Jello Night!

A few weeks ago, my knitting group (which meets at the fantastic Fiber Gallery on Tuesday evenings) had a Jello themed potluck. We were inspired by this sort of vintage recipe: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/knox/4.html. Instead of doing something disturbingly glistening, though, I decided to go in another direction. In the comments for this recipe, someone complained that the panna cotta tasted like "milky jello" and another commenter pointed out that panna cotta is milky jello.

Confident that this met our theme, I played around with several recipes and came up with a Lemon-Lavender Panna Cotta. (I'm on something of a lemon-lavender binge at present.) It would be delicious with blueberry sauce, but I guessed (correctly, as it turned out) that there would be lots of other sweet creations to pair it with. (If you happen to have some, it went pretty well with Blueberry Jello Surprise.)

Lemon-Lavender Panna Cotta

• 4 C whole milk, divided
  
• 1 1/2 Tbsp unflavored gelatin
• 1 Tbsp dried culinary lavender buds
• 2 Tbsp grated organic lemon zest
• 3/4 C sugar

Sprinkle gelatin over 1 C of the milk in a small saucepan. Put the lavender in a cheesecloth pouch or tea ball. Let the milk & gelatin stand for 10 minutes.

Add the lavender and lemon zest and gently heat over medium-low heat for 10 minutes, whisking until gelatin dissolves. Keep stirring and increase heat to medium. Add the sugar and whisk some more, until the sugar dissolves.

Take off the heat and remove the lavender pouch, squeezing a bit to get more liquid out. Add the remaining 3 C milk and give the mixture one last good stir.

For an elegant presentation, pour into 8 6-oz ramekins and allow to chill at least 4 hours. When the mixture is completely set and chilled, invert each panna cotta onto a dessert plate. Pour berry sauce over the panna cotta, if desired. (For a potluck, it's much easier to just pour the hot mixture into a pretty serving bowl and scoop it out of there to serve after chilling.)

serves 6-8

post-farmers' market dinner

Monday: Salmon Roasted in Butter; Tomato, Basil, and Fresh Mozzarella Salad; Blueberries

Wow, it's been a looooong time since I've posted anything. I guess summer is all about food that's so simple I don't need to write it down? Anyway, I have all kinds of tasty food stuff planned for the week (including some canning), and I have a feeling that our holiday weekend will include some pie-makin'.

We had quite the haul from the farmers' market, including an extra-large salmon fillet. We had planned to have salmon once this week (tomorrow), but had so much fish that we made a simple recipe with it (from Mark Bittman's Fish) in addition to a glorious late-summer tomato salad. We also scored some delicious blueberries from Sidhu Farms (which has consistently had the best blueberries at the market, IMO). The salad feels so simple that it's hardly worth writing down, but here 'tis:

Tomato, Basil, and Fresh Mozzarella Salad

• 1 large or two small, very ripe tomatoes, sliced into moderately thin wedges
  
• 2 oz fresh mozzarella (ours was from Golden Glen), sliced
  
• 1 handful fresh basil, chopped or snipped into small pieces
• glug olive oil
• generous drizzle balsamic vinegar
• salt & pepper, to taste

Arrange the first three ingredients however appeals to your sense of food style on a plate. Drizzle with olive oil & balsamic; sprinkle with salt & freshly ground pepper.

serves 2 as a side

lemon cookies with lavender icing

I've had an image in my mind of a very specific cookie. I think it had its origin in the lovely lemon crunch cookies at Sugar and was likely also inspired by the many desserts they have there that use lavender (sometimes paired with lemon, even). But what I wanted was more specific even than that: I wanted a pale yellow lemon-flavored sugar cookie with a light lavender frosting (in my mind, it was a delicate lilac color).

