My mother was a fairly simple cook. She was raised on a farm, as was my dad, in the central valley of California. During the depression. As they grew up, mostly they ate meatless meals with an occasional chicken dinner on Sundays, at noontime, from one of the young hens in the chicken pen. So when I was growing up my mother followed her mother’s tradition – we had simple meals too – a small portion of meat (mostly beef), a vegetable, a salad maybe, and some kind of carb (Minute Rice was a new product – my mother thought it was marvelous, so we had it often).

My recollection of brussels sprouts from my youth is not a particularly good one. Overcooked baby cabbages don’t ring any culinary bells for me. And that’s most often how my mother cooked them. They were freshly cooked. But with nothing to embellish them except some salt and pepper, they had nothing to make them appetizing. My dad and mom both loved them, though. Fixed just that way. Often. Blah. Yuck.

But I did and do like cabbage in many guises. I just didn’t think I liked brussels sprouts. So many years later I decided to buy some fresh brussels sprouts – sold on the stalk – and found a recipe in Sunset Magazine. It may have been the recipe that inspired me to try it again. Lo and behold? I liked them. And I do prepare them in the fall and winter months, steamed, still with some bite to them, with a little butter, salt and pepper. Very good. I must admit.

Our kids didn’t think they liked brussels sprouts either, until I made this version below. The recipe takes the lowly sprout to a higher level. You steam or boil them until barely done, then toss with a dressing and let them marinate for a few hours. It’s the tart, piquant bacon dressing that makes them taste so darned good. I believe what I’ve printed below is the recipe from Sunset from years ago. I don’t add but a couple of slices (not 6) of bacon to this, and they are still very good. This makes a great side dish – it could qualify as a salad, I suppose. One of the good things about this is you can make it the day ahead too. They’re good hot or cold, but I prefer them cold or room temperature. Maybe this will motivate you to try it too.
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About 20 years ago a wonderful restaurant opened near our home, called Zov’s Bistro. Owned by Zov (pronounced like the letter oh) Karamardian, it was open for weekday lunches and a few nights a week for dinner. As the restaurant grew, and Zov’s well-executed Mediterranean food became more well known, they opened every day but Sunday. Zov is a wonderful philanthropist in our community, and loves to share her native Armenian cooking, although she has broadened the scope to include recipes from many different cultures around the Mediterranean. Now the restaurant houses the bistro, a bakery and a she’s opened a couple of other locations as well.

But back in the earlier days of the Bistro, Zov taught a cooking class starring some of her family favorites, of which this recipe was one. It’s not on the restaurant menu, unfortunately, or I would have it more often. I have no recollection what else she made that night, but I fell in love with this simple pasta dish, and have been making it ever since. You need to enjoy garlic, as it plays a prominent role. And the sauce needs to sit for awhile (at least an hour, or up to 2-3 hours) to develop its flavors. You can make this any time of year – it’s nothing more complicated than canned tomatoes, garlic, green onions, olives, capers and olive oil tossed with hot pasta and sprinkled with real Parmesan. It has some other things in it too that enhance the flavor, and you garnish with a lot of fresh basil. The anchovies (buy good ones if you can find them . . . they have so much more flavor than the cheap cans at the supermarket . . . go to an Italian deli if you have one) give it some character, but you never know they’re there. This is a great meal for a warm summer night.

So, I have a fun story to relate about this recipe. We had dinner with our son, Powell, and his wife the other night, and I mentioned that I had written up this recipe, which has always been a favorite of his. I’d forgotten that when he first met Karen he offered to help her with catering food for an art event a couple of weeks later. She wasn’t a caterer, but had offered to help a friend and was happy to have some help with it. Powell enjoyed cooking and loved entertaining when he was a bon vivant bachelor. Anyway, back then Powell had phoned me to ask advice on what recipes I had that might work for such an event where they could do no actual cooking, so they’d have to make everything ahead. This recipe was a standout for doing ahead, no question.

