Archive for beverage

The First Two Days of Christmas

Christmas Day -  dinner for 9.

Locally smoked salmon with creme fraiche tartines (homemade baguette)

Cream of butternut squash & parsnips with truffle oil (butternut squash from guest Wendy ‘s garden. This is Wendy’ second year of gardening only and she – unlike me – had a very nice winter squash harvest. Thanks for sharing, Wendy!)

Green garden salad (mache, lettuces, chicories, chickweed & arugula) with fresh persimmon slices, dry cranberries & toasted pecans. Blackberry vinaigrette.

Roasted leg of Piedmont lamb with garlic, rosemary & ginger. Fennel carrots, mashed potatoes & sautéed oyster mushrooms

Cheese platter (Virginia and other American cheeses), homemade quince paste

A fabulous chocolate torte AND profiteroles made by guest and professional baker Brooke Parkhurst of Triple Oak Bakery (amazingly delicious and gluten-free!)

Dainties, locally roasted coffee and homemade cordials.

Served with Virginia Wines:  Barboursville Brut, RdV Friends & Family 2008, and dessert Chateau O’Brien Virginia Apple Wine.

 

The First Day of Christmas – walk it off

The Second Day of Christmas  – make limoncello

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On Cherries

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I first encountered really fresh cherries when I was 15 – a defining age to meet a flat of just picked sun-gorged brilliant cherries, I can tell you. On the tropical island where I grew up, cherries do not fruit – they grow, but without a cold dormancy period, they do not fruit. Papayas, mangoes, longans, cherymoyas, pineapple, yes. But cherries are an exotic expensive luxury that travels a long way to get to Reunion Island – like litchis in Virginia. So I was 15, my family was living in Provence for year, and Provence has wonderful cherries. I was hooked. Read more

Strawberry Liqueur

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Time to make more strawberry liqueur! The 2009 batch is almost all gone – the liqueur gets a little darker as it ages.but retained its fragrance. It’s a nice drink to sip by the wood stove in winter or – slightly chilled – on the porch in summer, watching the fireflies.

The original entry was made in May 2009, the recipe is just repeated below

Homemade Lemon-Verbena Strawberry Liqueur.

  • 4 cups, washed, hulled and quartered strawberries, any bad spot removed
  • 3 cups vodka *
  • a 1/2 cup of fresh lemon verbena leaves, loosely packed
  • 1 heaping cup sugar

In a large lidded glass jar, combine all 4 ingredients. Stir well. Cap. Stir daily for 2 weeks until the sugar is fully dissolved. Then place in a cool dark place for 6 weeks and let age. Strain strawberries through a clean butter muslin cloth. Let drip for several hours. Discard solids. Repeat straining to have liquid as limpid as possible. Bottle. The cloudy part of the liqueur may settle. Decant into new containers. The cloudy part is fine to cook or drink – it’s just not as pretty.

* Note: in those states that allow the sale of pure grain alcohol (180 – or so – proof), you may replace the 3 cups of vodka with 1.5 cup of grain alcohol. After aging and straining the liquid, add 1.5 cup distilled or unchlorinated well water.

The Year of Rhubarb

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Or maybe it’ll be “A Year In Rhubarb”, given the voracity with which I am acquiring stalks for the kitchen. I can’t help it: there are so many plump juicy stems for sale… I have to make up for years of deprivation, you know: there was no rhubarb growing on the tropical island where I spent my childhood.

I am hearing from growers that this year’s wet cool spring has done wonder for rhubarb. Unfortunately, the cool spring is ending this week as we not-so-gently steam and wilt with the thermometer reaching 90 degrees  ( 32 C). The wet part is still on though with copious rain showers every day – rather tropical, really. What that will do for rhubarb is anybody’s guess, but I am furiously buying rhubarb. Close to 30 pounds to date, and few weeks to go still…

It’s been fun. I’ve made ice-cream (several batches and settled on proportions I like), sorbet, syrup, cordial, compote, tartelettes, fresh strawberry & ginger rhubarb tart, jam (some with elder blossom cordial, some with vanilla bean and some with fresh ginger root), rhubarb strudel (or was that baklava?) as well as fresh rhubarb chutney (delicious with a rack of lamb). And frozen a bunch, should I suddenly have a craving for rhubarb. It could happen.

