i really like your peaches fruit salad

It’s a fruit salad. It’s an aphrodisiac. Does summer get any better than this?

I invented this fruit salad after reading a chapter in Iwan Bloch’s Sex Life in England (1934) entitled “Curious Sexual Instruments.” Bloch was an old-school German sexologist — indeed, he is credited for being one of the founders of that branch of study — who wrote comprehensive books on large chunks of sexual life, including a biography of the Marquis de Sade and books on prostitution, erotic literature, and sexual odors.

In “Curious Sexual Instruments,” we find not only what you would expect, but also a few paragraphs on aphrodisiacs identified by experts. A certain M. Venette, author of De la Generation de l’Homme ou Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal, singles out foods such as egg whites, “sweet strong wine,” and milk. Another gentleman named Ryan adds these to the list: fish, turtles, oysters, crabs, lobsters, eggs, artichokes, truffles, mushrooms, celery, cocoa, onions, cinnamon, pepper, apricots, strawberries and peaches.

Bloch’s third source, the pornographic novel The Amatory Experience of a Surgeon (1881), is perhaps the least credible of the lot, but I believe everyone should try once what it recommends: making your move on the ladies with a cinnamon-dusted hand.

Or you could try this fruit salad instead. Capitalize on the local peaches coming into season, and the apricots in full swing.  It seems too decadent for breakfast to me, but you have your own morals.  You might perhaps decide to enjoy it after eating some of the other ingredients on the list: begin with raw oysters and chilled artichokes in a truffle mayonnaise, then tuck into a bouillabaisse of fish, shellfish, celery and onions, perhaps.

Whatever you do, save some room for dessert, because this is the best fruit salad I’ve ever tasted. If they don’t like your peaches after this concoction, heaven help you.

I Really Like Your Peaches Fruit Salad

Serves 2

• 2 ripe peaches, cubed
• 2 ripe apricots, cubed
• strawberries in some form, either fresh (everbearing from your garden?) or frozen, chopped, or a scoop of homemade strawberry preserves or syrup
• a few shakes of cinnamon
• a few grinds of black pepper
• 2 T. “strong, sweet wine” such as Port or Madeira
• 1 pint whipping cream

Mix together all ingredients but the whipping cream. Let macerate for at least 30 minutes. Adjust sweetening by adding a bit more Port, if necessary or pleasurable.

While fruit is macerating, whip cream until very stiff, even lumpy, and add a bit of sugar while whipping. An alternative is to use slightly sweetened ricotta or crème fraîche. Serve in individual bowls with a dollop of whipped cream on top and a drizzle of Port.

 

keeping cool with sour cherry and apricot soup

I should dedicate this, the second summer appetizer in my series of summer appetizers with obscure ingredients, to the folks at Hentze farm, where I bought the blushing, lovely apricots and the already-pitted sour cherries, submerged in their juice.  It made my life so easy, and easy livin’ is what summer is supposed to be about, right?

Sour cherries and apricots whisper Hungary to me.  My trip to Budapest in 2006 for a conference was one of the highlights of my life.  If my soul had a foreign home, it would be Hungary.  Of course, I’d soon die and have to be buried in a piano box because I would eat so much, but I’d die happy.  At one restaurant, I ordered sour cherry soup (meggy leves), thinking it would be a light starter.  Of course, being Hungary, it was thickened with sour cream and topped with whipped cream.  And every bite was delicious.

My version of the soup is lighter and appropriate for a July grilled meal.  The soup is still rich, but unless you want to serve it as a dessert (which you absolutely can), forgo the whipped cream and replace the sour cream with thinner, lighter crème fraîche.  Noris Dairy makes a delicious, slightly runny “sour cream” that is basically crème fraîche, so I use that.  You might try lightening up your sour cream with a bit of heavy cream if you can’t find crème fraîche.  If you can’t find that, you certainly won’t be able to find Hungarian apricot brandy, which is not imported much in the States, so substitute cherry brandy.  Or make your own apricot liqueur!

Using fresh sour cherries and apricots make this soup extraordinary.  It’s better to substitute fresh Bing or other cherries than to use frozen or canned sour cherries, since this is all about fresh summer produce.  I don’t bother peeling the apricots, but it might make the texture more elegant.

