We planted three tomato plants back in early May. All of them are in one 6 foot by 9 foot bed —with the Sun Gold cherry tomato plant now taking over the entire bed. When I turn my back, another dozen orange globes fall to the ground. The poor Stupice and Early Girl are nearly hidden by the overly eager Sun Gold branches.
Sun Gold cherry tomatoes: So dainty, so golden, so many.
I collected a basket of tomatoes, only to be reminded that there was another basket sitting in the kitchen, staring and waiting. It was time to do something before they started to attract fruit flies… Allow me to present the Lazy Tomato Sauce.
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Haven’t posted a meme oriented entry ’till now. Considering this site’s content, it’s appropriate. I’m sure this meme has already made the rounds —just not with me. 😉 Yoinked from Kathleen.
- What are your favorite foods? So many! I’ll cheat and list (some of) my favorite cuisines: Californian, French, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Middle Eastern (e.g., Lebanese, Persian), Vietnamese. I also love appetizers and snackie sized foods; yes, I’m a sucker for small plate menus.
- What foods do you hate? I am a picky omnivore, so this list also would be rather long. :-/ The most obvious is beef, and most any (mammalian based) meat.
- Foods you like but are embarrassed to admit? Cheese puffs, crunchy chicken skin, and, sometimes, bacon (crispy, please; notice the pattern?).
- Strangest food you’ve eaten and enjoyed? Fresh sea urchin roe (uni, in Japanese). Pastries filled with durian; I think it was durian at the time…
- Cooking failures that still rankle? I still cannot make the Ultimate Butter Chicken Curry (makhani murgh, if you’re familiar with Indian menus). At least not consistently. The same goes for chocolate ice cream, which often ends up too hard or too greasy.
- Ingredients you don’t want to consider living without? Fresh produce, fresh seafood, tea, cheese, durable goods (pasta, flour)… Er, should I just say food?
- Cuisine you’d like to know more about? Another long list. I really enjoy Moroccan and Ethiopian food, and would love to learn more about African cuisines. More interesting, and/or unconventional uses of legumes, nuts and grains. Also, discovering more fruits, vegetables and herbs. Okay, so the latter two sentences aren’t cuisines (cheating!).
- Foods you hated but have grown to love? Do beer and wine count? Also cilantro, lemongrass and ginger. Although I wouldn’t say I love those —mostly that I’ve adapted to their flavors and appreciate how intrinsic they are to cooking.
I have played with OpenID on my test site, and it’s about time to make it available on Iwaruna.com: You may now use your OpenIDs here for your comments!
Many thanks to Jed and Kathleen for helping me out with testing. 😀
How to use OpenID here
1. First of all, you need an OpenID. If you have a blog at LiveJournal, WordPress.com, Vox or TypePad, you already have one: your OpenID is simply the blog’s web address (its URL). Alternatively, you can obtain an OpenID from a vast group of OpenID providers.
2. In the comment form, rather than filling out the Name and Email fields, you need only fill out the Website field. Just enter your OpenID there, then continue on to typing your comment. However, if you do leave the Name field empty, your link will be labeled as Anonymous (though it will still point to your OpenID address).
3. Preview still works as before.
4. Hit the Post button, which will authenticate (when needed) then submit the comment.
That’s it! If you run into strange issues, let me know in the comments. But do read on if you’re curious about more technical details…
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Ah, coffee ice cream. It can be a challenge to make or find a good one: Sometimes too bitter, or too much grit. Sometimes too sweet. Sometimes too un-coffee-like in flavor due to strange freeze-dried coffee or espresso powders. Sometimes too weak in coffee flavor. But the recipe by Elise of Simply Recipes encouraged me to persevere.
Rather than using whole beans, I lightly crushed them, increasing the surface area and reducing the steeping time. I also stirred in a leetle heent of chocolate. The chocolate is barely detectable, if at all, but that’s expected, since its purpose is to subtly soften the edge of the coffee.
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Back in school, my friends Ananda, Carolyn and I used to frequent a small Middle Eastern eatery in a half-empty strip mall in Pomona. Their hummus was divine: it came with either a swirl of paprika-infused olive oil or grilled meat, and a basket of warm pita bread. Sadly, according to Ananda, this dive no longer exists. I was happy to find a local Lebanese restaurant, Dishdash, which makes a similar dish of hummus topped with grilled chicken and pickles.
