Super simple strawberry cake

We've been getting 2 pints of strawberries per week from our CSA. This, of course, is pretty fantastic. Strawberries with dinner! Strawberries with breakfast! Strawberries at the slightest provocation!

But there's always that point at which the yet uneaten berries start to wilt a bit. Maybe one pint is gone, and the other is completely untouched (strange, but it does occasionally happen). And then it's Tuesday night and you know that Thursday will bring another two pints.

At this point you have a couple options. You can freeze your berries for smoothies, which is always a good plan. You can mash your berries into the world's smallest batch of jam, to be eaten immediately on toast spread with ricotta or cream cheese and topped with basil and black pepper (which I have not done, but which definitely needs to happen ASAP). Or you can bake with them.

Since the weather was cool enough for us to turn on the oven, we went with option 3. I found a minimal cake recipe that would let the berries take center stage, and I went to work.

This cake is not only really easy and quick to make, but also deceptive, hiding chunks of strawberry beneath its surface. The berries start out on top of the batter and sink down over the course of baking, becoming delightful surprises. So good.

Super simple strawberry cake
adapted from Always With Butter.

6 tbsp softened butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups flour
1 pint strawberries

I bake pretty much everything by the 1-bowl method, and this was no different.

In a large mixing bowl, cream your butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and milk and mix to combine well. Add the baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, and mix to combine again. Add the flour in three half-cup increments, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

Pour the batter into a well-buttered and floured 8-inch cake pan.

Wash and slice your strawberries. Push the berries far down into the surface of the batter, making a pattern or not as you prefer. As you can see, I prefer not to. They'll mostly be covered in the end anyway.

Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Try not to put your tester directly into a molten berry.

Serve plain, with whipped cream, or with a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Very lovely for breakfast or with a cup of afternoon tea. Or, you know, whenever.

And if you are a fan of peanut butter, this is excellent with a big spoonful spread on top. Peanut butter and jelly cake for all!

What fruit-filled concoctions are you baking this summer?

Fresh apricot sauce with honey and black pepper

OKAY. We have just finished hosting John's mom and our niece for a full week of running around the SF bay area and points beyond. Much fun was had by all. The only problem is that I now have roughly 500 posts in my foodblog feed to get through as quickly as possible. Yay?

We didn't do that much cooking in the past week, considering the holiday etc., but one standout was this delightful apricot sauce. It was totally appropriate for multiple occasions. First, we seared some pork chops and served them with the apricot sauce, plus brown rice and garlic chard. This was lovely. But the sauce was even better on our last night, when we made a big batch of waffles for celebratory breakfast for dinner. Apricot sauce, waffles, and butter: yes please.

Of course, at this point I also must point out that our niece's favorite way to eat her waffles -- with peanut butter and maple syrup -- was excellent too. But you don't need me to teach you how to put peanut butter and maple syrup on waffles!

This sauce is very easy to make. Just a quick poach plus a little blending is all it takes to make your own delightful apricot concoction. This also creates what is possibly the most vibrantly orange sauce ever.

If you're planning to use this sauce with meat or other savory devices, I'd recommend adding a touch of something herbal. Rosemary would be ideal. You could either put a branch in the poaching liquid to let the flavor infuse into the fruit, or gently cook the pureed sauce with your rosemary for overall sauce infusion. Either way, you'd end up with something just a touch more complex and applicable to savory dishes.

This makes approximately 1.5 cups of apricot sauce, depending on the size of your apricots.

Fresh apricot sauce with honey and black pepper

6-7 apricots
water to poach
2-3 tbsp honey (adjust to taste, depending on the apricots' sweetness)
10-12 grinds black pepper
stick blender or other appropriate blending device

Put a medium pot of water on to simmer. Halve and pit your apricots. When the water comes up to temperature, add your apricot halves and poach gently for about two to three minutes, or until the apricots float to the surface. They should be lovely and tender.

In a bowl or other container, combine your apricots, honey, and pepper. Puree thoroughly using the stick blender. If your sauce is too thick, you can thin it with a spoonful or two of poaching liquid.

Serve your finished apricot sauce with the delights of your choice. I choose waffles.

How are you eating your fresh summer stone fruit?

Strawberry banana chia smoothie

Strawberry banana: perhaps not the most creative smoothie combination of all time. But hey! It's still tasty and easy, and it's certainly strawberry season right now. Why not?

Besides, the chia seeds make up for it.

I've been experimenting with chia seeds for a few months. They're excellent as a simple oatmeal topping or made into a pudding such as Gena's basic chia pudding. But I think my favorite way to eat chia seeds is to soak them and use them to thicken smoothies.

It's easy to adjust the amounts of seeds and liquid to make a thicker or thinner smoothie. This time, since I was using the classic smoothie thickener, banana, I kept the amount of chia seeds fairly low -- 1 tbsp of seeds for 1/2 cup total of milk and yogurt. It would definitely be possible to double the amount of seeds, eliminate the banana, and add in a bunch of different fruits and vegetables, though. Experiment and see what you like!

I strongly prefer smoothies made with fresh banana to those made with frozen. However! If you happen to have a freezer full of smoothie-destined bananas, you could absolutely use them here. You may need to add some extra liquid or switch out the yogurt for milk to adjust for your desired texture, but otherwise, you should be good to go.

