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Rhubarb and Ice cream

We have rhubarb! Honest to goodness rhubarb, in the grocery store! And it doesn't look like the rhubarb they tried to sell me in Arizona, brown, limp, weeping. It is robust, rosy, and cheap! So I had to bring some home to surprise my husband. He has been whining for dessert after dinner these last few nights and I think he will be excited by cooked rhubarb and ice cream.

1 pound rhubarb

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp. lavender

Slice the tops and tails off the rhubarb. Next divide any wide pieces in half down the middle. Chop the rhubarb into 2 inch long lengths. Find a skillet wide enough to accommodate the rhubarb in one layer. When it cooks down it will release a lot of moisture and the large surface area of the skillet will aid in evaporation. Combine your herb, sugar, and veg. Cook on medium heat stirring occasionally until the rhubarb releases moisture and the sugar dissolves. Then turn down heat to medium low and stir every ten minutes or so. Cook until tender 30-40 minutes. Cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Atomic coffee

We are in the middle of a heat wave, and the only way to fight it is with a batch of Merissa Mendoza's Atomic Coffee. I got this recipe from Merissa when I worked with her in the pastry kitchen at the Sheraton. It must sit overnight, but it has the added bonus of not requiring the application of any heat. Keep that house cool!

1 cup coffee grounds

3 cups cold water

3 cups heavy cream or half and half

6 cups milk

1 cup sugar

a generous pinch of cinnamon

a generous pinch of kosher salt

Combine the coffee grounds and cold water in a container and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. Strain the mixture and measure your amount of coffee. The list of the remaining 3 ingredients require the addition of 3 cups of coffee. So if you haven't quite made that much, adjust the recipe accordingly. Combine coffee and milk, cream, sugar, and spice; sit and sip.

The coffee will taste even better again if you let the cinnamon mellow with the other ingredients for a time, but I bet you can't control yourself.

Fool

We made this dessert for dinner guests this weekend. I was in the mood for ginger, and thought I would make a cake; but lost my motivation. Fool is an English dessert, something I learned to make when working in London. It is layered much like a parfait, but it doesn't require the arduous fiddling with eggs.

16 oz. greek yogurt

1 cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peak

6 peaches, pitted and large dice

1/4 cup sugar

a generous grating of fresh ginger

1/4 cup chopped crystallized ginger (optional)

There a lots of little tips I can give you with this recipe. The first, don't substitute anything for the greek yogurt. It has a natural tartness to it that is a beautiful foil for the fat and sweetness of this dessert. But if you must, if you cry, "Claudine, I cannot find greek yogurt for sale at my local grocery store", then try plain FULL FAT yogurt.

Secondly, I like to have fresh ginger to hand, but found myself constantly buying it, using a miniscule amount and then laying it in my crisper drawer to be forgotten and to become moldy. Then some clever cookbook recommended I keep it in the freezer and simply grate the frozen chunk into whatever recipe calls for it. Pure genius. The ginger will change in consistancy and become quite sodden with water if it is defrosted, but that should never be neccessary. Remember, freeze and grate.

Enough tips - let me outline the simple recipe for you.

The first step is one we used in England, and I skimped on it quite a bit when making the fool this weekend. I will let you decide whether you want to do it or not. I was taught to turn the yogurt onto a double or triple layer of cheesecloth. Gather the ends of the cloth and secure them. Then hang the whole contraption suspended over a large bowl and leave it to sit in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning you will find a thin yellowish liquid in the bowl, dispose of this. You have effectively leeched some of the liquid out of the yogurt making it thicker and creamier in consistency. If you would like to cheat, I will tell you that this weekend I only drained the yogurt for 2 hours, and had good results.

Combine the chopped peaches, 1/4 cup sugar, and grating of ginger in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat. Stir the mixture occassionally to prevent the sugar from catching and burning. You need only cook the peaches for a short time, perhaps ten minutes, only long enough for the fruit to soften and the flavours to combine.

