Cue Up the Gypsy Kings

There were some optimistic souls who assumed we were due for a mild summer to make up for the horrific winter we had, followed by a spring with a terminal identity crisis, which it tried to resolve by experimenting with 40s and rainy and 80s and humid in 72-hour rotations for the past two months. Said well-meaning souls do not have my hard-earned and deep-seated cynicism, which is why they might have been disappointed when the weather gods decided Memorial Day weekend was as good as any time to go from zero to July, and to hell with June.

Some might say that my reality-based view of the universe makes me less shiny-happy-whatever, but I say there is a certain grim satisfaction to be derived from being right, to say nothing of being better prepared when the inevitable happens. When the 90s-and-humid hit, I already had a pitcher of cold-brewed coffee ready in the fridge, and I was also raring to make my favorite heat-busting celebration of summer, even if it had to be made with supermarket tomatoes because it isn’t actually July and the Jersey tomatoes are still weeks away.

Gazpacho, like flamenco music, is one of those things I fell so hard in love with at first exposure that I have to attribute it to genetic memory. After all, some part of my cross-Mediterranean mix does come from Andalusia, the ancestral home of both. I’m still trying to find the time and discipline to learn guitar, but regularly making gazpacho during the sauna season honors my forebearers with almost no time or effort, and consistently helps me keep my cool.

Gazpacho is infinitely forgiving and you can vary the amounts and ingredients according to what you have and like. For example, this version comes from Jose Andres, my favorite Spanish chef and the source of the best flan ever. His (actually his Andalusian wife’s) recipe uses half a green pepper rather than one whole red one, but I almost never buy green anymore since red is so much sweeter and more versatile, so I used that. Of course, the better tomatoes you use the more deeply flavorful this will be. When the heirlooms hit the farmers markets, go nuts with any variety you can find.

Gazpacho
(Adapted from Jose Andres’ Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America)
Serves 4, if I feel especially self-sacrificing

2 pounds ripe tomatoes (around 5-6 medium ones)
1 large cucumber, peeled
1 small red pepper
1 garlic clove, peeled
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish
2 teaspoons sea salt

Core the tomatoes, chop roughly into eighths, and place in a blender. Roughly chop the cucumber and pepper and add to the carafe on top of the tomatoes. Add the garlic, vinegar and water, and blend until the mixture is uniform and no visible chunks of vegetable remain. Taste and add more vinegar to balance the tomatoes and pepper if they’re especially sweet.

Add the oil and salt and blend again briefly. Don’t blend too long or the gazpacho will start to heat up and you’ll lose the fruitiness of the olive oil. Chill in the carafe until very cold, at least 30 minutes.

Serve in glasses, drizzled with a tiny bit more olive oil and vinegar. If you like, you can also garnish with cherry tomatoes and additional diced cucumber.

Notes:

The recipe calls for straining the gazpacho after the initial blending and before the refrigeration step, but I never bother because unless I’m paying big bucks for it at Jaleo, when perfection is to be expected, I prefer gazpacho to be a little rustic. You can strain if you like, but the extra fiber is good for you, and shouldn’t life have a little texture?

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My Preciousss

We loves Meyerses. Yes, we do. We loves them so much that we sacrifice valuable checked-luggage space just so we can smuggle several pounds of them back from California, probably violating numerous state and federal agricultural regulations in the process. We piles the preciouses up on our kitchen island and stares at them for days, until they start showing signs of wrinkling, and then we panics and makes everything we can think of to save them from being wasted.

Ahem. OK, enough first-person Gollum plural. I believe I’ve made my point, which is that one of the best parts of spending the holidays in California is bringing as many lemons as possible back.

This year, thanks to the combined generosity of my brother, his fiance, and His Lordship’s parents, who made sure I was supplied with lemons despite having no opportunity to shop for them myself, I had enough to require last-minute rearranging of our luggage to avoid paying overweight baggage fees. And unlike my attitude toward persimmons, it physically pains me to let Meyer lemons go to waste, so pretty soon after our return to the East Coast, I had to make efforts to preserve them.

About a half-dozen of them were salted and are currently in the back of my fridge, turning into Moroccan-style preserved lemons. The remainder were used in two variations on jam: one a proper marmalade, and the other a fast and loose almost-instant jam. Both recipes make full use out of the whole fruit, wasting absolutely no part of my sunny beauties.

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Two for the Price of One

Speaking of ginger — and with me, you pretty much always are — I’d like to share one of my favorite fall desserts and/or breakfasts: poached pears.

