Archive for Dairy recipe

28 Jun 2010
Dairy recipe • Desserts • Fruit recipe • Harvest • locavore log

Blueberry Season

Yesterday I knew summer was here.

icecream-blueberry-005

How did I know it? No, not because the temperature was – again! – over 90 (over 32 C) in the shade; 116 (47 C!!!) in the sun insisted the thermometer (wish I misread that). Not because the creek is drying up – although it is and we need rain badly. Not because it’s muggy, because it surely is and it has been feeling like August for too many days (somebody actually installed a small fan in the new chicklets’ pen – that’s how hot and stifling it is).

No, it’s  because the day before yesterday the first empty cicada shell was spotted, still hanging onto the smoke tree trunk, split open in the back -  the cicada who lived in it for many years under the earth now gone to live in the sun for a few months, singing. Yesterday I heard the first cicada sing. The sure sign of summer. Cicadas do not make mistakes.

Yesterday morning I also picked blueberries at a small pick-your-own bramble farm, a few miles from me. I suppose that’s another sign of summer Read more

sylvie | 10 comments | Tags: ,
10 Oct 2009
Dairy recipe • Desserts • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes

What To Do With Quinces

Isn’t that what you are asking yourself?

You are not?

quince

sigh…

you know, quince is not a very popular fruit nowadays. And really it is a shame, because nothing else has it piquant aromatic floral taste… pineapple, jasmine, guava and sweet vanilla, with a hint of clove. Some even say that it was quince that Eve offered Adam…

On Monday, just before work, I stopped by Jenkins Orchard in Woodville. Inquiries made in the summer revealed that yes, they had some quince. Yes, they should have them in the fall. Yes, they were picking them when ripe. Not too many people ask for them. But “the old timers like to preserve them”. The “old-timers” and the French lady, I guess… Read more

sylvie | 23 comments | Tags: , , ,
05 May 2009
Dairy recipe • locavore log • Soups • Vegetable recipe

Cream Of Radish Leaf Soup and Homemade Farm Cheese

My frugal peasant instincts won’t let me throw out (OK, compost) perfectly good to eat radish leaves. Of course, there is somebody in the house (who shall rename nameless) who does not think that radish leaves are perfectly good to eat.

I still, sometime, manage to sneak them in soup and stir fries, when the leaves are young. There are a lot more difficult to sneak in if the leaves are mature, because they can be… mmm… fibrous.

But I like cream of radish leaf soup. It tastes good, it’s thrifty. And it’s nutritious: lots of Vitamin A, B1, B2, C & Iron. Bottom line: Don’t discard the leaves, that’d be a waste. If the leaves are stringy, pass the puréed soup through a fine-meshed sieve (or a “chinois” if you’ve got one of those) to ensure it’s smooth.

Cream of Radish Leaf Soup is a recipe I submitted to Flavor Magazine for the Seasonal Table of their April 2009 issue, along with Radish Tartines and Homemade Fresh Farm Cheese. Scroll to page 2 for my recipes. But they are other nifty recipes there that I encourage you to look at, including Caramelized Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake with Strawberries & Whipped Cream from Heidi Morf of Twenty Four Crow (Heidi used to own Four & Twenty Blackbirds) , Morel Mushroom Risotto with Rosemary Cream and Chive Oil from David Scales of the Inn at Meander Plantation – a recipe I really should try if more morels deign to be hunted this year… and a few other early spring recipes. I am in good company.

Pictures? How about farm cheese in the making?

sylvie | 15 comments | Tags: , , ,
30 Mar 2009
Cookery • Dairy recipe • Desserts • Fruit recipe • locavore log

Petits Pots Of Yogurt And Strawberry Compote

Yogurt is for dessert too.

yogurt-strawberry-compote-006

After a 15+ year hiatus, I am again making yogurt. Easy, tasty, low-tech. Did I say easy? Since I much prefer eating yogurt to drinking milk, I have been making at least two quarts of yogurt a week. Love it! As was explained here: heat the milk (if the milk is pasteurized, I only heat up to 120 F; but I do heat up to 180F when using raw milk). Add milk to a large mason jar with a couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt, shake the jar. Put it in a small cooler overnight with a mason jar full of very hot water. Go to bed. Voila: yogurt for breakfast. I love it.

You can make it in big jars, in small jars, in tiny jars… For all of us who are compulsive jar saver, now there IS an excuse to save to save more jars…

I even bought some “Swiss-style” yogurt. It listed 4 kinds of active cultures (Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and L. bifidus and I can’t remember the 4th – how geeky, is that?). It turned out to be less tart than the other yogurt I was getting. I am now keeping an eye out for Bulgur-style yogurt, which I remember as really really creamy and which I think contains – what else? - L. bulcaricus. I tried to add a little cream or half and half to my yogurt, and while it made it richer it still was not that wonderful Bulgarian yogurt (maybe it exists only in my memory?). I guess next time I am at a WholeFood or Natural Store, I’ll have to investigate the yogurt case. So here I am: collecting pretty china tea cups, AND yogurt cultures … See what life in the country can do to a (fairly) level-headed girl?

