Brown Sugar Ice Cream

Successful ice cream making requires two things. Most importantly, you need a basic formula that respects the science of tiny delicious ice crystals. Secondly, you need some ballsy ideas about what flavors will work — like Kate’s wildly successful bacon ice cream.

Not that brown sugar is particularly ballsy. But it *is* particularly good. We had it with my caramel-topped birthday cake (from Fremont Diner!) last night and it was like they were meant to be.

Ingredients

• 1½ cup whole milk
• 1½ cup heavy cream
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Combine all ingredients and stir until sugar is dissolved.
2. Pour into a 1½ quart ice cream maker and churn till it’s done.
3. Scoop into a container and freeze at least an hour before serving.

Chard Quiche & Arugula Pesto

Last night’s dinner was quite late, but fancy as heck.

I had planned on (finally) making blackberry pie, but after I finished making the crust I realized that the berries had been sitting in the fridge far too long. After a fruitless search online for chocolate pie recipes that use cocoa powder, no evaporated milk, and no eggs, I remembered how much I used to love making quiche. Thank goodness.

We also had a couple fillets of rock cod that our friend Dave caught. (I’d include that recipe, but really you just dredge the fillets and then fry them.) And the daunting pile of sylvetta that I harvested earlier went into the food processor for a nice pesto.

Chard Quiche

(Adapted from Alton Brown’s Refrigerator Pie recipe.)

Ingredients

• 1 9-inch pie crust
• 1 smallish bunch chard (about ½ lb), tough stems removed and sliced horizontally into ½-inch strips
• ¼ cup onion, chopped
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup heavy cream
• ½ cup milk
• 2 pinches kosher salt
• just a wee bit of fresh grated nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Toss together chard and onion, and spread out evenly in the pie crust.
3. In a bowl, combine the eggs, dairy, salt, and nutmeg. Beat well.
4. Pour the egg mixture evenly into the pie crust.
5. Bake for 45 minutes, or until set.
6. Cool at least 10 minutes before eating.

Arugula Pesto

Ingredients

• ¼ pound arugula (about one very big handful)
• 3 cloves garlic
• pinch kosher salt
• 2-4 T olive oil

1. Place arugula, garlic, and salt in food processor. Process until arugula and garlic are puréed.
2. Drizzle in olive oil until the consistency looks right. Taste and adjust seasoning.
3. Serve over fish, pasta, or use as a spread for bread or sandwiches.

Barley & mushroom pilaf

I thought I hated barley until I actually tried it. Chris and I have been hooked on it for a couple weeks. Delicious! And, dare I say, nutritious.

The trick to making barley tasty and not mushy is rocking the pilaf. Instead of a sticky, health-foody mess o glop, you get lovely little individual grains that pop oh so slightly when you chew them. Delicious!

Ingredients

• 2 T butter (or 1 if you’re wimpy/dieting/short on butter)
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 12 crimini mushrooms, sliced nice and thin
• hefty pinch of salt
• about 12 fresh sage leaves, cut into ribbons
• 1 C pearl barley
• 2 C water

1. Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Add garlic and cook until soft, then add mushrooms, salt, and sage, and cook until mushrooms are all nice and cooked.
2. Add the barley and stir to get each grain coated with butter. Keep stirring and cooking until you smell toasty goodness.
3. Add water, cover, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and cook for 30 minutes.
4. Check the barley — it might still need a few more minutes. If there’s still liquid in the pan, give it a little more time. If it’s ready, fluff with a fork and serve. Sprinkle with nooch if you like.

Corn-sage biscuits

Isn’t it great when a baking experiment turns out well? These biscuits aren’t as flaky as your standard all-flour biscuits, but the flavor is unbeatable. Slather ‘em with butter while they’re still hot, and top with poached eggs, herby beans, or a nice thick gravy.

Ingredients

• 1 C cornmeal (I use medium-ground, but anything finer that polenta/grits should be fine)
• 1 C all-purpose flour
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 t kosher salt
• about 20 fresh sage leaves, cut into fine ribbons
• 4 T butter
• ¾ C milk

1. Mix the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sage together in a bowl.
2. Cut the butter into the dry mixture. Rub together with your fingers until there aren’t any big chunks left.
3. Pour in the milk, and stir with a fork until the dough comes together.
4. Knead the dough for a minute or two.
5. Divide the dough into eight equal pieces. (Alternately, you can roll the dough out and use a biscuit cutter to cut out perfect little biscuits. I think this’ll make for a more biscuit-like texture — maybe? Of course, if you are like me and own neither a rolling pin nor a biscuit cutter, you’re best off just dividing the dough.)
6. Arrange dough pieces in a 9-9½ inch glass pie dish. No need to grease it beforehand.
7. Ultimate gluttony option: dab a wee sliver of butter onto the top of each biscuit.
8. Bake at 450°F for 15-20 minutes, or until they brown just a bit.