A perfectly ripe pear is an autumnal joy all by itself, but when the pears are not quite ripe or are a little on the grainy side, poaching them erases all sins. Using a plain light syrup gives you a soft, unpretentious result reminiscent of the canned pears we probably all loved as kids, but adding grown-up flavorings to the liquid or using wine or juice instead of water elevates the simple fruit to heights of sophistication.

Naturally, ginger is one of my favorite additions to the poaching syrup, but that’s just the start. Although I once thought nothing could supplant allspice in my “where have you been all my life?” affections, lately I can’t keep my hands off the jar of Szechuan peppercorns. These little pink gems look like miniature red popcorn kernels, smell like a cross between citrus and roses, and add just the right hint of delicious mystery. To play supporting alto to their trilling soprano, I add an equal amount of black peppercorns, rendering a subtly challenging syrup that makes both the pears and your tastebuds go “hmmm”.

As a bonus, any syrup left after you’ve fished out the last of the pears can be mixed with fizzy water to yield a subtly spicy pear-and-ginger soda, or stirred into unsweetened iced tea for a flavor Snapple only wishes they’d thought up.

Pears Poached with Ginger and Szechuan Peppercorns
Serves 4-6, not counting leftover syrup for beverages

1 cup granulated sugar
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and sliced
1/4 teaspoon each Szechuan and black peppercorns
3 cups water
1 quart Seckel pears or 6-8 full-sized pears

In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, ginger, peppercorns and water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel the pears, cut in half, and remove the cores with a melon baller. If using full-sized pears, cut into eighths. Seckels can be left in halves.

Tip the pears into the syrup, return to a simmer, and continue cooking until the tip of a sharp knife easily pierces the pears all the way through. Let the pears cool to room temperature, then fish out the peppercorns and ginger.

Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve in your prettiest bowls, with or without ice cream, for dessert, or with yogurt and granola for breakfast. Use any leftover syrup in your favorite beverage application.

Notes:

I am a fiend for the tiny, cute Seckel variety, which make for a particularly elegant presentation, but pretty much any variety will work. In this batch, I mixed Seckels and big red Bartletts with no ill effects. Very firm varieties like Boscs will hold together really well, although you will sacrifice some of the creaminess that makes a poached pear so soothing.

You can bump up the quantity of ginger or black peppercorns to your heart’s content. Whatever you do, though, don’t add more Szechuan peppercorns unless you like your desserts with a side of Novocaine. The same compounds in Szechuan peppercorns that give them their addictively floral fragrance also make them a topical anaesthetic in larger quantities. Any more than I’ve indicated here will numb your tongue for hours.

If you can’t get Szechuan peppercorns, you could get a similar, if less dramatic, effect with a couple of star anise or a cinnamon stick plus half a vanilla bean in addition to the black peppercorns.

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What Have We Here?

Swamp water? Toxic waste?

Whatever it is, it doesn’t look very appetizing, doesn’t it?

Well, this is another of those cases where looks are inversely proportional to yumminess. It’s an infused syrup for homemade ginger ale, and if you’re as ginger-obsessed as I am, it’s beauty incarnate. This syrup makes a turbo-charged version of ginger ale, a bubbly drink so intensely spicy and punchy that your head will reel in the best possible way. It’s simultaneously refreshing and electrifying, with a deeply addictive slow, sweet burn.

I love ginger so much that I make this summery cooler year-round, but it recently occurred to me that its bilgey appearance and diabolical bite couldn’t be more perfect for your Halloween party. Depending on the size of your bash, I’d double or triple the batch, and serve it out of a glass vessel suitable for a mad scientist’s lab. If your party is of the strictly grown-ups variety, you could mix in some rum for the aptly-named Dark and Stormy.

Ginger Ale Syrup
(Originally from Jean Georges Vongerichten, but see below)
Makes around 2 cups syrup, enough to serve 6-8 (assuming I feel like sharing)

1/2 pound fresh ginger, peeled
Inner parts of bottom third of 2 stalks lemongrass
1-2 dried Tien tsin peppers or other small infernal chiles, left whole
3/4 cup sugar, preferably raw (demerara or turbinado)
Seltzer or fizzy mineral water

Chop the ginger into half-inch chunks, and thinly slice the lemongrass stalks. Place both in a food processor and pulse until very fine, but not pureed.

In a small saucepan, combine the ginger mixture, chiles, sugar, and 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer vigorously for 15 minutes.