According to Karen, she was mightily impressed when Powell made this in a very large quantity for her event. According to Karen, her thoughts were along the lines of wow, this guy may be a keeper. It was a black-tie event, and the two of them served this dish and a bunch of others to the crowd of people. Toward the end, with Powell standing nearby in his tux, a businessman approached him and asked for his card. Probably Powell looked at him askance. Uhm. The guy said, we’d like you to cater something for us at our home. Powell laughed and said, we really don’t DO catering, etc. The guy said, well, what do you do and Powell explained that he is in the investment banking/bond biz. The guy looked at him and said what in the world are you doing here? Powell & Karen had a good laugh over that. So, a romance was made that night, according to them, over a big bowl of Pasta a la Puttanesca.
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We may be one of the few cultures to make baked meatloaf. Lots of other cuisines include a ground meat stuffed something (pastry, cabbage, etc.) or small orbs of some kind of chopped meat, but we Americans appear to have invented meatloaf (really, we did), meaning we started with finely chopped raw meat. Mostly I learned, earlier cooks used cooked meat to make any kind of chopped meat dish. I wanted to know more about the history of the dish, and found this:

• The raw, ground meat commonly used to make today’s American meat loaf has a humble heritage. In the 19th century, we know the Industrial Revolution made it possible for ground meat to be manufactured and sold to the public at a very low cost. At first, many Americans were slow to purchase raw ground meat products and generally regarded them with suspicion. Cooks continued to mince their meat (often already cooked, as was the practice for centuries) by hand. Companies selling meat grinders to home consumers at the turn of the century endeavored to change this practice by providing recipe

Regarded as the ultimate comfort food, there are certainly lots of types of meatloaf. Some with fillers and additions (bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, carrots, onions, eggs, red bell pepper) and many variations of toppings (savory tomato, catsup type, even teriyaki style). But the most common is with a tomato-based sauce on top. I’m no different than the crowd, so this may not be one of the recipes you’re going to try since you may already have a favorite sauce. But for me it’s simply the sweet and sour sauce that is a must here. The recipe came from one of my old 1960’s era military officer’s wives cookbooks, and since I first made it, this has been the standard by which any and all meatloaves are measured. In our family, this is THE recipe, and mashed potatoes on the side are an absolute must. No rice. No pasta. It must be mashed potatoes.

And generally I increase the sauce because everybody loves to put more sauce on the potatoes. So early on I began doubling it. No problem. It’s easy enough to make. I’ve made this with partly ground turkey, and it’s also very good. I think my daughter Sara makes it with all turkey and her family loves it that way. When I make it now I use 50/50 beef and ground turkey. That gives the meatloaf a little firmer texture, which is what we (and most people, I surmise) miss about eating ground turkey. It just doesn’t have the “tooth” to it that beef does. I’ve made this using Splenda (it’s fine) and with Brown Sugar Twin (also fine). So we can still have this but with less carbs.

Back when our children were teenagers we asked each of the kids to choose a weeknight and be responsible for preparing dinner for the family. (We’re a blended family, so between DH and I we have 3 children, two daughters and a son, all in their late 30’s now and for most of their teenage years we all lived together.) We had to plan ahead so the ingredients were on hand, and mostly the kids were pretty good about it. They got to fix one of their favorite meals, and we were all appreciative (at least I think we were). I will tell you that this item was a real “regular” on the menu. Everyone in our family loves this meatloaf and they all learned how to make it because they had to do it.
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I would be ever so negligent if I didn’t post one of my favorite recipes, my mother’s Crisp Apple Pudding. I’ve been making this for as long as I’ve been cooking (that began in 1962). It was written out in my mother’s small recipe journal, something she began when SHE got married in the 1930’s, a recipe from her mother. And she passed this recipe on to me when I got married. My mother is gone now. Bless her heart. I loved her so much. But she lives on in this recipe for sure. I think of her every time I fix this.

I believe – but I’m not sure – that this recipe came from a vintage (probably 1930’s version) Betty Crocker Cookbook. Or maybe it was a Better Homes & Gardens. Did they publish cookbooks back in the 1930’s? I think one time in a used book store I saw a very old, stained copy of one of those books and glanced in it, and sure enough, it looked like this recipe. It has one very unique technique that I’ve not seen in any recipes I’ve studied. Even today. I did a search just now, and after looking at probably 40-50 apple crisp recipes, with variations of toppings (this one has no oatmeal or brown sugar in it), not a single one of them sprinkles the flour/sugar topping with water. That’s what gives this apple dessert its crispness, a different texture for sure. I love it – of course, it’s what I grew up having when my mother made this, so it’s what I think is the “right” kind of apple crisp. Note that this dessert has a whopping 5 grams of fat per serving.

