Tag Archives: summer

Late Summer Tomato and Burrata Pasta

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Tomatoes don’t reach their prime until mid-late August. That’s when the farmstands and markets are full of juicy, ripe, warm from the sun tomatoes. And if you’re anythig like me, you buy way too many because we have waited so long for them to arrive. If you happen to have a surplus of ripe tomatoes, this pasta is a fantastic way to use them up.

A mix of different kinds of tomatoes is fine. If you can find any heirloom varieties, they are perfect for this dish. Just halve or quarter the little ones and dice the larger ones into a 1/2 inch dice. There is a no-cook sauce. When tomatoes are this good, heat is not needed. Mix up a marinade of garlic, anchovy paste, red pepper flakes, olive oil, red wine vinegar and capers. Let the tomatoes macerate in this liquid while you cook the pasta. Use a good quality, fruity extra- virgin olive oil here. And don’t be afraid of the salt. Tomatoes need lots of salt.

Cook up a pound of pasta. Penne, rigatoni, fusilli, orecchiette or any short pasta will work here. You need a hollow pasta or one with lots of curves, to catch all the flavourful liquid. Toss the drained pasta into the bowl with the tomatoes. The warm pasta will absorb all that delicious liquid.

This pasta can be served warm or you could let it sit for a few hours and serve it at room temperature. Add a few dollops of burrata cheese and lots of fresh basil just before serving. If you can’t find burrata, fresh mozzarella would also be delicious. Check out this article if you’re wondering about the difference between freh mozzarella and burrata.

Click here to print recipe for Summer Tomato and Burrata Pasta SaladDownload

Malted Milk Ice Cream Sandwiches

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If you’re not a food photographer, you might think that shooting ice cream sandwiches is fun. Nothing could be further from the truth. Photographing ice cream is one of the most challenging foods, because it melts so quickly.

I made the mistake of trying to shoot this last Saturday at the cottage, where it was a sweltering 32°C, with a humidex of 41°C! The ice cream wasn’t the only thing melting. We were sweating just standing still. I finally shoved the sandwiches back into the freezer and spent the afternoon on the hammock, in the shade. I got up very early Sunday morning before the heat got too bad and managed to get a few good shots.

Do you remember ice cream sandwiches before they got all fancy? That squidgey chocolate wafer, so moist, it stuck to the paper wrapper. How you had to lick the chocolate crumbs off your fingers after you were all done. The familiar, bland, slightly too sweet, vanilla ice cream center.

I wanted to recreate the ice cream sandwiches of my youth, but with a bit of an update. I’d keep the fudgy chocolate wafer but elevate the ice cream center. I decided to fill mine with malted milk ice cream.

Cook’s Illustrated has a fantastic recipe for the chocolate wafers. The addition of chocolate syrup keeps them super fudgy. All the ingredients are mixed in a bowl and spread into a thin layer on a baking sheet. Once they are baked and cooled, you can cut them into any shape you like.

If you would prefer not to make ice cream, just soften some storebought and spread it out onto a baking sheet. Freeze until solid and then cut into the same shape as the chocolate wafers.

They are delicious as is or you can go deluxe and embellish them with melted chocolate and various toppings. I used chopped Malteasers, mini chocolate chips and Skor bits.

Click here to print recipe for Malted Milk Ice Cream SandwichesDownload


Late Summer Peach Streusel Cake

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It happens every summer. I get carried away when local peaches finally arrive. The rest of the year they are like rocks with absolutely no flavour or aroma. For a few short weeks each August, they are perfect. The flesh gently yields as you take a bite, and the juice drips down your chin and stains your shirt. But it’s worth it. I always buy more peaches than we can possibly consume. Last year I peeled and pitted the extra peaches and tucked them away in the freezer to use during the winter. Of course I completely forgot about them, until I was cleaning the freezer in June and pulled out a frost covered bag.