Let cool to room temperature, then strain through a fine-meshed strainer. The syrup will theoretically keep in the fridge for days, but it’s highly unlikely it will last longer than 48 hours once you’ve tried your first sip.

To serve, pour 4-5 tablespoons of syrup into a large ice-filled glass, and top off slowly with the seltzer or mineral water. Stir gently with a chopstick or long spoon to distribute the syrup.

Notes:

The original recipe came from Jean Georges Vongerichten, but I found it some time ago after following so convoluted a trail of hyperlinks that I’m really not sure how authentic it was even before I started tweaking.

If you don’t have access to a food processor, as I didn’t when I first tried this, grate the ginger and mince the lemongrass instead.

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Birthday Pie and Sangria

It’s been a quite busy couple of weeks, and although I’ve been baking for two birthdays and the usual Monday scene, I’ve been too scatter-brained to take pictures, so we’re going to have to make do here.  I’ll do a bit of a round-up of the baking, then offer what you’ll have to take on faith is quite a photogenic, in addition to easy and well-received, sangria.

So first things first: His Lordship’s birthday came ’round again, and as usual there is no cake for you! because he turns up his nose at cake and demands pie instead.  Since it’s prime apple and pear season, he usually gets some variation on one or the other, and this year, I found this perfect recipe by Tartelette at exactly the right time.  Since I don’t currently have tart molds, I made it as one big tart instead, with locally-grown Cameo and Pink Lady apples baked with maple syrup instead of honey.  It was quite fabulous, especially the frangipane custard layer.  The one change I’d make next time is to slice the apples just a smidgen thicker for a more toothsome texture, even if they won’t layer as prettily as they did in the (sadly mediocre) picture above.

For the other birthday person, who thankfully does not ‘meh’ cake and asked for anything chocolate, I made dark chocolate cupcakes from the same Scharffenberger base recipe behind my uber-coconutty German Chocolate Cupcakes.

As part of the birthday celebrations, there was quite a raucous get-together for which I improvised some sangria, since I don’t do beer and the amusing set of liquor laws here makes wine readily accessible at the supermarket, but hard alcohol means an extra trip to a separate store.  By popular demand (by which I mean two people asked for it), here is the recipe:

Ice-Breaker Sangria
Serves 6-8

2 bottles inexpensive, non-oaky white wine
1/3 cup sherry
3 oranges, 1 sliced thinly and 2 juiced (preferably blood oranges, but navel or valencia are fine)
1 lemon, sliced thinly
1 lime, sliced thinly
1 eating apple, sliced thinly
1/4 cup sugar, dissolved in an equal amount of boiling water

Combine everything in a large pitcher and refrigerate for at least an hour to let flavors combine.

Serve over ice.

Notes:

I used California pinot grigio here, but it’s a really flexible recipe and you could use whatever strikes your fancy, including swapping red or rose for white. I’d just add two cautions: don’t use chardonnay unless it’s aged in neutral barrels, because the oak will overwhelm the fruit, and don’t waste your best wine here.  You actually want  to use the cheap, unobtrusive stuff in sangria.

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A Little Light Wednesday Blogging

I thought I’d take a break from the interminable packing and cleaning to put up this fresh and pretty iced tea variation, which used off the last of the green tea.

Although it’s definitely cooling off at last, it’s still plenty warm, and iced tea is a great place to use the great ripe end-of-summer produce. So far, I’ve done nectarine, peach, plum and raspberry with black and green tea, yerba mate, herbals, and combinations thereof.

Vanilla Plum Iced Tea
Serves 2-4

Vanilla Simple Syrup:
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 vanilla bean, split

Iced Green Tea:
2 green tea bags and 2 yerba mate tea bags, or four of one kind
4 cups barely-boiling water
2 ripe plums

In a small saucepan, combine syrup ingredients.  Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 2 more minutes.  Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.

Remove the tags and strings from the tea bags and place in a large, heatproof pitcher.  Add the hot water and steep for 5 minutes, then remove the bags.  Cool at least to room temperature.

When the tea is cool, peel and core the plums and puree with an immersion blender or in a regular blender until smooth.  Pour the plum puree and 1/3 cup of the syrup into the tea and stir well.

Serve over ice, with additional syrup on the side so each person can sweeten further if desired.

Notes:

The amount of tea can be scaled up at will; this just happens to be the amount that fits our pitcher best and allows for two large glasses each for me and His Lordship.

