Admittedly, I’m a fan of ice cream. I came to this anomaly honestly. My Dad was an out-and-out obsessive-compulsive about the stuff. I grew up eating dessert after nearly every dinner, and I can still remember (and hear it in my head) my Dad’s spoon against the side of the bowl, systematically scraping around to get the very last possible speck of it. After going around once, he’d change the angle of the spoon and scrape around one more time. Remember, my Dad was an engineer, so methodical was his middle name. His favorite dessert was vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, or rocky road, just plain.

We go for periods of time with no ice cream in the freezer. As summer months approach, though, and the last of our home grown Meyer lemons reach mid-to-past maturity, I need to use some of that lemon juice. So, a new recipe streaked past the recipe trove – from Bon Appetit, May, 2008. It sounded delicious. And indeed it was.

You simmer water, sugar and freshly grated ginger, strain out the ginger, then chill. Add the yogurt, buttermilk, fresh lemon juice and some grated zest and freeze in your ice cream maker. Freeze further for a couple of hours and serve.

The ginger flavor does not predominate at all. In fact, if you weren’t TOLD it was there, you might not be able to identify it. I adored the elusive flavor. A lot. Enough that the next time I make this I’m going to use a bit more ginger, but not much. The frozen yogurt/ice cream has more of the texture of sorbet – to me anyway – although it does have more dairy (buttermilk and yogurt) than water. It was very, very refreshing, and with a bit of crystallized ginger on top (and maybe mango as suggested in the recipe), it’s an easy dessert to make. Next time I may try using 2% yogurt, just to see if there’s any difference. In any case, it’s a very low-calorie dessert, but lovely enough for guests. I’ll be making this again.
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Don’t know if you’re aware that Martha Stewart has just published a new cookbook – called Martha Stewart’s Cookies. A really thick tome, it contains 175 new recipes with super photos. This one was delicious! My friend Kathleen brought them the other night when she came to our home for dinner. Kathleen’s a good writer, so I asked her if she’d like to guest-write this posting.

Happily for me, she agreed. You can find the recipe on Martha’s site. I wrote up another of Kathleen’s recipes some time back – if you’re interested, check out her Almond Custard. Here’s Kathleen’s write-up about the cookies:

• I am a Martha Stewart junkie. Even her checkered past doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for everything Martha; I just can’t get enough. I also love technology, especially if somebody else installs and troubleshoots it.
• So here’s how technology connected me to Martha’s Cashew Caramel Cookies: I listen in my car to Everyday Food Editor Sandy Gluck’s show on the Martha Stewart channel on Sirius radio. Sandy raved about Martha’s latest book, Martha Stewart’s Cookies, so I previewed it on Martha’s website, logged on to amazon.com and ordered it. It’s great to get exactly what you want without ever having to set foot inside a store. I guess I’m the perfect example of someone who is fully plugged into the Martha Stewart distribution network. I even asked my husband to record all of Martha’s television shows for me so that I can watch them in the evening.
• So far, each recipe that I have tried has been simple to prepare and delicious. When relatives recently came to visit, they loved the cookies so much that they even ate them for breakfast. I sent the book to my niece and she is having similar successful results. I hope you enjoy your copy of Martha Stewart Cookies as much as I do mine. I swear that I am not on her payroll, though perhaps I should be!

The cookies have a salty tang to them (because you use roasted, salted cashews) and the drizzle of caramel on the top is just a lovely finale to each cookie. They look wonderful, and taste wonderful. Thanks, Kathleen!
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Chilled Cucumber Soup, with just the hint of thickness to it. You can garnish it with fresh dill if you have it, or do as I have, sprinkle the top with some toasted sliced almonds (good for the crunch).

It’s been years – eons even – that I’ve been making cold cucumber soup. And I always thought my recipe was just the greatest. Well . . . until I tasted my friend Jackie’s soup recently. It was a lovely bridal shower at her home, and this cold cucumber soup was served as a first course. It was absolutely wonderful. Smooth. Extra smooth, with a different texture than mine has. Jackie graciously shared the recipe with me (thank you, Jackie!), and come to find out this is a COOKED soup (mine is a raw soup only, although it also has buttermilk added). And this one has the addition of Cream of Wheat (just a little bit) to thicken it very slightly. You have no idea it’s there, but that’s what the elusive texture was.