If you make this in a regular-mouth mason jar, you can screw it onto a standard blender base and blend in the jar itself. Fewer dishes = yes please. This also means you can always put a lid on your jar and save the leftovers for later. Super easy.

Strawberry banana chia smoothie

1/4 cup milk or non-dairy milk of choice
1 tbsp chia seeds
1/4 cup plain yogurt or non-dairy sub of choice (or more milk)
4-5 strawberries, chunked
1 fresh banana, sliced
1 tsp flaxseed meal, optional

At least two hours before you want your smoothie, mix your milk and chia seeds together in your jar of choice. Refrigerate. Stir to mix twice at rough 10-minute intervals. This will keep your seeds from sticking together in one big lump at the bottom of your jar. Then just leave the jar in the fridge for 2 hours or more. I leave mine overnight.

In the morning, your chia seeds will be ready to go. Add your yogurt, strawberries, banana, and flaxseed meal to the jar (or put everything in a standard blender). Blend until fully pureed.

Drink it! Breakfast!

Do you eat chia seeds? What's your favorite thing to make with them?

PS: I have a sprained ankle. WHY. (It's because the moles dug a hole right in front of the back door. Jerks.)

Oatmeal with flax, yogurt, jam, and chia seed

Okay! Things have clearly been busy at our house. Everything we eat lately seems to be something I've written about before. Pasta fagioli, salads with nice homemade dressing, enchiladas, quesadillas: yes, yes, yes and yes. (Although now I am noticing just how old these posts are and thinking about writing them up again anyway.)

These are our house standards, and we love them. It's really nice to have a variety of autopilot dishes under your belt, so during those weeks when you have to commute an hour and twenty minutes (one way) to a conference that starts at 8 am, you can still eat actual food.

I got home Friday night post-conference at roughly 7:45, and John seared me a piece of fish with lemon and parsley, chopped up some romaine for salad, and poured me a glass of wine. It was an excellent plan. Later I fell asleep with my glasses on and laptop open.

This morning I had oatmeal. Want to see some oatmeal?

Oatmeal with flax, yogurt, jam, and chia seed

rolled oats
flaxseed meal
water
salt
yogurt, jam, and chia seed to top

Put as many oats as you want to eat into a small pot, along with a teaspoon or two of flaxseed meal and a generous several shakes of salt. Cover with water to about one finger's width above the oats. Cook over medium-high to high heat for five minutes, or until the oats are done to your preferred consistency, stirring occasionally. A longer boil will mean thicker oatmeal.

Put your finished oatmeal in a bowl and top with yogurt, jam (mine was apricot), and chia seed, or switch it up and add whatever you like.

What are some of your favorite things to eat over and over, frequently when you're too busy to think of new things to make?

Hot citrus drinks for cold winter nights

You guys, we finally have a fully operational furnace. YAY.

So now is the perfect time to talk about what I was drinking to combat the creeping cold over the past few weeks.

When you're trying to use a beverage to keep warm, tea is the clear winner. Coffee is way too full of acid and caffeine for constant consumption, hot chocolate is super sweet and can become oddly filling, hot toddies are a bad idea in any quantity over two. Tea, in contrast, includes a great variety of flavors and levels of caffeine, and is neither sweet nor alcoholic unless you actually add sugar or alcohol.

But even tea can pall when you're drinking it constantly for weeks at a time. I needed to find some other hot drinks.

At the same time, a storm front came through California, and the wind and rain knocked quite a bit of citrus (not to mention leaves and branches) off the neighborhood trees. Our backyard was suddenly full of oranges, ranging from tiny and green to black and shriveled. In between, an overabundance of perfect oranges needed to be eaten.

So, after eating a lot of oranges and drinking a lot of tea, I decided to combine the two into a new hot drink, and it was good. I tried it with a white grapefruit, and that was good too. And so the hot citrus drink was born.

These drinks are the easiest things ever and provide a nice change from whatever else you might be drinking this winter. All you have to do is mix the freshly squeezed citrus juice of your choice with hot water, and adjust to taste. Bonus: they are perhaps the most frugal drinks possible if you happen to have an orange or grapefruit tree!

These do bear a strong resemblance to the traditional morning hot water with lemon that has become a byword with many detox programs, but I'm not using them to detox! They're tasty, warming, and a welcome addition to my hot beverage library, and that's plenty for me.

Hot water with orange

Put your teapot on to boil. Juice a large orange and pour the juice into your mug of choice. Fill the rest of the cup with just-boiled water. If your orange is very sweet, add the juice of a quarter of a lemon too. Stir and drink.

Hot water with grapefruit

Put your teapot on to boil. Juice a large grapefruit (white or red -- our local grapefruits are white) and pour the juice into your mug of choice. Fill the rest of the cup with just-boiled water. If your grapefruit is particularly tart, swirl in a spoonful of honey. Stir and drink.

What are you drinking (or eating, or otherwise doing) to keep warm and toasty this winter?

Spinach salad with lemon cucumber, toasted almonds, and summer cherries

Well, we are still essentially buried under a massive amount of fresh CSA veg at all times.

This means salads. Lots of salads. Salads at dinner, yes; salads at lunch, yes. Salads at breakfast? Also yes.

