Strawberry, Spinach and Fennel Salad

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So… I made this salad a while ago when strawberries were still in season.  It was delicious then and it would still be delicious now given that there are berries coming in from the more northern climates and they still have that freshness that I crave, also fennel is coming into season right now – so go for it.  I liked the quickness of this for a couple of reasons – 1) a little chopping and a masterpiece is created and 2) spinach and strawberries are a match made in heaven.  For real. Also it was one of those salads that barely needed to be dressed – a little bit of well aged balsamic and some olive oil and a quick satisfying meal is made.

It was raining when Boyfriend and I ate this salad, which was originally for a naively imagined craft night that lasted a total of three weeks for those of us involved.  But regardless I loved it – the night crunch of  fennel with the softness of the strawberry and the mellow smoothness of baby spinach was amazing.  I can just imagine how very good this would have been if it had been hot outside or the urge to cook wasn’t particularly high.

It also only took about 10 minutes, including hulling and chopping – instant gratification dinner.  I’m there.

Strawberry, Spinach and Fennel Salad
Note: If you want to add a few walnuts or pine nuts to this salad I’m pretty sure it would rock.  Also some goat cheese crumbles would pair beautifully.  Truestory.

10-12 Medium Strawberries Hulled and Quartered (about 1/2 cup)
10 oz Washed Baby Spinach (about 2 Cups)
1 Medium Bulb of fennel sliced finely (about 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup Nuts (optional)
2 oz Goat cheese (optional)
Balsamic Vinegar and Olive Oil

Slice and rinse the fennel and set it aside.  Line a wide, shallow dish with the spinach (I used a pie plate and I think it was just right).  Sprinkle the fennel evenly over the spinach and then add the strawberries.  If you are using the nuts and goat cheese you can add them now or have them in bowls to the side for optional toppings.  Serve the salad immediately with a light drizzle of good quality Balsamic vinegar (I used Blueberry balsamic and it was delicious) and olive oil.

Enjoy!

Fresh Blueberry Pie

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I love August.  I love the cicadas calling in the high grass and the smell of blueberries ripening on the air.  I love swimming in the afternoons and trying to get the purple out from under your fingernails after a long day of raking. And I love the blueberries.  There is something so intensely satisfying in picking a sun warmed blueberry and popping it in your mouth with that tartness on your tongue.  It’s also a very short window this heaven of blueberries in Washington County Maine (it’s one of the best parts of the whole year there… long hot days and blueberries for as far as you can run along 1A).

This year the blueberries are not cooperating – they’re super early (like when I was little raking started last week and the season ran for two weeks)and at this point have completely gone by.  I went home last week and in a panic of not getting blueberries for my year demanded my mom help me out – she did because she loves me and raked about 20 pounds of blueberries for my big sister and I to split when I got home.  I of course got home and promptly came down with a cold that put my out of commission for two days, and my blueberries sat in the fridge wiating for me to feel better.  On Thursday I did feel better.  With that good health came THIS PIE.  This pie is my ode to perfect fresh pie.  As a late night snack or breakfast it is delicious – the tartness of the berries makes it a not-too-sweet dip into the delightfulness that is this pie.  Top it with sweetened slightly whipped cream and its “practically-perfect-in-every-way.”

With August running hot and humid everywhere this is cooling in all the right ways, not to mention picking the berries on the right piece of land makes you feel as though you should live in the country slowly getting sunburned while berries pop off of their stems forever, though I may be a bit partial. 

Fresh Berry Pie a la Mom
Note: This pie can go in a crust or just in a bowl topped by whipped cream, it’s delicious either way.  Either way its a “day-of” kind of pie.  You can use frozen berries to create the glaze, thus preserving your fresh if you like.

For the Crust – Buy it.  Brush it with egg white and bake at 350 for 10-15 mins until its golden.   Let it cool completely.

For the Pie
2 Qts fresh berries (any kind though I like blueberry) cut to bite sized pieces, washed and picked over, 3/4 cup reserved
1 cup Sugar
1 cup water
1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg (optional)
1/2 tsp Cinnamon (optional)
3 Tbs Cornstarch (shaken with 1/4 cup water)
1/2 Lemon, juiced (about 1 Tbs)

Add water, sugar and 1 cup of the berries to a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.  Once the water/sugar/berries/nutmeg/cinnamon have come to a boil add the cornstarch/water to it.  Continue to simmer that sauce for 5 minutes until it is clear and think (this is a great fruit glaze in general).  Remove the sauce from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.  In a large bowl gently fold the sauce into the fresh berries, evenly coating them.  Drop this pie filling into your pre-baked crust and smooth it out until it’s even, it will slightly overfill an 8″ crust and come to the top of a 9″.  Top the filled pie with the reserved berries and refrigerate for 2-3 hours – I suggest taking this opportunity to locate more berries for your second pie.  Serve with a generous dallop of very slightly whipped cream. DELICIOUS.  Enjoy.

