Food

This recipe was adapted from Elise Bauer's site Simply Recipes from Garrett McCord's recipe.

Cherry season is short.. but when it comes.. it's in full force. Buy or pick all you can and then eat them like crazy, fresh, in Claflouti, with cereal, on yogurt, and definitely have pit spitting contests to see who can hurl them though the tongue the farthest.

Ingredients
* 4 cups of fresh sweet organic cherries, pitted
* 1 cup of ground organic almonds with or without skin
* 4 eggs
* 1 cup of organic cane juice sugar
* 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour, sifted
* 1/8 teaspoon of salt
* 1.5 cups of whole organic milk
* 2 tablespoons Amaretto or good dark Rum -or- 3/4 teaspoon of almond extract
* 1 1/2 tablespoons of vanilla extract
* Powdered sugar for dusting
* Optional: whipped cream whipped without sugar for serving on the side.

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a 9X13 baking dish. Toss cherries and ground almonds in a bowl. Then place in the baking dish.

2. Whisk the eggs, sugars, salt, and flour together until smooth.

3. Add the milk, Amaretto or Rum (or almond extract, if using), and vanilla extract. Whisk until smooth. Pour over the cherry/almonds in the baking dish.

Bake for 45 minutes, test by pulling it out of the oven and gently pressing the middle with a finger.. if firm, it's done.

Cool some.. if you want, dust with powdered sugar, but serve a little warm with whipped creme.

Yummy! So good I'm getting a cherry pitter because i made this three times this cherry season and it appeared an axe murder had occurred on since the juice ran dark from my fingers to my elbows.

Posted by Mary Hodder at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adapted from Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess (and translated to American measurements)

Ingredients:
1.5 cubes unsalted butter
1.5 bars of 73% organic dark chocolate (trader joes or green & black worked well)
16 oz of good quality orange (or tangerine -- which I used) marmalade
1.5 cups of sugar (Nigella uses 2 cups - I used organic evaporated cane juice crystals)
1/2 T of salt
3 large eggs
1 2/3 cups of self-rising or pastry flour, well sifted before measurement

Melt butter slowly in a heavy-bottom saucepan. When it's almost melted, add chocolate pieces. Remove from heat. Stir with a wooden spoon, until chocolate has melted.

Add marmalade, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir thoroughly (it's okay to leave small visible chunks of marmalade in the batter).

Add sifted flour, stir and pour into a buttered / floured 10" springform cake tin.
Bake at 350˚F oven for 45-50 minutes, until the cake has set (test with a knife or wooden stick).

Leave to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes, then slide onto a plate.

Dust with powered sugar through a sifter on the top.

Posted by Mary Hodder at 06:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, first, this is not made with Hachiya Persimmons but rather the ones that are more like apples, in that they are eaten when crunchy, usually fresh, and are squat in size.

First, a slice of the Persimmon Cake, which looks as carmelized as it tastes:

I adapted this Apple Cake recipe from Razzle Dazzle Recipes for Fuyu Persimmons:

Persimmon Walnut Cake

5 cups organic Fuyu Persimmons peeled, chopped into small pieces
2 cups organic evaporated cane juice sugar
2 organic eggs slightly beaten
1/2 cup organic olive oil
1 teaspoon organic vanilla
2 cups organic unbleached pastry or baking flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups organic walnuts chopped

In bowl stir together chopped persimmons and 1 cup sugar; let stand 5 minutes.

Mix on high beaters: 1 cup sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla.

Sift flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Fold gently into in egg mixture until all is incorporated and dry mixture is gone, but don't overmix to keep lighter.

Fold in apples mix and walnuts, mixing well.

Pour batter into greased and floured 13 x 9 baking pan.

Bake at 350ºF for 60 minutes or until done.

The Finished Product:

You could serve it with whipped creme and another with ice cream that had chocolate and orange. Both were delicious and the persimmon really stood up to the ice cream and in fact was a great combination.

Posted by Mary Hodder at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First, I only really make this pie if I've picked blackberries somewhere. The reason? It's too expensive to buy this many blackberries from the store, and they don't taste nearly as good as when you pick them fresh. Or if in season, buy a flat at a great discount at the farmer's market.

Step one: rinse about 10 cups of blackberries very gently to test the dust off. Put in about 1 cup of sugar and juice from a big meyer lemon (about a 3/4 cup) or 1.5 eureka or lisbon lemons (about a 1/2 cup).

Step two: make a pate brisee crust.

