CSA week 19 - Strawberry kalamata ice cream

If you didn't read all the way to the end of my post on the Coral Gables Food and Wine Festival (and I wouldn't blame you a bit if you didn't), you missed the strawberry/tomato/black olive parfait that was being offered by the Miccosukee resort. I liked the flavor combination a lot so stole it for an ice cream recipe.

The parfait didn't have any pieces of olive in it and, at first, I wanted to infuse the flavor they way they did, but, not really knowing how to do that, I thought it would add an extra layer of uncertainty to an already risky recipe.

Instead I just took a simple strawberry ice cream recipe and mixed in some chopped olives. I can go for elegant next time once I know what I'm doing. I chose kalamata because I wanted a black olive that a) I could reliable get and b) was unmistakably fruity in flavor and had a substantial meaty texture. All I did was give them a good rinse to get the brine off, but I just found a video cooking demo for an olive cobbler that simmers them in port and sugar to get a more cherry-like flavor out of them. Interesting idea, but it kind of seems like cheating.

The ice cream recipe comes from the Perfect Scoop, and like I said, it's really simple. Slice up one pound of strawberries (two pints exactly, I found) and macerate them in 3/4 sugar and a Tablespoon of vodka or kirsch for an hour. Then put the berries and the expressed juices into a food processor with two cups of cream and a good squeeze of lemon. (Lebovitz actually uses one cup cream and one cup sour cream which would be dandy if I was just making strawberry ice cream. But sour cream plus black olives equals topping for bad nachos to me which I hoped to avoid evoking here.) Process until not quite smooth, chill and churn. This actually makes more than would fit into my standard-sized churn so I had to do it in two batches. Once that was done, I mixed in a good-sized handful of chopped olives, gave it a night in the freezer and here you go:



As you can see, the texture isn't as creamy as I usually get. This is more of a Philadelphia style ice cream so that's to be expected. You can also see lots of olives. I think I went a little overboard. With the strawberry flavor damped down by the cold, the olive is a little more prominent that I wanted. That said, the flavors do work very nicely. Actually, I seem to be the least happy with it of everyone whose tried to so far as it's getting rave reviews. I should have taken some notes when I had some this afternoon as I'm having trouble describing the flavors evocatively at this remove. I'm going to have to get technical instead. You've had strawberry ice cream--I don't have to describe that. This is a fairly mild rendition that supplies mainly low notes with a deep berry flavor and the rich creaminess. The olives themselves have fruity middle notes with salty highlights here and there. Does that make sense? Maybe I'll try again later.

CSA week 19 - Semur terong

which would be steamed eggplant in dark sauce. Eggplant stew is the exact translation from Indonesian, but that doesn't tell you much. "Dark sauce" is all that helpful either, I suppose.

Anyway, I didn't much feel like cooking tonight. I've been suffering from the dreaded oogy tummy syndrome lately. But even if I don't want to eat, I've still got to blog so here we are.

This is a modestly modified version of a recipe from my go to Indonesian cookbook The Indonesian Kitchen. I really ought to get another one of these days just to compare the different takes on the cuisine.

Ingredients:
1 pound eggplant, cut horizontally in 1/2 inch thick slices
1 egg, beaten with 1/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons peanut oil
1/4 cup thin-sliced onion
1/4 cup thin-sliced pepper
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 cup beef or chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (less if it's fresh)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons sweet soy sauce

1. Steam eggplant slices for five minutes. Remove and cool. (I had to pile up my eggplant to fit them all in the steamer. A dual level Chinese-style bamboo steamer might have room to lay everything out. I also found that the eggplant started falling apart as I removed it to a bowl. I decided to just go with that.)

2. Dip eggplant in egg and fry in 4 Tablespoons oil over medium high heat for two to three minutes, until light brown on both sides. (Individually dipping each slice in egg, even if they were holding together, would be a huge pointless pain so I just tossed the eggplant with the egg and dumped it all into a hot pan.) Remove and set aside.

3. Add remaining 2 Tablespoons of oil to pan, heat and add onion, garlic and peppers. Fry two minutes. Add stock, salt, sugar, nutmeg, pepper and sweet soy sauce. Cook three minutes more. Return eggplant and cook two minutes. Serve over rice.



Not much to look at, particularly with the eggplant all broken up like that, but, well, it's not much to taste either. It's rather bland and mushy. Just what my stomach can handle, but that wasn't my intention.

My cookbook has a second semur terong recipe which has made its way out onto the open web, so you can find it here. In retrospect, that looks rather better. Make that instead.

Vacation wrap-up, Week 19 start-up

I'm back and, thanks to la Diva, I've got this week's share.

