fruits | Slow Food Fast

Microwave Tricks: Passover Haste and Fresh Apple Sauce

Posted on March 26, 2021 by DebbieN

(What? no pictures of apples? How could this be?!! Somehow I’ve never taken any during Passover–maybe Tuesday…)

I know, I know, it’s already Friday afternoon, Passover starts tomorrow night after sundown, and have I cleaned out my fridge? Have I found the all-important kosher-enough-for-me chocolate and kosher-enough-for-anyone cocoa powder? Um…no. I did just bake the remaining bowl of dough (why? why?) for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow. I kashered the oven afterward, if that’s any comfort. But really. I’ve been hating the idea of kashering for Passover this year more than usual, and that’s saying something. I hate it every year, especially the fridge. And all the boiling. And trying to remember which frying pan was going to be okay for dairy.

It’s just me and my husband this time, again, not even our daughter this year except by Zoom–and due to March Madness, she reports that the typical sports stupids on Syracuse’s campus have been partying maskless AGAIN, like it’s a big surprise that COVID is still around and still actually matters more than the coach’s son’s basketball talents. The distanced seder she was going to is not happening, or at least not for her. The lady in charge is sending her a Pesach kit so she can be a party of one at home–we’ll Zoom with her a couple of hours before we start and so she doesn’t have to be starting at 10 at night to be with us. But oy.

Passover ideas on this site

So I’m obviously not feeling all that brilliant and I don’t have a lot of new great ideas other than the ones I always have, to make best use of a microwave where you can–mostly for fresh vegetables–and to keep the matzah modest and out where you can identify it easily as matzah, not all kinds of dubious baked “treats.” More plain fruit than baked goods–citrus if you still can. Keep the vegetables in the soup, whether chicken or not-chicken. And mostly, don’t forget not to grate raw daikon radish and pour on any vinegar if you can’t find horseradish. That is sage advice, there, the actual one thing I would not do again, ever, so please learn from our hilarious but horrifying experience a few years ago!

I plan to honor my ancestors, including my grandfather whose memoir of escaping the Pale of Settlement I’m re-editing right now, by not wasting food if I can help it and not whining too much for things there just aren’t. Keep it simple, make do, try to make sure other people have food. Keep walking. Improvise.

If you want or need some ideas for microwaveable Passover stuff, look either in the Recipes tab at the top of the page or use the search to find “Passover”. Or in my fabulous “Microwaveable Passover/not-chicken” post from a coupla years ago, which has a roster of links you may or may not enjoy–sort of like second prize in a matzah-crunching competition…

And one more

Meanwhile, one quick, cheap microwaveable idea for the day: microwave applesauce from scratch.

Let’s say you have a couple of apples. Big ones. Maybe with a couple of bruises. And they’ve been sitting in your fridge or in your fruit bowl or (if you’re old-fashioned enough) apple barrel long enough to need using. What can you do with them that doesn’t take more effort than it’s worth? Actually, this is a good time to be using them up instead of tossing them and going back to the store before you really have to.

If you’re not interested in eating them as-is, then at least peel them, core them and cut them up–slices for microwave apple toaster pastry or an apple omelet, dice for throwing into microwave oatmeal, or just whole but peeled for grating…

Grating? yes. I mean, you could get out the food processor if you want, or if you have a lot of apples to do. But if you have a flat or box grater and only one or two apples to use up, it’s probably faster to do it by hand and you don’t have to wash as many utensils afterward. This is what I did on my one night of latke-making during Chanukah this year, because we had no applesauce in the house and I wasn’t about to dash out and buy some. Plus the grater was still handy. It was a seriously nice surprise that it wasn’t a flop.

Microwave Applesauce

Apple(s), washed and peeled–that’s it. Unless you want lemon juice or cinnamon or something–I’d say add that after microwaving, though, because cinnamon contains a compound that’s slightly hyperreactive in the microwave, and depending what and how much stuff you’re adding it to can result in unexpected boilover.

Make the applesauce:

Set the grater in or over a bowl, preferably microwaveable, and grate each peeled apple just about down to the core on one side, give it a quarter-turn and grate it down again, turn and grate the remaining sides and throw away or compost the core. Once you have the gratings in the bowl, stick the pulp in the microwave for about 1.5-2 minutes per cup, just enough to get it cooked through, and voilà! You have fresh (though hot) applesauce and nothing but. Obviously, if your grating bowl’s not microwave-friendly, transfer the stuff to a snaplock or other container that is before you nuke.

Or you could go the other way, especially if you’re making more than 1 or 2 apples’ worth of sauce. Peel and this time core the apples, quarter them, nuke them in a lidded container with a drizzle of water for a few minutes until they’re cooked, then mash them by hand or whiz them in a food processor.

Happy Passover, chag same’ach, stay safe, wear a mask, wash your hands, don’t poke yourself in the eye especially if you’ve been handling horseradish, and eat nice.

Filed under: cooking, frugality, fruits, holiday cooking, Microwave tricks, sauces and condiments | Tagged: food, recipes | Comments Off on Microwave Tricks: Passover Haste and Fresh Apple Sauce

Oasis

Posted on October 20, 2020 by DebbieN

Cactus tunas (prickly pears) from the Armenian corner grocery

For the first time in the history of this blog, I’ve decided to delete a post. Last week I wrote about the nomination hearings for Judge Barrett, whom I definitely don’t want to see on the Supreme Court–not that I’m so thrilled by and large with any of the conservative justices already on the court.

I thought about that piece all week, though, and reconsidered, because every time I started to work on the next new post for things I was actually excited about, it bothered me to see it here, and I decided that meant something. I have voiced some fairly strong opinions in my time, here and elsewhere, and I generally stand by them in retrospect. One of my convictions, however, is that I don’t like signs that someone is cooking with bile, a chip on their shoulder, or is making blanket statements, and that includes myself. A difficult thing to balance because we live in the real world, and there’s a lot to be upset about right now.