You cook up some green onions with butter, then add chicken broth, vinegar and dill weed (fresh), also some Cream of Wheat and finally the chopped-up cucumbers. The soup is smoothed twice in the blender and sour cream is added at the end. Then you garnish it with a bit more dill weed. I did make it with full-fat sour cream. Next time I might try it with low-fat just to see how it tasted. A lovely soup. Try it. Highly recommended.
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About eight years or so ago I tasted homemade hummus for the first time. Served to me by a friend who is Armenian (she’s a Parisian – not Persian, but Paris-ian, but she’s Armenian, and she lets you know you’d better not forget it!). My taste buds hit nirvana. I’d had nothing but ready made previously, and didn’t realize how incredibly easy it was to make. Or how delicious it could possibly be. Not long after that I attended a cooking class and the instructor demonstrated this method. Oh my gosh. It was so gosh-darned delicious!

The appetizer is not all that difficult, but it does have a moderate amount of work involved. I wish I could tell you there wasn’t. But, you can do most of it ahead – even the day before if you’re pushed for time. Because it has so much work involved, I tend not to make this when I’m doing a company meal with several courses. But, I’ll tell you, nobody has ever come away from the platter without oohs and aahs. Guaranteed.

Here’s what’s involved. One, you make the hummus in the food processor with canned garbanzos, garlic and tahini (sesame seed paste). Two, you slice up the eggplant and sauté it in batches in olive oil. Three, you concoct a simple balsamic vinaigrette which gets tossed with the eggplant once it’s chopped up. Mound the hummus on a lovely platter, then mound the eggplant on top of that and garnish with a bunch of chopped cilantro (or Italian parsley) and toasted pine nuts. That’s it. I serve it with toasted pita chips. The eggplant takes on a very rich mahogany color and when you serve this on a big platter with the eggplant on top, it’s very colorful. You don’t use all of the dressing, so the nutritional information is misleading.

This recipe is one of my all-time favorites and will be so marked on my recipe page (click Recipes in my right sidebar). We had a friend over for dinner last night and she helped with the preparation of this dish (thanks again for your help, Kathleen!).
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In my recent frenzy to dispose of some old magazines, I read and sorted about 20 old issues of my regular pile of food-oriented magazines. And normally I wouldn’t have stopped at a recipe for almond pound cake. But the word “limoncello” was a part of the title, so I read the story. It was included in the monthly Barbara Fairchild letter from the editor, of Bon Appetit. She explained that Inga Swenson (the actress from the tv series Benson), a friend of hers, gave her the recipe. Swedish, I would guess from her name. Then I glanced at the ingredients – almond paste, light olive oil and limoncello. Well, it got my attention because the ingredients were so unusual.

Limoncello didn’t hit my radar until a few years ago when we visited Sicily and other parts of Italy. Lemons are an integral part of the Italian – and particularly the Sicilian – food landscape. They eat them, juice them, paint them and sculpt them. And decorate everything in between (like tablecloths, napkins, plates, even silverware).

So, with a friend coming for dinner, I pulled out this recipe and my DH made a trip to the grocery store (I never keep almond paste around because it gets hard as a rock if you don’t use it very soon). The cake batter isn’t all that unusual, actually, except that you add in about 10 ounces of the almond paste (crumbled up in little pieces). I do not think – my humble opinion – that the cake portion meets the qualification of “pound” cake (used to be a pound of flour, a pound of eggs, a pound of butter). This is more like a cake-cake. It has a lighter crumb than pound cake, although the almond paste does give it a heavier texture than a cake.