It’s about time I share some recipes… so… on today’s episode we’ll learn to cook rhubarb once and make no less than 4 dishes! We’ll delve into the secret lives of rhubarb (oh… wait… we did that already!). Oh, well, then we’ll … learn how to coax the juice  from those stalks without turning them into mush and we’ll make first a  happy rosy syrup, and then a sweet and even happier little cordial. Read more

Elder Blossom Lemonade

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A plant of our hedgerows and abandoned fields that are being reconquered by the forest, the elder favors the sides of ditches and embankments – especially those with a bit of shade. Oh, it grows well enough in full sun, but it seems to appreciate the extra moisture that accumulates in ditches.

Elder is a plant of the edge – maybe a plant ON the edge – making do with full sun or part shade – unable to decide whether it wants to really be in the meadow. Because of its widespread natural habitat, Sambucus (the botanical name for the genus) plays a role in many folklores: Scandinavians, Mediterraneans, North American Indians all had legends of the Elder … giving rises to conflicting stories of goodness and evil, stories that bellies its sun/shade qualities. At the edge, neither sun nor shade, neither evil nor saintly.

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Even its name – both the common and the botanical name in fact – harks back to old times. Read more

S Is For Strawberries

Or is it for Swiss chard?

because my chard is doing quite well, thank you very much. I am now harvesting two big bunches a week, and with all that rain, and that nice temperature, it’s growing and growing and growing – as you can see from the photo taken just after a harvest, a couple of days ago, of ‘Lucullus’, a chard with a white respectable-sized stem and pale green leaves. It has grown remarkably well in the 7 weeks since I transplanted it out.

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I also have planted perpetual Swiss Chard, ‘Golden’ Swiss chard (with, you guessed it, has yellow stems), ‘Rhubard’ Swiss chard (with red stem) and another one with dark green leaves and white stem which label has been lost. And the one self seeding from last year. Those are not as far along as ‘Lucullus’, because I started them later.

Yes, I like Swiss chard.

I like strawberries too. And Tristar, is, again, not disappointing: small, abundant and bursting with flavor.

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So, of course, I am making sorbet. I am also making strawberry jam Read more

S is for Super Easy Smoothie

smoothie-006This is why I pick and freeze berries – and other fruit – in the summer when they are at peak flavor. And for cobbler and clafoutis too.Yeah… I suppose nobody needs a recipe for smoothie? Indulge me a little. It’s a locavore post after all, one that’ll provide plenty of vitamins and taste (and a lovely color in the glass) to help you start the new year on good footing. Forget the Bloody Mary for New Year’s brunch, ring in the Smoothie. You will have sipped homemade peach liqueur the night before anyway… your liver needs a little rest from all that rich food. Hence the Super easy Smoothie. Read more

Just In Time for Sipping the New Year In

Bottle of Homemade Peach Liqueur

Bottle of Homemade Peach Liqueur

It’s been aging in the dark closet under the stair since July. This morning, finally, it was time for bottling. You do remember the peach liqueur we made, right? YOU did make it, right?, when the peaches were full of flavor and fragrance last summer?

Thanks to the magic of photo editing software I “transformed” one of my pictures of peaches into a “watercolor”, and used it to make pretty labels.

Then looked for an attractive clear bottle – all the better to show the pale color of the liqueur (here a recycled Port bottle), carefully poured the fragrant liqueur from its aging container – and: voila, a fine bottle to sip on new year’s eve – and beyond – with memories redolent of summers past and with hope for summers to come.

Cheers! Happy New Year. May the winter be not too hard (but hard enough to kill the bugs and let the trees be dormant) and may the harvest be good next year.

Note for tLocavore Log: the peaches were immediately local!