The first time I made this, I used just green tea, honey instead of simple syrup, and ginger instead of vanilla.  The hint of ginger accented the plum very well, and was really refreshing.  If you’d like to try this variation, add 1/4 cup of honey and half of a thumb-sized knob of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced, to the tea while it’s still hot, to dissolve the honey and let the ginger infuse the tea.

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Mutant Peach and Zarzamora!

White Nectarine and Blackberry Agua Fresca

No, it’s not the newest silly cartoon on Nickelodeon, although it would make a cool update to Strawberry Shortcake, which I understand is undergoing some kind of revival.  To this I can only respond, “Dear god, why?  If you’re going to dredge up crappy 80s cartoons, don’t start at the bottom.  This is just one step above Care Bears.”  But again, and in my usual fashion, I digress.

Mutant peach and zarzamora is the flavor of agua fresca I made mid-week, as a refuge from the appalling late-July hellwave we’ve been suffering through.  The mutant peaches are actually nectarines, from the label I saw on the nectarine trellises at Longwood Gardens last weekend.  Their fuzzless state is the result of a mutation in peaches, and apparently Pierre du Pont was a fiend for them and demanded his gardeners keep them in constant supply. (There, you’ve picked up your RDA of useless trivia for today.)  Zarzamora, besides being one of my long-standing favorite words in Spanish by virtue of its soft, sibilant roundness and languid meter, is also one of my favorite fruits, the blackberry.

Both of them were beckoning compellingly at the mid-week farmers’ market, so I decided to pair them in a cooling drink.  We’ve been favoring iced tea all summer, particularly made from yerba mate, which His Lordship acquired a taste for during the aforementioned ancestral homeland trip, so I could just have made a simple puree to flavor iced tea with.  Instead, I continued the agua fresca kick of the past couple of weeks, a byproduct of all the reminiscing about my angst-ridden teenage sojourn in Mexico, which triggered the memory of how passionately I used to love the fruit drinks even when I hated life, the universe and everything.

Making aguas frescas is a matter of method more than of recipes.  Choose good ripe fruit and blend it with a small amount of water until perfectly smooth, adjusting the acidity and sweetness as required.  Strain out the pulpy and seedy bits, and thin the juice further to achieve a light, easy-drinking consistency.  You don’t want a smoothie; you want a fruit-infused water.

The combination of nectarines and blackberries worked really nicely, as stone fruit and berries generally get along splendidly, and had a lovely dusky pink color.  You can use any other fruit or combination you find appealing, and even certain vegetables, like cucumber.  My favorite of all time is watermelon, and any other kind of melon is also great.

White Nectarine and Blackberry Agua Fresca
Serves 2-4 thirsty people and 6-8 less parched individuals

3 white nectarines, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 pint of blackberries
Juice of 1/2 a lemon, or more as needed
Agave nectar, simple syrup or honey, as needed
3-6 cups water

Place nectarines and berries in a blender with 1 cup of water and whiz until completely smooth.  Taste the puree and add lemon as necessary to brighten the fruit, and sweetener to taste.

Strain the puree through mesh sieve into a large pitcher and stir in more water to dilute to the consistency and approximate transparency of iced tea.

Chill thoroughly and keep in the fridge to be pulled out, icy cold, when you can’t take the 90-plus temps any more.

Notes:

Lime is more common in agua fresca, but it would have competed with the nectarine, while the less-assertive lemon just adds a sparkle and fades into the background.  You could easily use orange, grapefruit, tangerine, etc. instead.

Although agua fresca is fundamentally unpretentious, you can play with additional flavorings to your heart’s content.  The simple syrup, honey or agave that sweetens the drink can be steeped with ginger, lemongrass, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, or herbs such as lavender, mint, lemon thyme, or even basil for greater sophistication.

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Oooof.

Overdid it? Feel like fasting between now and New Year’s? Vowing to everyone in sight that this is the last time you will participate in this appalling national orgy of gluttony?

Yeah, me too, which is why breakfast today consisted of my sure-fire morning-after remedy: lemon ginger tea. The ginger aids in digestion, and both ginger and citrus will quickly settle an upset tummy. You can make ginger tea just by steeping a few slices of fresh ginger in hot water for a few minutes, with perhaps a spoonful of honey added for sweetness, but I really like the combination of ginger and lemon, and I think it works a little faster than ginger alone. I suppose you could even add some fresh mint, if you really want to hedge your bets.