After baking and cooling the cake, you slather it all over with limoncello, the lemon-flavored (vodka) liqueur that is ubiquitous in Italy. Then serve it in narrow slices. I’d serve it with whipped cream or table cream or vanilla ice cream, and maybe some berries for decoration. I didn’t have any berries or I’d have done so. Whatever the décor, this cake is scrumptious. The three of us scarfed down that cake in nothing flat. You do need to like almond as the flavor predominates through the cake. Wonderful. Worth making.
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We’ve been eating out a lot lately. For a variety of reasons. So I haven’t cooked much for several days. Also, I had only one “story” in the bank – the blog bank – so to speak – a post I wrote up last week, but haven’t yet posted. But yesterday I thought – hmmm – I need to use up some of the frozen stuff in the garage freezer.

You see, in July we’ll have a quarter of a 4-H pig arriving, so I simply MUST make room for this new part of a pig in my freezer. My kitchen Sub-Zero freezer, which is amply sized, is absolutely jamb-packed full. So, there’s trouble in river city. I need to make a conscientious effort to cook some freezer items. If you haven’t read my previous post about the 4-H pigs we’ve had over the years, you may want to read about it.

Therefore, I looked around at what was in there – a couple of pork roasts, some pork chops, a steak or two, a pan of lasagna from last fall and also found a flattish package that appeared to be meat, but the writing on it was smudged so I couldn’t read it. Oh well, defrost it anyway. My friend Cherrie calls these “mystery meat” dinners. And yes, this was mystery meat in some kind of sauce.

Once defrosted it appeared to be country ribs, already prepared in a thick marinade. So, I baked them, made a salad, and scrounged around in the refrigerator for any vegetables I might have. Sure enough, there was a whole head of cauliflower about a week old. What to do. Lacking key ingredients for nearly every recipe I looked up, I decided to wing it. And it was delicious.

Here’s what you do:

The mystery meat? Well, it was country ribs. They had been in the freezer for way too long, and I baked them a tad too long. But they were edible. With a lovely green salad, it was a simple, but delicious meal. I liked the cauliflower best – the truffle salt added a nice undertone that was undefinable, elusive, but very tasty.
No recipe for this one – it’s too easy.

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Back in the 1970’s, pita bread kind of appeared in West Coast restaurants. In fact, back then you couldn’t buy pita bread anywhere, but some restaurants did serve it. They didn’t sell the bread. So Sunset magazine did an article about it, with a recipe. Since I was a bread maker anyway, making pita didn’t intimidate me at all, and in fact I made them many times, back then. But I will admit, I had trouble with the bread opening up evenly – some parts would stick a bit. And if you couldn’t stuff the bread, well, what else could you do with them? So I had some waste.

It wasn’t long, though, before the grocery stores started carrying pita. And now we can buy whole wheat pita as well as regular. Even some flavored types on occasion as well.

Vividly I can remember, like Marcel Proust and his madeleines, the first lamb pita sandwich I had. It was a potluck at someone else’s home, and a couple I didn’t know brought lamb meatball pita sandwiches with a dark brown, rich, wine gravy to go with it. Oh my. It was so out of this world. Unfortunately for me, the guy was a chef, owned a restaurant (which I didn’t know), and was moderately offended when I asked if he’d share the recipe.

Ever since that day I’ve tried to find a recipe that would try to recreate that dish. I have tried lamb meatballs, attempted after the above incident, to figure out how to make them, and the sauce. Now I suspect it was probably an intense veal and red-wine stock that enriched the gravy.

So way back in 1973 I saw a steak pita sandwich recipe in Better Homes & Gardens (the magazine). Over the years I’ve changed it a little bit to try to make it as close to that meatball recipe as I could (but using steak instead of lamb). Marinating the sirloin steak (or a lamb steak) in a red wine-garlic-oregano mixture helps. Then you pan-fry the steak with the red onion until it’s barely done. Ahead of time you will have prepared the condiments (chopped tomato, lettuce, cucumber, and mixed the yogurt-sour cream sauce which contains some minced up green onions). Heat the pita if you’d like, but whenever I make this, the bread is back to room temp by the time you doctor up your pita with all the toppings and are ready to take your first bite.

This particular time I made it, I had some leftover rib eye steak. The steak was quite rare to start with, so I marinated the meat in the red wine-garlic mixture just as above, but when I sautéed it in the frying pan, I just barely cooked it, so the meat was warmed through, but still slightly pink when it was served. You could easily adapt this with leftover roast beef or roast lamb – just slice really thin pieces and marinate it in some red wine to give it moisture and heat it through. The original recipe didn’t serve cheese with it, but I have on occasion done so, but a typical Greek style would be crumbled Feta as another condiment, which I’ve also done, so that’s added into the recipe too. Feta may be Greek, but it might not be typical for this sandwich. I just like the texture and saltiness added to the combination.
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There are probably 1001 recipes out there for molten chocolate cake, or lava cake. Meaning that some of the batter doesn’t quite get cooked through, so when you press your fork or spoon into it, some of the center, hot batter oozes out and becomes a sauce. I have made these before, but not often, since I rarely make a heavy-duty chocolate dessert for guests. I do serve chocolate, but not usually a really heavy dose of it because the caffeine in chocolate affects me, so I assume it affects others too. I’m sensitive to caffeine. A half a cup of regular coffee and I’m feeling jittery in a matter of 15 minutes and regular coffee would probably prevent me from sleeping all night.

When this was served at the cooking class last week I hesitated. Should I really eat this? I don’t want to be up half the night playing mindless games on the computer. But my will power was weak. Especially when each of these cakes was cut in half, so I was only getting a half portion. I dug in. Ah, yes, it was good. Very good.

It’s a relatively simple recipe. The batter can be made up ahead of time, poured into ramekins and refrigerated. Then you can pop the pan into the oven about 15 minutes before you want to eat them. You could bake them just as you’re getting up from the dinner table perhaps. The only thing I learned from this version was dusting the buttered ramekins with granulated sugar before pouring in the batter. You could also use powdered cocoa (that’s what I’ve done in the past) but the granulated sugar is probably a better option. Dusting the ramekins with one or the other helps when it comes time to unmold the cakes. And make the caramel sauce ahead of time – it will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.

The good news is that I slept just fine, thank you!
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I don’t know about you, but I’ve always loved short ribs. My mother used to prepare them with some frequency, because our family all liked them. I don’t remember now how my mother prepared them. Over the years I’ve made them in numerous ways myself, but this recipe (new to me, but probably an old rendition) is so awesome. So perfect for this cut of meat.

Over the last few days I’ve mentioned a cooking class I attended last week about comfort food. Well, this recipe is the all-star winner in that category. The chef who prepared this, Deb Buzar, credited her mother-in-law for this recipe. As a professional chef, Deb said she tried countless versions of short ribs, but every time she kept going back to her mother-in-law’s recipe, and finally decided this is her favorite. She no longer even looks at other recipes. She said the sauce “made” the dish, and I wholeheartedly agree. You do want to serve this with a carb that will take the sauce, though – like mashed potatoes – she served it with the Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Shallots and Truffle Oil that I posted recently. You could use rice, but mashed potatoes are just the perfect side for these.

The chef started off the class by laughing, saying “bet you thought I was crazy to choose short ribs to make for a 2+ hour cooking class.” Then she slid a pressure cooker over for us to see. She’d brought her own – a 10-quart Fagor she uses annually for canning and in between for lots of other things too. She loves her pressure cooker and uses it very often.

The cooked short ribs set aside while I whizzed up the sauce.

I don’t own one anymore. I was given one back in the 1960’s as a wedding gift. I did use it for some years until I burned the bottom of it when I dashed outside for some reason and left artichokes cooking away in it. An hour later the artichokes of course, were burned to a crisp inside and the pan had bowed such that it was no longer usable. I felt very guilty about that and kept the darned pan for years hoping somebody could figure out how to fix it. Nope. Nada. Finally tossed it out about 15 years ago. Meanwhile, some cookware manufacturers have come out with new versions. They work infinitely better than the older variety with the rocking gadget on the top. Now there are electric models too, but from reading reviews about them I’d say the stovetop ones appear to have more control. At least for now they do. The chef and the store owner both recommended the Fagor brand (made in Spain) as the best. Later note: I’ve since bought a pressure cooker, and use it frequently!

All the sauce gets whizzed up – if you have time, chill the stuff overnight and remove the fat – otherwise it gets homogenized into the sauce.

