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.

 

farm day at sweetwater farm!

Before I left for the weekend trip, I had the great pleasure to visit my CSA farm, Sweetwater Farm east of Creswell.  Creswell is a short drive south of Eugene, a small town and rural community nestled in its own little valley.  Farmer John and Lynn welcomed us with home brew of the regular and root beer varieties, a potluck, pizzas made in their brick oven (which sadly, I missed due to tardiness), and an herbalist table with minted elixirs of red clover and nettles. Lynn and I took the Master Food Preserver training program together, and I’m volunteering to help the CSA folks out with questions about how to cook with the vegetables in the shares.

The big joy of the 20-acre farm, of course, was the tour provided by Farmer John.  As I said, I was late, so I was fortunate that he was willing to do one last tour, and I happily tagged along, listening to an articulate, passionate disquisition on soil additives, crop rotation, experimentation with chicken feed and greenhouse rows, and all manner of things.  He showed us the bakery in progress, the lumber kiln, and the dank and mysterious mushroom hut, where shiitakes and oyster mushrooms bloom like pale, fleshy flowers.

The fields, immaculately maintained, are grouped by plant type.  The brassicas have their own area, the twenty-odd types of potatoes (some of which are pictured above) grow in neat mounded rows next to a field bursting with hard red wheat (pictured with daisy).  But where were the Yukon Gold potatoes?  Why, in the shares, of course!

Rows of Asian greens fill out another field, and garlic has its own real estate.  Tomatoes and peppers and herbs — really most of the hot weather crops — grow carefully in greenhouses dotted around the property.  Cardoons — cardoons!! — line the long driveway up to the farmhouse.  They are pictured here, the things that look like artichokes.  I had never seen a growing cardoon.  Farmer John said that in Italy, they bend the stalks and cover them with soil to get the blanched white color.  There were strawberries, some small fig trees and the beginnings of a plum orchard, and god knows what else.  The man even has an entire row of wormwood (Artemesia absinthia) and has faced — it was rumored — the green fairy.

We got to see an old Ponderosa Pine in a lovely wooded meadow, a relic, said Farmer John, of what the whole valley used to look like centuries ago.  Hundreds of chickens wander around several large fenced areas, and you can see how happy they are by the size and quality of their eggs.

Sweetwater Farm has been in operation for 20 years, and doing natural or organic farming the entire time.  They used to supply produce to high-end restaurants, but now they just grow for the market and the CSA shares, to maximize freshness and variety.  The vegetables are beautiful, and the breadth of what’s available there is really unusual for a small farm in the Willamette Valley.  I was glad I had the opportunity to visit; thanks John and Lynn!

And one last shot:  I love living in Oregon. Yes, this would be purple mountains’ majesty above the fruited plain…of amber waves of grain.  You know you want it.

 

with this food i thee wed

Just returned from a sorely needed mini-vacation to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Retrogrouch was at a conference in Canada, so we had to celebrate our tenth anniversary when we returned.  And what better way to do it than by sharing a meal with friends?  Ah yes, sharing the meal we had catered for our wedding ten years ago, with the same wine.

La Méditerranée in Berkeley is still going strong, serving the same pomegranate chicken, fruited garbanzo pilaf, Middle Eastern dips and salads, dolmas and chicken filo fingers it did in 1998.  The 2006 Husch Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley was no 1995, alas, but it was still good enough to remind us of how delicious life can be together.

I decided to pick up the food when I was driving down College Avenue, and saw the restaurant.  Packed in airtight plastic containers, layered with icepacks, and carefully ensconced in the cooler I’ve started taking along with me everywhere I go in the car, it was just fine on the journey back home.  The restaurant didn’t bake the filo, so I just popped it in the oven to crisp up the top, and microwaved the other items that needed heat, and we were good to go.  May the next ten years be as easy as that.

 

eating behind the orange curtain

Having survived in Orange County for three years and lived to tell my silicone-free, pudgy tale, I find the place mostly horrific and sometimes amusing. But is making fun of the nouveau riche ever really funny? I mean, it’s like poking fun at George W.’s butchery of our native tongue: shooting oversized, resource-wasting, born-again fish in a gilded oil barrel. But. Having grown up in a place where I doubted that the beach culture and Beverly Hills ridiculousness actually existed, convinced it was a TV fantasy, I feel obligated to share with the world that Southern California is real, and there are still plenty of guffaws to be had on every street corner.

I bring you Exhibits 1 and 2.

