Too Lazy to Cook

It isn't too hot. There is no family crisis. And we aren't being pulled in ten million directions.

Nope. It's just a week filled with dogs using beds and carpets as bathrooms, teething babies, whining and sniveling Monsters, taking care of the neighbours' incredible barfing cat, and a miserable time at work. So no, I don't feel like cooking.

Last night we went out. Yeah, that was a mistake. The girls are normally great in a restaurant, but last night they were not. So rather than resort to true laziness and simply boiling water for pasta I pulled out some leftover bread from Aviv. A quick survey of the counter and fridge revealed the rest of the ingredients for dinner: tomatoes, peaches, and some mallow and green onions from last week's CSA delivery.

Yup, when you are too lazy to cook you can still have a damn tasty meal. Just 10 minutes of chopping and a quick drizzle of oil and vinegar and you've got panzanella. For us non-italians, that means bread salad.

This is a technique more so than a recipe. I've never made this without tomatoes, but the rest of it depends on what herbs and other veggies I have around. Sometimes cucumber and red onions. Sometimes coriander and roast peppers. And today, peaches, mallow, and green onions.

Basic Panzanella

serves 1-4, or more

1/2 to 1 loaf of day old crusty bread

1 pint cherry tomatoes or two to three tomatoes, chopped

peaches, cucumbers, onions, peppers, or veg of choice - a couple of chopped handfuls

1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2-3 tablespoons of fresh herbs - basil, mint, oregano, mallow

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

1. Tear or cut your bread into rough 1 inch pieces.

2. Place bread in a bowl, add tomatoes and remaining ingredients of choice. Add garlic and herbs.

3. Drizzle generously with olive oil and vinegar. Season generously and eat.

Oh, and in case you thought that even this dinner was immune to the daily frustrations of life these days this was half of dinner, before we even started. I was coming inside after taking a few pictures and the dog jumped up, knocking the bowl from my hand. Sigh.

Impress Your Girlfriends

The next time you've got friends coming over for dinner or brunch and are worried about impressing them, make this dish.  You will look like a star, with 10 minutes of effort.  Just 10 minutes.  It works for mother-in-laws too.

This is the humble clafoutis.  See, it even has a fancy French name (pronounced kla-foo-TEE). It's not a showstopper cake topped with ganache.  Nor is it a buttercream topped cupcake.  And nay, it is not a labor-intensive pie. Just a simple clafoutis.

It does look good, though, right?

Traditionally a clafoutis is made with cherries, and nothing but cherries.  But we came home from a weekend visiting family facing a limited supply of groceries. I had a lot of apricots and a lot of cherries.  With just a few other simple ingredients we had dinner.

Yes, I said dinner.  We had a late lunch on the way into town so this is what we ate before the girls went to bed. I whipped it up, stuck it in the oven while we finally hung the swing Smilosaurus got for her birthday.  After the tantrums started I took the ridiculously good smelling 'pancake' out of the oven and we promptly ate it all but one piece.  And that one was eaten Nigella style at 3 am by me.

It really is an easy recipe.  All you need is a blender and a pie plate. Smilosaurus even pushed the button on the bender for me. Without any effort you can have dessert, or my favourite concept, brunch. 

And the taste?  It is described as a pancake or custard.  I thought it was more crepe like, but a bit heavier. Baked custard? Just know that it isn't pie, cobbler, crisp, crumble or buckle. It is clafoutis.

As I said, I used apricots and cherries, but any stone fruit or berry would work. Perhaps peaches and raspberries or plums, apricots, and nectarines. The recipe is based on one I found during Summer Fest, and comes from good ol' Martha.

Fruit Clafoutis

(serves 4-6)

1/2 cup vanilla sugar

2/3 cup milk

1/3 cup heavy cream

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

2/3 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 cups sliced fruit

1. Peel and slice fruit (peaches, plum, or apricots into 6-8 slices and cherries in half). Set aside.

1. Butter a 9 inch pie dish and dust with a tablespoon of sugar. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Blend all ingredients except for the fruit in a blender for a minute.