Consider the (Cranberry) Shrub

Cranberries are not a shrub, you say? You are right, but they can be turned into a shrub, the sweet-tart refreshing drink that was popular before colas.

Today – if the word is recognized at all as a drink – shrub is often understood to signify a cocktail. And indeed, in colonial times, it was often meant as a sweet-tart punch made with citrus or raspberry juice and fortified with brandy. The word shrub can trace its origins to Middle-Eastern drink made from fruit juice, often chilled with snow: sharâb – which gave us Sherbet in English. The beverage “shrub” comes from a related word šurb, a drink [itself from šariba, to drink]. By the way, the derivation of shrub, meaning a bush, comes from Middle English schrubbe [itself from Old English scrybb.] Over the centuries, the two different derivations melded into one word.

Several of the well-know 19th century cookbooks such as Martha Washington’s, Mary Randolf’s, and Lydia Maria Child’s, have recipes for shrubs – basically fruit juice (often from berries), sugar & vinegar made into a syrup. Sometimes they were called Vinegars, as in Mrs. Haskell’s Housekeeper’s Encyclopedia published in 1861 which has Vinegar As A Drink For The Invalids, adding sugar, pounded ice & water to a gill of fruit vinegar (made from scratch of course, and of which 14 recipes are provided from apples to currants to raspberries and whortleberries).

Over the 19th century, with food becoming industrialized, colas took over, providing a ready shelf-stable sweet drink and the word “shrub” disappeared from the common lexicon. Today, outlets where shrub can be bought are rare – Tait Farms, in Pennsylvania, is one of the few. Otherwise – short of making your own (which is very easy… and, yes, we are getting to that!) – you can probably sample it in those places that aim to give a glimpse on life in colonial times, like Williamsburg, VA.

Serving Cranberry Shrub

Just one more point before we get to the recipe: how do you drink shrub? Easy… put a jigger of the shrub in a glass, top with soda/carbonated water or tonic water or sparkling apple cider or sparkling wine, and you have a tasty pretty fizzy drink perfect for celebrations. Since this not the season for raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, or currant (unless you stashed some excess in your freezer), let’s make Cranberry Shrub. A Votre Santé! Read more

An Orgy of Peaches

This is going to be a good summer for peaches.

A bushel of peachesTwo local orchards I already hit had early peaches in the 2nd week of July. A third said the rain was having them push harvesting by a few days, but that peaches should be coming strong after the 15th. And they did! On Friday, I picked up a bushel of peaches – some white, some yellow – at Moore’s Orchard on Fodderstack Road between Sperryville and Washington, VA. As I walked into the packing shed, the sensuous scent of ripe peaches hits me, sweet and smooth and then wraps itself around me. Later, as I was driving home, loaded with my bounty, the fragrance of ripe peaches pervaded my small car and drifted out through the open window, making me dreamy. Can one get high of the scent of ripe peaches?

At the orchard, Dorothy Moore helped me pack my bushel (bring your own containers) and charged me only $18 (instead of the regular $24) because many of the peaches were “seconds”. Look at the picture above and how many peaches that is! As it turns out, that’s over 56 pounds – or $0.32 per pound. A win-win situation: I am having freshly picked ripe peaches at an incredible price and supporting a local farmer. Yes, the “seconds” were a little bruised, but they are fine for what I want to make with them: compote, sauce & purée – all to be frozen or canned for winter use. Some of the unblemished peaches will be halved, pitted and frozen for cobblers, pies, smoothies and the likes – also for cold weather use… well maybe nor the smoothies. Others will go into sorbets & ice-cream. A few will be eaten out of hand or grilled or baked into a rustic tart (not too much baking – it is HOT). Finally several pounds already found their way into peach liqueur and peach vinegar.

I am having a peach orgy. I hope to have many more this summer as this promises to be a good peach summer. Lots of ways to eat them. Today I will write down the recipe for Homemade Peach Liqueur, a distillation of summer to be sipped joyfully at Thanksgiving, gratefully on a cold winter evening or expectantly in the spring. Over the next week or so, I will be posting more peach recipes. Read more