Breakfast salads are one of my favorite things. This stems from our year and a half living in Brooklyn, during which we tried our best to eat at every restaurant possible, and consequently ended up eating a lot of brunch. I mean, we would have ended up eating lots of brunch anyway, but Brooklyn is one of those towns in which brunch is practically an institution. So we ate lots of brunch at lots of different places, and the main thing those places had in common was salad. Every time we ate brunch anywhere even the smallest step up from the classic diner, we discovered that our orders came with a handful of mesclun and shredded carrot, tossed with vinaigrette and deposited next to the egg of our choice.

And now I don't really want to eat breakfast without some sort of serious vegetable content.

So. Salad for breakfast?

We received both a bag of baby spinach and a few lemon cucumbers in the last CSA box. Clearly, those were the basis for an excellent salad.

Lemon cucumber is not a variety I use much, mostly because it's not the best choice for pickling. But when I'm not making pickles, I find its mild flavor and subtle crunch to be delicious in salads and sandwiches.

The cherries came into play after we found bags of them on sale for $2 per pound. You can't say no to that. And once you have cherries, you have to have a handful of crunchy, rich almonds as well.

Boom. Salad.

Spinach salad with lemon cucumber, toasted almonds, and summer cherries

baby spinach
lemon cucumber
toasted almonds
sweet cherries
olive oil
salt, pepper
lemon juice

Arrange a few handfuls of spinach on each salad plate. Scatter a few drops of olive oil over them.

Trim your lemon cucumber, halve it, and slice it into thin slices. Arrange half a cucumber's worth of slices over each salad.

Roughly chop a handful of almonds and scatter them over each salad.

Pit your cherries, either using a cherry pitter or the paperclip method. Cut them in half. Strew a generous handful of cherry halves over each salad.

Dress your salads with a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some salt and pepper. Done.

While these salads are excellent alongside a plate of traditional breakfast eggs and toast, they would also clearly be fine additions to the lunch or dinner table. Eat them with a huge sandwich, a seared piece of halibut and a side of green beans, a bowlful of rice and curry. It's all good.

What is your favorite summertime salad?

Fennel and orange pickle

Cauliflower is not the only thing I am pickling this year! Nope. In fact, the pickling vat has been going on and off for several weeks now, and all the results are nothing short of thrilling.

I made yet another batch of my favorite pickled peppers ever, from Emmycooks (come back, Emmy!), doubling the recipe and adding some green beans into the mix. The results are stunning and delicious, and I can't wait to start tossing those beans into weekend bloody marys.

But the real star of the pickling season so far has been a surprise underdog: refrigerator pickled fennel.

This was yet another CSA save. We got multiple heads of fennel two weeks in a row. I am generally not into the typical shredded fennel salad, and so was kind of at a loss for what to do with it. But no more! This is hereby my default way to deal with any fennel that shows up at our house -- at least until I start experimenting with other pickle variations. A lemon variation would certainly be on the table, as would the inclusion of some fresh ginger. Oh man. I'm super excited to try that.

Seriously, it's SO GOOD. It is amazing. I am amazed.

This is heavily based on the pickled fennel with orange recipe in The Joy of Pickling, which is an excellent book and well worth a look if you like pickles even a little. The main change I made was to switch out the white wine vinegar for champagne vinegar, which I find smooth and delightful, and which I actually had in the cupboard besides. I also bumped up the orange zest, because who doesn't love orange zest? And everything worked out beautifully. Hooray!

Though it looks small, it is mighty.

Fennel and orange pickle
adapted from The Joy of Pickling

2 heads fennel plus a few fronds (more or less for decoration)
1 tsp pickling salt
zest of 1 orange
4 peppercorns
6 tbsp champagne vinegar
juice of 1 orange (approx 6 tbsp)
1 tbsp sugar
pint jar
semi-optional canning funnel
chopstick or flexible spatula

Start by trimming your fennel bulbs, halving them, and slicing them thinly. In a medium bowl, toss your sliced fennel with the pickling salt. Let this sit for about an hour, so the salt begins to drain some of the juices from the fennel.

When the hour is up, drain off any accumulated liquid. Pack your fennel slices, fronds, and orange zest into a clean pint jar. I used wide strips of orange zest, but I'd recommend that you go for thin strips, either by using an actual zester or by slicing up strips taken with a vegetable peeler. Be careful just to include the zest and no white pith.

To make your brine, crush your peppercorns roughly with a mortar & pestle or the bottom of a measuring cup. Put your pepper, vinegar, orange juice, and sugar into a small pan and bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer, swirling occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved.

Using the canning funnel, pour your brine into your jar, leaving 1/4 inch of headspace at the top. Use your chopstick or spatula to go around the edge of the jar, releasing air bubbles. Top up your brine if needed, cap your jar, and put your pickles in the refrigerator overnight.

After 24 hours, crack your jar open and taste your pickles. Try not to just eat the entire jar with a spoon.

Since this is such an unusual pickle, I bet you guys are wondering what to do with it (besides eating it with a spoon, which I heartily recommend). Well, I have found it to be excellent on toasted cheese sandwiches, usually with a milder cheese such as emmenthaler, along with plenty of cracked pepper. A super-simple snack platter of crackers with said emmenthaler, a smear of mustard, and some fennel pickle would be an excellent variation. It's definitely delicious tossed into a green salad, preferably with some orange supremes thrown in. And if you are of the sausage in a bun persuasion, how about searing one up and topping it with big handfuls of pickled fennel?