Cardamom Ice Cream

I had my mom and brother up this last weekend, and Saturday night I cooked them the nicest meal I could muster. (Well, my mom helped a lot — she even peeled a box of fava beans, which is no small feat.) We had fava bean soup full of olive oil and tasty herbs, creamy rice pilaf, and a big, fluffy dry jack soufflé just to show off a little. For dessert — after we recovered — we had this ice cream.

I hoped it would turn out well, but I had no idea it would be as great as it is! It’s mind-bogglingly easy too, so I imagine this will become regular freezer fodder around here.

• 2 C heavy cream (go for the good stuff — I use Straus. You can really tell the difference)
• 1 C whole milk
• ¾ C sugar
• 8 whole cardamom pods (buy small amounts in bulk and you won’t believe how cheap it is.)

1. Mix the cream, milk, and sugar until all sugar has dissolved.
2. Open up the cardamom and discard the pods. Grind up the seeds as best as you can with a mortar and pestle. It might take a while, but the smaller the pieces are, the more flavor you’ll get.
3. Mix that shit up! All together now.
4. Pour into a 1.5-quart ice cream maker and let it churn 20-30 minutes, or according to your manufacturer’s instructions.
5. Scoop into another container and freeze for at least an hour or two to harden.
6. Enjoy, and thank the gods that you were bright enough to buy an ice cream machine.

Creamy Pesto Couscous

Recently I’ve been in the mood for quick, easy, one-bowl dinners. It feels like cheating, especially when I skip the veggies and protein completely, like I did with this dish tonight. But sometimes this sort of comfort food really hits the spot.

I’ll eat vegetables tomorrow. Tonight, I want to drown in creamy pesto sauce.

• 1 T butter
• 2 shoots green garlic, sliced
• 1 T pesto
• 1 T flour
• 1 C milk
• salt and pepper
• ½ C uncooked couscous

1. Melt butter. Add garlic, cook until soft.
2. Stir in pesto, then flour. Cook for a few minutes. Add milk, salt and pepper to taste, and cook until thickened and boiling.
3. Stir in couscous, cover, and remove from heat.
4. In 7 minutes, remove lid and “fluff” with fork. Rejoice in creamy goodness.

Leftover Soup Soufflé

If you don’t have a microwave, there’s no such thing as boring leftovers. That’s my theory, anyways. The reasoning goes like this: if reheating means you’ll have to dirty a pan, you might as well add a little something — some butter, some garlic, maybe a sauce. Really, you might as well go all-out.

In the best case, the second dish is not only better than the first, it’s also unrecognizably different. Like making a soufflé out of last week’s soup.

I should mention that this soufflé is flatter and less airy than most. If you prefer a traditionally lofty dish, use an additional two egg whites (but not yolks!) and only one cup of soup.

Ho-hum leftover cuisine meets French fanciness. I love it.

Ingredients

• 2½ T butter
• 3 T flour
• 1½ C leftover cream of chard soup (anything nice and creamy will do)
• 4 eggs, seperated
• butter and a wee bit of grated hard cheese, for the dish

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Melt the butter, stir in the flour, and cook for a couple minutes, stirring.
3. Stir in the soup, add salt if needed, and bring to a simmer.
4. Remove from heat. Add the egg yolks one by one, stirring each in completely before adding the next.
5. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Do it by hand to Check out how buff you are!
6. Using a rubber spatula, fold about a quarter of the whites into the sauce. Then add the rest of the whites and fold only as much as you have to; leaving it a little streaky now, instead of mixing it into utter submission, will make for a better soufflé in the end.
7. Grease the soufflé dish liberally with butter. Grate a tablespoon or so of cheese into the bottom and tap-tap-tap it around to coat the bottom and sides. Makes for quite a tasty crust.
8. (Carefully) pour the eggy goodness into the dish, and put it in the oven. Lower the heat to 375°F and set the timer for 25 minutes.
9. Resolve not to open the oven until the timer goes off, not even for the tiniest peek. If you have a curious boyfriend or roommate roaming around, stake out the oven door and guard it with your life! (The expansion of air and steam in the tiny bubbles is what makes a soufflé rise; let in too much cold air, and it will fall flat.)
10. When the timer’s done, check out the soufflé. If it’s still quite jiggly, put it back in for another 5 or 10 minutes.
11. Slice, serve, and eat right away! But save some for the next morning — cold soufflé ain’t a bad way to start your day.

