I am learning — slowly — that while San Francisco doesn’t offer the summer weather I grew up with (and long for) when school lets out each year, there are ways to compensate for that. Here at home it may be 60 degrees, with fog swirling in the street and a wind so strong it picks up our deck umbrella and tosses it into the neighbor’s yard (we only open the umbrella a couple days in the spring and then again not until our real summer in October, so I hardly know why we bother.) But we can drive half an hour north to the swimming pool or half an hour south for a sunny oceanside hike and that gets me in the mood to make summer in the kitchen, too. So when school let out last week and we faced another foggy day, I summoned my sunniest mood and said to the boys, “It’s summertime! What kind of ice cream should we make?” Ben was first to answer: “Honey ice cream!” And Eli was the one to help. Happy summer.
The recipe is from my go-to ice cream book (everyone should have one): Bruce Weinstein’s The Ultimate Ice Cream Book.
1/2 c mild honey
6 large egg yolks*
1 1/2 c milk
1 c heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
In a medium mixing bowl, beat the honey with the egg yolks until thickened and pale yellow. Set aside.
Bring the milk to a simmer in a heavy saucepan. Slowly beat the hot milk into the egg and honey mixture. Pour the entire mixture back into the pan and heat slowly, stirring constantly, until the custard thickens slightly and coats the back of the spoon. Be careful not to let the mixture boil or the eggs will scramble. Take off the heat and pour through a strainer into a large bowl. Cool slightly, then stir in the cream and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate until cold, or overnight.
Stir the chilled custard, then freeze in your ice cream machine according to its directions.
*Tune in next time for a way to use those 6 egg whites.
Do I really need to give you another pancake recipe? We’ve already given you Lisa’s classic griddlecake recipe, and I’ve contributed recipes for quinoa, pumpkin and lemon pancakes. But I am going to give you one more, because this recipe is so easy you can make it in your sleep, which, frankly, is often my state when pancake-making for my children: vertical and sufficiently responsive, but not entirely awake yet.
The recipe comes from Eric Carle’s picture book, Pancakes, Pancakes!, a book I have been reading to my kids for years about a boy named Jack who asks his mother for pancakes. She tells him she’s busy and will need his help, and then proceeds to direct (but not assist) him in each step, from cutting wheat for the miller to grind into flour all the way to milking the cow for milk (and churning some of it into butter) and gathering the wood for a cooking fire. Jack’s quite happy to do all the chores, and at the end he and his mother flip the pancake together, she spreads it with jam, and he tucks into an enormous, strawberry-jam topped pancake. It’s an excellent story — I revere Jack’s mother — but I have never dreamed of actually making the recipe with which the story concludes:
Until one day recently, as we finished reading, Eli said, “Let’s make these pancakes!” and he caught me at a moment when I was in the mood to say yes. I really didn’t think they’d be very good — no sugar, no baking powder — but I couldn’t sneak in any extra ingredients because Eli was determined to do the cooking himself, plus he can read now. He hardly needs my permission or participation at all:
And I have to say, the pancakes are perfectly good. They don’t hold up very well (no snack pancakes here), so eat them while they’re hot, whether they are stacked with jam:
Or poured and sliced into a homage to Giants’ closer Brian Wilson:
I’ll give you the ingredients, but pick up a copy of Pancakes, Pancakes! to get the whole story, read it with your kids, and then make some pancakes.
1 c flour
1 egg
1 c milk
Stir into a batter while your frying pan is heating, melt a bit of butter in the pan, then proceed, one ladleful of batter at a time, to cook your pancakes.
It’s been a couple years now since Lisa wrote about fresh cherries, plain and simple, and that’s how I like them best, too. But this year, having signed up for an all-fruit CSA, we’ve been inundated with cherries, more than anybody wants to eat, so I’ve been exploring cake. It’s not, I know, the traditional direction to go with cherries; why not clafouti, or a pie? Because I felt like cake.
It gets off to a lovely, fragrant start with a caramel-balsamic syrup:
to which you then add the cherries:
At this point, though, I’d recommend switching from this recipe to this one, for an apricot upside-down cake which I have made several times (click here for a picture); the cake for the apricot recipe is less sweet, so I think a nicer contrast to the cherries, and much less fussy, since it doesn’t require that you separate the eggs. Either way you go, though, you’ll wind up with a delicious cake:
ingredients
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, divided
1/4 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
3 cups whole pitted fresh Bing cherries or other dark sweet cherries (about 21 ounces whole, unpitted cherries)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal (preferably stone-ground medium grind)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, separated
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
preparation
Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°F. Combine 1/4 cup butter with brown sugar and vinegar in 10- to 11-inch ovenproof skillet with 2-inch-high sides. Stir over medium heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves, about 2 minutes. Increase heat to high; add cherries and bring to boil. Remove from heat.
Whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat 1/2 cup butter in large bowl. Add sugar; beat until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with milk in 2 additions each, beating just until blended and occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites in another medium bowl until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat until whites are stiff but not dry. Using rubber spatula, fold 1/4 of whites into batter to lighten slightly. Fold in remaining whites in 3 additions (batter will be thick). Spoon batter over cherries in skillet, then spread evenly with offset spatula to cover cherries.
Bake cake until top is golden brown and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool in skillet on rack 5 minutes. Run spatula around edges of cake to loosen. Place large serving platter upside down atop skillet. Using pot holders or oven mitts, firmly hold platter and skillet together and invert. Leave skillet atop cake 5 minutes. Remove skillet. Stick back any wayward cherries. Let cake cool at least 45 minutes. Cut cake into wedges and serve slightly warm or at room temperature.
Cherry Brown Butter Bars
Adapted from Bon Appetit, via Smitten Kitchen
Crust:
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all purpose flour
Pinch of salt
Filling:
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, diced
1 pound sweet cherries, which will yield 12 ounces of pitted cherries, (alternately, you can use 12 ounces of the berry of your choice)
Make crust: Preheat over to 375°F. Cut two 12-inch lengths of parchment paper and trim each to fit the 8-inch width of an 8×8-inch square baking pan. Press it into the bottom and sides of your pan in one direction, then use the second sheet to line the rest of the pan, perpendicular to the first sheet. Congratulations! You’ve just faked a square tart pan.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the sugar and vanilla and stir. Add flour and salt and stir until incorporated. Transfer dough to your prepared pan, and use your fingertips to press the dough evenly across the bottom of the pan. Bake the crust until golden, about 18 minutes (it will puff slightly while baking). Transfer crust to rack and cool in pan. Maintain oven temperature.
Make the filling: Cook butter in heavy small saucepan (a lighter-colored one will make it easier to see the color changing, which happens quickly) over medium heat until deep nutty brown (do not burn), stirring often and watching carefully, about six minutes. Immediately pour browned butter into glass measuring cup to cool slightly.
Whisk sugar, eggs, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Add flour and vanilla and whisk until smooth. Gradually whisk browned butter into sugar-egg mixture; whisk until well blended.
Arrange pitted cherries, or the berries of your choice, in bottom of cooled crust. Carefully pour browned butter mixture evenly over the fruit. Bake bars until filling is puffed and golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool bars completely in pan on rack.
Use the parchment paper overhang to carefully remove cooled bars from pan and place them on a cutting board and cut them into squares with a very sharp knife.
I’ll make this again, and I’ll vary it, too, by topping this easy pastry with lemon custard, or lemon custard + raspberries, or blueberries… the possibilities are nearly endless.
The pace of life has not abated here, and like a lot of you, I’m still not finding a whole lot of time to cook a leisurely dinner. I’ve had to innovate a lot in order to have some variety. It helps that the markets are full of lots of fresh produce, which needs very little to adorn it or get it ready for the table.
Recently, I needed something fast to cook in between soccer practice and the school performance, and while I love pre-cooked sausages, the kids love mini pre-cooked sausages even more. I built the meal around these, which were ready in the convection oven in 10 minutes.
I put out a tray of mustards, mini rolls, mini carrots, cherry tomatoes, & shelling peas.
The salad on a stick was such a hit with everyone, and so easy and portable, I’ve been brainstorming variations. And what better place to test the concept and recipes than a Memorial Day get together with Caroline and her family, and our friend Nicki Richesin & her family. Nicki has just edited the terrific anthology Crush: 26 Real Life Tales of First Love, which you should put on the top of your summer reading list.
I made bite size versions of the salad-on-a-stick with toothpicks instead of skewers, and it turned out to be perfect party food. They were a big hit with the grown-ups, and some of the kids. But the kids were mostly busy with the zip line, which Tony re-created for the afternoon and kept all of them busy for, oh, 4 hours. So can you blame them for not eating very much while there were things to build and fly and crash?
We set the platters out on the deck for snackingwhile building, but we adults ate most of them. For two of the choices, I put a small slice of bread on the bottom to soak up the dipping sauce. It worked beautifully.
The choices:
Roasted Pepper + Manchego + Brown bread
Cherry tomato + basil leaf + mini-baguette slice, with olive oil + balsamic vinegar for dipping