3. Pour half the custard mixture into the prepared pie plate.  Arrange fruit on top and pour the rest of the custard over the fruit.

4. Bake for 45-55 minutes, until the top is golden brown and puffy.

Serve warm or cold with whipped cream.

Taste Adventure - Sour Cherries

Behold, the sour cherry. And the sour cherry pie. Oh, the sweet sour cherry pie.

Until about 10 days ago I always thought that sour cherries were an edible myth created by American food editors. Created to make do with smaller Bing cherries or like fried green tomatoes, something to do with unripe fruit. Then I was wandering through the tables of yet another BC fruit seller at the market, comparing prices for a small container of blueberries, when I noticed the sign. If it wasn't for the sign I probably wouldn't have noticed the sour cherries. They looked like a smaller, paler cousin to the giant Bings. So I snapped up a large container for a ridiculous price and daydreamed about all the recipes I've read over the years.

And then I remembered that I gave away all my magazines.

But really, there was only one thing to do. How could I not make pie to pop my sour cherry? Yes, I just said that. That's how monumental this is.

The first taste was surprising. You know the canned cherry pie filling you can buy? The kind that fills every commercial pie and black forest cake? Surprisingly, a plain sour cherry tastes exactly like that, just less sweet. I had kind of figured that this mythical creature was like grape juice - the real tasting radically different from the processed. That taste excited me immensely and gave me a huge boost of confidence. I figured there was no way to mess this up.

To give you an idea of the size of a sour cherry here it is next to an organic Rainier. The organic ones are smaller than the regular ones and that sour cherry seemed positively tiny in comparison to a regular Bing. They were easy to pit, simply coming apart between my thumbs.

The Monster and I pitted the cherries, we boiled the juices with some cornstarch and sugar, stirred in the rest of the cherries and a generous pat of butter. Then I made some pate brisee, chilled it, and when I rolled it out I knew I had a winner. I made the pies, mopped on some cream, and sprinkled them with raw sugar for some extra crunch. I put them in a hot oven, then I promptly forgot about them.

It was a near disaster in an already frustrating day. But I caught them just before complete failure. The juices ran just a little and those were the really cooked bits, and easily picked off. In the end, though, they were the perfect finish to an eventful day. And like any good first date, it ended well. So well.

I do have some cherry pie filling left. I froze the bit that was left in the hopes that I'll find more sour cherries this weekend. If not, then I figure I'm going to try and use regular Bings, perhaps with a bit of almond extract added.

Cherry Hand Pies
Makes 15-16 generously sized pies

Pate brisee (enough for a double crust pie)

5 cups pitted sour cherries, loosely packed

3/4 cup granulated sugar or vanilla sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 tablespoons water

1/2 lemon, juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons butter

1. Make your pate brisee or pie crust recipe. Chill well.

2. Once you have pitted your cherries drain them. Pour off the juice into a small saucepan, with one cup of cherries and the sugar. Heat over medium high heat until the sugar is dissolved and liquid is boiling.

3. Meanwhile, stir the cornstarch and the water together. Once the cherry liquid is boiling add the cornstarch mixture. Continue to boil until the liquid is clear, a few minutes.

4. Remove from heat and add the butter. Once the butter is melted add the remaining cherries. Set aside to cool.

5. Once the mixture is cool take your pate brisee out of the fridge. On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to a quarter inch thickness. Cut into roughly 4 by 6 inch squares or cut out circles about 5 inches in diameter, whatever is your preference.

6. Working one at a time, place 2 heaping tablespoons of filling on the center of each piece of dough. Fold one side over the other and seal well by pinching the edges together. You could finish by pressing a fork around the edge.

7. Place on a Silpat or parchment lined cookie sheet, brush with cream or milk, sprinkle with raw sugar, and cut two small slits in the top of each. Place in the freezer.

8. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

9. Bake pies for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

This is the second week for Summer Fest '09. Make sure you take a browse around the other participants. A Way to Garden, Matt Bites, White on Rice Couple, and Steamy Kitchen, among others are leading the way. Make sure to share your own Summer Fest experiences here, there, and everywhere.