Sour Cherry Apricot Soup

Serves 4-6 as an appetizer or dessert

2 cups pitted sour cherries
3 cups cherry juice
½ cup fruity red wine, such as Merlot
1 cup quartered fresh apricots
1 T. sugar
½ cup crème fraîche
1 T. powdered sugar
1 piece cinnamon stick
1 star anise
3-4 whole cloves
1 T. apricot brandy (Hungarian barack palinka) or cherry brandy

Pour juice and wine into pot, add cherries, apricots, and sugar.  Place spices in small cheesecloth bag and tie with kitchen twine.  Submerge in juice.

Simmer cherries and apricots just long enough to soften them up, about 5-10 minutes.

Mix crème fraîche and powdered sugar in a small bowl.  Remove soup from heat and remove spice bag.

Scoop out about half of the cherries and apricots and puree in the food processor, then return to soup pot.

Quickly whisk in crème fraîche until thoroughly mixed, and add brandy.

Pour into small serving bowls and chill for several hours before serving.

 

tayberries at lone pine farm

If you can find tayberries, this cross between an Aurora blackberry cultivar (an Oregon varietal, thank you very much) and a raspberry, by all means buy them immediately.  In my neck of the woods, Lone Pine Farm in Junction City had them for sale yesterday, so I snapped some up to make delicious jam.  The tayberry is an exquisitely beautiful fruit, and it’s a bit tarter and muskier than a boysenberry (which you can see pictured in my masthead above).  Dark red and elongated, the tayberry tastes far more complex than either of its parents, almost like a raspberry on steriods, dreaming dark dreams.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

And some are born to jam their plight.

 

my reputation spreads far (harrisburg) and wide (one person)

After my shift slinging no-bake breakfast bars — the Food Pantry Project recipe of the month — at the Coburg food pantry, I hightailed it north to Detering’s Orchards in Harrisburg to feed my food-drying addiction.  While I was immersed in green beans, a friendly face smiled at me and said, “nice day for cherry picking!” and “you’re Eugenia from Culinaria Eugenius, aren’t you?”  She didn’t seem to be concealing a weapon, so I came clean, and discovered I was talking to Eat Local Eugene, another local food blogger, who had rushed over to the farm after work to pick cherries and found, well, me.  I was very sad I didn’t have time to follow suit, but my dehydrator — like a crack pipe or a mound of fries or dirty Serge Gainsbourg videos on the Internet — was waiting for me at home.  Not that I’d know anything about the Serge Gainsbourg videos.

But Eat Local Eugene made a good point:  it’s cherry picking time, and the time is now.  They have lovely Bings and Royal Annes at Detering’s, and the price for U-pick can’t be beat.  I was told that the pie cherries (the sour, ruby red ones) will be ready any day now, so please give them a call to see if they’re available before you go to the orchard.  I dried a bunch of fresh Bings and some frozen pie cherries, and they both turned out sweet and tart and lovely. Can’t wait to use them in salads and desserts…

And Eat Local Eugene, I’d love to see what you did with yours!

 

strawberry comparison

Preparatory to anything else, I put up six half-pints and five mini-jars of strawberry-elderflower jam yesterday.  I couldn’t resist a half-flat of Bentons at the Saturday Market, just because we had been discussing them.  And the MFP Hotline people were right, they are bright red and make a tasty jam.  They’re also delicious, a lighter but still complex, flowery strawberry taste than my beloved Seascapes.  I thought the Bentons were better than the Shuksans I used for jam last year.

I also bought a pint of “Honey-Os” (Honeoyes) for eating. Though I had planned differently, I was once again seduced by no-pectin strawberry jam.  The Honeoyes were really tart.  I thought they’d add a bit of natural pectin, so I threw them in the mix.  Perhaps they did; the jam’s rather runny, but I think it will set up a bit firmer than what it looks like now.  The color is really nice (as you can see for yourself here), and would have been even better had I opted to use pectin and therefore not to cook it so long.

Anyway, the header picture is a berry color comparison.  Left to right: Seascape from my strawberry planter, Benton from the Slusher farm, Honeoye from Hentze Family Farm.  Each variety has different sizes and shapes, so the size here means nothing.