But I won't judge you if you just eat it with a spoon.

Who else is making crazy pickles this summer? Forget popsicles, right? PICKLES WIN.

(Oh, also I am suddenly going to BlogHer14 this weekend! If you are going, let me know & let's meet up!)

Plum orangeade

For the last installment of plum week (or is it three weeks now?), we have the easiest possible thing to make: a drink.

Just as the plums were at the top of their game, our next-door neighbor brought us a grocery bag full of oranges from her tree. On the one hand, great! Double fruit harvest! On the other hand, we suddenly had twice as much fruit to eat before it all went bad.

The obvious solution was to combine them. Thus, plum orangeade was born.

This simple blender drink is sweet and refreshing. It's excellent served over ice all by itself, but you can also add a shot of vodka or rum, or just make a simple sparkler with half juice and half sparkling water.

The texture of the finished product is up to you. I don't mind pulpy juice, so I just threw my oranges into the blender in big pieces. If you are a non-pulp person, you will probably want to juice your oranges instead. To get two cups of juice, you may need a third orange.

As you can see, the orangeade is pretty foamy right out of the blender. If you like, you can always pass it through a sieve to eliminate the fragments of plum skin and other fibrous bits. I just left mine as-is and drank it. Why throw out any of the fruit? It's all good.

Makes approximately 6 cups.

Plum orangeade

2 cups plums, pitted and quartered
2 oranges, peeled and quartered
1-2 cups water, depending on the juiciness of your fruit
simple syrup to taste

Liquefy your plums, oranges, and water in your blender. Taste the resulting orangeade and decide if you want to add any simple syrup. My fruit made a perfectly sweet orangeade all by itself, but if you have less sweet fruit, you can always adjust.

Drink over ice, with or without the added alcohol of your choice. Super refreshing!

What are you drinking to beat the heat this summer?

Strawberry, nectarine, basil, and fennel frond salad

I don't know about you, but salad is just about the only thing I'm really craving right now. It's cool, refreshing, and delicious. It's an excellent way to eat as much delicate summer fruit as possible -- and vegetables as well. And it's certainly the season for a bounty of fresh produce!

Lately, our CSA box has been showering us with assorted greens, heads of fennel, baskets of strawberries, and even a still-rooted basil plant that's been resting happily in a jar of water for a good week. I supplemented this mix with a single white nectarine, and ten minutes later sat down to a huge plate of delicious fruit, herbs, and vegetables. So good.

I used a mix of butter lettuce and baby spinach for the base of this salad. Spinach and strawberry, together forever, right? The butter lettuce upped the crunch factor for a good contrast with the soft fruit and herbs. If you want an even greater contrast, you could also add in some bitter crunchy greens like endive or radicchio. Or toss on some toasted almonds, if that floats your boat. It's all good.

For dressing, I went super simple with olive oil and lemon. This salad could definitely stand up to a syrupy balsamic vinegar instead of the lemon -- I just tend not to ever have such a thing in the house. Yes, a foodblogger without balsamic vinegar! But no matter what my kitchen stock may be, berries and stone fruit with balsamic are still completely classic.

Strawberry, nectarine, basil, and fennel frond salad

lettuce of your choice
2-3 strawberries per serving
1/2 nectarine per serving
3 fennel fronds per serving
4-5 basil leaves per serving
olive oil
lemon wedge
salt, pepper

Chop up your lettuce, wash, and spin dry. Arrange a few handfuls on as many salad plates as you want servings. Drizzle with a few drops of olive oil.

Wash your strawberries, halve or quarter them according to size, and scatter them across your plates of lettuce.

Wash your nectarine, twist the halves off the pit, and slice into thin slices. If your pit clings, slice individual slices off the nectarine, using the remaining flesh as a pivot for your knife, and gradually rotate until you have enough. Add your nectarine to your salads.

Roughly chop your fennel fronds and slice your basil leaves into thin strips. Distribute them over your salads.

Drizzle some olive oil over each plate of salad. Season with salt and pepper. Serve each salad with a lemon wedge for individual acid adjustment, or just squeeze and serve if you prefer.

This salad is great by itself, or with a few crackers and cheese on the side as a simple lunch, but it would also work very well with all kinds of other dishes. Vivid carrot soup, garlicky white bean salad, or a piece of simple poached fish -- it's all good. Or shred some leftover chicken and add it in for a full meal in salad form. Hooray, salad!

Are you eating any of your summer fruit in salad form?

Cornmeal pancakes with fresh cherry plums

PANCAKES!

It has been far too long since I've had a huge plateful of hot, delightful pancakes, so a few days ago I decided to break out the cast iron skillet and go for it. Cornmeal pancakes sounded like an excellent idea. And on top? Some of the summer's best fruit. In my case, that meant our backyard cherry plums.

My initial plan was to embed a few slices of plums into the surface of each pancake, but this turned out to be a challenge. The batter was really too thin to handle big chunks of anything. Fortunately, my backup plan -- simple diced plums on top of each pancake -- worked out exceptionally well.