One year either Bon Appetit or Gourmet did a very in-depth article about crisps, buckles, pandowdies and slumps. They are all similar, but not quite the same. And this technique was not in there, either. I even wrote a letter to the writer of that article about it. Never heard from her. Oh well. Her loss!

So, here is my mother’s recipe: Sliced apples, piled into a 8×8 Pyrex or metal baking dish, with a floury-egg-sugar based crumbly topping, dotted with a little butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon and a bit more sugar. THEN, it’s sprinkled with water to give that topping an honest-to-goodness crust. Once baked the topping melds together into a crust, and rises a little bit since it has baking powder in it. Allow to cool about an hour, then serve with warm cream or whipped cream. Ice cream is okay too, but whipped cream is better, I think. I’ve cut down a little on the sugar – I think originally it called for 1 cup, so if you like it sweeter, go ahead and add the full amount. And I hate to say this, but in a pinch, this is marvelous for breakfast.
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If I owned a restaurant, this would probably be my signature dish. I’ve made this so often that I might be able to make it in my sleep. And it is my one-and-only recipe for which I can buy the ingredients in the late afternoon and have dinner on the table by 6:30 or 7:00 – for guests. This is a one dish meal – well, clarify that . . . it’s a grill in one meal. Except for dessert and appetizers, if you’re serving them, you can make this in no time at all. It may be the only recipe in my entire personal cookbook that qualifies. So, take note, if you’d like a company meal with little effort.

My friend Stacey is a good cook, but doesn’t really like spending hours in prep, nor does she have time anymore with two little ones getting into mischief. But after I made this at their house in the Bay Area one weekend several years ago, she said they invited lots of friends over and she got a lot of entertaining done – serving this for every one. So, Stacey, this one’s dedicated to you! You’re my hero!

I’ve told you before about Chris Schlesinger. His book, The Thrill of the Grill, is one of my favorite cookbooks. This recipe came from there. This is the fellow I spoke to, telling him my favorite recipe from his book was the Asian Slaw and he gave me this face. If you haven’t read that story, click here. When he signed my cookbook, I hadn’t prepared this salmon dish yet. I just wish Chris was reading my blog and he’d know that this is my favorite recipe to date. And I’ve amplified on his recipe too. I’ve thought about writing to him tell tell him all about what I’ve done to his recipe. But oh well. He’s a famous chef and all. I think I won’t.

For awhile, some years ago, I cut down the amount of the dressing on this salad, to reduce the total fat grams, but have since decided that the full amount is needed; it’s an important component of the dish so it covers the salad sufficiently and you have enough left over to pour a little over the salmon itself. And if you grill vegetables to go with, like I do, then you need a bit more for them too. Salmon has plenty of fat in its tissues, but it’s good fat, so don’t be thrown by the fat content on this one. I’ve done the math and the salad dressing is fairly inconsequential.

I do need to talk a bit about watercress. It’s a little hard to find – at least it is here in California. Whole Foods sells some funny kind of young watercress still growing in vermiculite covered in a little root ball. It has different roundish leaves. And has almost no flavor. This is NOT what you want for this. You need the real thing, the kind of watercress that’s actually grown in water. It has fattish stems (which you don’t use in the salad) and wonderful crinkly leaves. The taste is peppery, not to everyone’s taste, I suppose. I love it, though. So seek out good, fresh watercress.

Costco sells this huge slab of boneless salmon. It is farm-raised; not my favorite thing anymore, but I will buy it on occasion. I prefer wild caught now, and if you can find it, by all means do so! You wipe it off, spray it with olive oil spray, then place it on two large pieces of greased heavy-duty aluminum foil, crimp up the edges around the salmon (you don’t seal it or cover it). Add a bit of salt and pepper. Meanwhile, you fire up your grill and start working on the vegetables, whichever ones you decide to use. I like putting something red with this dish – the color is just glorious on a large platter. So, you need red bell peppers for sure, even yellow or orange ones too. Asparagus works also. And zucchini too. In a pinch I’ve also thrown a large quantity of halved cherry tomatoes on the platter at the end (not grilled, of course). And DH’s favorite is small red onions, halved. All the vegies need to be well oiled, then grilled. Then you put on the salmon and it’s done when you begin to see some white foam seep up through the middle of the salmon. At the last minute toss the watercress salad with some of the dressing, spread it down the middle of the large platter, then slide the salmon off the foil and on top of the salad and add the grilled vegies (that you’ve kept hot) around the edges. Serve immediately to raves. Guaranteed.
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Back when I was still working full time, had teenage children at home, had fewer hours of time for anything, I seemed to be able to squeeze in more entertaining than I do now. I loved spending 8-10 hours in the kitchen prepping all the dishes for a brunch for 10 people for the next day. Now that I’m retired, have more time on my hands (no, I’m rarely bored), I don’t entertain as often. Why is that? Must be because I’ve slowed down my hectic pace. I must have been far more organized than I am now. And today I don’t choose to spend so many hours in kitchen prep either.