This summer, I decided to take action and bake a cake with my peach windfall. The problem with most peach cakes is that the peaches exude so much juice that the cake has a wet, gummy texture. Cook’s Illustrated cracked the code on that problem by suggesting that you roast the peaches first, and then mix them with Panko breadcrumbs.

I tarted up the Cook’s Illustrated version of this cake with a delicious streusel topping, crafted from pecans, oats, butter, brown sugar and maple syrup. I love a little crunch on top of my cake.

A drizzle of some salted caramel sauce wouldn’t be a bad idea.
And a scoop of vanilla ice cream, because it’s the last week of summer and I propose we go out with a bang!

Click here to print recipe for Summer Peach Streusel Cake.

 

 

 

Peach Tomato Corn Salad

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When Mother Nature forces corn, peaches and tomatoes to ripen all at the same time, I do believe she intended for us to put them together into something delicious.

First, let’s chat about peaches. There are two types of peaches, cling and freestone. As the name suggests, the flesh of the cling peach stubbornly hugs the stone, making them a real pain to slice. The flesh of the freestone, comes away easily from the pit. Unfortunately, without slicing the peach open, there is no way of knowing which type of peach is which. The first peaches of the season are almost always cling, and the freestones usually follow a few weeks later.
The easiest way to pit a freestone peach is to use a sharp paring knife. Pierce the peach at its stem end and slice it along the seam all the way around the fruit. Place each half of the peach in either hand. Twist the halves in opposite directions. Pull the halves apart to reveal the pit. Use the tip of a spoon to nudge the pit out of the peach.
For this salad I encourage you to buy as many different types, colours and sizes of ripe tomatoes as you can find. Heirloom ones are perfect for this salad. This is truly a blank canvas and you are the artist.

I recently discovered Tomberries. They are minuscule red and yellow tomatoes, about the quarter of the size of a cherry tomato. They are super-sweet and freaking adorable. In the photo below, I put a in grape tomato (bottom left)  for size reference. Loblaws in Canada carries them under their President’s Choice label. If the corn is really fresh, like picked that day, just shuck it, cut the corn off the cob and use it raw in the salad. I like to sauté the corn in a bit of olive oil if it was not picked that day.

Cut some of the tomatoes in slices, others in wedges and start composing. I just drizzled mine with some really fruity extra virgin olive oil. I scattered some fresh basil over top and finished it with a judicious sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper and flaky sea salt. I didn’t feel it needed any vinegar as the tomatoes have a good amount of acid. If you feel it needs vinegar, then go ahead and add some delicate white wine vinegar.

Send me a picture if you make this salad. I’d love to see what you create.

Cherry Yogurt Breakfast Ice Pops

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I make popsicles a few times every summer and end up buying new molds almost every year because I can’t find them or have lost half the parts for the set. This year I splurged on this set , and I am promising myself it will be the last set I will ever buy. They are stainless steel and everything fits neatly into a little tray to hold and store all the parts.

Fresh cherries are at their peak now and we decided to celebrate with them.My daughter thought that plain Greek yogurt would be the perfect base for these popsicles. She is way more health conscious than I am and she convinced me to sweeten them with just 2 tablespoons of honey. We decided to use both pureed and chopped cherries for a textural treat.

Fresh or frozen pitted cherries are cooked with a bit of water for about 5 minutes, until softened. They get blitzed in the blender. we mixed some chopped fresh cherries with the yogurt and honey and filled the molds 2/3 full. Then we poured in the pureed cherry mixture and swirled it with a wooden skewer for a pretty marbled design.
Since they are not very sweet, I thought they would make a perfect portable breakfast. I couldn’t resist dipping the top into more honey and rolling them in some chopped granola, for a complete breakfast!

Click here for recipe for Cherry Yogurt Breakfast Ice Pops.

Malted Milk Ice Cream

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 Perhaps it’s the latent scientist in me, but I find the process of making ice cream fascinating. Taking something from a liquid to a solid state is just so cool. (pun intended).I adore the flavour of malted milk powder. It adds caramel, toasty, roasted notes to all sorts of desserts. But what exactly is malted milk powder? I wasn’t really sure where it came from, so I did a bit of research. Turns out that malted milk powder is a derivative of barley.