As I predicted, I was kicked out of the kitchen while my mother, sister and brother-in-law cooked for Passover. I didn't even get to make any dessert. I don't really know how this traditional came about. They must have settled into a routine while I was living in San Diego and couldn't afford to fly back cross-country every year. Just as well, probably, as I've never actually roasted a turkey, braised a brisket, made chopped liver or matzo balls so I'd probably screw them up on my first try. Or more likely, do something different with them. Briskets should be smoked and there are plenty of interesting things to do with chicken livers.

Not that my mother's chopped liver recipe isn't interesting; she's got a few tweaks to the standard methodology that are worth recording. I'll took some notes and some pictures and I'll give it it's own sometime soon.

I did get to cobble together a meal from the picked-over leftovers: just some roasted broccoli and turkey scraps. I sauteed some onion and mushrooms, added the leftovers to reheat, then chicken soup and cream, salt, pepper and plenty of nutmeg which I cooked down for a sauce to go over fresh pasta. I didn't have a pasta maker so the noodles ended up quite thick and chewy, but since I didn't have to struggle with a pasta maker they were really easy to make. That's something everyone makes a few days after Thanksgiving, right?

I also spent some time looking through the cookbooks my sister brought and found a really interesting recipe for the beets. It's rather involved and I have the more perishable items from week 19 to worry about first so it may be a little while before I get around to it, though. How did you guys deal with the giant beets? Or are they still taunting you from the backs of your refrigerators?


As for those week 19 items, let's start with the leeks. When I thought they were more spring onions I decided on doing an onion bread and not 100% on abandoning that idea. But I've always liked leeks in a cream sauce too. I'll have to see what they look like cleaned up; I may have enough there for two recipes, particularly with last week's spring onions added to the pile.

For the eggplant, I have a Javanese eggplant in sweet soy sauce recipe I want to make and I'm thinking of adding onions, peppers and squash to make a weird version of ratatouille out of it.

La Diva got me an extra bag of green beans and I intend to freeze one of them. The other I want to use in a cold salad. I've gone back over the 11 different ways I've cooked green beans since starting this blog and and concluded that I prefer them cold. I'll figure out the exact details later. Bacon will probably be involved.

The cabbage will keep so I won't worry about that. The strawberries I need to add to last week's to make up enough for the strawberry/black olive ice cream I'm planning. Not enough kale or cucumber for much. I'll probably just make chips with the kale and pair the cucumber with dill and tuna or salmon for something simple. That leaves the Chinese celery which I need for my mysterious beet recipe from earlier in the post.

CSA week 18 - Quinoa-crusted quiche

It's been a while since I've made a quiche. I spent some time last Fall experimenting with crumb crusts trying to come up with something with a good texture that didn't require most of a stick of butter to make. I finally settled on using cracker crumbs mixed with finely grated cheese and blind baked like a pie crust.

So when I finished making beet-top, spring-onion, grape-tomato pizza last night with plenty of each left over (not to mention half a ball of fresh mozzarella), and thought of quiche as a way to use up some more, I wanted to do something a bit different with the crust.

Frequent commenter Kat has made polenta crusts that she's talked about on her blog so I thought I'd try quinoa to see how that might work.

I started by cooking up a half cup of quinoa, mixing it with a quarter cup of panko bread crumbs, salt and a spice blend and letting it cool. Once it was workable, I pressed it into a 9-inch pie pan. It was a little crumblier than I wanted, although it was sticking together, so I decided to pre-bake it. I grated a good layer of pecorino toscano over top before putting it into a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. The results were interesting. The cheese melted to form a sort of shellac over the quinoa. I think mixing it in would have worked well, but this protective coating should keep the crust intact.

Meanwhile, for the filling, I fried up a couple thick slices of bacon until crisp, set those aside and sautéed a handful each of beet- and spring onion-tops along with a good bit of parsley. Once those were just about done I added a handful of grape tomatoes to cook just a little bit. I just quartered the tomatoes instead of slicing them as I wanted to have them be distinct chunks in the quiche and not just a general tomatoey flavor thinning out the custard. And finally, I chopped up a thick slice of mozzarella into half-inch cubes, crumbled the bacon and mixed it all together for the final filling.

I decided to experiment with the custard a bit too as I had half a cup of leftover Greek yogurt I wanted to use. I mixed that with a cup of milk, a quarter cup or so of grated cheddar cheese and four eggs for the custard. That turned out to be just a little too much so I wasn't able to get the pan into the oven without spillage, but I didn't lose a whole lot.

I baked it at 375 degrees for 45 minutes and then ate leftover pizza while it cooled because the whole thing took a lot longer than I expected and was getting really hungry.

After 15 minutes of cooking, here it is.



Near the center, quiche and quinoa stayed separate and the quinoa stayed crumbly so it's not much of a crust there. But closer to the edges, and particularly up on the sides, the custard soaked down. It's delicate, but it holds together and I think it'll be firmer once it's cold. The flavors blend nicely too. The soaking in means there's less custard on top so the filling ratio is higher than I was hoping for and it's hard to judge whether the yogurt has any real influence on the flavor. So I'm inconclusive on that part of the experiment. I was worried about the random mix of cheeses, but they're all mild. The bacon smooths over any faults and the quinoa matches well with the eggs and smokiness so, even if there are faults in some specific areas, I'm going to call this overall a success.