Remove the pan from the heat and cool off the mixture. I placed the whole thing in the freezer and stirred it every ten minutes. You won't want to add it to your cream/yogurt mix until it has cooled. Lukewarm would be permissable.

Lastly whip your cream to soft peak. For those of you who aren't familiar with this term, soft peak refers to the type of mound you should see in the cream when you touch and pull your finger, a fork, a beater away from the surface. It happens shortly after you notice the cream thicken. And it should create a little mountain which falls over on itself at the tip.

Okay, I said this way easy...so here goes.

In a bowl large enough for the cream and yogurt stir your yogurt with a utensil to break it up and soften it. Add your cream and gently combine the mixture. Now you are ready with all your layers. Simply combine them yogurt, fruit, yogurt, fruit in a container for serving - or in individual containers - think glasses....

If you are using the crystallized ginger, it is typically very spicy, so be spare with it.

AND if you are like us and overfeed your guests you will find yourself with leftover fool. No matter. This recipe is fabulous on top of waffles in the morning, especially if you have candied nuts around. Or you can pop it all in the freezer for an impromptu semifreddo, simply be sure to stir the mixture every 1/2 hour to prevent untasty ice crystals from forming.

Blueberry muffins

It was 80 degrees here in Boston yesterday. I don't really understand what that means yet in a region where humidity is the norm and AC isn't. And well, I had a craving for blueberry muffins. I hadn't yet been out into the afternoon sun and wasn't aware how warm it was. As I trudged to the market for blueberries and eggs I noticed I was doing little more than a shuffle; as if my clothing weren't proof enough – a tank top and skirt – it was hot. This after we had the heat going only three weeks ago. Nevertheless I was determined, and once I returned home the oven was preheated to a searing 350 and the windows were thrown open. Lucky I did because these muffins were awesome.

350 g all-purpose flour (have you bought that scale yet?)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 wt oz. sugar ("wt oz" means use the scale again)
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk
6 Tbs. melted butter
1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line one 12 cup muffin tin with baking cups. Into a large bowl sift together your flour, powder, soda and salt. Whisk your sugar into that until it's well combined. Measure the milk in a largish liquid measure and add to it the vanilla and beaten eggs. Melt your butter. I like to do it in the microwave, but find it's best to use two short cycles of time, say 30 seconds twice, rather than one long time as the butter has a tendency to bubble over and make a mess. Make a well in your dry ingredients and pour in your milk/egg/vanilla mixture. Using a whisk and a light hand begin mixing, making small circles at first to incorporate the flour nearest your well before working your way to the sides of the bowl. Herein lies the key to great muffin making – a light crumb. This is achieved by restraining your mixing. With that said, it is okay to stop with your whisk well before you have incorporated all the dry ingredients. Add your blueberries to the bowl and pour over your butter being sure to distribute it over your entire batter. With rubber spatula* in hand (*notice the tool change), begin lightly folding the batter to incorporate both the blueberries and melted butter and to finally work out the last of the dry balls of flour. Et voila!

Your next challenge is to divide the mix evenly amongst the muffin tins. Much to my chagrin, I find that an ice cream scooper works the best. You know, the kind of scoop with the switch at the handle that sweeps the metal ring across the inside of the spoon and dislodges your ice cream ball. These are sold at kitchen specialty stores in a variety of portion sizes and are most often used in professional American kitchens to portion batters for baking. I used a number 10 sized scoop, but would actually recommend a size smaller for standard muffin tins – try size 8. The muffins should take between 20 and 30 minutes in the oven. Don't forget to turn them halfway through and don't turn off your oven in the middle of baking as I did. Oops!

Holy Bolognese Batman!

I am inclined to tinker with this recipe, but as of now it has met with Tyler's approval. So perhaps I will leave well enough alone. It takes four hours on the stove - not a pretty thing if the house is hot or you have errands to run. But if like us it is still only 50F outside and you don't mind forgetting you left your gas stove running while at dinner to celebrate your anniversay, it should be a breeze.