The process involves taking sprouted barley, drying and grinding it up into a powder. During this process, the starches in the grain are converted to sugar, producing a sweet dried grain powder. Dried malt becomes the base for beer, whiskey and malt vinegar.

When dried malt is mixed with wheat flour and milk powder, it becomes malted milk powder. This stuff is a flavour bomb. I love adding it to cookies and brownies. The addition of milk powder to the blend adds a creamy rich dairy note, which is why I love it added to ice cream. You need to read the label of the brand you are using. Some brands, like Ovaltine, add sugar and cocoa powder. Other brands, like Hoosier Hill Farm, keep it pure.

I made this ice cream with Ovaltine, as I liked the hint of chocolate it added to the ice cream from the cocoa powder in the mix. If you prefer a more intense malted flavour, use a brand without any added cocoa.

This recipe comes from the King Arthur website. They added a swirl of chocolate fudge sauce to theirs. I left that out, but added some chopped Mars Bars during the last few minutes of freezing my ice cream. I like the little surprise of chocolate malted nougat bits studded throughout the ice cream.

Click here to print recipe for Malted Milk Ice Cream.

Tomato, Corn and Two Cheese Tart

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tarts 625 sqWhen the farmers market stands begin to overflow with corn and tomatoes, I add them to everything I make. Lightly dressed arugula gets topped with sautéed corn and tomatoes and garnished with some buttery diced avocado. Peaches and Cream Corn and Blondkopfchen mini tomatoes weave their way into fritattas and onto tortilla chips gussied up as a salsa. Tiny tomatoes bursting with sweet acidity mingle with basil and plump sweet corn kernels. Tossed with some hot penne pasta and chunks of creamy buffalo mozzarella, it makes for a very happy summertime dinner.

I know that for many folks, biting into a freshly boiled, buttered and salted ear is a summer ritual eagerly anticipated all winter long. When all those sweet little kernels explode in your mouth, it’s bliss for them. But I am among the, mostly silent, minority who do not like to eat corn straight off the cob. It gets stuck in my teeth and I just want to run for the floss. Yes, very un-Canadian/American of me, I know. But I am ok with that. I am perfectly comfortable being mocked when I cut my corn off the cob.market freshWith my abundance of corn, tomatoes and scallions, I decided to make a tart.  Chef Christine Cushing’s buttermilk pastry, studded with fresh thyme makes a perfect base.pastry mise en placeRolling out the dough between 2 large sheets of parchment paper is a foolproof way of handling pastry.rolling between parchment paperLine the pastry with some parchment paper and fill with pie weights to blind bake the tarts. I buy dried chick peas that I reuse for this purpose only. This will give your pastry a head start so that your finished tarts do not have soggy bottoms.pie weights 2Delicious hot or at room temperature (they were even great reheated the next day) these little tarts are a very special way to celebrate the bounty of summer. Once everyone has a bite of these, you will be forgiven for cutting the corn off the cob.

Click here to print recipe for Tomato, Corn and Two Cheese Tart.

close up tart

 

Rye Galette

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When I started this blog over two years ago, I never imagined that it would be read by college and university students. Yet, somehow, I seem to have garnered a following among the 20 something crowd. It started with the daughters of my friends. One young woman, my god-daughter, has set my blog as her home page and was worried about me when I went 10 days without blogging.  She actually called her mom to ask if everything was ok with me . How sweet is that?

Then it grew to include my daughter’s friends. She was quite proud of her mom and told her friends about my blog. I am sure they checked it out, just to be polite, because they are such nice young women!

However, I think they kept returning to the blog because they loved to read stories about my daughter and then tease and embarrass her. This was when they were in high school. Over the past 2 years they have moved onto university and have just recently moved out of residence and into their own apartments. Now they are interested in cooking, so they read the blog for recipes. And they have told their friends about it. So a big shout out to all my girls at McGill, Queens, Emerson and Ryerson!