CSA week 18 start-up

Nothing much to wrap up for week 17. I tried to reproduce the hindbeh bil zayt with the daikon tops to see if it was the dandelions or the method that made it taste so good, but I couldn't resist tweaking it so much that I couldn't make a fair comparison in the end. And daikon tops aren't really your first choice as greens go so maybe not a fair comparison even if I did do it straight.

As for this week, I'm heading out of state on Monday for a week visiting family so I tried to take from my share only what I could use right away or freeze. I ended up taking most everything anyway.


The carrots and the beets can sit in the back of the refrigerator for a while without degrading much if I remove the tops. Same goes from the spring onion, I think. The squash should freeze well; I defrosted some zucchini this week and it seemed just fine. In my experience green pepper gets mushy when frozen and defrosted, but I've never really done it in the proper way so it's still worth a shot.

I left the carrot tops and the parsley in the extras bin. so that leaves the beet and onion tops and the tomatoes. That should make a good pizza topping, I think. I need to go buy some mozzarella.

Further on my trip, I'm not sure if I'll be able to post anything or have anything much to post about. I'm generally kicked out of the kitchen for Passover dinner, but I might be put in charge of dessert. We do the kosher for Passover thing, but not the meat and dairy thing so a mousse is a good choice. Maybe I'll write up my mom's chopped liver; I'd like to at least have the recipe for myself.

Also, I'm getting back too late on Saturday to pick up my share and I can't find anyone who wants it. So if you can find it a good home and you can come by the 24th street pick-up point to get it, please let me know.

CSA week 17 - orange-miso glazed scallops and bok choy

I'm not generally fond of fruit in savory dishes, but orange juice is a borderline case. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but I'm willing to consider it as an ingredient. Tonight I wanted to use at least one of the oranges as part of dinner. And also the bok choy which narrowed things down a bit.

I found a few different possibilities, but the one that appealed was this recipe I found at a vegan website, veggiemealplans.com:

1/3 cup orange juice [from one CSA orange if you juice it right]
4 teaspoons mirin
2 teaspoons rice vinegar (unseasoned)
1 tablespoon shiro miso
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (vary amount to suit your preferences)
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
2 scallions, chopped [I was all out so I used red onion, chopped fine]

I don't think I've ever had orange with miso, but it sounded like it might work. They used it to glaze tofu, but I'm all out and I thought those flavors would work well with scallops too.

So, I mixed up the glaze and set it aside, brined some scallops, blanched the bok choy for a couple minutes (for the stems, just one for the leaves), and made some rice.

I was about to add the scallops to the pan when I had the brainwave to see if I could make a sesame crust so I dipped them in a bowl of sesame seeds first. Not great results; some of the seeds stuck, some didn't, but they all prevented the scallops from getting a good sear.


Once the scallops looked mostly done I added the bok choy and the sauce and turned up the heat to cook it down to a glaze. You may see the flaw in that plan. Once I noticed that I was over-cooking the scallops and boy choy I fished them out and let the sauce cook down for a couple minutes before putting them back, tossing them in the not-as-sticky-as-one-might-hope glaze and pouring everything out into bowl for serving.


Overcooking aside, the flavor combination is pretty good. The sauce is sweet but not cloying and complex with savory, spicy and tart notes too. The real question is would it be better with lemon instead of orange? And I'm going to say no. The orange brings a roundness to the citrus notes that pairs with the miso to tie the sauce together. Or maybe I'm talking crap there; I'm really not sure. If I'm not, then its worth trying with Myer lemons too as those may work as well without making you think "Is there orange in here?" the way this does.

Apricot-ginger crumble ice cream

I'm not going to bother with a real detailed post here. This is just a Jeni Britton-style ice cream base infused with ginger and mixed with lots of diced pieces of the apricot oat bars I made poorly last week. The points of interest here are the combination of flavors and the very low ratio of ice cream to stuff-mixed-in.

First, the flavor combination. A little bit of ginger in the stewing liquid enhanced the dried apricots for the oat bars, but here it doesn't play well with the cream. Maybe it's because I didn't blanch the ginger like a lot of recipes for ginger ice cream do. Maybe it's because the milk and cream are leftover from my last batch and, while not sour as such, are a little tangy.

It gets better as it warms up a little. Everything gets sweeter--balancing out the ginger and dairy--and the apricot's flavor blooms. That also helps the textural balance. While it's cold, I find I want a big scoop of ice cream with a few bits apricot bar, but when it's warmer the chewy apricot turns gooey, blending better with the creamy ice cream and contrasting with the chewy and still a little crisp oat bits. So the key to enjoying this ice cream is to sit at your computer and let its sit while you ponder the best wording to describe it.