I’ve been using candied or crystallized ginger rather than fresh lately, because it keeps forever in the cupboard, is easier to carry along to the office or while traveling, and because the sugar in the ginger sweetens the tea by itself. If you don’t have any, use an inch-long piece of fresh ginger, sliced (no need to peel it if you don’t want to), and a teaspoon of honey.

Ginger-Lemon Tea
Serves 2

Equipment: A small teapot, or two cups or mugs

4-6 pieces candied or crystallized ginger, roughly chopped
1/2 lemon, sliced
2 cups boiling water, or enough to fill the vessel you’re using

Place the ginger and lemon in a small teapot, or divide evenly between two cups. Cover with boiling water and allow to steep for five minutes. Stir before serving.

Notes: You could also serve this over ice, with some additional fresh lemon juice and a shot of simple syrup.

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How to Fix a Crappy Day Without Getting the DEA Involved

I didn’t actually have a crappy day, but when I do, this is my drug of choice. This, my friends, is the World’s Best Hot Chocolate.No, don’t dismiss it so readily. When I first read about this hot chocolate, I said, “Yeah, big deal. It’s hot chocolate. How special can it be?” Then I tried it, and I would have been more than happy to swallow not just those words, but also the first folio of the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary, if only it could be dipped in this hot chocolate. This is not the stuff you make from the powdered mix when you’re camping. This is not the stuff you pay $4 for at the top of the ski slope. This is not even the stuff you stand in line for 45 minutes for at Ghirardelli Square while you’re freezing your ass off waiting for the Fourth of July fireworks to start. (Which I did, and yeah, it really is good cocoa. Just not as good as this.)

This stuff is, quite simply, the Platonic Ideal of Cocoa. If you ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, closed your eyes, and imagined what it would be like to dip a mug into Wonka’s chocolate river and drink deep, this is it. It tastes exactly like drinking the perfect bar of dark chocolate, melted. It will repair your darkest mood, put a broken heart on the road to recovery, and, single readers, I’m convinced that learning how to make this stuff will do wonders for your love life.

The recipe is a simplification of Jeff Steingarten’s Chocolat Chaud recipe in It Must Have Been Something I Ate. The original called for whole milk diluted with spring water, and required 5 minutes of blending in order to create froth. It also made way more than even the most determined chocoholic could consume. As written, the recipe made four six-ounce cups, but this stuff is so rich that you can only drink it in demi tasse-sized doses. I’ve cut the recipe in half, which still serves four beautifully when served in espresso cups and accompanied by a couple of cookies. (It also allowed me to use exactly one of the small 2 oz bars of Scharffen Berger dark chocolate per batch.) I substituted 1 or 2% milk for the whole milk with water, since he was already diluting the whole milk, and I eliminated the frothing step altogether, because I tend to be lazy when I want a last-minute chocolate fix.

Try it. Seriously.

World’s Best Hot Chocolate
(Serves 4 on a normal day, or 2 on a truly abysmal day)

1 1/4 cups lowfat milk
2 tablespoons sugar
2 oz (50 grams) dark chocolate (use the good stuff)
2 tablespoons good quality cocoa powder (I use Ghirardelli)

Optional: cinnamon, nutmeg, powdered chiles, vanilla or almond extract, or espresso powder

Chop the chocolate with a serrated knife, and combine with the cocoa and any spices or the espresso powder, if using.

In a small saucepan, combine the milk and sugar, and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Once it simmers, pull it off the heat and add the chocolate mixture, whisking thoroughly. Return to the heat and bring back up to a simmer, whisking vigorously until the chocolate is dissolved and the mixture is thick and homogeneous.

(If using vanilla or any other extract, add it at the last minute, off the heat, to preserve the flavor.)

Serve in demi-tasse, espresso, or other small cups, with a couple of good cookies. (Ladyfingers, shortbread, Mexican Wedding Cookies, amaretti, meringues, or other fairly plain, non-chocolate ones work best.)

Leftovers, if there are any, keep perfectly well in the fridge for at least a day and can be reheated in the microwave.
—–

If the situation is really, really dire, I would recommend adding a stiff shot of Kahlua, Amaretto, Frangelico, or Bailey’s.Incidentally, this is a perfect diet food. No, I’m not kidding. For those brief and shining moments when I’m trying to stick to a healthier eating plan, I use this as a guilt-free dessert. Since it’s so incredibly rich and flavorful, a tiny cup of it will satisfy me completely, and then I won’t go rampaging through every cupboard, eating half a dozen things I really didn’t want in my effort to find the one thing I did want. Better to head the whole process off and have one small thing I’ll really enjoy, I think.

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