My daughter’s best friend, spent many hours at our home when they were in high school. She loved eating at our house, especially when I made peanut butter bark, as her brother has a peanut allergy, so she couldn’t have it at home. Once she moved into her own apartment, she began asking me for recipes. She has turned out to be a wonderful cook (one minor mishap with vegetarian chili – but we won’t talk about that). She became obsessed with my galettes (free form tarts) and in May she made a Roasted Tomato and Gruyère Galette for her mom for Mother’s day and told me it was one of her proudest moments! It makes me so happy to see the next generation taking an interest in cooking and baking.

My sons, by the way, do not tell anyone their mother is a blogger. The oldest, probably for fear that his friends will read something humiliating about him, and the youngest because he can’t imagine his mother has time for anything but him!

Flushed with success at my recent venture into whole grains baking, I decided to try Kim Boyce’s Rustic Rye Dough and create a galette with that. In her book, “Good to the Grain”, Kim gives a lyrical description of this dough.

“The method for making this dough is similar to that for a rough puff pastry, a method I learned while working with Sherry Yard at Spago. It calls for letting a rough dough, made from chunks of butter and moist clumps of flour, rest in the refrigerator to give the gluten time to relax and the flour time to absorb the water. After an hour, the dough is rolled and folded a few times to create long “laminated” layers of butter throughout the dough, which give it its flakiness.”

Of course I waited to make the galette until my daughter’s galette obsessed friend was coming for a visit to the cottage. I filled the tart with spinach, corn, Asiago and provolone cheese and sliced tomatoes. The nutty flavour of the rye dough was perfect with that filling. Now of course my daughter’s friend wants to know how to make this, so here is a step by step tutorial, with video, to help her on her way.

Click here to print the recipe for Rustic Rye Dough .

Click here to print recipe for Asiago, Spinach, Corn and Tomato Galette

Cherry Cake with Pistachio Crumble Topping

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If you happened to be at Your Independent Grocer (or “THE YIG“, as my sister likes to call it) in Smiths Falls, Ontario, last Wednesday, at around 2:30 p.m, and you heard a crazy woman let out a gleeful scream, well, that would be me. You see, as I turned the corner, just past the pluots and nectarines, I spied a bin filled with Ranier cherries.

The Rainier cherry is the sweetest, prettiest and most pampered of cherries. Developed in 1953, it is a cross between the Bing and Van varieties. Golden to orange to pale red in colour on the outside, one bite reveals a creamy yellow flesh. They are more delicate and sweeter than Bing cherries. The season for Ranier cherries is extremely short, a few weeks in mid July, and then it’s over.

During cherry season, I eat cherries like it’s my job. During Ranier cherry season, I work overtime! I filled my cart with several bags of Ranier cherries and probably ate at least a pound of them on the drive back to the cottage. I continued to gorge on Ranier cherries for the next several days and pretty soon I was sweating cherry juice. (In my defense, it was quite humid.) It became apparent that I would have to do something with the cherries before the rest spoiled.

Tartelette’s blog  came to my rescue! If you haven’t discovered this blog yet, I urge you to go on over for a visit. It is charming and filled with wonderful recipes and gorgeous drool inducing photography. She made little cherry cakes topped with a pistachio crumble. Brimming with fresh cherries and slightly flavoured with lemon zest. this cake is a wonderful way to celebrate cherry season. I made it with my surplus of Ranier cherries, but in hindsight, the flavour of Ranier cherries is so delicate, and the colour so pale, they were lost in the cake. Next time I make it, I will use Bing cherries.

Pitting the cherries is the most time-consuming task in making this cake. if you don’t have a cherry pitter, do it this way:

The crumble and cake come together very quickly. I made a 9 inch square cake, although if you have mini cake pans, it would make an adorable presentation!

Click here to print recipe for Cherry Cakes With Pistachio Crumble Topping .