. Take out the cheesecloth with the pits if you put them in.

(If the jam gets burned on the bottom at any point, just pour out the unburned jam into a fresh pot and continue cooking. Don't scrape the burned bits into the new pot!)

Preparing the jars and lids

I always use canning jars with replaceable lids with the rubber seal built into the jar. They are very easy to handle. I re-use the jars, and replace the lids for each fresh batch of jam, preserves or chutney.

While you are simmering the preserves, sterilize the jars and lids. There are a couple of ways of doing this. If your dishwasher can sterilize baby bottles, you can use that setting for the jars and lids. Otherwise use one of the following methods:

The traditional boiling pot of water: Bring a big pot of water to a boil, and lower the jars into it, immersing them completely. Follow up with the lids. Boil for a few minutes to sterilize. Take them out with clean tongs.
The low oven method: Put the washed jars and lids into an oven heated to about 110°C/230°F. "Bake" the jars for about 20 minutes, or until the water on them is totally dried out. Take them out carefully using tongs and/or a clean oven mitt. This is the method I use.

Filling the jars

When you are handling the sterilized jars and lids, at no point should you touch the jars inside or on the rims, or inside the lids. Your hands are not sterile even if you wash them well, unless you scrubbed up like a surgeon.

To fill the jars, fill them up to the very rim with the boiling hot preserves, then immediately screw on a lid. Don't worry if some of the liquid spills - and whatever you do, don't try to wipe the exposed rim. Now, leave the jars until you hear and see the lids "popping" - they should be indented now. That's the indication that they are vacuum-sealed. (This happens because the hot air inside the jar contracted.)

Once the jars are cool, wipe off any dribbles outside the jar with a damp cloth, and store in a cool, dark place. Remember that an opened jar must be stored in the refrigerator.

This will make about 2 small jars of preserves. (My 5 kilos yielded 7 1-pint/ half-litre jars, plus a bowlful left over for immediate consumption.)

Regular sugar?

If you want the preserved to have that jellified state that commercial jams have, use either sugar for preserves or add pectin powder. I don't bother with this for these preserves. If they are a little runny don't worry, they will still taste terrific.