The kids get back Friday from sleep away camp, and I can’t wait. I miss them and I miss their cooking. Fortunately their garden has been doing well, and I’ve picked lots of peas (and other veggies). But the green peas have been amazing and I’ve frozen pounds and pounds of them for the kids to cook when they come home. Not sure what they will make with them, but I will make sure they post it.
Peas fresh from the garden
Blueberry crisp is one of our favorite desserts, and the kids have made it once for us. I just picked a large basket of blueberries and froze most of them so they can make it again for one of their Sunday dinners when they get back from sleepaway camp. Here’s the recipe, and a photo of one of their half eaten crisps. (And photos of the berries I just picked)
What you need: For the blueberry filling 6-1/2 cups fresh blueberries 1 tablespoon flour or corn starch 1/4 cup sugar
For the crisp topping 6 ounces softened, unsalted butter 1/3 cup sugar 1/2 cup all purpose flour* 3/4 cup rolled oats 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt * subsitute finely chopped walnuts for flour if you want to to gluten free.
What you do: 1. Take out butter at least 1/2 hour before you want to start cooking to soften it. Don’t try softening in microwave…it just doesn’t work 2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees 3. Mix blueberry filling ingredients in bowl, transfer to 8×8 baking dish 4. Cream butter and sugar together in large bowl until pale yellow & well blended 5. Combine flour, oats, baking powder and salt together in separate bowl 6. Add flour/oat mix to butter/sugar mix and use your hand to form into clumps 7. Spread crisp topping on top of berries in baking pan 8. Set timer for 45 minutes, may take up to 1 hour, but check at 45 minutes. Crisp is done when topping is golden brown and berries are bubbling through
Blueberry Crisp–half eaten before I could even take a photo!
Just picked organic blue berries from Thompson Finch farm
Close up (they are just so blue)
Alas, the kids are still at sleep-away camp, but we did see them this weekend and I asked them what dinners they would be making for the the family when they got back. Max said his dinner would involve steak and crepes (I am not sure if he meant together…steak-filled crepes? or separately…steak and then dessert crepes. Alex said that her menu would focus on gruyere cheese because she missed it so much.) They asked me to post some of their favorite recipes, but this one is for Judy:
Really Really Good Roast Chicken: (Max & Alex made this in March for us, served it with a green salad and mashed potatoes, and, of course, wine for the grown-ups.)
Ingredients: 1 four-six pound roasting chicken (six is better because the left overs are “really really good” 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter 2 medium yellow onions, peeled and sliced across 3/4 inch thick 3 cloves of garlic 1 lemon 1 Cup Chicken stock fresh thyme if you have it (not essential, but nice)
What to do: 1. Wash hands. 2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Remove all the stuff in the chicken (giblets etc.). Rinse chicken inside and out under cold running water. Let butter and the chicken stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Dry chicken (with paper towels). 3. Place sliced onions flat in a heavy-duty roasting pan in two rows (they serve as the “grill rack” for the chicken). Roll lemon on hard surface with your hand to soften and then pierce lemon all over with fork. With side of knife gently smash garlic cloves to open. Put garlic, lemon and thyme (4 sprigs if you have it) along with salt & pepper in cavity of chicken. Cut 2 feet of kitchen twine and tie chicken legs together. Place chicken in pan on top of onion slices. 4. Spread the softened butter over the whole surface of the chicken (if you don’t let the butter and chicken sit at room temperature for 1/2 hour, this won’t work…the butter won’t spread). WASH HANDS. Salt & pepper the chicken and put in the oven and roast until the skin is deep golden brown (about 1 and 1/4 hours for 4 pound chicken; 1 and 1/2 hours for 6 pound chicken, but it always depends on your oven). To check to see if the chicken is done, prick the chicken near the thigh, the juices should run clear, and if you have an meat thermometer, the temperature in the thigh should be 190 degrees. 5. Remove chicken from oven and transfer to a plate/cutting board. Let sit for 10 minutes. You can make gravy from the drippings if you want but this chicken is so juicy that you don’t need to. The onions are also delicious (but beware they have absorbed so much chicken fat that they are a meal in themselves.
The kids made this a couple dinners ago but since they are at sleep-away camp (and, alas, not cooking for the family for a while), they asked me to post the recipe. We use a Cusinart ice cream maker, and this recipe is based on a Cuisinart recipe, but any ice cream maker should work.
Ingredients: 2 Cups Water, 1 and 1/2 Cups Sugar, Pinch of table salt (NOT SEA SALT), 4 and 1/2 Cups frozen raspberries, thawed.
Make a simple syrup by heating the water and sugar together over medium low heat. Stir once in a while and remove from heat when sugar is completely dissolved. Add pinch of salt and let cool. When cool, add thawed raspberries and blend (we have used both a regular blender and an immersion blender: either one is fine). After mixture is blended smooth. Remove 1/3 of the mix and strain through a fine strainer (using a wooden spoon or spatula to get rid of the seeds). THIS REALLY MAKES A DIFFERENCE–the first time I made it I didn’t strain it; when the kids made it, they followed the recipe and strained it, and it was much better. Remove seeds from strainer and continue straining the remaining raspberry mix. Refrigerate the mix at least 2 hours. Turn on your ice cream maker! Pour the mix into the frozen mixing bowl and voila, in 15-20 minutes you will have a soft, creamy rasberry sorbet.
You can do this with strawberries as well but reduce the sugar in the simple syrup by 1/2 cup. Taste the mix before you put it in ice cream maker and if still too sweet, add fresh squeezed lemon juice (but no more than 1 tablespoon).