A Gucci suit and a Baccarat gazelle, to match your Baccarat chandelier, of course. In my triennial trip to South Coast Plaza, the absurdist-dream-come-true megamall in Costa Mesa, where I discovered to my great dismay that replacing my wine glasses, purchased 10 years ago from my wedding registry at Williams Sonoma, had jumped in price from about 7 bucks a glass to 18 with a proportionate reduction in quality, I snapped a few shots for posterity. My friend Miss C was surely mortified, and I’m sorry for that. I need GAUDY, I snapped, waving around my camera, work it, girlfriend, work it! We also managed to find similar-looking wine glasses to mine at Crate & Barrel, plain, sturdy, all-purpose balloon glasses that were made for breakin’ at 5 bucks apiece. The glass quality isn’t fine, but it also isn’t Ikea, either, if you know what I mean.

I called Retrogrouch to brag of my success. You didn’t buy varietal glasses, he warned dangerously, because I will divorce you if you wasted my money to buy varietal glasses. With a sigh, I stopped lustfully fingering the Riedel Riesling glasses, and reassured him I hadn’t. And decided to wait before telling him about the shoes.

But this is a post about eating behind the Orange Curtain, not the travails of being a Crate & Barrrel multipurpose glass girl in a Baccarat crystal gazelle world. And eating there, friends, is not at all bad. Sometimes it is even sublime.

Again with the Exhibits. The first is, without question, Thai Nakorn in Stanton (near Garden Grove) the best Thai restaurant I’ve ever patronized, except for well, maybe one vegetarian one in Bangkok.

But why is it that I’m always eating Thai with vegetarians? Although my companion generously offered to share a meat dish (if I recall correctly, she was drooling over Thai sausage), I told her to preserve her chastitity; I could deal. So we ordered Pad Thai and Chinese Water Grass with Bean Sauce, and I partook in the Crab Egg Roll, which was a fresh crab stuffing inside a tofu skin roll. So much yum. I’m only devastated that I’m just now discovering I lived so close to such a wondrous place.

But we couldn’t stop there. We also ate at Felix’s Continental Café in Orange for breakfast, just because we couldn’t fit in one more dinner, one more lunch. Felix’s has terrific roasted meat, one of my raisons d’être, but the breakfast isn’t bad, either. We were able to sit outside on yet another beautiful day, right smack dab on the circle in Olde Towne Orange, looking at the peaches, er, oranges growing impossibly on the trees around the central fountain. Soon enough we stopped noticing the people, and dug into our carbohydrate-laden grub. That’s me with the Eggs Hussarde, with not only Hollandaise but also

Marchand de Vin sauce. Oddly, Felix’s replaces the latter with their bittersweet, orange-marmaladey white wine interpretation, but it was still good, and the fried potatoes and eggs were divine. For dessert was a picture-perfect fruit fritter with some kind of red berry glaze, but not being much of a sweets girl, I only nibbled at it. My lovely companion chose smartly: Cuban huevos ranchero with black beans, rice, and extra sauce. And dear heavens, did I mention the price?

And I can’t forget to mention Taco Rosa in Newport Beach, for that Cali-Mex upscale cantina taste you (inexplicably) can’t find anywhere but Cali. Carnitas Baked in Banana Leaf with Pibil Sauce and a corn tamale, Portobello mushroom quesadillas, and a trio of bocadillos (marinated carrot, a tostadita with beans, a mini beef chimichanga) sure do go down easy with a few margaritas.

But believe it or not (o ye who knowst me), I didn’t eat at my absolutely favorite Orange County fine dining establishment, Wholesome Choice Supermarket. If it weren’t for my adorable ex-roomie and departmental homegirl sublettor who made me dinner in the ‘hood, Irvine’s graduate ghetto, I would have. (My ex-roomie, a Chilean, is a fantastic cook, and one of the main reasons I survived my return to The OC last fall. We ate Chilean comfort food — a type of shepherd’s pie and homemade bread, and a big Greek salad, and I got to spend an evening with two beautiful ladies, so who’s complaining? )

But I must speak on the wonder that is the Persian hot food deli counter at Wholesome Choice. I have eaten so many kebabs from the Persian deli there that I swear to you that at least 50 lbs. of my body is made of fillet mignon seasoned with a juiced half-lemon and sumac, topped with yogurt-cucumber dressing, and snuggled up next to buttered Basmati rice pilaf with a crust of fried Persian bread and rice.

