Fruit Soup and Vanilla ice Cream

There's a Spanish restaurant around here that we love and it has this incredible dessert. It's a fruit soup with scoop of cheese ice cream, sprigs of mint, and fresh berries. Well, since we have a bunch of fruit hanging around and a brand-new ice cream maker that's still crying out to be used, I decided to experiment.

Fruit Soup

1 peach
2 small red plums
1 apricot
cherries (1 c. or so)
strawberries (maybe 1/2 cup?)
blueberries (probably around 1 or 2 cups)
freshly ground nutmeg (probably came to around 1 tsp)
fresh ginger (1/2 an inch or so)
sugar
water

I had some of the medium syrup left over from trying strawberry sorbet and watermelon yogurt ice a week or so before, so I just used that, but it probably would have been about 1/2 c. sugar and a cup or so of water. Anyway, peel, core and slice the fruit (you can use this particular combination of fruit, or whatever similar ones you have on hand) as necessary and put it in the pot with the sugar, water, and spices (feel free to adjust the spices as you desire and use ground/dried if you don't have fresh stuff). Simmer for 15 or 20 minutes until the fruit has fallen apart and practically dissolved. Puree it, then strain it through a sieve. The soup from the restaurant is more like a broth - they obviously just used the strained juices, but we tossed some of the pureed fruit back in for texture (and because I only have a very tiny strainer and stuff fell over the sides). Put in the fridge to cool.

Vanilla Ice Cream

2 c. half and half or milk
1/2 c. sugar
6 egg yolks
1 c. heavy cream, more milk, or half and half
1-2 tsp vanilla

I'd found a recipe for chocolate ice cream, and basically left out the chocolate, and I'd been reading several other ice cream recipes, so I kind of mentally combined them all to make this.

Combine dairy product (we ended up using about 1 1/2 cups each of whole milk and half and half total in the recipe) of your choosing, with 1/2 c. sugar in saucepan. Heat until steam is coming off the milk but it's not boiling yet. Remove from heat.

With a whisk or mixer, combine the egg yolks with the other 1/4 c of sugar until it's all yellowy and frothy (the recipe said 2-4 minutes, but I did it just a bit longer). Temper the eggs by adding about 1/2 cup of the warm half and half slowly while mixing it up. Add the tempered eggs to the rest of the milk, and cook it over medium-low heat until it's a bit thicker. Don't boil it!

Strain it into a bowl, add the last cup of dairy product. Add more sugar if you want, and this is when I added the vanilla. Chill it in the fridge, then make it into ice cream using your ice cream machine!

Once we finally got the ice cream to freeze (I'm not sure whether our ice cream machine bowl wasn't cold enough, it was too hot, or the ice cream mixture wasn't cool enough, but it didn't set up at all the first time we tried it, so we gave it another shot the next day after everything went back into the fridge/freezer), we served it up and it was yummy! Not adding the pureed fruit back in would make it much smoother obviously, but it was good this way, too. All in all, a success!

Sorry no pictures - I would have taken one of the finished, dished-up product but my stinker of a son was having a bad night.

Thyme (Formerly known as A - see, it only took me like a month to pick a spicy nickname)

Grilled beets and yellow squash

Okay, so we did this for the fourth of July, which as you might be able to tell from the date I post this, was over a week ago. I just got around to uploading the pictures - my bad. Anyway, in addition to gobs of other good food, we grilled these veggies and they were yummy.

Grilled beets
Sliced fresh beets (about 1/4 inch thick) - I had three or four medium ones
olive oil
rosemary



Cut up the beets, coat them in olive oil, add rosemary, grill. They sat in the fridge for an hour or so before we grilled them, but that was just for time management purposes, not because they need to sit or anything. We grilled them on a piece of aluminum foil since they were kind of small and we didn't want them falling through the grill rack.

Grilled yellow squash
Four medium yellow squash - quartered (you could slice them too, if you wanted)
lemon juice
olive oil
fresh chives
fresh basil
minced garlic



I whisked together about equal parts lemon juice and olive oil, added the cut up fresh herbs and garlic, and then coated the squash in it. Let it marinate for a while (more than fifteen minutes, but probably not more than overnight - ours sat in the fridge for a couple of hours). Grill. You could do smaller chunks and put them on skewers (we did that last year with zucchini and yellow squash) but this time we just quartered them and put them directly on the grill.

End result:

Yummy and colorful!

A (I'll pick a better nickname eventually)

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies That Stay That Way

I finally found the chocolate chip cookie recipe that I've been dreaming of. The cookies come out beautifully and stay nice and chewy. I found it on RecipeZaar. Thanks LuuvBunny, whoever you are. Here's the magic potion:

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour (I used half whole wheat in the cookies pictured and all whole wheat pastry flour in another batch. Both turned out wonderfully)
2 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
8 oz chocolate chunks (approximately 1 1/2 cups) (you can substitute about 1 1/2 cups of any mix-ins you like)

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Cream together butter and sugars until creamy. (Do not skip this or just do it until they're mixed! Cream them and you will not regret it.)
3. Add egg and vanilla; blend well.
4. In another bowl combine flour, cornstarch and baking soda.
5. Add to butter mixture and then add chocolate chunks.
6. Drop by tablespoons onto a greased baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown around the edges. (I actually rolled them in balls. I also found that in my oven they needed 2-4 minutes longer, but that might just be my oven.)

Now, I am a dietitian, so in a lot of my recipes I will make comments about nutrition. First, to make them more nutritious, use half regular whole wheat flour or all whole wheat pastry flour and mix in dried fruit and nuts. Serve with milk.