 

strawberries for jam

Someone asked me a question today, and I thought I’d repost my response as a blog entry, since, well, it’s that season and I lurve talking about strawberries, and I’ll take any chance I can to promote the Lane County OSU Extension Master Food Preserver program. Oregon residents, please note I’ve posted an announcement about our statewide hotline on the right-hand side of this page.

Christy wrote to me and asked me if Seascape strawberries would be good for jam.  Here is my response:

I’ve only made strawberry jam once, and it was with Shuksans, which were recommended, but I was trying a French no-pectin recipe and it didn’t set up. I blamed the recipe and my skills. Seascapes are so soft and sweet that I suspect they wouldn’t be the best variety.

So I called my friends at the statewide Master Food Preservation Hotline (541-682-4246) and asked them what they thought! They agreed, and said Seascapes are beautiful eating, but wouldn’t hold up well in jam. For mid-season, your best bets include what you’ve been using, the Hoods, or Shuksans, or Bentons. The consensus was that Bentons are best because they make beautifully colored jam. They’re the berries that ripen salmon colored to light red, so the jam they make is bright and lively. Apparently, they’ve been used in commercial jams for a long time.

Some other suggestions were Olympus (also mid-season), Red Craft (late), and a new variety, Firecracker, that apparently has a better flavor than Hoods.

If you do decide to switch varieties, please let me know the results, and good luck!

I forgot to add that the solemn consensus was that Oregon strawberries should be chosen over berries from anywhere else, should that unfathomable choice arise.

I’d love to hear more suggestions and experiences, if anyone else has them!

 

licking letters: meadowfoam honey

A certain famous architect tells a story about his childhood in a traditional Jewish family, a story that sits so well with me I just might curl up with it, some hot biscuits and butter and a cup of tea, all unctuous with clear, golden, musky honey.

To learn the Hebrew letters, the teachers traced them on paper with honey and let us lick them, he says, so we could learn how sweet the word was.

Those of us who write for a living know, instinctively, what those teachers meant. But isn’t there always time for another reminder? Make a date with some local honey. In the Willamette Valley, we have extraordinary varieties of honey. Poison oak honey is said to be an inoculant for encounters with the rash. Blueberry honey is fruity and clean. We have fireweed honey, madrone honey, and raspberry honey. Blackberry honey is ubiquitous, but if you ask me, it doesn’t taste like anything special, unfortunately. Certainly not like the best local honey of all, a Willamette Valley specialty: meadowfoam honey.

I made my acquaintance with meadowfoam honey out at Detering Orchards, a local u-pick farm that has an astounding range of fresh produce. The jars of honey were marked M/F, and being in gender studies and all, I wondered if that meant it was ok to eat if you were male or female, or a combination of both, so I asked.

“Meadowfoam honey,” was the response. “It tastes like toasted marshmallows.”

Now, being no great fan of marshmallows, I hesitated. I wanted my honey to taste like honey. But the adventurer in me couldn’t resist.

Meadowfoam is a plant that was introduced in the Willamette Valley in 1984, one of those new get-rich-quick crops that anticipates consumer demand for a trendy ingredient. Meadowfoam bears a pretty white and yellow flower that issues an oil that has fatty acids found good for skin and hair, so it is used in beauty products. Importantly for us, it’s a marsh plant, so it grows well in poorly drained soil.

It also makes some darned good honey. I don’t think “toasted marshmallows” is the best term to describe it; it’s more like caramelized custard, with a hint of burnt sugar. It’s a soft and very sweet taste and unlike any honey I’ve had. I’d imagine a honey cake would be delicious with meadowfoam honey, but I just eat it straight out of the jar on plain yogurt. Or lick it in alphabetic curlicues off a plate. Because I swear that when it coats my tongue, I can taste our valley. I learn more each time about just how sweet it is.

 

how to get oregon strawberries and what to do with california ones

Pails of Oregon strawberries. What could be nicer? Eugeniuses, It’s time for the 16th annual Emerald Empire Kiwanis Berry Sale. These are the folks you see causing pile-ups at Valley River Center, distributing Oregon-grown strawberries like drive-through Johnny Appleseeds. The strawberries come in one form: fresh, cleaned, sliced and unsugared, and you can either buy a 30-lb. pail for $41 or a 15-lb. pail for $27. You must order by June 2, and pick up in the afternoon of June 19. Also available are 9-lb. pails of quick-frozen strawberries, marionberries and blueberries, for delivery in August. Order soon by mailing in the form on their website, or by calling 541-607-4065. I’m holding my breath that my two-dozen Seascape strawberry plants will come through for me, but if this heat destroys them, I’ll be there with you in line!