Finally last weekend I decided that I just had to have that cookie, and set about making one. I started with a variation of the Fannie Farmer sugar cookie recipe, because it had an egg (not all sugar cookies do) and I was pretty sure that was part of the texture of the cookie I craved:

Lemon Sugar Cookies
adapted from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook

• 1 stick butter, softened (1/4 lb)
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp lemon extract
• grated zest from an organic lemon
• 1 Tbsp milk
• 1 1/4 C flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 350F. Cream the butter, then add the sugar. Beat until light and fluffy. Add the egg, flavorings, zest, and milk. Beat until uniformly mixed. In another bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add to the dough and blend well. Arrange by spoonfuls on cookie sheets, 1" or 1 1/2" apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned

yield: ~40 cookies

While the cookies cooled, I hunted up a recipe for lavender frosting (I used skim milk, but otherwise followed the recipe). I added a tiny bit of food coloring to get the look I was going for. Because I can't resist adding salt to things, I made a few with a sprinkling of pink Hawaiian salt on top. (The salt covered cookies were good, IMO, but not really what I was trying to make.)

Overall, it was a success - I've only made cookies a few times, so I was surprised that they turned out at all, much less that they were tasty. They weren't quite the cookies I'd been imagining (possibly because I didn't have lemon extract and subbed in fiori di sicilia instead), but they were pretty darn close.

Early Summer Menu II (week of June 27)

Sunday: loads-of-veggies pilaf (Vegetarian Suppers)
Monday: slow-cooked ginger salmon; snap peas; brown rice
Tuesday: cook's holiday
Wednesday: roasted chicken; braised kale with bacon; roasted carrots
Thursday: outFriday: hoisin pork and "Asian" slaw (with thinly sliced radishes); ice-cream(!)
Saturday: lemongrass soup with tofu & rice noodles (Bittman)

Early Summer Menu (week of June 20)

Sunday: Baked Eggs over Croutons; green salad
Monday: grilled veggie sausages & grilled green garlic; strawberry-rhubarb crumble
Tuesday: cook's holiday
Wednesday: roasted chicken; baked sweet potatoes; braised kale
Thursday: stir-fried pork, broccoli, and green garlic; brown rice
Friday: skillet-seared tofu; oven-roasted asparagus (topped with miso sauce from tofu); brown rice
Saturday: out

strawberry extravaganza

As I so often do, I ended up going a little overboard with the canning this weekend. This month's can jam is everything berries, and I'm thinking I should pick just one of the following recipes for my entry... it's so hard to decide, though! They all turned out wonderfully, but I think that the "oven-roasted strawberry jam with rosemary" is my favorite.

Two weeks ago, we went to our usual Sunday market, sampled strawberries from all the organic vendors, and found only one place with truly flavorful ones. (It's been so wet here that the berries are a little watery, I think.) Typically, they were also the most expensive strawberries at the market. I asked if they had any seconds, and it turns out that they bring all their seconds to the Saturday market and sell them by the bucket. With no idea what size that bucket was, we tentatively decided to go to the Saturday market the following weekend.

Here is what we ended up with on Saturday:



It wasn't labeled (other than with price - it was $20), and I neglected to weigh it or otherwise figure out precisely how much was in that big bucket. It took us about 3 hours to hull and quarter all the berries, enough to make 20 half-pint jars of jam, plus however many berries we ended up eating as we worked.

We spontaneously decided to break in our new pasta maker, so partway through the hulling process, Aaron came over and he and Victor made linguine:

(why didn't we cover the chairs? no idea)

Meanwhile, I divided the strawberries for different recipes and let them macerate. We ended up with:

• 5 x 8 oz jars Vanilla Strawberry Jam (I followed his recipe except that I added 1 split vanilla bean and its seeds during the maceration step)
• 2 x 8 oz jars Key-Lime Strawberry Jam (this recipe, but replacing the lemon juice with key-lime juice)
  
• 5 x 8 oz jars Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam (recipe follows)
• 4 x 8 oz jars Strawberry Preserves with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper
• 4 x 8 oz jars Oven-Roasted Strawberry Jam with Rosemary (recipe follows)

For all but the oven-roasted jam, I used some Pomona's Pectin to thicken the liquid slightly. It still has a "European-style" lightly-gelled set, but I didn't need to fuss with it as much to get there. Because I hadn't originally intended to use the pectin, I ended up mixing the pectin power with just a few tablespoons of sugar and blending that in for the last few minutes of boiling. In a few cases that led to some clumping, so I think that in the future I'll try harder to remember to add it when I add the bulk of the sugar (prior to letting the strawberries macerate).