But then it hit me – I mean about getting creamy yogurt: strain it! It’ll give me a Greek-style yogurt. It worked! Delicious indeed (although not Bulgarian).

More importanly it was a pretty good success at a recent picnic I put together. I used Tristar strawberries, picked in the garden last summer and frozen, with a little sugar and vanilla bean to make my fruit base, combine it with yogurt in small canning jars. And man, I thought I made good ice-cream, but based on the reactions, I obviously need to be making even more yogurt. So any way, here is the recipe for Greek-Style Yogurt with Vanilla Bean & ‘Tristar’ Strawberry Compote – as much as this is a recipe! Read more

sylvie | 18 comments | Tags: , ,
11 Mar 2009
Cookery • Dairy recipe • locavore log • Snack

Making Yogurt

It only took me 15 years.

I used to make yogurt. Really, I did. I had one of those nifty little machine with individual glass containers. You prepared your yogurt mix, pour it into the little glass jars, nested the jars into matching holes in the machine, set the cover, turn it on, went to bed…. and voila yogurt for breakfast.

Then we moved, and somehow the jars and the machines got separated. I could never find the jars again. And as good yogurt started to be available in the better stores, the urgency of making yogurt faded. So a few years ago, before we moved again (to our current place) I got rid of the yogurt machine. Of course, a few months later, I found the jars which had been packed more than 10 years prior with Mason jars – a box which had remained untouched as I did not do that much canning in the city. Unlike now.

Also, although I can find respectable yogurt nowadays, the supply is more limited and I have to drive a bit to get it. So I have been vaguely thinking about a yogurt machine again. Except I did not want yet another one-purpose-only gadget. I have heard also of swaddling your yogurt in blanket to keep it warm. That held no appeal to me.

Fast forward a few days, when I read that post. Duh!!!! a cooler and a jar filled with hot water. Who needs a yogurt machine? blankets? Pfff!

That morning, I made yogurt. I loved the uncomplicated low tech approach. I probably put in 1/2 cup of yogurt instead of the 1/3 that El calls for in her recipe since I preferred to err of the side of firm yogurt (the recipe is in the comment section of the post – be sure to scroll down El’s post). That night, for dessert, we had yogurt with roasted Italian plums (frozen from last summer’s harvest).

All I need from now on is a few tablespoons of my yogurt and some milk. It’s little sourdough bread – just keep it going.

I am sold! I have become a yogurt maker again.

It’s about time.

Thanks, El.

sylvie | 10 comments | Tags: , ,
31 Dec 2008
beverage • Dairy recipe • Fruit recipe • locavore log • Recipes

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

sylvie | One comment | Tags: , , ,
15 Oct 2008
Cookery • Dairy recipe • Desserts • egg recipe • locavore log • Recipes

When You Have Eggs, Make Custard… or Flan

I love a good baked custard – or flan as we call in France (which is not the same as a Spanish flan – maybe a post for another day). And although the last few days have been warm, the down spiraling leaves are letting us know – in no uncertain terms – that cooler times are coming. As a matter of fact, they are supposed to sweep through the area Saturday with near freezing temperature. The next two days are going to be spent in a frenzy of tasks that should have been accomplished weeks ago: digging up the banana trees, moving into the greenhouse all the tender plants I want to keep over the winter, pick up the last of the tomatoes (and up-root the now unsightly plants), harvest all the remaining basil and turn it into pesto… Fat chance of being able to even accomplish half of it!

Maple Vanilla Baked Custard

But at least, on Saturday, as the evening gets really chilly, I can console myself with a nice little flan. Easy to make, it only requires a few ingredients, so it makes sense to get the best ingredients you can: whole local organic milk from pastured cows, fresh fat farm eggs from free-range chicken allowed to roam in the pasture to forage for at least part of their food – and real vanilla bean.

Do you know that this orchid (yes, vanilla beans are the fruit of an orchid) originates from Mexico? When it was exported to other countries in the hope of producing vanilla and break the Spanish monopoly – in the 18th century – growers were very disappointed that they could not get the orchid flower to fruit (it’s because the orchid needs a specialized pollinator endemic to Mexico). It was not until a slave figured how to manually fertilize vanilla in the early 19th century on French Bourbon Island in the Indian Ocean (now Reunion) that the culture of vanilla took off in so many different places around the world. Bourbon Vanilla now comes from Madagascar, Reunion, Mauritius and I believe some of the Comoros Islands. Growers on Reunion are trying to establish international recognition for their vanilla – for cultural, historical, agricultural and culinary reasons.

No matter the origin of your vanilla bean, ensure it’s plump for maximum flavor.

For my custard, especially at this time of the year, I like to add a touch of maple syrup (from not too far Pennsylvania), and so that gives us Maple Vanilla Bean Baked Custard.

Read more

sylvie | 6 comments | Tags: , , , , ,