Until then, let’s work on those other strawberries; you know the ones.

California strawberry season is in full swing. It’s the time before regular strawberry season, when the stores insist on selling those huge, sour, bright red, white-crowned things. I am seduced just like you are, and I take home a package of “Crown Jewels,” thinking they look so good this year, but soon realizing “jewels” mean they are as hard and inedible as a diamond. So I sugar them down, disguise them with whipped cream, and save a few for my real California strawberry annual event: a strawberry mud mask. Try it. It celebrates spring, mud, and making the most of a subpar foundation.

Strawberry Mud Mask

Without fail, I do this mask every spring, before the strawberries start to taste good. It really does feel nice, making your skin tingle and glow pinkly. Apparently, strawberries are full not only of Vitamin C, but also salicyclic acid, which freshens the skin by removing dead cells.

Take three or four fresh berries, chop them, and then puree them in the food processor with about 2 tablespoons of a pre-prepared mud mask. I use the basic supermarket brand, but you could get fancy and make your own with rhassoul mud, yogurt, and/or honey. You just need something to bind the berries. Go for it. And let me know your recipe! You can also grind down the berries by hand, but it’s important to completely smash them, or else you will have large berry bits on your face.

Spread mud mask on your face, chest, feet, wherever you need it, and leave on for 15-20 minutes. It will dry a bit, but not completely. I advise doing this before a shower, because you will get strawberries in your hair, no matter how hard you try. Wipe off mask with a clean, warm, washcloth, and rinse in kitchen sink so bits won’t get fester in your bathroom pipes.

 

i pity the rhubarb fool

Suffering fools in my house:

Her: Would you like some rhubarb fool?

Him: Did you mean “do you want some rhubarb, fool?” or “do you want some rhubarb fool?”

Her: Both.

Him: I pity the rhubarb fool who rejects this hypothesis.

For the 0.31416% of my readers who understand this is a statistics joke, made “popular” by the Graduate Student Statistics Department T-Shirt Committee at Berkeley in the 90s, probability=1 that you laughed. The rest of youse fools, well, yeah, I only laughed after I finally persuaded my love to give the t-shirt to Goodwill in, like, 2005.

So this is a celebration of spring cleaning, and spring produce, too. Our CSA bag yielded three lovely stalks of pink rhubarb, and I had some leftover whipped cream from yesterday’s strawberry shortcakes, so I thought I’d whip up a quick fool. Rhubarb Fool is an old English dessert, not always the prettiest girl on the block, but can be lovely and even wild. In all cases, it is a combination of chopped, cooked rhubarb, mixed with sweetened whipped cream. One can puree the rhubarb or, as I did for my quickie, leave it chunky. It’s a nice, light combination of tart and creamy, bitter and sweet. In short, my ideal dessert. My version is very simple, and features Fee Bros. peach bitters, which brings out both the fruitiness and the bitterness of the rhubarb. The darker in color the rhubarb is, the darker the puree will be, but beware: rhubarb loses its color to the water, so you want to make sure not to use too much water, and reincorporate water into the puree.

I Pity the Rhubarb Fool

Serves 2

3-4 medium stalks spring rhubarb

3 T. sugar or xylitol (a sugar substitute that tastes just like sugar), or to taste

5-6 shakes Fee Bros. peach bitters

1 cup freshly whipped cream (please use real cream), sweetened with sugar and a bit of liqueur like Cointreau or Hungarian barack palinka (apricot)

fresh mint leaves for garnish

Slice rhubarb into 1-inch chunks, place in non-reactive saucepan with sugar and enough water to barely cover chunks. Simmer until soft but not dissolved, stirring occasionally. When fruit has softened, taste and adjust for sweetness. You may decide you’d like it sweeter. Remove from heat and let cool.

While fruit is cooling, whip up your whipped cream to soft peaks, adding sugar and liqueur to taste. Chill in refrigerator.

Spoon fruit into small glasses or bowls and chill in the refrigerator for at least a couple hours. Top desserts with whipped cream and garnish with a couple of mint leaves, if you have them.