Lazy Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam
adapted from Saving the Season

My adaptations mostly had to do with forgetting to keep the rhubarb and strawberries separated during the maceration (hence the "lazy" in the recipe title).

• 1 lb rhubarb, sliced
• 1.5 lb strawberries, hulled and quartered lenthwise
• 2 C sugar (if using Pomona's Pectin, mix with 2 tsp pectin powder)
  
• zest of half a lemon
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• optional: 2 Tbsp Kirschwasser
  
• optional: 2 tsp calcium water (only if you're using Pomona's Pectin - if you are, this comes with the pectin powder)
  

Toss prepared rhubarb and strawberries with sugar, zest, and juice. Allow to macerate at least an hour (mine sat for maybe 5 hours - overnight would be fine, too).

In a large sauce pan, cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring to prevent scorching. If you want a little fruity kick, add the Kirschwasser, too. (If you're using Pomona's Pectin, add the calcium water early in the cooking process.) During the last 2-3 minutes of cooking, stir with a whisk to break up the fruit into a sauce, if desired.

Ladle into hot prepared jars, seal, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

yield: 5 8-oz jars

Oven-Roasted Strawberry Jam with Rosemary
adapted from Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving

• 8 C strawberries, hulled and quartered lengthwise
• 4 C sugar
• 1/4 C lemon juice
• 4 sprigs clean fresh rosemary

Combine berries and sugar and allow to macerate, two hours (up to a day or so). Stir to mix in the sugar occasionally.

In a large saucepan, add lemon juice and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat a simmer, and continue cooking for 10 minutes.

Pour into two 13" x 9" pans, add two sprigs rosemary to each pan, and bake in a warm oven for 10-12 hours. (The directions say to use a 150F oven - the lowest my oven will do is 170F, so that's what I used. It worked fine. If using a convection oven, apparently the process only takes 2-4 hours.) Stir occasionally. Keep baking until the mixture has thickened and will form a gel.

Ladle into hot jars, seal, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

yield: 4 8-oz jars

perfect kale

Wednesday: roasted chicken; sweet potato spears; "braised" kale

The Zuni Cafe roast chicken recipe is pretty much the only one I use. Once in a while I'll dally with another technique for roasting the bird, but I always come back to this. It is especially good if you have time to let the chicken rest for three days before cooking, though two or even one day of rest will still give you a delicious dinner.

I don't bother with the herbs - I don't think their flavor gets into any of the meat that's not in direct contact with them. I also have decided that the pan drippings are put to better use in a gravy than in the bread salad she suggests (I say this even after having had the chicken/bread salad at Zuni in SF... it's good, but not worth giving up gravy for). I usually add some stock to the pan after I take the chicken out, but this time I made the gravy with some white wine we had in the fridge - definitely a tasty addition.

Last night we also roasted some sweet potatoes while the chicken cooked - they were tossed with olive oil/salt/pepper. I think I ended up having them in the oven for about half the chicken's cooking time. I'd also planned to make Michael Ruhlman's braised kale, but as I started cooking I realised two things: I didn't have most of the ingredients, and my 475F oven was likely too hot. What I came up with was probably the best kale I've ever eaten, though, so it all worked out in the end.

Kale with Guanciale
inspired by Michael Ruhlman's braised kale

• hunk of guanciale, diced
  
• two large bunches kale, cleaned and cut into strips (don't dry it - you want the residual water clinging to the leaves)
  
• red pepper flakes
• 1 Tbsp honey
• glug or two sherry vinegar
  
• salt to taste
• pepper to taste

In a large pan over medium-low heat, cook the guanciale until the fat is mostly rendered and the meat is beginning to crisp. Add the kale and turn the heat up to medium. Cook, stirring frequently, until it has started to wilt. Add a pinch or two of salt, a grind or two of pepper, and the red pepper flakes. Cover, and cook over medium-low heat for 15-30 minutes (honestly, I have no idea how long it was cooking for... until it looked done, I guess). When it's mostly cooked, add the honey and sherry. Cook off the liquid, taste, and add more salt or pepper as needed.

makes 3-4 servings