The sauce is so very easy – chopped celery and onion (raw) combined with water, white vinegar, ketchup, sugar, salt, Worcestershire sauce and dry mustard. You brown the chunks of boneless short ribs (silverskin removed and cut into large 2-inch pieces) on two sides, then combine the sauce and meat. If you have a pressure cooker, it takes 28 minutes to process. If you bake it in a 350 F. oven, it takes about 2 hours, maybe 2 ¼ hours. It can also be done in a crock pot for about 8-10 hours too.

The calories and fat on this recipe are outrageous. I’d forgotten how bad this meat is for us. Short ribs are just riddled with fat. They used to be a cheap cut of meat. Not so much anymore. I purchased the boneless ones at Costco. The chef recommended this be made a day or two ahead, refrigerated, then you can remove the fat from the top of the sauce. It’s so gosh-darned good. And yes, more comfort food at its finest. Technically this should serve 8 people. But if they’re hungry and they like this, well, 4 pounds of meat won’t feed more than 6.
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How did the word “yum” ever come into being? It’s not a very pleasant sounding one, to my ears, and yet I do use it. Probably too often. I don’t even like the look of the word in print, either. And yet, it conveys the meaning very well. Maybe I liked it better before Rachel Ray started using the word “yum-o,” which I think is really a rank permutation of a not-very-good word. Makes me think we can’t come up with adjectives to describe something that tastes really, really good. Something that wakes up the taste buds, or soothes them, whichever the case may be.

And surely, mashed potatoes are mashed potatoes, after all. I do enjoy them immensely. More than rice. More than pasta even, but now we know they’re not all that good for us because they’re a high glycemic carb. That means they digest quickly, turn into sugar which pours into our bloodstream faster than we’d like food to do – we want food that sticks to the ribs, but in the low glycemic way – like grains do – to sustain energy, to keep us going for hours before another meal. Like brown rice does. So these days, mashed potatoes are a real, honest-to-goodness treat. I try to slap my hands when I reach for a 3-lb. bag of Yukon Gold at the market. Once in awhile I succumb, though.

Last week I attended a cooking class about comfort foods. I’d signed up for the class months ago, and didn’t even recall the subject until my friend Cherrie and I arrived at the class. Ah yes, “comfort on a plate” it was titled. We got four recipes altogether (short ribs, these mashed potatoes, green beans, and a chocolate dessert). They were all relatively simple to make, but they sure did rate high on that comfort factor. The short ribs and mashed potatoes with the sauce from the ribs poured over the potatoes . . . oh yes. Comfort for sure.

This recipe is nothing all that different as far as prep. While the potatoes are simmering (starting with COLD water, by the way) you sauté the shallots under low, low heat, so they turn golden brown, but not burned. The potatoes are riced, if possible, tossed with a bit of cream and butter and truffle oil is poured in at the end. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

One of the students in the class asked with a low voice and eyes downcast, if the chef would remove her portion before she added the truffle oil. You don’t like truffle oil? the chef blurted out. No, she said, I don’t like mushrooms. The chef said, there’s nothing in truffle oil that even remotely tastes like mushrooms.

We know that truffles are a mushroom. A much-prized one I might add – to the tune of several hundred dollars per mushroom. But they have the most elusive, yet unique flavor. But one tablespoon of truffle infused oil in a big pot of mashed potatoes? To tell you the truth, I couldn’t even TASTE the truffle oil. But anyway, the chef said she’d give her a small portion of both so she could taste the difference. Most of the rest of us were teasing the poor young woman. She did speak up later and said she liked the one with truffle oil, so she would never disparage a truffle again! So, in case you’ve never had truffle oil, I heartily suggest you try it. You can buy very small bottles of it in some places. Or larger bottles as well.

Prior to this above dialog, one of the other students in the class asked why the chef would put chocolate in mashed potatoes? She’d only seen truffle candy and couldn’t quite get the incongruity of mashed potatoes mixed up with chocolate. We all got a good laugh about that.

But oh so good are these potatoes. Delicious. Smooth. Comforting. Hot. And yes, yummy.
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