 

hazelnut punitions for naughty oregonians

I’m fond of a good sadomasochism joke; it’s no lie. And visual puns all the better. But when it involves cookies AND a story AND France AND corporal punishment, well, there’s just no stopping me.

Punitions are petite butter cookies made famous by the French bakery Boulangerie Poilâne, where you can help yourself out of the basket by the register as you pay for your pain Poilâne or buy ‘em by the box. Une punition is ‘a punishment’ in French, and M. Poilâne tells Dorie Greenspan that in Normandy, grandmothers baked these simple cookies and then called in their charges for ‘punishments,’ beckoning them over while hiding the cookies behind their backs. This is how they do punishment in France, you see: eat this, become as fat as an American! OK, that last part was my embellishment.

The important part of punitions is that you need absolutely pristine, lovely, unsalted butter. These are butter cookies, and with so few ingredients, one must use the best. I use, of course, our excellent local Noris butter. I found this tastier than the cultured Vermont Butter and Cheese Company butter, somehow clearer and purer in heart. (Oregonians, the Noris website is up again, and you can check out their products here.)

Something else I love about these petite punitions is that they’re delicious as is, but you can also add one (ONE!) extra ingredient to personalize them. For us, that would be fresh roasted Willamette Valley hazelnuts, the best example of the specimen in the whole world. The internet tells me that up to 99% of the country’s hazelnuts are grown here in the Willamette Valley, and they’ve been grown here for 150 years. We get hazelnuts that are huge and plump and roasty, collected from local trees and sold at markets in the fall. I’m not sure if the variety that remains here is different than what is shipped out, but man o man, is it better than what you can get elsewhere.

But in the interest of keeping it local, I’d suggest you substitute hazelnuts for whatever local add-in might be yummy. I could see adding macadamia nuts to punitions in Hawaii, or a bit of candied Meyer lemon peel in the SF Bay Area, or a few dried cranberries in Bandon, OR, or some maple sugar in rural Connecticut. One more ingredient is the limit, though. I wouldn’t recommend doing anything fancier with them, although the temptation is huge. NO SPRINKLES. You’ll get a spanking. I mean it.

You can see from the Poilâne website or Chocolate & Zucchini (both linked above) that punitions are tiny, with fluted edges. When I bake mine with hazelnuts, I prefer to chill the dough in a log and slice thin, irregular, rustic-looking cookies with a sharp knife. But you might prefer to roll them out and cut them in fancier shapes. My only advice is to keep them small.

Retrogrouch recently ate a plate of these cookies made from local eggs from our CSA, Oregon flour, and the Noris butter, plus some Willamette Valley hazelnuts; he’s a glutton for punishment.

I liked those munitions cookies, he said, they were tasty.

Bang bang, I said, in complete agreement.

Hazelnut Punitions

(adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s recipe in Paris Sweets)

5 oz unsalted, fresh, high quality butter (1 1/4 sticks or 1/2 cup plus 1/8 cup), at room temperature
Slightly rounded 1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 cups (280 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped roasted hazelnuts

Process butter until smooth in a food processor with the metal blade. Scrape down, add the sugar, and process until thoroughly blended into the butter, scraping down the sides once or twice.

Add the egg and continue to process, scraping down the bowl as needed, until the mixture is smooth and satiny.

Add the flour all at once, then pulse 10-15 times, until the dough forms clumps and curds and looks like streusel. Add hazelnuts and pulse a few more times to blend.

Roll dough into log on saran wrap and wrap tightly, chilling in the refrigerator for at least four hours. If you opt to roll out the dough later instead of slice it, form the dough into two equal-sized flattened disks instead.

When you are ready to bake, position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

You’ll want cookies that are between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Either (A) cut log in slices that are no more than 1/4 inch thick with a sharp, thin knife, or (B) roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, and cut with a cookie cutter no more than 2 inches in diameter. Place on cookie sheets, leaving about 1 inch space between them.

Bake the cookies for 6 to 8 minutes, or until they are set but pale. Transfer the cookies to cooling racks to cool to room temperature.

Greenspan says the dough can be wrapped airtight and refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month. The finished cookies can be kept in a tin at room temperature for about 5 days or wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 1 month.

Makes about 4 dozen small cookies.