This time, however, this last time I might ever be in Irvine, I merely took a longing look and said my goodbyes with a bag full of citrus salt pistachios, Persian pistachio-rosewater ice cream, and a big jar of Morello cherries in syrup. Could there be a better way to say thanks to my last, best graduate school? I think not.

 

halloween in may: in which she makes two orange and black dishes

I made a Thanksgiving joke yesterday; today it’s Halloween. I just can’t get down this seasonal cooking thing, can I?

Today’s recipes are brought to you by a shut-in foodie, a girlfriend trying to make her meat-filled way in a vegetarian household. You see, I was staying at a friend’s house in Southern California. She’s a working girl, a lover of food, but an impending move across country and her unfortunate vegetarian status rendered her cupboards quite bare. I was writing my paper for the conference when, unbeknownst to me, I found myself rummaging through the kitchen looking for something to eat. I was locked in the apartment because of some rogue drywall repairmen outside the door. (Actually, they were quite kind about untaping my door when I had to leave, but let’s make this more dramatic, shall we?) I knew I’d starve if I didn’t do something quick.

So, brainy (remember I *am* writing a paper here so the mind juices are flowing), I thought I’d cook up a few dishes.

I found some lovely “beluga” black lentils, so called because they look like little pearls of beluga caviar, some of Orange County’s finest — Valencia oranges — and parsley and green onions. There was a bag of sweet potatoes, onions, some sour Chardonnay, and black wild rice. And olive oil and four kinds of fancy salt and white balsamic vinegar. And a Trader Joe’s vegetarian liquid bouillon of dubious merit. Clearly, these starvation rations needed a deft hand, some magic cook juju to make them edible.

My friend, though years out of her goth phase, maintains a certain flair we like to call Orange County Gothtastic. Though starving, I also felt tremendous pressure to make food of presentable quality, something the Queen of Blackness would accept as a Dark Offering. Clearly, orange and black colours were on the menu, and fall flavors would be a must, even though it was nearing 90 degrees that day. Alas, the agony of being a pale creature of the night behind the sunny, bikini-clad, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Orange Curtain. But I was more hungry than a vampyre at an actuary convention, so with the aid of Miss C’s familiar, Lord Dominic von Katzer-Masoch, I managed thusly:

Orange and Beluga Black Lentil Salad

Serves 2-3.

4 juicy Valencia oranges

1 lemon

1 cup raw Beluga black lentils

3 cups vegetable stock (use bouillon of choice)

bunch of scallions

1/3 cup. parsley, chopped, with a few whole stalks set aside for the stock

1 t. smoked Alder salt, or to taste

1/2 t. cumin

1/2 t. ground pepper

1 T. fruity extra-virgin olive oil

1 T. white balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted

First, make the stock. In a medium pot, mix up your bouillon, use fresh mushroom and onion stock, or whathaveyou. To the stock, add the juice of half a lemon and large pieces of the lemon zest (or slice the lemon half and add the whole thing to the pot). Juice one orange and add juice to pot. Add smoked salt, cumin, and pepper, and a few whole parsley stalks.

Now, for the secret: smoked scallions. Turn one burner on high. When it is hot, very carefully, using tongs, place four whole scallions on the burner. Let them blacken in places for about 20 seconds, then turn over, and blacken a few more spots. (I learned this trick from Craig Claiborne, so you know it’s good.) Add scallions smoked thusly to the pot.

Rinse and check lentils for detritus, then add to stock. Simmer until cooked. I think this took about 30 minutes, but I don’t remember, so taste frequently. Note that the stock flavor will transfer to the lentils, so if the stock is not salty or flavored enough, you’ll need to adjust the flavorings. Lentils should remain whole but be tender and glossy. They really are beautiful creatures.

When lentils have cooked, remove from stock with a strainer (and save stock if you will be using it for a pilaf). Remove parsley, scallions, and lemon peels. Spread out lentils in a shallow pan to cool.

As the lentils are cooking, marinate the oranges. Remove peel from three remaining oranges. Since presentation is key, you might need to waste a bit of orange. You could segment them, but I like to have slices, so I turn the round orange into a cube by slicing off all six sides with the peel still on, then slicing the orange into 1/4 inch slices before trimming the remaining peel off each slice.

Chop the rest of the parsley and some of the scallions, finely. Place orange slices in a bowl, and add olive oil, balsamic vinegar, the juice from the rest of the lemon, some of the parsley and some of the scallions. Let marinate in the refrigerator.

When the lentils are cool, place the orange slices on top of the lentils. Add a bit more parsley and scallions judiciously atop the oranges, and sprinkle the pine nuts evenly on top. Chill until serving.