I went for the silver dollar size, but larger cakes are fine as well. It all depends on your personal preferences, with a glance or two toward the size of your skillet.

These corn cakes work very well with as many sweet plums as you can handle, but they could also go savory, especially if you leave out the maple syrup. That means, among other things, that if you have some of this plum-thyme sauce left over, you should absolutely try it out on these pancakes. A little slice of leftover pork and a leaf of greens would not go amiss either. Pancakes for dinner? Yes.

The best part is folding each pancake into a little plummy taco and eating it with your hands. So good!

Cornmeal pancakes with fresh cherry plums (or plum sauce)

3/4 cup cornmeal
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
pinch nutmeg
2 eggs
3 tbsp melted butter or oil
1 1/2 cups milk of choice
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
3-4 chopped plums and/or plum sauce to serve

Start by greasing your skillet or griddle lightly with a little butter or flavorless oil. Put it over medium-high heat to get hot while you make your batter.

In a large bowl, combine your cornmeal, flour salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. In another bowl, combine your eggs, butter, milk, maple syrup, and vanilla.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together until just combined. I find that a large wooden spoon or paddle works well here. The finished batter will be thin, but no worries! The resulting pancakes are just fine.

Test your pan to see if it's hot enough by flicking a little water onto the surface. If the water immediately boils away, the pan is hot enough. You may need to adjust your heat for optimal cooking temperature.

To cook your pancakes, use a ladle to pour portions of batter onto your hot griddle. Let cook until you see bubbles breaking through the batter all over the surface of your pancake. Check to make sure the underside is golden brown, and then flip. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, or until the second side is also golden brown. Remove to a warm plate and cover with a tea towel until ready to serve.

Repeat until all your batter is used up.

Eat your pancakes topped with plums or plum sauce. A little sour cream would be excellent with the fresh plums. Some extra butter wouldn't go amiss, either.

I got about 40 silver dollar pancakes from one batch of batter. Obviously, we couldn't eat that much at once. But guess what we could do? Put them in bags and freeze them for future nearly-instant pancake consumption. Now, when I want pancakes, I can just pull a bag out of the freezer, put the cakes in the toaster oven in one layer, and heat them through. It's super nice for an instant breakfast or snack.

Hooray for pancakes!

What delicious and exciting breakfasts are you eating lately? (Or are your breakfasts usually made of coffee? Most of mine are, too. It's ok!)

Pork roulade with beet greens and plum-thyme sauce

When you have a backyard full of plums -- especially if you're just not that into jam -- you really have to get creative about using them. So we decided to get fancy. How about a savory plum sauce?

We could have gone for the classic Chinese plum sauce with spring rolls, but we also had a bunch of fresh thyme and that beautiful CSA honey kicking around. So a more French-inspired sauce seemed in order. And what could we serve with this kind of sauce? The obvious answer is pork. How about a roulade?

So. We're essentially going to butterfly a pork chop per person, make a filling of greens and nuts, stuff the chop, and sear until done. Then we'll simmer pureed plums and seasonings to make a sauce. The end result looks complicated, and is amazingly delicious, but it's really not very difficult to cook at all.

This recipe will make enough filling and sauce for two pork chops. Any extra greens are delicious as a side dish.

If you want to feed a crowd and use up a boatload of plums, you can also double the filling and sauce recipes and stuff an entire pork tenderloin. You'll just need to roast it in the oven for a bit after searing, since such a large piece of meat won't cook through with just a sear. And OH MAN would that crowd be impressed when you served it. I'm just saying.

If you don't eat meat, you can still try out the greens and sauce! Cook them both (minus meat juices, of course), roast some potatoes, sear a piece of tofu, and you're all set for a delicious dinner. And I have one more vegetarian-appropriate sauce application to come later this week. Stay tuned!

Pork roulade with beet greens and plum-thyme sauce

Filling:
butter/olive oil
4 cloves garlic
1 bunch beet greens
double handful almonds, raw or roasted
salt & pepper

Roulade:
1 deboned, trimmed pork chop per person OR split it between two less meaty eaters
more salt & pepper
4-6 sprigs fresh thyme per chop
meat mallet or rolling pin
cooking twine or tinfoil to tie

Plum sauce:
butter/olive oil
~ 1 cup chopped fresh plums
1/2 cup water
leaves of 4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tbsp honey, to taste
2 tbsp dry white wine
yet more salt & pepper

Start by making the roulade filling. Melt a pat of butter in a wide saute pan while you crush and slice a few garlic cloves. Add the garlic to the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until it begins to turn golden.

Wash and chop a bunch of beet greens. You can also sub in chard or spinach here if you prefer (though spinach will cook down more, so you'll need two bunches if you go that direction).

Add the greens to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes, or until the greens are wilted. Chop your almonds and add them to the greens. Mix it together, and your filling is done.

Now is the time to start heating your meat pan. Just put a sufficiently large stainless steel or cast iron pan over medium-high heat and let it warm up while you're prepping your meat. A hot pan will ensure a good sear.