But in those days Dave and I often entertained, either at home or on our sailboat. At least once a month we had brunches or dinners on the boat for 6-10 people, motoring around Newport Harbor, usually dropping a short anchor in one of the very chichi private lagoons, just long enough to tip a few glasses of wine or champagne, have brunch or dinner, then we’d motor again as we enjoyed coffee and dessert, glancing into the gorgeous multi-million dollar homes that line Newport Harbor. In the evenings, the houses were lit up and looked so beautiful. Back then we kept our boat on a mooring (for the non-boaters, that’s a permanent anchoring place that’s not at a dock, but sits offshore about 100-200 feet) in Newport, so we had to row a rotted old fiberglass dinghy from the shore to the boat, remove all the paraphernalia we used to TRY to keep the seagulls from defecating all over the decks, because they thought the boat was their private hanging-out place when we weren’t on board, motor it to our small yacht club (a 30-minute ride) to wash and scrub the decks, then get ready for entertaining. Now our boat is in San Diego, at a dock and we don’t have to do that – we drive about 80 minutes and we’re on board at a comfy dock. More gasoline to drive there, but a heck of a lot less work and stress.

So, brunch dishes became a staple in my cooking repertoire, and I was always on the lookout for something new and different. Something that could be made ahead, too, since the galley on our 38-foot sailboat isn’t exactly roomy. It’s certainly functional, but it isn’t luxurious. It has a small double sink, hot water, a propane 4-burner stove, an oven plus a narrow but deep refrigerator.

I have a number of different egg casseroles I’ve made over the years, and I’ll likely share most of them here in time. But this one is a favorite of all the choices. I’ve made this for Christmas morning when we’ve had a houseful of people. Have all the ingredients all ready, then mix it up just before baking. And I’ve made it for numerous brunches at home as well. It’s not difficult. The Italian sausage is what makes it, though. Please don’t substitute, although you could use turkey Italian sausage. But not the pre-cooked type – use only fresh sausage. The recipe came from Bon Appetit magazine. I don’t know when, but at least 20 years ago! But it’s still just as good this many years later.
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If you’re a connoisseur of scones, as I am, then you already know that there are about as many variations on the scone theme as flowers in the universe. I became a scone lover about 20 years ago. They popped up on the food scene, I guess, because of the proliferation of “afternoon tea” in various places. My friend Cherrie and I liked trying different afternoon tea locations as often as we thought we could fit it in, maybe every 2-3 months. We went on Saturdays because we both worked full time back then. But then scones became part of the coffee bar circuit too – Starbuck’s, Peet’s. Wherever you went for morning coffee, they all had scones. Dry scones. Not very tasty scones in my book. I usually left disappointed.

But in the intervening years, Cherrie and I have tried about 15 or more tea places within easy driving distance of our homes. We enjoy the whole event – from the tea itself (usually Earl Gray) to the tea sandwiches, the scones, jam, clotted cream (not whipped cream, mind you) and little tasty sweets. We enjoyed the whole package so much that she and I took a “Tea Tour” in England one year and had a ball. It was a 10 or 12 day trip with Penelope Carlavato, a proper English lady who lived in Southern California and led tours in England every year. There were about 12 of us on the trip and we had afternoon tea 5 times in 10 days, I believe. After that, I didn’t have an afternoon tea for at least a year! On that trip we sampled scones of all varieties. British scones are drier than mine. Thicker too, I think.

But I’m spoiled. I like my own scones too much. It’s so easy to make your own and get just the kind of texture you want in your own home made ones. I’ve made them for Christmas morning – I get all the ingredients gathered up the night before and can whip them out in a hurry in the morning. I don’t make them often – they’re a special occasion treat for me. The last time I had afternoon tea was in Paris, a year ago May, when I was there alone (DH couldn’t go because of a leg injury) and friends I was meeting invited me to join them at Mariage Freres for lunch. Very special indeed.