Serve with a pearl barley pilaf cooked in the lentil broth, since your friend does not have basmati rice.

~~~

Roasted Sweet Potato and Wild Rice Soup

Serves 2-3 as a main dish.

4 sweet potatoes

1 small white onion

1 T. olive oil plus 2 T. olive oil for soup

2 cups orange juice

1 t. paprika (hot or smoked)

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 cup cooked wild rice (see package for instructions and leave time for this, as it takes about an hour)

chopped parsley (about 1/4 cup)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Scrub sweet potatoes and cut off bad spots. Chop onion finely and place in small roasting pan with 1 T. olive oil. Roast whole sweet potatoes whole until soft, about 45 minutes, and onions until soft and caramelized (watch them so they don’t burn), about 20 minutes or so.

Remove sweet potatoes and let cool before peeling and chopping. Add chopped sweet potato to large saucepan with onions, orange juice, paprika, wine, and rest of olive oil. Puree with a stick blender or a potato masher, adding a bit more wine or juice if the soup is too thick for your tastes. Cook to blend flavors for about 15 minutes. Add wild rice, some parsley, salt (smoked salt if you have it) and freshly ground pepper to taste. This is not meant to be a very sweet soup, and the flavors should be balanced by the salt and the dry white wine. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve hot with bread.

 

back with goodies!

I’m back! Had a wonderful trip to California, points north and south, filled with eating and drinking and buying of all manner of foodie accoutrements. Expect to see details involving the items pictured above and below, and more, soon.

 

in arbor manzanitas

Oh yes, and this has nothing to do with food, but here is a manzanita tree at Matanzas for my husband, who happens to be fond of them:

Love,

me.

 

in vino matanzas

Had the most loverly day yesterday in Sonoma County. It’s been many years since I’ve been wine-tasting in Sonoma, and even then, we had always opted for the smaller valleys and the back-country routes. Then, around 1994 or so, Retrogrouch and I fell in love with Anderson Valley, and moved our wine-tasting northeastward to Mendocino County.

Well, I had the good fortune to see some in-laws visiting from France, and we decided to take the leisurely drive up Highway 12 to sightsee and visit with their family friend François, the winemaker at Matanzas Creek Winery.

We had lunch in Sonoma and stopped at a couple of wineries along the way. Because I’m feeling more and more grumpy about merchants passing off overmarketed, mediocre products with bells and whistles that command a high price, I feel duty-bound to report that we were particularly disappointed with Kunde Estate in Kenwood, which was as horribly commercial as the most commercial winery in Napa County. They charge 10 bucks for a regular tasting, 20 bucks for a “premium” tasting where you’re allowed to sit down and scarf down some snacks, too. They’ve diversified their name into a line of mustards and all kinds of crap. Is the wine good? Who knows? I’m not going to try it, and I’m willing to encourage other people to complain about this kind of over-merchandising and treating visitors like potential marks that can be soaked for as much money as possible. It’s distasteful, and I hope others speak out about it, too.

But we were pretty thrilled with the northern end of the trip, when we hit Bennett Valley and drove around in the meadows and farms (and even an errant redwood grove (!)). We were warmly welcomed at the winery. François arrived after we had had a chance to stroll around the lavender garden. The landscaping was really beautiful. It’s so nice to see mature plants, and the six gardeners at Matanzas have really done an excellent job keeping the grounds in top shape.

We got to tour the facility, starting out in the chemistry area with fancy machinery, geegaws and beekers. François then took us down to the cold vat room, where Chardonnays were a-brewin’, and we got to taste some raw wines. Although I was excited by the idea of a new reserve line being debuted and the whole meticulous process, I was particularly enthralled by the ice on the vats, which would shiver and crack every so often. He talked to us about some filtration and blending magic, then we saw the other areas of production. Afterward, we had a chance to spend a little time with his wife, too. It was such a good trip.

If you’re going to Sonoma or find yourself in Santa Rosa, it is well worth it to visit Matanzas. Their wines are excellent and the lavender garden yields both culinary and apothecarial lavender, the latter of which is turned into pure, fresh soaps and lotions for men and women, lavender wands, and the like. The lavender seemed much more fitting and appropriate as a companion product, and it wasn’t cheesy like Kunde’s clutter of cheeses, apparel, oils, vinegars, chocolates, etc., etc. And it smelled good, too. François seemed less happy about it, though. I guess when your job is nosing wine, a lavender jamboree in the room next door is not as wonderful as it seems. Ah well.