Beet-Couscous Pilaf

Ingredients

• 1 T butter
• 4 small beets, cut into smallish bite-size pieces
• ½ C broth or water
• 2 T butter
• ¾ C couscous
• 1¼ C boiling broth or water
• salt
• greens from 4 beets, cut into strips (substitute 1 or 2 red Swiss chard leaves if your beets are green-less)

1. In a small to medium saucepan, melt the first tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Add the beets, and enough broth or water to almost cover the beets.
2. Cook, stirring occassionally, until liquid has evaporated. Beets should be just tender.
3. Pushing the beets to the sides, add the second installment of butter (yeah!) to the center of the pan. Once it’s melted, add the couscous and stir everything together. Continue to stir for a couple minutes, until you smell the nuttiness of the toasted couscous.
4. Add the boiling broth or water, salt, and stir. Dump the beet greens on top, cover with a tight-fitting lid, and remove from heat. In 10 minutes, fluff with a fork and serve! (Grate some cheese on top if it’s too healthy for you.)

Turnip faux-sotto

Turnips: the sweet, buttery underdogs of the root vegetables. Seriously, get some well grown ones and give ‘em a try. Sooooo goooood.

Ingredients

• 4 small-medium turnips, with greens
• 2 T butter
• 1/2 t paprika
• salt
• 2 C leftover brown rice
• 1/3 C white wine
• 1/4 cup grated aged manchego or gran pecorino or some other yummy mildish cheese

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Cut tops from turnips. Remove stems from greens.
3. Cut turnips into quarter-inch bite-sized slices.
4. Place greens in boiling water, cover, and set timer for 10 minutes.
5. Melt butter in a large skillet. Add turnips, paprika, and salt, and toss to coat. Continue to cook, tossing occasionally.
6. When timer goes off, drain the turnip greens well and add to the skillet. Also add brown rice and wine. Stir until excess liquid from wine has evaporated.
7. Remove from heat, and stir in cheese. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, and be sure to tell your guests about how long you slaved away, constantly stirring this creamy risotto.

Better Than Grandma’s Pecan Pie

Pecan pie is one of the few dishes my mom’s family serves at every single holiday dinner. It was also one of the first recipes I got to help with; when I was little, my mom and I would arrange the pecan halfs on the empty pie shell, carefully resisting the temptation to press them in, so they would rise to the top during baking. As a teenager, I made the pie myself a few times, and was always so proud of my contribution.

We’ve only ever used one recipe for pecan pie, and that’s Grandma’s recipe. I’m not sure if she actually wrote it herself, or if we call it that because she made it for so many years. The thing is, Grandma’s recipe uses corn syrup. In fact, it uses more corn syrup than anything else.

I did a wee bit of research online before last year’s holidays, trying to find a “real” pecan pie recipe that didn’t call for corn. I figured there would be an original recipe that people used before the advent of corn syrup.

As far as I can tell, I was wrong. Pecan pie was an invention of the processed food age, and the original recipe was printed on a bottle of Karo syrup! Yikes.

Luckily, I did find an alternative recipe by John Thorne. In place of corn syrup, he uses golden syrup, a British product that I can’t find around here. I’ve been using agave nectar instead, but I think any inverted sugar syrup — like honey or maple sugar — would work.

With dishes like this, the final product relies more on the quality of the ingredients than how you cook it. If you go out of your way to get truly full-flavored brown sugar, high quality butter (Straus!), and tasty little pecans, the pie will be exceptional.

I made this pie for Thanksgiving this year, and a couple family members dared to call it, “Better than Grandma’s.” Sorry Grandma, but it’s true. It’s unapologeticly untraditional, and it’s reaaaaaally yummy.

Pecan Pie

Ingredients

• 1 packed cup full-flavored brown sugar
• scant 2/3 cup agave nectar
• 3 tablespoons Meyer’s dark rum
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups broken pecan meats
• 9″ unbaked pie shell

1. Heat the brown sugar, butter, and agave nectar to boiling, stirring constantly and scraping foam from sides.
2. Boil for about 1 minute. Remove from heat and cool.
3. Beat eggs until creamy.
4. Temper eggs with sugar mixture, then combine along with salt, pecans, and rum.
5. Pour into shell and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Cool before serving.