Once a year a group of girlfriends of mine (we’ve been meeting for breakfast about every other week for the last 30 years) get together to celebrate a Christmas breakfast. We move from house to house, year to year. We exchange gifts, talk about our children, our grandchildren, and what we’re doing for the holidays. Once I started making these, though, they’ve become a regular on the menu, at whoever’s home we’re meeting. I take the ingredients and make them there.

My scones are more like rich Southern biscuits – American Southern Biscuits. They’re buttery, with layers of tender dough. These are not on the dry theme at all. If that’s what you prefer, you won’t like this version one bit. Stop right here. But if you like rich and buttery, then these are for you. I got the recipe from a Canadian friend of mine (my former business partner), who got it from a Canadian friend of hers, who got it from Canadian Living magazine in 1991. Since I tried these the very first time they’ve been my one and only scone. Hope you enjoy them. The original recipe called for currants. I didn’t have any, so began using golden raisins. Other than that, I usually fix the recipe exactly as shown.

Follow the directions to a T, except where noted that you can. These don’t keep well – if you don’t eat them right away, cool and freeze immediately. You can also substitute different dried fruit, or make them plain. I’ve shared this recipe with many of my friends over the years. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Try with a bit of clotted cream and jam. They hardly need butter, but I always serve it anyway.
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With my foot mending, my DH is cooking all the meals. He’s starting to get into it. He actually likes to go grocery shopping. His family used to own a gourmet grocery store in Ocean City New Jersey. It still is a summer resort kind of town, and 80% of their annual business was conducted in those summer months. It was a small, family-run business, originally part of DH’s mother’s side of the family, then for about 18 years his parents owned it and the name was changed to Thurston’s Market. So, growing up in the late 40’s and early 50’s, DH helped out in the store all summer long. The wealthy customers would phone in an order, and he or others would box up the order and he’d ride shotgun in the delivery truck since he was too young to drive. Anyway, he learned some about butchering, about cheese, a lot about produce, stocked shelves, helped bag the 1-pound private label coffee (in special bags marked “Thurston’s Market Coffee”) and in the winter (slower) he was a checker sometimes. He swept floors and the most hated job was sorting out potatoes from the huge bin to wipe it out with a wet rag. (We all know what rotting potatoes smell like, don’t we?) He loved going with his father on rare occasions to the daily wholesale market (that opened at 1:00 am) in Philadelphia.

Grocery shopping is in his blood, I think. Therefore, going to the market these days is an almost everyday occurrence. He loves to go. He hops into his 11-year old teal blue convertible, with the top down, of course, and zips off. Give him a shopping list and he’s a happy camper. He’s learned over the years that I normally buy name brands, not the grocery generic brands of cottage cheese, sour cream, etc. Our cell phones are busy when Dave goes shopping as he still has questions now and then. Yesterday he phoned me twice. Often he has to go to at least 2 markets – Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Neither market carries everything we like. About every 10 days we buy a loaf of grainy Harvest bread from the Corner Bakery, so that’s another stop in a different direction. That gets repackaged at home in small foil wraps and frozen. And about once a week he has to go to our regular grocery store as well. Some meats come from a small, independent market in another direction, where they also make sensational fresh tomato salsa. Then there’s the occasional Costco run too.

But, we’re talking about salads here, weren’t we? When I make green salads I fill them with all kinds of vegies (carrots, celery, fennel, radishes, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, etc.). And a variety of lettuces, of course. And usually some Greek feta cheese too. Then it gets tossed with one of my home made dressings.

A couple of days ago DH and I discussed that we needed salad makings. These days his M.O. for dinner is a protein and maybe a salad. We eat low carb anyway, but he tends to not want to fix a vegetable. But he doesn’t really like chopping up the salad vegies either. Too much trouble. I keep encouraging him, though. He did saute some zucchini and yellow squash the other night, along with some red onion. It was mostly edible. He forgot to stir it, so about 25% of it was burned black. We ate it anyway. 🙂

So yesterday, on his grocery list was salad greens. I usually buy Romaine and head lettuce and supplement with some of the fancy greens. He prefers to buy bagged salad. He also was to buy a few other vegies. Dinner time arrived. As usual, he doesn’t even think about dinner until about 6:30 or 7:00. I kept quiet; didn’t want to nag. 🙂 Last night he rooted around in the refrigerator and found two Italian sausages. He thought we’d have a sausage and a salad. He began taking things out of the refrigerator to make the salad, arranging stuff, opened the bag and read out loud what he’d bought – mixed greens. Oops. Those are the greens like kale, chard, red chard, collards etc. Oh —-, he said. I piped up. No problem, honey, just saute them. He actually loves all those kinds of things.