Custard Ice Cream with Mixed Berries

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So… Failure in the kitchen makes me horrifically sad.  I nearly start to cry and Boyfriend always has to steal whatever I have deemed unacceptable away from me so I don’t throw it out in a fit of anger.  Most of the time these failures can be attributed to one of two things 1) I got sloppy and missed a step or 2) I was hurrying and just didn’t wait properly.  This failure falls into the didn’t wait category.

When I got home from work and saw that I had missed a UPS package I immediately called them and asked the UPS office to hold it, in the distribution center down the street for pick-up the next day.  Then I googled ice cream recipes for 10 hours, custard, sorbets, fro-yos, sorbettos, gelatos, you name it I was obsessively searching for it on google as a break in for my new Ice Cream Maker attachment for the KitchenAid (otherwise known as Esther).  I found four to try and printed them out for later and trekked home in a downpour.  Did you know there are 3 UPS buildings in a 1 block radius in Watertown?  Neither did I.   I had to go to all of them before finding my ice cream maker and heading home with it to freeze.

Now: Day 2 Ice Cream Maker is frozen and I can’t find the Ice cream recipes I so carefully weeded through – ANYWHERE.  They’re gone the way of the cooler temperatures so I’ll use the one from the KitchenAid book that came with it, it can’t be that bad right?  And you know in all fairness to the KitchenAid people – it probably wasn’t, the custard base tasted fine and the berries were delicious (like a big kid slushpuppy glazed in Chambord).  But I couldn’t wait and poured the STILL STEAMING custard into the nicely frozen ice cream maker.  Failure.  SO.MUCH.FAILURE.  I turned it on and went to watch 30Rock, nothing happened but some sweat peeing onto the counter.  Sadness.

The next morning it was full of shard of ice – like it had melted and refrozen all wrong.  The worst experience ever with ice cream.  Maybe take two will be better?  Keep your fingers crossed for me because those stillettos of ice were just not pleasant melting in my mouth.  Not at all.

Custard Ice Cream with Mixed Berries
Note: I’m sure with patience I can actually make this ice cream.  Now if I only knew where I had put that down.

Mixed Berry Mash
2 cups mixed berries, I used raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries
2 Tbs of your favorite liquor or brandy (I used Chambord and it tasted EXACTLY like a blue slush puppy)

Mix the berries together in a bowl with the liquor and mash them a bit with a masher so they’re all about he same size and some of the juice has been a little pressed out.

Custard Ice Cream Base
2 1/2 cups half and half
8 Egg Yolks
1 cup sugar (I used 2/3 cup)
2 1/2 cups whipping cream
4 tsp Vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

In a saucepan heat the half and half to just bubbling – stirring often to keep it from scalding.
Mix the sugar and egg yolks together in a medium bowl stirring until they’re thick and ribbony, about 2 minutes of mixing by hand.  Mix in the half and half to the eggs and sugar slowly while continuing to stir to keep the eggs from scrambling.  Stir the whole thing until it has set and is a light yellow color.  Return the egg, sugar, and half and half mixture to the pan and bring to a second simmer stirring constantly until it starts to lightly bubble on the edges – DO NOT BOIL IT. Put the hot custard base back into your mixing bowl and gently stir in the vanilla, salt and cream.  Cover and do what I was too impatient to do and CHILL IT.  Watch a movie, have a nap, go to bed then make breakfast.  AFTER cooling put the chilled custard in the bowl of your ice cream maker and follow the instructions.  Add the mixed berries at the very very end just in the last two or three twirls of the ice cream maker.  And there it is.  I hope you have better luck than I did.

Blueberry Lemonade

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If you add blueberries to anything I’ll try it.  I love them, the tart blue globes that burst on the tongue when you close your mouth and the sweetness that is rich and perfect at the same time.  I think this love of the blue berry goes back to my childhood on a big blueberry field in Maine.  We had lowbush wild blueberries and come late July you could find me with my hand in the berries covered in the purple juices that flowed from them.  It was so satisfying to run down through those huge fields trying to keep my balance while leap-frogging rocks and stonewalls to find the best patch of berries.  The “best” berries were always dark blue, nearly black, and in clumps that i would squat down by and eat before my sister, older and more sensible as she was, would pick them to make pie – more berries made it to my mouth then my picking vessel (they still do for that matter).