Butterfly your pork chops. You can check out this video for a visual. First, put your chop on a cutting board. Using a very sharp knife, cut gradually in from the side opposite the fat cap, dividing the meat in half horizontally as best you can. If you make a mistake and cut through to the board, it's ok! Just back up and make a correct cut over the mistake. You won't even notice any mistakes once you're done. Cut 4/5 of the way through the chop, leaving it connected at the end. Then open it up like a book. Voila! You just butterflied a pork chop.

Lay your butterflied chop flat and cover with a piece of plastic wrap or butcher paper. Use a meat mallet or rolling pin to pound it to an even 1/2-inch thickness.

To stuff your chop, season it liberally with salt and pepper and arrange it nicest side down. Put several spoonfuls of filling down the middle of the chop. You want to use just enough filling to let the meat wrap completely around it; mine is a little overfull here.

Roll up your chop and secure it with butcher twine or a few strips of tinfoil. I used a classic butcher's truss (video), but it's totally fine to improvise. Tuck your sprigs of thyme under the twine in several different spots around the chop.

Sear your roulades quickly on all sides in the prepared pan. It should take about three minutes per side to get a nice golden brown crust. If the roulade sticks, your pan may not be hot enough, or the meat may not be completely seared yet. Turn up the heat or try a few good shakes to release the meat from the pan.

When your roulades are seared, remove them from the pan to a plate and let them rest, covered loosely with foil, for a good five to seven minutes. Resting meat is super important! It will give the hot juices time to reabsorb into the meat, making for a juicy and evenly cooked roulade.

While you're waiting, it's time to make the sauce. Wash and chop your plums. Put them in a blender with the water and liquefy as best you can. There will be bits of plum peel floating around; that's ok.

Pour the liquefied plums into the same pan you used for the roulade and cook over medium-high, stirring to deglaze the crystallized meat juices. You can also add any accumulated juices from the meat plate. Add the thyme, honey, and white wine, season with a scant pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, for about five minutes, or until the sauce is thickened and reduced to approximately half its volume. Correct the seasonings, and your sauce is done. Hooray!

It's time to serve! Remove the butcher twine and thyme sprigs and slice your roulades into six or eight medallions each. Arrange them on a plate (on extra greens if you have any, or in a puddle of sauce if not) and ladle a few spoonfuls of sauce over the top. Four slices is a perfectly adequate serving, especially with some mashed potatoes and salad on the side; an entire roulade is a huge but very satisfying serving. It's all good.

Now serve it to your amazed guests. Or, you know, yourself.

This is hands down one of the best dinners we've made in months.

PS: Want more roulades? How about a venison roulade?

Salad of plums, almonds, and arugula

The plums are ripe.

They're constantly falling off the tree into the backyard. Squirrels take single bites and leave the rest of the fruit hanging from their stems. Birds peck.

It's ok, though; we've rescued plenty. So now, it's plum week!

I kicked it off with a very simple but VERY delicious salad: a bed of tender baby arugula with chopped plums and roasted almonds, topped off with a minimal drizzle of olive oil and squeeze of lemon. Perfect.

The discerning viewer will notice that the salad in the picture is actually made with little gem lettuce. This is because we tore through the original arugula-based salads way too quickly to take any pictures, but I am not going out to buy more baby arugula when we have a CSA shipment of lettuce to get through once a week. The little gem version was good, but the arugula was better. Take note.

This can be easily adapted for any number of servings. Make as much as you like!

Salad of plums, almonds, and arugula

baby arugula
fresh plums
roasted almonds
olive oil
salt, pepper
lemon wedges

Wash and spin dry your arugula. Arrange big handfuls on each salad plate.

Wash your plums. Slice them off their pits and into fourths or eighths. Scatter handfuls of plum across each plate of arugula. Pour any accumulated juice over each salad.

Roughly chop your almonds and add them to your salads. If you have raw almonds instead of roasted, toast them in a frying pan for about 5 minute, or until fragrant and starting to turn golden, before you chop.

Drizzle a thin stream of olive oil over each salad. Season with a little salt and pepper. Serve with a lemon wedge, or just squeeze a spray of juice over each salad.

The finished salad is so simple and so good. The sweet plums, the spicy arugula, and the crunchy almonds are a perfect combination of contrasting textures and flavors.

What could you eat with this salad? Practically anything. A plate of pasta with creamy sauce, a bowl of hearty, wine-laced soup, a perfectly seared piece of meat or fish, or a huge sandwich stuffed sky-high with every filling under the sun: any or all of these would be great.

What new and creative dishes are you cooking with your summer stone fruit?

Apricot crisp with oat crumble topping

Someone in our neighborhood had an epic apricot harvest, and this is the result, at least at our house. Hello, fruit!

It's a standard thing around here to get overwhelmed by your burgeoning fruit trees. When that happens, you spend an hour or two picking fruit and put the results in a bag in your front yard with a big FREE sign. Then everyone walking past gets to bring home a bounty of fresh fruit. We do this all the time with our annual pineapple guava deluge. It's great: the glut of fruit gets used instead of rotting away on your back lawn.

This time I came across a big tray of apricots, picked out a bagful, and brought them home for delightful baking escapades. Crumble for all!

A huge variety of other fruit would work well here. Strawberry and rhubarb are excellent and seasonal. Cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, or a mixture of any of the above would be delicious. In the fall, apples or pears would work beautifully. And you can always add a handful of blackberries, blueberries, or raspberries to punctuate a panful of stone fruit. Delightful.