Recently I read an article on hummus by Mercedes of Desert Candy, and I thought, “Finally, someone who vindicates my pickiness about hummus!” I’ve always preferred a smoother, creamier version of the dip served in a broad platter, and it turns out that style is considered more traditional than the chunkier, firmer versions in piles sold in grocery stores (and some attempts at non-Middle Eastern restaurants). Her entry inspired me to whip up this version, a comforting homage to my college days.
Hummus topped with sautéed ground chicken, onions, pine nuts and tomatoes (with lavash on the side). Photo by Simon.
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Blackberry ice cream is my favorite ice cream made at home (so far). This recipe calls for blackberries, but boysenberries, olallieberries or raspberries would prolly work, being similar fruits.
The deep magenta color is enough to confuse this ice cream for a sorbet!
I haven’t tried this with frozen berries, yet. Some similar fruits are hard to find fresh, like mulberries, so I’d love to hear how this recipe would work (or what would need to change) using frozen fruit.
Update (28 July 2013): I’ve increased the amount of egg yolks to 3, in order to avoid further curdling issues with very acidic batches of berries. Speaking of which, this recipe goes very well with raspberries, although I really needed to jack up the amount of sugar due to extreme tartness.
Update (13 July 2008): Don’t use half-and-half. I had naïvely thought that it had half the fat content of heavy whipping cream. Wrong! The result: mixing in the acidic berry sauce causes the custard to curdle because there isn’t enough fat to protect the milk’s proteins. Mathematics indicates 3g fat (div) 30ml = 10% per serving of half-and-half. But if you mix whole milk (3.5% to 4% fat) with heavy cream (36% to 38%), that’s at least 19.75% fat, nearly twice as much as half and half! The frozen result was actually passable in that the curds weren’t noticeable, although it wasn’t as creamy as when it’s made with cream and milk. In any case, I’m going to update my other ice cream recipes by removing the usage of half-and-half.
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Here’s another recipe for surplus apricot jam: ice cream. 🙂 You don’t need to add more sugar, since the jam already contains enough. The orange liqueur (I prefer Grand Marnier) provides a perfumy zing to the apricots and cream.
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Allow me to offer you a break from the apricot oriented articles. 😉 I drank Salvadoran horchata for the first time a couple years ago, and I’ve been keen to figure out how to make it ever since. Unlike Mexican horchata, which is made primarily of rice, cinnamon and far too much sugar (at least the few times I’ve had it), the Salvadoran version is deliciously nutty with a hint of chocolate.
This recipe is an evolving experiment. Because I’ve improvised with many of the ingredients (and the preparation), it would not count as authentic. But I think it’s approaching something similar to Salvadoran horchata. Not the same as what my favorite pupuserías create, but tasty, with potential.
If you know of good instructions for making horchata Salvadoreña, please do share! Web searches mentioned morro seeds and tigernuts (chufas), but I couldn’t find a useful recipe. Would these items be available at a Mexican / Latino market? If so, do they have different names in Spanish and English?
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Just as there’s an abundance of apricots, sometimes there’s a lot of leftover apricot jam. Glazes are great, but they don’t use up much. After flipping through some cookbooks, I got the idea to use apricot jam instead of applesauce to make a tea cake.
Unlike applesauce which is usually unsweetened, fruit jams can have a lot of added sugar, so I needed to lower the amount of sugar. I also wanted to avoid the cinnamon / clove / allspice / ginger / nutmeg combination I frequently saw. I do like a good gingerbread or spice cake, but for this I wanted something different. With a vaguely Middle Eastern touch in mind, I used cardamom and rose water, along with a bit of (yeah, okay) cinnamon.
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Apricot jam is summer preserved in a jar. (That must be a paraphrase of some famous food or seasonal quote, but I can’t recall the original.) Although the season for Blenheim apricots isn’t quite as brief as it is for cherries, it is short because the fruit are renowned for ripening over a short period. Of course, using jam is not the same as relishing the fruit right off the tree, but it still has many uses: a glaze for desserts or savory dishes, a topping for ice cream and puddings, and of course as a spread for breads and crackers.
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