I love to eat the berries popping them one at a time off the bush but I hate to rake them.  Raking seems like so much work to me with those awkward handles and the sharp tines which I would poke into my ankle or calf – drawing blood and attracting the early morning mosquitoes.  And the hours, the hours of a raker are awful, getting up at 5 or 5:30 and raking until 11:30 or 12 when the berries got to soft from the heat and would turn to instant jam in your bucket, I really hated those hours and always dragged my feet.  Not that it mattered I was a terrible raker, regardless of when I started.  I mangled berries and never got to the bottom of the bush, leaving behind more berries than I raked at times and raising the ire of whichever family member was heading up the crew to work the fields (usually an aunt or a cousin).

But in Maine it’s blueberry season again, and the rakers are starting to get all of the juice and fruit to Wyman’s or some other processor to be cleaned and eaten for the sake of everyone.  The Maine blueberry is my pride and joy – leading to great arguments with my friends from New Jersey who claim they have the better blueberry, we both know they’re just looking for something for Jersey to claim as it’s own.  It’s addictive and it you drop it in lemonade it’s just heavenly.  The tartness of the lemon and the sweetness of the blueberry marry so well that this is something everyone should have in their refrigerators all the time, especially if they are like me and obsessed with lemonade but are always disappointed with the store brand they come across.  I found this to be especially refreshing over the past week or so while we all baked in the greater Boston area.

Blueberry Lemonade
Note: If you want to add ice cubes to this lemonade please count them as water or it will be too watery.
Adapted from The Betty Crocker Cookbook circa 1950

1 1/2 cup lemon juice (about 9 lemons squeezed)
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup water
Rind of 3 lemons, cut into eighths
1/2 -3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen but they better be from MAINE

Combine the water, sugar, lemon rind and blueberries in a saucepan and just bring them to a boil.  Boil for 3-4 minutes, creating a flavored sugar syrup. Strain the syrup into a medium bowl trying to press the juices out of the lemon rind and berries as you do.  I used a vegetable steamer for this – it worked perfectly.  Add the lemon juice to this mixture and you will have your lemonade base.
Using your syrup as a base add water to flavor, I like 1 part syrup to 3 parts water.  To dress it up use club soda or a lemon sparkling water for that refreshing tingle.

Eli’s Lentil Soup

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Last week I went on vacation in Maine.  It was wonderful, we were in Greenville (the head of Moosehead Lake) and spent the better portion of the time reading and cooking (well I was reading and cooking, Boyfriend was video gaming and coding).  But the best part of the vacation? We were with our best friends from college and their two year old son (our godson).  Their Son, named Eli, loves lentils so I brought some and one night for a quick meal we made this soup.

My favorite part of lentil soup is its simplicity.  The satisfaction of creating a soup with onions and cheap dried goods is truly awesome, and all I can think is that I really should have played with lentils sooner than March of this year.  The simplicity of Lentil Soup really leant itself to this particular kitchen adventure because Eli wanted to help which meant more time making sure chubby adorable fingers don’t get burned and less time checking measurements and trying to be exact.  So we made soup, best friend did most of the heavy cutting and Eli added all the spices and did some key stirring for us.

Eli loved the soup so much he ate 3 bowls worth (about 2 cups).  Which I took as a rave review, because let’s face it – there’s no one pickier than a 2 year old with discerning tastes.  The adults in the house followed the soup up with instant gratification yellow cake with chocolate frosting (delicious)  and a viewing of The Fifth Element.

Eli’s Lentil Soup
Note: I think this would translate well to a cold soup with an addition of about 1 more cup of stock or water to thin it a bit.  Also the sausage/bacon in optional and its very easy to substitute in vegetable stock for the chicken for a vegetarian soup.

1 medium onion chopped
2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 cup celery chopped
1/2 red pepper chopped
1 small zucchini (optional) chopped coarsely
2-3 slices thick cut bacon cut into small strips or 2 oz sausage skinned and broken up (optional)
4 cups stock (vegetable of chicken works)
2 cups water (add another for cold soup)
2 cups lentils (I use 1 cup French and 1 cup red but it doesn’t matter)
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1 tsp thyme, or use 2-3 fresh stalks for an even better flavor.
Salt and Pepper to taste

If you are using it cook your bacon or sausage in your soup pot.  Add the onion, garlic, and celery to the pot and saute them for 2-3 minutes (until the onion is transparent).  Add the pepper and cook it until soft (another minute or so).  Add the stock and let it come to boil, don’t get impatient here the boiling stock makes a difference.  Once the stock has come to a boil add your lentils, stir, and leave it alone for about half an hour.  Go have a dance party with your godson to Lady Gaga, because that’s what the cool kids are doing.  Check the soup if the lentils are starting to soften toss in the zucchini and cook for another 10-15 mins or until the zucchini is cooked through.  Serve the soup!  This is delicious with a big slice of crusty bread to dip in it.  YUM!  Enjoy your soup and then let the dance party continue, maybe with some music from GLEE!