Ice Cream for Dinner

Some days diets and nutrition are just thrown out the window. When you are young, single, and childless it is pretty damn easy to make a dinner of nachos and beer, or perhaps some chips and dip in front of wrestling on TV (been there). Having kids, though, makes nights like those so much more difficult, yet so necessary.

Gone are the days of pizza on the couch or a bowl of cereal for dinner. I would like to blame an irrational desire to promote nutrition and proper dinner etiquette, but I have to blame The Monster. We tried, more than once, to make it a big treat to have dinner at the coffee table in front of a hockey game or Le Tour de France.  No dice, that kid insists on eating dinner together at the dining room table.  We're lucky she doesn't know anything about white tablecloths and candles. Sure, it is our fault for a general insistence on table manners and enforcement of dinnertime rules. But seriously, can't we relax the rules, just a little?

I did discover a good way to do that - don't even mention it's dinner.  Just sit down on the floor at the coffee table, food in hand.  Let them come to you, begging to try your treat.  Then, don't feed them dinner.

That is how we came to have ice cream for dinner the other night.  Hubby was out of town so it was just me and the girls. I'd had a day, just a long, draining day.  And I wanted to try and get a decent picture of this ice cream before 9 pm.  Since the ice cream was all soft (too soft) and I didn't want to freeze it again, I scooped it all in one bowl, parked in front of Le Tour, and we ate ice cream for dinner.  And damn, it felt good.

Strawberry ice cream with a rhubarb swirl.  If one felt so inclined a sprinkling of granola on top would make it the ice cream interpretation of a strawberry rhubarb crisp.  But I wanted smooth, creamy, tangy, and sweet.  And this delivered.

The ice cream was made with the custard base I've developed and quite like - creamy and thick without being eggy. I macerated, then pureed strawberries. Then added a swirl of stewed rhubarb before it was placed in the freezer.  

Just a note on the rhubarb.  The picture below shows two different versions of stewed rhubarb, made exactly the same way.  One was with pretty much green stalks, one with very red stalks. There was pretty much no difference in taste. The only difference is cosmetic. I saved the brown stuff for a topping for oatmeal and yogurt, and used the pink stuff in the ice cream.

   

Strawberry Ice Cream with a Rhubarb Swirl

Makes about 5-6 cups

2 cups half and half cream

1 cup heavy (whipping) cream

1 cup milk

1/2 a vanilla bean, split

3 egg yolks

2 cups cleaned, hulled strawberries

1 cup sugar, divided

1 cup chopped rhubarb

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon water

Splash of vodka

1. Combine creams, milk, vanilla bean, and 1/2 cup sugar in a heavy saucepan.  Heat while stirring, but do not scald or boil.  Whip egg yolks in small bowl.  Slowly pour 1/2 cup of warm cream/milk mixture into eggs, whisking constantly.  Pour eggs/cream/milk mixture back into the remaining cream/milk mixture.  Heat, stirring constantly until custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (5-10 minutes).  Remove from heat, pour through a sieve into a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard, and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

2.  While custard is cooling slice the strawberries and macerate in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar.  Just before you want to make the ice cream blitz the strawberries with a food processor of mash well with a fork.

3. Make your stewed rhubarb.  Combine rhubarb, brown sugar, and water in a small saucepan. Set on medium heat to cook.  Stir occasionally while the mixture cooks down.  After a few minutes the rhubarb will be almost broken down and the sauce will be thick.  Remove from heat and cool completely.  Add a splash of vodka just before adding to the ice cream. 

4.  Stir the strawberries into the cooled custard and make ice cream according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

5. When your ice cream is done, place half in a container for the freezer.  Dollop half of the cooled rhubarb over the ice cream.  Scoop over the remaining ice cream, top with dollops of the remaining rhubarb.  Quickly run a knife through the ice cream to swirl the rhubarb.  Place some plastic wrap directly on the surface of the ice cream and freeze until firm.