So, with me coaching him all the way through, he managed just fine – he cooked the onion in olive oil, added garlic at the end, then cut up all the greens and added them. He popped a lid on top and let it simmer for awhile. I wheeled around and poured in a little bit of red wine vinegar toward the end. I suggested he add about 2-3 tablespoons of water – he was going to put in more oil. It worked out fine with water. He forgot the salt and pepper, but that was easily added at the table. Meanwhile, he fried up the two sausages and nearly burned them completely, but they were edible. He was too busy working on the greens to watch the sausages on the burner one inch away. 🙂 He made a salad with what he could rummage out of the vegie bin and tossed it with a very inedible fat-free dressing I’d bought some time ago that I’d tried once and never used again. I never learn – I keep hoping I’m going to find some bottled salad dressings that I really like. (He threw it out later. He says he’s going to make some home made salad dressing today if I’ll tell him how.) But overall, the dinner was fine. Just not very much of it, that’s all.

Therefore, DH was hungry after dinner was finished. Hmmm. I kept quiet. 🙂 So he found the last of the home made apricot ice cream and scooped out rather large bowls. Smiles all around.

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Oh, do I have a recipe for you. What’s more summery than a cool bowl of gazpacho? One day soon I’ll post my other, traditional recipe for gazpacho, but this one has a citrus twist. And it’s easier, actually, than the regular one.

Here’s the scoop. Some years ago, on one of the trips I’ve made to Santa Fe, we were a group of 10-12 people on a culinary tour. There were four of us (all gals from Southern California, as it happened) who just hit it off and tried to squeeze in as much fun as possible, in between the spectacular meals, museums, galleries, etc. And we had some really fabulous meals. But eating at Cafe Pasqual’s isn’t something for a group. The restaurant is too small. And maybe they don’t work with groups, even though ours was only about 12 people altogether. So our leader recommended we all go there for some other meal. But if any of you have been there, you know there’s nearly always a line outside the door waiting for a table. Their website says they do take reservations now, for dinner. That would help. They didn’t take them at the time I was there, this particular trip.

Katherine Kagel owns Cafe Pasqual’s, and she’s made a real name for herself with nouvelle Southwestern food. She takes mostly old New Mexican favorites, everything from enchiladas, to stews, to desserts, and gives them her unique touch. So far as I know, she’s never expanded. It’s still the one restaurant, the same, small kitchen they cook in, and the same small dining room. And it’s still going strong. She’s published two cookbooks. (Can you believe it? I don’t own either one of them!) Her first, the earlier book, Cafe Pasqual’s Cookbook, was printed in 1993. I went to the library back then and hunted for this recipe. Nope. That’s why I didn’t buy the book. Plus, we have such good Mexican food here, I rarely cook it myself. I don’t know if the recipe is in her newest book. I may have to order it to find out. It’s Cooking with Cafe Pasqual’s, published in 2006. Address: 121 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Later note: the recipe IS in her 2nd book, and it does differ some. I’ll have to post it one of these days.
So anyway, the 4 of us sat down – squeezed around a table really meant for 2 people, and ordered. Two of us decided to try the Citrus Gazpacho. Oh my goodness was it ever good. I got out a piece of paper and a pen and tried my best to figure out what was in it. We all sampled sips, dissecting it as much as possible.

Upon returning home, I tried to recreate it. We think it was made with canned juice, probably V-8 [wrong on that one]. You can make your own base if you would like to, but we thought it had a greater density of flavor than just pureed fresh tomatoes and or canned tomato juice. It had a sweet side to it – we picked out that there was some fruit in it, but when I tried to make it at home, it wasn’t sweet enough with just the fruit and some of the juice squeezed from the pulp and membranes, so I added the apple juice concentrate [wrong on that one too]. Remember to taste as you make this so you don’t add too much concentrate. I did that once, and learned my lesson. We knew what was in the garnish because it was visible, but which kinds of peppers (poblano and serrano?) I couldn’t tell. You could substitute other types. Be cautious about the salt. If you want, buy the low salt V-8 and salt up as you like. Regular V-8 contains a lot of sodium.

