Apricot compote is one of the easiest desserts you can make: Just simmer the ingredients, chill if desired, then serve with or without a garnish.
This recipe uses fresh apricots. I haven’t tried it with dried apricots, but I’d think the main differences would be more simmering time to plump up the fruit, and perhaps more sugar (or honey) for additional sweetness.
For a while I thought this year’s apricots wouldn’t ripen, that we’d be stuck with a bunch of stunted, inedible fruits. A possible recovery from last year’s lack of fruit.
Nope. I walked around the backyard two days ago, and saw how the paths were strewn with bruised, sweet-smelling apricots (as well as the soles of my sandals). Fortunately, quite a few fruit remain on the tree. (Not as many as past years, but the slow die-back is endemic to this valley. Sadness!)
Let this be a reminder for me: The fruit remained green and small until about the beginning of this month, June. So it takes the better part of a month for ’em to plump up, turn that charming orangey-pink-red, and develop that perfumy sweetness. This year. 🙂
In any case, the next week or two will be our mad apricot jam and chutney cookin’ phase. In addition to the ones here, Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes wrote a article referencing a bunch of mouth-watering apricot recipes.
The season for fresh cherries is coming to an end here in the Bay Area, so I came up with this cherry soup recipe. I’ve always found fruit soups intriguing, especially after reading descriptions in Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant and Chez Panisse Fruit.
Many thanks to Simon for the pretty swirl.
They might seem weird, but soup made from sweet fruit can easily complement your culinary mood. For example, you can serve cherry soup as a first course to dinner, or as a dessert. Sugar is used as a seasoning, similar to salt, to bring out the flavors: Use less for an early course, or more for a final course. Serve it chilled when the weather is hot, or warmed during the colder seasons.
I’ve wanted OpenID authentication on my site for a long time, because it would allow readers with OpenIDs to easily add comments here. If you’d like to help with testing, please do so at this article at Sairuh.org, a test site I’ve setup with OpenID authentication. Thanks!
A simple explanation of OpenID: A distributed identity system based on a web address. The web address is technically known as a URI, also commonly referred to as a URL.
You might not realize that you could already have an OpenID to use. Some of the many OpenID providers host blogs, like LiveJournal, WordPress.com and Vox.com. Just enter your blog URL to authenticate a comment. Simple! (Okay, well, more detailed instructions at the test entry.)
Why bother? It’s easier than having to register, entering a username and password, or remembering multiple whatevers —every time you want to submit a comment in a blog, in a discussion forum, or any other website or online service which accepts OpenID authentication. The OpenID is something unique and memorable for you, as it’s an address which belongs to you.
[Update: 1 September 2009] Gentle reminder for clarity: Because I have implemented OpenID authentication here at Iwaruna.com, I will be periodically clearing out the test comments in this entry.
[Update: 16 June 2011] I’m closing this post to comments for the time being due to spam volume.
This drink was inspired by Samovar’s soy matcha shake, which became my gateway soy milk drink. You could use any green tea powder. Matcha is the one used in the Japanese tea ceremony, and tends to be slightly bitter and earthy. Sencha or kabuse green tea powder, often sold in single serving packets as a nutritional supplement, has a milder, mellower flavor than matcha.
Using the basic vanilla ice cream recipe, you could add so many different types of spices and essences! If you feel the vanilla will overpower the other flavors, substitute regular granulated sugar for the vanilla sugar.
Since fruit and chocolate based ice creams use a significant mass of additional flavoring (which need a few more steps), I’ll write those up as separate recipes.
Summer weather is upon us, which means it’s time for ice cream. Here is a simple recipe for vanilla ice cream, made with vanilla sugar.
Goes well with fresh fruit (cherries! apricots in a few weeks!), raspberry liqueur, maple syrup, and soda floats. This recipe yields about a quart.
After a couple months of testing, I’ve decided to continue my DVD rentals through GreenCine, instead of Netflix. (As well as borrowing more from local libraries. :-D) The first four or so years with Netflix was both fun and useful. But the throttling killed it for me.
While it’s great that I could export my rental history from Netflix (i.e., download the webpage), I’m disappointed that I could not easily download my 1600+ ratings. One can view them only 20… items… at… a… time. I’ve got better things to do than spending time paging through all of that data. Customer support offered no helpful advice on this, alas. (They kept confusing “rental history” with “rating history”; it became exasperating.)
I like GreenCine’s catalog, and I like that they’re (another) local company. I love how they don’t slow down their delivery service.
GreenCine isn’t perfect, of course. Not all of my DVD requests have been fulfilled, although a few have been added to their collection. (Whether those were due to my requests, or those of other customers, or selections initially made from their employees, I wouldn’t know.) I have yet to contact customer support at GreenCine. I don’t know how that experience will compare with Netflix.
We’ll see. But for now, the change has been for the better.
I admit it, I find soy milk suspicious. Sure, it works nicely as a creamy substitute in soups; and the occasional soy cheese I’ve had at izakaya restaurants has been tasty. I’ve even had a couple soy-based ice cream sandwiches which nearly fooled me, taste and texture-wise.
But soy milk. As a drink, especially a sweet one. Ick, beany. They say, “Hey! It’s bland! It should be fine.” Eh? Don’t be fooled, bean flavors can be strong, too. A strong bean flavor in a drink that I expect to be non-savory? Does not compute.
Then I had the soy matcha shake at Samovar. Surprise! It was dehleeshuss. The trick to learn, as in food-drink matching: counter or complement a strong flavor with other strong flavors.
Many articles online suggested using vanilla or chocolate flavored soy milks. Unless it comes from an excellent Bourbon-based extract, vanilla sugar, or directly from the bean itself, I usually don’t like vanilla flavorings. I think the predominantly used vanillin, which is but a component of the natural stuff, lends an artificial taste.
So, why not do my own not-so-scientific tastings? I don’t plan on removing dairy from my diet, but soy milk could be fun, new territory to explore. I’ve tasted five brands, described below. I will update this article as I try more out.
Upgrading this site to WordPress 2.2 went rather smoothly, a lot quicker than the WP 2.1 upgrade. Not too surprising, as the differences between 2.0 and 2.1 were much greater than the ones between 2.1 and 2.2.
The change that might make a difference to you, dear readers, is that this site now has an Atom 1.0 feed for all articles (https://iwaruna.com/feed/atom/), which you may use as an alternative to the usual RSS 2.0 feed (https://iwaruna.com/feed/).
Notes on this upgrade, mostly for my own reference: