Category: Recipes
Jun 04, 2009 | From the kitchen of Rose
in Recipes
It's entirely possible that there is no flavor more delightful and compelling than strawberry.
I’ll never forget my first taste of wild strawberries. I was 13 and was sent to the Putney Work Camp in Vermont to learn some work ethics and outdoor skills. The first overnight hike, carrying what seemed like an unbearably heavy backpack, was not very much to my liking until I discovered just before falling asleep that my sleeping bag was on a bed of wild strawberries. The sweet intense sting of the tiny berries was so amazing I almost forgot about the raw egg someone had slipped into my sleeping bag after hearing me brag about how my father had made it for me (another lesson learned!).
A few years ago, at the Union Square Farmer’s Market, I discovered the best strawberries since that night in Vermont so many years ago and a subsequent trip to France one June. They are called “day neutrals” and are a cross between the French fraises de bois and our often watery, flavorless, over-sized variety.
But what to do when now, at the height of strawberry season nearing, when the berries are sometimes disappointingly flavorless. This happened last weekend and here’s my restoration solution. It's quite shocking to discover how a little sugar and time can transform and bring out the flavor that a strawberry was born to possess.
For 1 cup/4 ounces/113 grams of hulled, sliced strawberries add about 1 teaspoon of sugar (don’t get fancy here—just superfine or granulated). Toss lightly, cover, and allow to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes—longer is better still. They will keep at room temperature for several hours or in the refrigerator for several days.
When ready to serve, drain the berries, placing the liquid in a lightly oiled microwave safe cup. Watching carefully, microwave on high until the juices are reduced to thick but still pourable syrup. Allow it to cool until just warm or room temperature and gently stir them back into the berries. Fabulous over Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream!
Mar 21, 2009 | From the kitchen of Rose
in Recipes
I love international cuisine, but when it comes to peanut butter, I’m as American as apple pie. Or maybe it should be changed to as American as peanut butter. Peanut butter seems to be the great divide between American and European taste. I’m sure they’re out there but I don’t know a single European who would prefer peanut butter to hazelnut paste in fact for many it isn’t even a contest—they wouldn’t consider eating the stuff in the first place. Quel domage!
My favorite recipe in The Pastry Bible is the peanut butter and chocolate mousse torte and not surprisingly Fine Cooking magazine chose that recipe to be featured in one of their Best of the Best cookbooks as their favorite recipe too. In my upcoming Rose’s Heavenly Cakes there will be a terrific combination of spice cake and peanut buttercream.
Of course peanut butter also shines in savory dishes as was amply demonstrated by several of America’s top chefs at a recent peanut butter party hosted by the National Peanut Board. I’m posting some of my favorite recipes from the event below except for one which I must tell you about instead as it requires special food service ingredients and machinery—the peanut cotton candy. How chef Linton Hopkins, from Atlanta, Ga. managed to capture the ethereal texture of cotton candy and the full flavor of peanut butter is nothing short of culinary alchemy! One of his secrets is using roasted peanuts for the oil used in the mixture. I’m not going to go on raving about each recipe as I wouldn’t be posting them if they were anything short of fantastically worth making yourself!
Rose and Linton
Suvir and three dishes
Continue reading "Peanut Nut" »
Sep 13, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose
in Special Stories
Some years ago I visited London for the first time and was staying in a rather depressing dumpy but affordable hotel, but not for long. Old family friends, the Streeters, who had retired to Harrogate—land of James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small), invited me to visit. It was like coming home—a beautiful apartment in the countryside, my own room with comfy bed and down pillow. I never did have to return to that dumpy hotel as my next stop was friends in Paris.
Staying with the Streeters was a most wonderful and sentimental visit as I had grown up with their sons and we hadn’t seen each other for years. Ted took me to see the newly unearthed (literally) Viking Village in York. Rosalind, a terrific cook, fed me well, but what was most memorable was breakfast. Rosalind served me a fried egg that was still sitting in the little copper bottomed stainless steel Revereware skillet in which it had been fried. She silently set it before me, having announced the night before that she didn’t like conversations first thing in the morning, and left me blissfully to enjoy the fabulous country egg.
When later I told her what a perfect way it was to serve an egg, keeping it warm but not continuing to cook it she told me that she had been looking for years for more of those little frying pans so she could serve more than one person at a time.
Continue reading "Cast Iron Eggs" »
Jan 19, 2008 | From the kitchen of Rose
in Recipes
I have a cousin, Peggy Samson, who flies to Spain every year to bring back Seville oranges to her home in London to make orange marmalade. If you live in the U.S., however, all you have to do is order from a Ca. company owned by Eric and Kim Christensen and appropriately named “Ripe to You”! www.ripetoyou.com or call 559-626-7917. These oranges are available now and will only be in season for about 2 months but they will keep refrigerated for several weeks.
Seville orange are also known as bitter oranges because they have an acidity level of about that of lemon. They offer the true orange flavor of a sourball candy and will give you the consistency of a perfect lemon curd, unlike that of other oranges which don’t thicken adequately. Don’t use the zest for the curd, however, as unless it is sweetened with tons of sugar as in a marmalade, it is undesirably bitter. Best to use naval oranges for the zest in the curd.
Note: weigh the yolks or measure them as you need the full amount to achieve the best texture.
Continue reading "As Orange as it Gets" »
Sep 07, 2006 | From the kitchen of Rose
in Happenings
Believe me, I’m grateful that Elliott takes care of the great outdoors here in Hope so that I can sit on the back porch and write about it! But come late August I get nervous when he starts making threatening noises about mowing the back lawn again and that I’d better pick the flowering garlic chives before he mows them down (he knows this to be an unforgivable offense but still it propels me into action).
Regular chives with round leaves have lavender blossoms which bloom early Summer but garlic chives have flat leaves which I find more flavorful, and delicate white blooms that smell very aromatic and make an exquisite and tasty garnish. They are particularly lovely sprinkled on salads such as this cucumber and onion salad. I also cut the leaves into small slices and freeze them for baked potatoes during the Winter.
My garlic chives plant was given to me by my cousin Marion Bush whose company “Wild Edibles” in Westchester NY supplies wonderful things from ramps to lobster mushrooms to restaurants in the greater NY area. She learned from her mother my Aunt Margaret who in turn learned from our Great Uncle Nat who founded the New England Mycological Society. Years ago Aunt Margaret taught chef Larry Forgione about wild edibles and also provided him with them for his restaurant. She likes to joke about how they used to meet like drug dealers in the early hours of dawn in a parking lot in Long Island as my Uncle David didn’t want it known that she was doing this!
The one plant that Marion gave me over 20 years ago is now growing everywhere except for the spot where I officially planted it, which means we may eventually have a lawn of garlic chives. This does not please Elliott. But look at the bouquet I harvested and decide for yourself!
It reminds me of a sad/funny moment at Uncle Nat’s funeral in the Berkshires. The ground was carpeted with thyme. Aunt Margaret couldn’t resist saying: “Are you supposed to have (a) wild thyme in a graveyard?” Thus carrying on another Uncle Nat tradition…punning.
Aug 08, 2006 | From the kitchen of Rose
in Recipes
we baker’s know that the most important and least expensive ingredient in baking is air. but it’s taken me years to put together the importance of air in all aspects of food, especially the consumption of it. the idea has so intrigued me i am prompted to share it on this blog. i think it could well change our way of experiencing more fully the dining experience. oh let me not formalize my favorite activity—let’s call it what it is--just plain EATING.
one night a few weeks ago, on the back porch in hope, nj, where it had just rained all afternoon unearthing the usual woodsy aromas from the forest around us, i noticed that dinner had the flavor of mushrooms. the odd thing is that i hadn’t added mushrooms to any of the dishes. that’s when i remembered all the incidents over the years when i noticed how what i smelled was affecting what i was tasting. a little bulb went off in my head: great way to diet: smell more, eat less! good luck!
but the idea of smell and taste intrigued me and remembrances of times when i noticed the phenomenon kept popping up. the first was when i decorated a chocolate cake with freesias and happened to smell them as i was tasting the cake. suddenly i was eating freesias! (but without putting them in my mouth of course—i think they’re poisonous—but not to the nose—ah ha!)
then my mind leapt back 40 summers, eating al fresco (italian translated as in fresh air) on a hill top at my uncle nat’s farm. actually it was just off bean hill road in the berkshires. my father was in the midst of building a log cabin nearby so i went up for the weekend to help him strip logs. he made an outdoor fire and we grilled a steak, accompanying it with freshly cooked vegetables from my uncle’s large garden. the panorama was unforgettable: the hilltop surrounded by the berkshire mountains in the distance with only the stockbridge bowl and one large white house belonging to leopold stokowky in sight. watching the fireflies dancing in the twilight, breathing in the country air, the simple meal tasted better than any i had ever had before (no i didn’t breath in any of the fireflies!)
years later i ate an unusual dish at the river café in brooklyn. it was my first introduction to a chef’s using the concept of aroma’s influence on taste and to great dramatic effect. chef david burke served steamed scallops, sitting on their shells, and placed on a substantial bed of toasted black peppercorns. with each bite of scallop, one tasted the heady perfume of black pepper without the accompanying irritation had one actually consumed enough black pepper to have the same flavor impact. then, for dessert, talk about drama: he served it on a miniature cast iron stove with little cinnamon logs burning in its oven. there’s a chef who knows how to maximize flavor and presentation.
i mentioned this concept to my friend michael batterberry, publisher of food arts magazine, and he immediately delighted me with the image of a rosemary branch twined around a fork (it somehow had to have been antique silver—perhaps even vermeil) so that with every bite one tasted the aroma of the herb without the overpowering flavor had it been in the dish itself. The possibilities here are endless.
just one thing i’d like to see take place immediately: a stringent ban the wearing of perfume or scented cosmetics in eating establishments (it certainly is and needs to be so at wine tastings). well, at least cigarette smoke is no longer a taste distorting presence. maybe eventually perfume will bite the dust as well but in the meantime i think i’ll either design a nose blinder or eat at home, most happily on the back porch of hope. (not, however, if a skunk should happen by!)
Continue reading "The Most Important Ingredient for Optimal Flavor in All Food" »
Mar 26, 2006 | From the kitchen of Rose
in FAQs
Whipped cream tends to water out slightly after beating so to keep this from happening I use a small amount cornstarch which does not affect the texture.
It will not hold up well at room temperature but in the refrigerator will stay well on the cake for 24 hours! Many people have reported that this recipes has saved their lives!
For 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, use 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon of cornstarch (if your cream is very low in butterfat use 1 1/2 teaspoons), and 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract.
Refrigerate the mixing bowl and (preferably whisk) beater for at least 15 minutes.
In a small saucepan place the powdered sugar and cornstarch and gradually stir in 1/4 cup of the cream.
Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and simmer for just a few seconds (until the liquid is thickened). Scrape into a small bowl and cool completely to room temperature. Stir in the vanilla.
Beat the remaining 3/4 cup cream just until traces of beater marks begin to show distinctly.
Add the cornstarch mixture in a steady stream, beating constantly. Beat just until stiff peaks form when the beater is raised.
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