Miscellanious

I can't tell you all how happy I am that it is the weekend! It was a long and tiring week and next week is shaping up to be even worse. But I'm choosing to focus on the positive:

Exhibit 1: Strawberry Summer Cake from Smitten Kitchen (I made the recipe as is so I thought I should just pass along SK's link). I made it for book club this week and oh my goodness was it good. I think it might have been even better the second day. I'm planning on trying it with other summer fruit-- blueberries and/or blackberries are next on my list. Whatever fruit you use-- you should make it this weekend.

Exhibit 2: Our house is even more house-like

We go in for our pre-drywall meeting this week which means we are about 60 days away from being homeowners!

Strawberry Week, part 3

It would be pretty impossible for me to come home with three quarts of strawberries and not make some kind of ice cream. Rather than the relatively straightforward strawberry ice cream I made last year, I decided to try something I had seen a few weeks ago on The Kitchn--strawberry cheesecake ice cream. This recipe is a take on a recipe from the fabulous David Lebovitz and is wonderful in it simplicity and its tangy cheesecake flavor. You could add in any fruit--raspberries, blueberries, cherries, even cranberries would be delicious.

Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream
Inspired by The Kitchn and adapted from David Lebovitz

Ingredients:
8 ounces softened cream cheese
1 cup light sour cream
1 lemon, zested
1/2 cup half-and-half
2/3 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 cup small diced strawberries

1. Cut cream cheese into small pieces. Add cream cheese, lemon zest, sour cream, sugar, half-and-half, and salt into a blender or food processor. Puree until smooth.
2. Freeze it in your ice cream maker according to instructions. About five minutes before the ice cream is complete, add in diced strawberries. 
3. Transfer to an air tight container and place in your freezer until ready to serve. 

Strawberry Week, part 2

It was easy to come up with ideas for strawberry sweet treats, but as I much as I would have liked to eat nothing but strawberry crisp, strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream, or even strawberry scones, I did not think that would be too good for my waist line (it has a hard enough battle given my current lack of exercise routine). So I came up with an idea for a simple spinach salad topped with strawberries, goat cheese, pecans and balsamic vinaigrette. It may sound odd to top a salad with strawberries (Jason, for one, was skeptical when I told him what we are having for dinner with our chicken kebabs tonight), but it is quite tasty (by the end of the meal he was converted). A no-recipe recipe and a healthy way to eat your summer fruit!

Strawberry Week, part 1

Did you know that May is National Strawberry Month? (If you are friends with me, you probably did know this as it is currently my favorite factoid-- I'm pretty sure that Jason has grown tired of hearing me say it!) That means that strawberries are at their peak of freshness in most of the country right now. And I, for one, couldn't be happier! Because even though you can buy strawberries from the grocery store year-round these days, I try really hard not to buy out of season produce. It's more expensive and, frankly, not as good. So I try to keep that to a minimum. Which means when fruits that I really like are in season, I tend to go a little bit nuts. This strawberry season is no different; Jason and I went to our local farmers market this weekend for the express purpose of buying in-season strawberries from Westmoreland Berry Farm. We came home with three quarts of the biggest, ripest, most beautiful strawberries you've ever seen! Three quarts is a lot of fruit and when it's good and ripe, it doesn't last too long. So I got to work on recipes that would make good use of these beauties. First up---strawberry rhubarb crisp.

I was really thinking about making a pie (similar to the one I made last year) but decided that Jason and I really did not need a whole pie to ourselves. So I decided to make a couple of mini strawberry-rhubarb crisps instead since it is much easier than making mini-pies. Fruit crisps are some of the easiest things to make: simply cut up your favorite fruit, toss with a little sugar, a little cornstarch and a squeeze of lemon and top with a mixture of butter, flour and brown sugar. I like to add in oats for texture. Stick it in the oven and voila! You have a beautiful and delicious dessert-- perfect for whatever fruit happens to be in season.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
Makes two mini-crisps that amounts to about 4 servings.

Ingredients:
2 cups of diced strawberries
1 stalk of rhubarb, quartered lengthwise and then diced
1/2 lemon, juiced
2 TBL granulated sugar
1 TBL cornstarch
3 TBL flour
2 TBL brown sugar
2 TBL oats
3 1/2 TBL butter, diced into small pieces
pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 375. Spray baking dish(es) with cooking spray.
2. Mix strawberries, rhubarb, lemon juice, sugar, and cornstarch together in a small bowl. Spoon into prepared baking dish(es). Set aside.
3. In another bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, oats, and salt together. Add diced butter and mix together using a fork, pastry cutter, or your fingers. Once everything is combined and the butter is the size of small pebbles, place on top fruit.
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until fruit is bubbling and topping is golden brown. Serve on its own or with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

I Scream, You Scream...

When trying to decide what to do with our massive strawberry haul, the first thing that came to my mind was ice cream. When I was growing up we usually made homemade ice cream a couple times during the summer, usually for July 4th or Memorial Day, and it almost always involved strawberries. My mom would make the base from egg yolks, milk/cream, vanilla, and sugar, and we would slice strawberries until our hands turned pink from all the juices. Then I would watch my dad get the machine ready to go. We had one of those electric ice cream makers that made a gallon of ice cream at a time, and required ice and rock salt so we had to do it in the garage. It was quite the production and we treated it as such. Usually a pound cake was made to go with the ice cream and neighbors were often invited over to partake of its creamy, fruity goodness. Our ice cream always tasted better than what you could buy in the store. Or at least that’s how I remember it. (PS Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!)

When it came time to create our wedding registry last year, I was adamant about including an ice cream maker on the list. We chose one of the smaller versions that do not require ice or salt. You simply place the bowl in the freezer overnight and pour in the ice cream mix and the machine does all the work. Today was the first time we used it together (I made some chocolate sorbet once last fall by myself to surprise Jason with when he came home from being gone one weekend with mixed results) and I was really excited to try my hand at the strawberry ice cream I remembered so fondly from my youth.

I consulted David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop (which I bought for myself not long after the wedding in anticipation of using our new ice cream maker at some point in the  future) for a recipe and much to my surprise, his strawberry ice cream did not require eggs!  Apparently, there are multiple styles of ice cream—French-style ice cream uses a custard base made with egg yolks while Philadelphia-style ice cream is made with cream (and sometimes milk) but no eggs.  Most of David Lebovitz’s fruit-based ice cream recipes use the Philadelphia-style since he thinks is preferable to “let the flavor the fruits come forward without all the richness” of the French-style.  Even thought it was not the custard-base ice cream of my youth I decided to give it a shot…if for no other reason than it is a whole lot simpler to make!

Macerated strawberries, cream, lemon juice, and (the surprise ingredient) sour cream pureed, chilled and then poured into our Cuisinart ice cream freezer. In the words of Ina—“how bad can that be?!”

Not bad at all. It’s going to be a tasty summer!

Strawberries immediately after they've been tossed with sugar and Cointreau

An hour later...look a all that yummy juicy goodness!

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
Adapted (hardly at all) from David Lebovitz

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and sliced
¾ cup of sugar
1 TBL Cointreau (originally recipe called for vodka or kirsch but we had neither so I went with what we had)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
½ lemon, juiced

1.Toss sliced strawberries with sugar and Cointreau, stirring until sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
2.Place strawberries (and all the ruby red liquid that comes out of them), cream, sour cream, and lemon juice into  a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth but still slightly chunky.  Refrigerate for 1 hour. Note: if you use a blender you can just place the vessel in the fridge which means 1 less dish to wash!
3.Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.