Apricot crisp with oat crumble topping

Fruit:
10 apricots, or about 2 cups sliced fruit
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Crumble:
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup flour of your choice
2 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp butter/oil

Start by prepping your apricots. Wash them, halve them, remove their pits, trim off any bruises or other issues, and slice them. I ended up cutting each half apricot into five or six pieces, but you can quarter them or even leave the halves as-is if you prefer. It's all good.

Butter an 8x8 inch pan. Tip in your prepared fruit, sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon, and stir to mix. Flatten your apricots into an even layer.

For the crumble, mix together your oats, flour, and sugar in a bowl. Add the butter, cut into chunks, and rub it into the dry ingredients with your fingertips.

Spread your crumble mixture evenly over your fruit. Dot with additional butter if you feel like it (and have more butter lying around).

Bake at 350F for 45 minutes or until lovely and bubbling around the edges and browned on top.

This crisp is best eaten hot, right out of the oven. The apricots melt into an intensely flavored jam, while the crumble provides a perfect nutty contrast. You're going to want to have some good seed-specked vanilla ice cream with it, too.

What are you doing with your new summer fruit?

Joe's cinnamon orange tequila shots

Our friend Chrissy filed her dissertation paperwork and will be receiving her PhD in two weeks. This calls for a celebration! Tequila shots all around!

Yes, tequila shots: those things with which you and all your friends probably had at least one bad experience in college. (Second place: Jägermeister.) But! When you go for a nice bottle of añejo silver instead of the ubiquitous Jose Cuervo, somehow the experience improves. A lot.

The typical tequila shot requires salt and lemon. You lick the back of your left hand in the flat space at the junction of thumb and index finger, sprinkle on some salt, and pick up a wedge of lemon. In your right hand is the shot of tequila. Lick the salt, take the shot, and bite the lemon. One tequila shot.

That's okay if you want to strip all the enamel off your teeth. This method is better.

Instead of salt and lemon, we use cinnamon and orange. This combination was pioneered by our friend Joe, again during the much more tequila-centric days of college. And what a huge difference it makes.

Needless to say, you'll want to do this on a full stomach. These are tequila shots, after all.

(Yes, our grout is indeed 80 years old. Fun times!)

Joe's cinnamon orange tequila shots

cinnamon
orange wedges
good añejo tequila of your choice

We're going to do this step by step.

First, pour a shot of your tequila. Set it aside for a moment.

Lick your hand and sprinkle on some cinnamon. Not too much -- this is not the cinnamon challenge. Just get a tap or two out of the bottle.

Pick up a piece of orange in your cinnamon hand. It should look like this.

Pick up your tequila shot with your other hand. Lick the cinnamon, take the shot, and eat the orange.

Have you ever had such a good tequila shot?

If you object to getting cinnamon on your hand, you can change up the situation by simply sprinkling a little cinnamon on your orange slice. Then just take the shot and bite the slice, no licking required. Either way is delicious. This second way just won't leave your hand smelling charmingly like a pastry shop.

A fitting celebration for achieving a PhD.

Strawberry rhubarb vodka sparkler

It's super hard to find a lot of specialty northern fruit and veg in California. By "specialty" I mean things that aren't really grown here: ramps, fiddleheads, and rhubarb. The ramps and fiddleheads never show up no matter how hard you look. But lo! Finally, after several no-dice grocery store searches, I got my hands on a couple stalks of delightful ruby-red rhubarb. Yay!

(I totally just had to use my iron will not to call those searches "fruitless." Er. Clearly my will is not all that iron. ANYWAY.)

The question was what to do with it. John suggested rhubarb scones, but it suddenly got too hot to bake. Clearly, refreshing spring cocktails were the answer. So I made a rhubarb-infused simple syrup and started mixing.

Rhubarb simple syrup

2 cups chopped rhubarb
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Combine rhubarb, sugar, and water in a small saucepan. Cook slowly over low-medium heat, covered, for about 20 minutes. Strain out the solids and chill the syrup thoroughly before using.

Check out the ultra-pink results! OH MAN.

Now I just had to decide what to do with it. Fortunately, we had a handful of beautiful spring strawberries in the refrigerator. What could possibly pair better with rhubarb?

Strawberry-rhubarb vodka sparkler

per drink:
2-3 strawberries
3/4 oz rhubarb simple syrup
2 oz vodka
~1 cup sparkling water
mint or lemon to garnish
also lots of ice

Wash and roughly chop your strawberries. Muddle them well in a cocktail shaker with your rhubarb syrup. Add ice and vodka, and then shake for as long as you can possibly stand it, preferably for at least a minute. This is especially important if your strawberries didn't want to muddle.

Strain into an ice-filled pint glass. You may need to clear strawberry seeds out of the strainer midway through the process. Add sparkling water, garnish with a mint sprig or lemon twist, and drink.

If you want to serve this as an ultra-lethal martini, just leave out the sparkling water and serve up in a martini glass. Be careful, though! It's going to taste like candy and be super alcoholic. So, you know, the sparkling water version is a better idea for a hot day when you just want to gulp down your drink as fast as possible.