So, even though this recipe isn’t really Cafe Pasqual’s version, I’m quite happy with the result.
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Calimyrna Figs. Not very good looking, are they?

I do wonder sometimes, how a recipe name evolves? If we look at this from the ethical side, the FDA side, then a food, a dish, should be named for its weight or volume substances, like the nutrition labels must show all the ingredients in descending order. But that doesn’t always tell the right story, does it? Even though Balsamic Vinegar is a very, very small part of this recipe, as you know, it has a very strong flavor. I would guess that’s how this sorbet came to have its name as BALSAMIC Fig Sorbet. But, really, chai tea is a more major ingredient by volume. But, well, is it really? If you just measure the dry chai tea in its bags, it would comprise the next to the last ingredient (balsamic brings up the rear). But when you brew chai tea with WATER, then the chai component becomes hefty. So, maybe this should be called CHAI Fig Balsamic Sorbet. Somehow, that doesn’t have the right ring to it, does it? Or, WATER Chai Balsamic Fig Sorbet. Oh my, much too big a dilemma for my brain this morning.

What I do know for sure, is that this sorbet is something other worldly. It’s sensational. And I really don’t like figs most of the time. My parents had a fig tree in the backyard when I was growing up, and mostly we ate the figs fresh off the tree. My mother made fig jam sometimes from it, and that I didn’t like one bit. I would eat them fresh, though. But my Dad loved Fig Newtons, and I can almost barf thinking of sinking my teeth into those millions of little seeds in a Newton. Yuck. Maybe it was really the jammy, stick goo that’s mixed with the seeds that turned me off of Newtons. So for any number of years I really thought I didn’t like figs. Certainly I didn’t like dried figs from whence Newtons were made. Fresh ones are a bit hard to find these days, although I’ve seen them at our very upscale markets at a very upscale price.

So, I went to a cooking class a few years ago and bingo, Andrew Schloss served this sorbet.

Never would I have prepared this by looking at the recipe or the title. I do drink tea, if you’ve read my post about making a “proper tea,” awhile back, you already know this about me. I like chai tea also. Occasionally I order a chai tea latte at Starbucks. Except they’re too sweet for me. Chai tea all by itself has just a hint of sweetness, a sweet underlayer all by itself provided by all those spices. It almost doesn’t need any sugar. But I probably wouldn’t have ever purchased the Bengal Spice tea (by Celestial Seasonings) without having it served to me in this sorbet. It is a necessary ingredient, so don’t be tempted to substitute black tea. The sorbet needs this spicy tea component. There may be some other chai teas that would work equally well, however; it’s just that this is what the chef used and I was absolutely delighted with it. You’ll notice this sorbet has a kind of brown tinge. It’s the tea and figs that do it. Well, and the balsamic too. Don’t be turned off by the color. Serve it on a pretty plate or bowl and try a cookie beside it.

I don’t know anything about Andrew Schloss other than the fact that he wrote this cookbook called “Almost From Scratch.” He was an engaging instructor, and I’ve referred to his cookbook several times (of course I bought the cookbook, right?). But this is the recipe that will maintain his name in my brain cells. The book is already out of print. Amazon’s raters gave it 5 stars. Hmm. Maybe I need to go look at that cookbook again for some other ideas.

So unless you just hate the actual taste of figs, or cannot abide chai tea I highly encourage you to try this. I’ve served it several times to family and friends. My suggestion is: don’t tell them what it is. Just tell them it’s a sorbet. Or a chai sorbet. That should be sufficient. The chai tea gives the sorbet this heavenly fragrance. It just roams around amongst your taste buds, then you begin to get the fig (maybe) and then the hint of balsamic. The sorbet doesn’t require an ice cream machine – it’s all done in your freezer and with a food processor. Several times I’ve thought about making this with milk, just to see what it would taste like. Hmm. Then it would be an ice milk, or an ice cream. Or a gelato. Let’s see: Chai Milk Fig Balsamic Gelato. Maybe I need to go back to the drawing boards for recipe names on this one. But either way, the recipe is easy, really. And whatever you name it, make it.
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