1.5 cubes or 12 T butter
2.5 c sifted flour
1 T evaporated cane juice organic sugar
1 t salt
Cold water

Sift the flour, sugar and salt into a metal bowl. Cut the butter into the flour, sugar, salt mixture a pastry cutter, working until the butter is in very small pieces, about 1/4" cubes or smaller and coated with the dry mixture. Be sure not to touch the mixture with your hands which will warm the butter and melt it. Just use a knife to scrape it from the pastry cutter, and work quickly to keep the mixture cold. Add 1/4 cup cold water and using a fork, blend the mixture into a dough. Carefully add a tablespoon at a time of additional cold water until the dough is crumbly but there is only a small amount of loose flour outside the main dough ball. Working quickly, take the dough and place it in the center of a large piece of plastic wrap. Then fold the wrap over teh top of the dough, press everything together and quickly and lightly form into a disc. Place the neatly wrapped disc into a ziplog bag. Put into the fridge for at least a half hour.

Step three: roll out the crust.

Place about a half cup of flour over a work surface at least 24" x 24" and then take half the dough from the plastic. Leave the other half back in the fridge. Put flour on a rolling pin, dust the top of the half disc, and carefully roll out the crust. Once it's about 1/8" thick uniformly by about 15" in diameter, lift the dough in a single piece into a 10" pie pan. Place the fruit into the pan with crust. Cut the edge of the crust leaving about a half inch around the outside edge of the pan. Set the fruit / crust in pan into the fridge.

Get out the other half of the dough rolling it out using the instruction above. Once the dough is approximately 15" in diameter, cut out a shape or two (star, moon, circle, etc). Pull the fruit / pan out of the fridge. Carefully lift the dough over the pan, and press the edges together either with fork tines, or with a three finger press to make ridges.

Mix well in a small bowl:
1 egg
1 T water

Brush the egg mixture over the top of the pie crust.

Step four: bake it.

Bake the pie in a 350 deg F oven for 50 minutes (10 min more if at high altitude). Crust will be lightly browned and the berries will be bubbling inside the holes. Let cool and serve with creme fraiche, vanilla ice cream, whipped creme, or plain.

And here is the finished product:

Posted by Mary Hodder at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sugar syrup: heat in a pan, dissolve sugar, then cool and chill in fridge for a couple of hours.
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup water

Berries: clean fresh berries or thaw frozen until they are defrosted but still cold, keeping all juice
8 small baskets of very ripe cold fresh
or
1.5 lbs frozen unsweetened blackberries, thawed with juices

1/2 meyer lemon juice

Directions:
Puree blackberries with juice and cold syrup in blender until smooth. Strain into large bowl; discard seeds. Mix in lemon juice.

Process berry mixture in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Transfer sorbetto to a container; seal and freeze until firm, about 6 hours. Keep frozen until ready to serve.

Note: we made this with Liquid Nitrogen. That means we wore gloves, masks, and purchased the Nitrogen in a Dewar from someplace like Airgas. Then at home, we carefully poured the nitrogen into a steel bowl with the sorbetto mixture, stiring it with a wooden spoon, fully decked like Dr. Horrible.

The Sorbetto was creamy, with no discernible ice crystals like what comes from a regular ice cream maker. It was so creamy, it was as if there was a little dairy in the mix, even though there was none. If you want an adveture, do a little research on using care with Liquid Nitrogen, and then try that method.

Posted by Mary Hodder at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made this tarte bout 10 days ago for Esme Vos' birthday.

Recipe:

Top:
12 Apricots
1/4 cup evaporated cane juice or similar organic sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice (prefer meyer lemon but can use lisbon or eureka lemon)

Filling:
2.5 cups ricotta cheese
(you can make your own, with 1/2 gal of 2% milk, plus 1 cup cream, brought to a simmer in a large pan, with juice of 1 large lemon. then let it cool, while it curdles. Strain it and discard the "milk" keeping the soft cheese.)

Grated nutmeg from about 3/4 of a nutmeg seed or 1 t nutmeg
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 T vanilla
1/4 t salt

crust:
4 cups hazelnuts
2 T cold unsalted butter
1/4 t salt

Directions:
Make the crust first. Preheat oven to 325 deg. F. Pulse in a food processor the hazelnuts. When they are finely ground and even, add the butter cut into a couple of pieces and the salt, and pulse until finely ground together in a light mix that will just look like nuts but have the butter and salt distributed.

Press the mixture into a 8x10" pan, with 2 inch sides. Bake for 12 minutes or until lightly toasted on edges.

Let cool.

Make the filling by mixing well all filling ingredients. When the crust is cooled, carefully pour into the crust, and spread evenly without pulling the crust away from the sides.

It should be lower than the top of the crust.

Then prep apricots by slicing them in half. Pour sugar and juice over them and gently fold the apricots in order to coat them with bits of sugar and the juice.

Then take the apricots and put them into a row face up, so that they are neatly spread across the top in a 4 x 6 grid.

Bake at 325 deg F for about 40 minutes, or until some of the ricotta has browned slightly and the filling is lightly firm.

Cool and serve.

Posted by Mary Hodder at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)