Also note that the cookies in the picture used half whole wheat flour, half regular flour. I also used white chocolate chips and raisins instead of regular chocolate chips. They tasted wonderful, although the white chocolate was almost too sweet. Some macadamia nuts would have made them perfect.

Rosemary

Strawberry Sorbet and Watermelon Ice

My first post is kind of a cheat. I've copied and pasted it from my other blog. But I figure if anyone's looking for my recipes down the road, they'll be looking here and not there. So here it is. Enjoy!

I took a ton of pictures so that I could blog about our experiments with the ice cream maker. But I was dumb and forgot to take pictures of the finished products. So here are just a few pictures to illustrate a couple of recipes. But before I get to that, here are a few important definitions. I am quoting directly from On Cooking, a textbook written by chefs, for chefs. As a side note, I LOVE that book. Everything I have made from that book has been divine.

Ice Cream: custard that is churned during freezing. Gelato is an Italian-style ice cream. It is denser than American-style products because less air is incorporated during churning. The USDA requires that products labeled "ice cream" contain not less than 10 percent milk fat and 20 percent milk solids, and have no more than 50 percent overrun[the amount of air churned into an ice cream].

Ice Milk: refers to products that do not meet the standards for ice cream.

Frozen Yogurt: uses yogurt as its base. Although touted as a nutritious substitute for ice cream, frozen yogurt may have whole milk or cream added for richness and smoothness.

Sherbet: frozen mixture of fruit juice or fruit puree. Sherbet contains milk and/or eggs for creaminess...

Sorbet: frozen mixture of fruit juice or fruit puree...sorbet contains neither[milk and/or eggs].

Strawberry Sorbet
from On Cooking

4 oz (about 1/2 cup) granulated sugar
1 tsp pectin
8 fl oz. (1 cup) medium syrup*
1 lb strawberries, hulled and pureed (about 4 cups when cut into chunks)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

*To make medium syrup, boil 1 1/2 parts sugar and 1 part water (by weight) for 2 minutes. Cool. When I make it from 3 cups sugar and 2 cups water, it's enough for at least 3 batches of sorbet.

1 Mix the sugar and pectin together, add the syrup and bring to a boil. Remoe from the heat and cool completely.

2 Add the pureed berries and lemon juice; strain. Adjust the flavor with additional sugar or lemon juice as needed. (We've used very ripe strawberries that taste wonderful on their own, so we haven't needed to adjust. If you use some that don't taste as good, you'll probably need more sugar.) (Hint: If you microwave lemons and limes for a few seconds, you'll get a lot more juice out with a lot less effort. Also, squeezing them upside-down can prevent seeds from getting into your dish.)

3 Pour the mixture into an ice cream/sorbet machine and process according to the manufacturer's directions. (Hint, chill mixture to at least 40° F and put ice cream maker core and paddle in the freezer to get ice cream faster and with a much better texture.)

4 You will die because this tastes so good. Or perhaps you will simply never want to buy anything labeled strawberry sorbet again because this is SO MUCH BETTER!


Watermelon Yogurt Ice
from Eating Well Magazine

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
4 cups diced seedless watermelon (about 3 pounds with the rind)
1 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
1 tbsp lime juice

1 Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Cook, stirring, over high heat until the sugar is dissolved. (FYI: This is a simple or light syrup as opposed to the medium one we used in the last recipe.) Transfer to a glass measuring cup and let cool slightly.

2 Puree watermelon in a food processor or blender, pulsing until smooth. Transfer to a large bowl. Whisk in the cooled sugar syrup, yogurt and lime juice. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into another large bowl, whisking to release all juice. Discard pulp. Pour mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions.

3 Enjoy on a hot summer day or evening. It's not rich like the sorbet but it is very nice and refreshing. Best when slushy.

Rosemary

ADDITION TO THE ORIGINAL POST:
Two nights ago we made sorbet again. I only had about half the strawberries I needed, so I made up the other 8 oz. with frozen mango chunks. It was amazing! You lost a touch of the strawberriness (naturally), but it was still very strawberryish. The mango made it incredibly smooth and creamy. I didn't even strain it and it was wonderful. So take that under advisement next time you're making sorbet.

We'll call it Tomato and Beet Greens Pasta

Okay, so no one else has posted yet, but I'll go ahead and step up to the challenge. We got our latest farm delivery this week and in it was more broccoli, green onions, and making it's debut - beets! Complete with greens. Plus I had three lovely tomatoes fresh from my backyard that needed using. So here's what I came up with.

2 1/2 tomatoes (there would have been three full ones, but the ants got to them)
1 beet top with greens (I'm saving the beets for something else)
1 green onion
1 tbs or so minced garlic (I have the pre-minced stuff on hand)
red pepper flakes
olive oil
parmesan cheese
1 head broccoli
whole wheat penne pasta

I chopped the tomatoes, beet greens, and green onion and sauteed them in the olive oil with the garlic. I saved the actual green leafy part of the beets until everything else had kind of broken down, but I tossed the harder red parts in earlier. I also added a bit of oregano and some red pepper flakes for a bit of a kick. Basil would probably be good, too, but I didn't add it this time. At the end, I also added some parmesan cheese (fresh would have been much better, but I only had the fake grated kind).

While all of that deliciousness was cooking, I boiled some water and cooked about a half a box or so of whole wheat pasta, penne-shaped. When that was about 2/3 done, I added some chopped broccoli and let it cook with the pasta until done. Drain, stir in the sauce, serve and add more parmesan.

For all that we're kind of sick and no one had much of an appetite, we thought this was yummy. Plus, it was very pretty and colorful. I'd take pictures, but it's already mostly been eaten and let's face it - leftovers never look as good. Also, I'd like everyone to take note of how hard I tried to post amounts - I can't promise I'll be this good in the future. But this was pretty simple, so I managed.