Voila! A delightful, refreshing, seasonal, and beautifully pink cocktail. It's an excellent plan for a bright and sunny afternoon.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the rest of the simple syrup. Ideas:

- Add lemon, mint, or ginger to the strawberries and rhubarb syrup before muddling. All the flavor variations!
- Add some freshly ground black pepper. You know strawberry and pepper can be great together. Why not?
- Try using the rhubarb syrup in a mojito with lime. Yes, rhubarb mojito!

Some of these are going to have to happen in the near to immediate future. I'm just saying.

What refreshing drinks are you making with your spring rhubarb?

Spring garden 2014

You guys, it was over 90F out today: the hottest day so far this year. For now, it's a novelty, but let's get real. Summer is almost on us. We have about a month or so until the temperatures stop bobbing up and down and settle into a steady 80-85.

You've probably heard about (or experienced) the near-total lack of rain in California this spring. Shit is serious. The entire state is in drought for the first time in 15 years. Just look at this map from the US Drought Monitor. YIKES. Water rationing hasn't started yet; evidently rationing is more complicated than it appears.

Outside, you can see the effects of the drought really easily. The grass is crisp two months before it should be. The ground is hard. The lemon balm and mint, both of which are usually super rampant, only take up about 2/3 as much space as they did last year. You can sit on the ground with no threat of damp pants. So although the plants themselves look pretty good so far, I am feeling concerned about the garden.

Let's have a tour.

When you go out the side door of our house, this lemon tree nearly clocks you in the face. It's full of both mature lemons and new blossoms. The branches bow really dramatically under the weight of the fruit. When you pick a ripe lemon, they spring back and bounce up and down.

In the side bed, there is indeed a bunch of lemon balm and mint. The darker, smoother leaves are the mint. These guys normally make themselves seen in late January, with the first rains. This year they came up in March.

I know what to do with mint: dry it and make all kinds of iced mint tea. The lemon balm is a little harder. I did make a batch of fresh tea with some the other day, but I'm not sure whether I like it yet. It was surprisingly vegetal, almost like a spinach-lemon tea. I think I need to try it iced.

The chives are doing really well, although those blossoms are pretty early. They are usually a pretty early herb in general, though. I like to make chive vinegar out of the blossoms and throw the chives themselves in practically everything I make.

If you go around the back of the house, you run smack into a bank of pineapple guava blossoms.

There are a million of them. I may be exaggerating just little, but not much. The tree overhangs our entire backyard, and it is entirely full of flowers. The bees LOVE it. We have a bee-loud glade in our backyard right now, is what I'm saying. It's really nice not to have to worry about not attracting enough pollinators. There is no shortage.

You can eat pineapple guava blossoms, but we usually don't. They're soft and faintly tropical-fruity.

In the actual garden bed, the key players are the two tomato plants. They're both volunteer seedlings from the Caspian Pink tomato I planted last year. They may have gotten cross-pollinated with the other tomatoes, but I don't care. As long as there are a bunch of home-grown tomatoes, everything will be fine.

Of course, with tomatoes you have to worry about water. These guys are in partial shade--Caspian Pink is a partial shade tomato, which I got especially for that purpose--so the water will have a fighting chance not to evaporate instantly. I feel fairly hopeful there.

Otherwise, the bed is filled with a mishmash of delightful things. This guy is a red bell pepper. There's a jalapeno pepper plant which is looking partially eaten and may need a replacement, and a volunteer potato, also a bit eaten. I have a bunch of scattered scallions and garlic looking like random blades of grass. The peppers at least should be happy on water restriction. Otherwise, I can mulch.

Yeah. I like my garden. I would like to keep it alive. We'll see how it goes.

How are your gardens going this spring?

Strawberry ginger yogurt smoothie

It's spring and my system wants all the fresh berries as immediately as possible.

That means it's time for...a smoothie with no banana!

I don't know about you guys, but I cannot stand frozen bananas in smoothies. For a long time, this made me think I didn't like smoothies. (Well, this plus my continued distaste for washing the blender.) But I was wrong, because guess what I can sub in? Yogurt.

So the ubiquitous vat of plain yogurt isn't just for curries, garnishes, and labneh anymore -- it's also my standby for cramming my face full of as much fresh fruit and veg as possible. Hooray!

I broke out the new spring strawberries and went to work.

Strawberries and ginger are an amazing combination in my book, so I punched up this smoothie with a chunk of fresh ginger. If you find the zing of ginger too strong, you can add a small apple, peeled and chopped, but be aware that the yogurt will tame it a bit too. Personally, I prefer the full-zing version, but both are very good. It's up to you and your taste buds. And of course you can always add more ginger for the most exciting smoothie in the land!

I used a standard plain full-fat yogurt for this smoothie. If you happen to have Greek yogurt instead, you can halve the amount and thin your smoothie accordingly with the milk of your choice. It's all good.

Strawberry ginger yogurt smoothie

3/4 cup plain yogurt
1/2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced or grated
1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries
(optional apple)

Put everything in a blender, with the yogurt on the bottom and the strawberries on top. Liquefy thoroughly. Pour into the glass of your choosing and drink. Makes approximately 1 pint.

This smoothie makes a perfect breakfast or mid-morning break on those days when you can't quite bring yourself to eat something hot. So good!

How are you eating your fresh spring strawberries? Any fantastic smoothies in your current rotation?