2 Tbs. butter

3 Tbs. evoo

2 Tbs. yellow onion small dice

2Tbs. carrot small dice

2 Tbs. celery small dice

3/4 pound ground beef

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup milk

1/8 tsp. nutmeg, freshly ground

2 cups tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced

(or canned and crushed like I used)

1 tsp. salt

1/4 - 1/2 tsp. freshly cracked pepper

In a pot - much like a soup pot, or equally large and wide but with shorter sides - melt the butter and heat the oil at medium high. Dice your onion and add to the cooking fat and cook until translucent. Meanwhile dice your celery and carrots. Add them to the pot once your onion is cooked and give them 2 or 3 minutes to soften. Add the 3/4 pound ground beef to the pot and begin breaking it up. My recipe recommended using a fork which was so "Susy Homemaker" but it did work fairly well. Once the beef begins to color but before it has cooked through add the wine to the pot. Allow the wine to cook off almost entirely, stir occassionally. Next add the milk and the grating of nutmeg. Allow the milk to cook off almost entirely as well also stirring occassionally. To this add the tomatoes and reduce the heat to a whisper so the whole sauce only bubbles intermittently - like you imagine a steaming swamp might do. Let it cook like this uncovered for three hours - feel free to go out to dinner. If you are home stir the sauce a few times while it cooks. Before serving taste for seasoning and add the s & p.

I doubled this recipe and ended up with enough for 8 servings. Half of it went into a container in the freezer for a night I don't feel up to cooking. The other half was heated and served on Campanelle pasta. Any shape that has holes, ripples or crevices would be ideal for this sauce as it can glom onto the meaty yummy bits.

This is where I tell you that the recipe comes from Marcella Hazan. So that you don't think I was clever enough to think it all up. I would like to alter it and reduce the amount of wine added to the recipe and perhaps swap the celery for fennel and the beef for sausage ala a meat sauce I had when we went out for dinner Friday night.

Mustard Maple salad dressing

We spent a weekend down in Philadelphia not too long ago with my brother Sean and sister in law, Susie. Sean is an avid cook often shaming me in his knowledge of meats and wine (and I went to cooking school). He is as Susie says, "an expert salad dressing maker". Here is something I saw him concoct one evening. It was so good it has been the only thing served in our house since.

1 Tbs. Dijon mustard

1 Tbs. champagne vinegar

1 Tbs. maple syrup (please don't use any imitation products;

this means no bottles shaped like people)

1/4 to 1/3 cup good evoo.

This would be evoo that you intend to eat raw. Ask a seller at a specialty store. It will inevitably be more expensive, but it's worth it. I recommend an oil with a fruity rather than a peppery finish especially if you are new to the world of olive oil.

pinch of fresh cracked pepper

pinch to 1/4 tsp of kosher salt

Combine all the ingredients except the oil in a bowl big enough to accomodate a whisk. Granted this isn't a lot of liquid to work with but still put it in a large-ish bowl. You may have heard that oil and water don't mix but the mustard included in the recipe will act as an emulsifier. Begin whisking the dressing and adding the oil in a slow steady stream. The dressing will be yellow and become opaque. This is good. Once 1/4 cup of oil is added taste the dressing. It should be sharp, but not too sharp, and NOT oily-never oily. If the vinegar is still too strong, continue adding oil, if the dressing sits heavily on your tongue, prepare another batch of the mustard, syrup, and vinegar; and begin again. Adding not oil this time but the old dressing, tasting, and continuing with oil if necessary. Dressing really is very simple, but I find it can require confidence and a good sense of taste. Good luck.

A warning to the adventurous who may consider trying this recipe. The ingredients are expensive. You will only buy them occassionally, but that first purchase could be dear. Try it when you feel like treating yourself.