Raspberry Sorbet
Tonight was the kids’ last dinner at home before they left for 6 weeks of sleep away camp so they wanted to cook one more time for the family. Everyone got to choose one or two of their favorite foods: Max chose filet mignon and Yorkshire pudding, Alex chose filet mignon and buttered noodles, and Harry and I chose grilled fish and grilled vegetables. We also made corn-on-the cob because everyone loves it. The kids marinated the cod filet and vegetables (peppers, zuccini, onions) in a soy-garlic-ginger-olive oil marinade for about 1/2 hour before they grilled them. They also decided to make mini Yorkshire puddings (aka popovers), since we had made a large Yorkshire pudding once before and we wanted to figure out which type we liked better. Special thanks to Dad for helping with the grilling: with the meat, all the veggies and the fish, there was a lot going on and a lot of flipping. Both Max and Alex agree that one of the hardest things about cooking is flipping hot stuff so it was nice to have an extra set of hands. We didn’t make desert because we still had packing to do but we enjoyed some delicious chocolate truffles from a neighborhood chocolate cafe called FIKA that a friend had given us. Harry and I are really going to miss both the kids and these dinners!
Yorkshire Pudding batter
Yorkshire Pudding Popovers (just out the oven)
Chopping Vegetables
Max & Dad grilling
Max couldn’t wait for photo before he started…
Today,for father’s Day, we decided to make baby back ribs. We decided to boil them before we barbecued the ribs and it turned out amazing (they were delicious even before we grilled them). We also made corn on the cob to symbolize the first barbecue of the summer, and for our vegetables, we made vegetable shish kabobs. For desert we made one of dad’s favorites: oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Happy Father’s Day!!
Mom recommends that if your kids are baking, or if you don’t bake too often: measure your dry ingredients over a plate (NOT the main mixing bowl where all ingredients end up, and not over the counter or floor): That way if you (or your kids) spill 1/4 cup of flour you can reuse it and it doesn’t 1) make a big mess or 2) mess up the recipe. It’s really important to measure salt, baking powder, baking soda… over a separate bowl (not your main mixing bowl). Nobody wants cookies with a lot of extra salt in them! Similarly, don’t break your eggs over the main mixing bowl. Break them in a separate bowl (and spoon out any extra egg shell) and then add them to your main mixing bowl. Nobody wants cookies with egg shell in them either!
Chopping Vegetalbes
Making kabobs
Today we went strawberry picking so strawberries had to be part of the dinner menu, and ended up as strawberry shortcake. Max decided he wanted a healthy version of fish and chips, along with a salad with goat cheese in it so they made oven-roasted potato wedges with breaded cod filets (baked, not deep fried). Along side that was an arugula, goat cheese and cranberry salad, and of course, the strawberry shortcake. It was delicious and nice to see the kids eating fish!! The kids did the classic flour/egg/bread crumb coating for the fish with two important highlights: the bread crumbs were home made (we try to freeze/toast/and then turn into bread crumbs any of those ends of loaves that otherwise no one eats) AND, after they flour/egg/bread crumb-coated the fish, they put it in the fridge for 15 minutes. For some reason, chilling it seems to help the bread crumbs stick to the fish (or chicken or whatever).
Taco Sunday! Kids made a taco buffet for us: we got to choose what to put in our soft tacos: spicy ground turkey (or less spicy ground turkey), shrimp with ancho chile powder, cheese (cheddar or jarlsberg), lettuce, tomato, salsa (Dad’s version, i.e. extra spicy, or everyone else’s version, i.e. mild), guacamole, sour cream, and rice. The shrimp were really good and a last minute inspiration–we had left over shrimp that didn’t get cooked yesterday as planned so Max and Al decided to chop them up a bit and saute with olive oil and ancho chile powder. I showed them how to use the rice cooker to make rice, and taught them the trick of rinsing the rice in water beforehand (to get off the rice powder or “bran”) until the water ran clear. (Thanks to Mike Holdeman for first sharing this trick…rice is always much fluffier.)
The whole spread..
First rinse of the rice
Last rinse of the rice
Chopping Serrano peppers for salsa (WASH HANDS AFTERWARDS!!)
Cooking Turkey Two ways
The spreads (for both tacos and chips)
Max and Alex made Saturday night dinner this weekend: grilled pork chops, sliced and sauteed apples with cinnamon, baked potatoes, “guac” greens (which is their interpretation of my favorite salad at Sweet Greens restaurant: their version is spinach, sliced avocado, tomato, red onion, crushed tortilla chips and pesto viniagrette), and raspberry sorbet. They have made some of these dishes before and it was interesting to see how much more comfortable they were making them again. They are also much more attentive to detail than I am. For example, when they were making the raspberry sorbet, the recipe recommended straining the raspberry puree to remove the raspberry seeds. I said “oh don’t bother, a few seeds won’t matter,” but they insisted and they were right! The sorbet was amazingly smooth — and much better than if I had made it.
Straining raspberry puree to get out the seeds
Blending raspberries with simple syrup
Final Product: Raspberry Sorbet
Max cooking apples in butter, sugar and cinnamon
The kids made dinner on Saturday night, not Sunday, this week because we weren’t sure where we would be on Sunday night or if we were going to have lots of guests. Regardless it was great: grilled pizza two ways (white and white with arugula and tomato), corn on the cob, baked raspberry custard, and green salad with home made creamy balsamic vinaigrette. Max and Alex made everything–including the pizza dough. The most interesting thing was watching them try to get the vinaigrette right…like chemists.