As my daughter pointed out last week and as I’ve said myself to loved ones who wanted to dissect the headlines when I needed a break, we all have heard way too much to want to hear even more of it right now at the dinner table. We need an oasis of some kind. So I’ve reconsidered and decided it doesn’t need to be here.

SlowFoodFast is one of my own longer-lasting places of calm–well, usually calm, or at least calm-ish. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that, take a step back and a deep breath or two (with a mask on) and get on with things…because I’ve been waiting to spring a couple of ideas I’d rather have written about instead.

This is my place to rethink and experiment with cooking methods, share my ideas about getting more out of ordinary inexpensive ingredients and kitchen gadgets, explore unfamiliar techniques and foods, and generally do the grown-up equivalent of climbing a chair and sampling every jar or bottle in the spice cabinet just to see what they taste like (which, you are probably not surprised, I did pretty often as a kid. I never actually got caught, either, now that I think about it).

I’m still more or less that kid and the cabinet keeps getting taller and springing some interesting new items. As, for instance, cactus tunas (prickly pears), which are in at my local market and slightly ugly on the outside–often scarred or ashy-looking in spots. It wasn’t really obvious why there should be several bags of them in the last-chance bin because the fresh ones aren’t markedly different. And you’d think people would be grabbing them up. Here they are, spines trimmed off, no need to go out and harvest them yourself and take the risk of high-fiving any cacti.

When I saw the cactus tunas at the store, I remembered a story from last year in Atlas Obscura about a Sicilia n liqueur, bright jewel-toned stuff, made from these cactus tunas steeped in strong alcohol plus sugar syrup and aged a bit as kind of a thick fruit brandy. Not that I was really going to put up a cactus cordial myself–I don’t really have the head for drink, and when I do, it has to prove its worth to me in a few sips. What if it were only kind of bland, like an alcohol/watermelon kind of thing?

But I still wanted a bag of them to take home. These are the kinds of fruits that grow on the paddle cacti the lonesome teenager in Cinema Paradiso cut to use for salad plates on his one picnic date with the elusive rich girl. Cue the music…

…It still took me a full week to dare to deal with them.

The tough leathery skins turn out to be no big deal, even the obviously blemished ones, as long as the spines are definitely off–some people recommend rubber gloves in case. You rinse the tunas and just peel them with a paring knife, and the skins slip off pretty easily. All of the ones in my bag were fine inside and unspoiled, no matter how blemished they were on the peel. Just inside the skins is a pale greenish-yellow-white layer–rather tart, like watermelon rind–and then the brilliant, multicolored fruit itself, also textured like watermelon, and with much the same kind of taste, maybe crossed with cucumber.

The fruit varies in color–one might be bright magenta, another a deep ruddy brick red, and some in the farmers’ markets are a sherbety pale orange, yellow or even honeydew green inside. My camera refused to believe what my eyes were seeing here in my kitchen or to give me an option partway between fluorescent and natural light, so the colors don’t really show up as bright in the picture as they actually are. Anyway, they’re pretty showy.

bowl of peeled cactus pears or "tunas" — Cactus tunas after peeling. The greenish layer is tart, like watermelon rind.

Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, frugality, fruits | Tagged: food, fruits and vegetables, recipes | Comments Off on Oasis

A Quick Wish for a Better 5781

Posted on September 27, 2020 by DebbieN

Most of the US is already at or past sunset for Yom Kippur, but it is still late afternoon here on the west coast. This morning I got up, fed the cat, made coffee, set up challah dough, watered the plants, and discovered that the two fresh pistachios I decided to try and root, after trying out a handful of these recently picked nuts with their soft green outer coat at my local Armenian corner grocery a week or so ago, had both sprouted over a couple of days in a bag with a damp paper towel, so I planted them. It was an immense joy.

Yesterday evening, out on a walk, I realized that the mystery plant that seems to be doing well among my peppers is in fact the product of one of the pomegranate seeds I tossed into some dirt in an empty yogurt container a few months ago and kept watering, even though I’d assumed nothing would germinate.

All these small things–when I look at them they offset a little of the hard uncertainties of daily life this year. At least for a moment or two at a time. It’s odd to think that if I take care of them I could end up with a pomegranate tree and a couple of pistachio trees.

Likewise with people.

Wednesday was my birthday, and I talked to four people I expected to–my family–and one person I didn’t expect to hear from, a friend from our congregation, who called to wish me happy, and we talked, and I asked her how she was doing. It would have been normal in a conversation with anyone else, but not with her.

She’s a care coordinator for other people, which often means “how are you doing?” is her question, not something other people ask her. “Really stressed out,” she told me. She, like me, has been reading the appalling headlines too often and is too worried about the upcoming election to be able to relax.

And we commiserated a little, and hopefully felt better and stronger afterward.

And we’re going to observe Yom Kippur in an hour or so, and we’re going to breathe in as much calm and remembrance as we can that our community is still here, in large part thanks to her work, and we’re going to put one foot in front of the other and take the chances we can to do better.

Take a moment and take a chance where you can on a small act of planting and growing generosity, kindness, optimism. It will sweeten the new year for at least moments at a time, and you never know but it may work better than you hope.

To a better 5781, with better health, peace, love, prosperity, justice and compassion for all of us who are feeling more than a little nuts at the moment.

Filed under: cooking, fruits, holiday cooking, nuts, Oddities | Tagged: community, food, Jewish holidays, politics | Comments Off on A Quick Wish for a Better 5781

Saving Summer, 2020-style: Peaches and Pasta Yet Again

Posted on September 6, 2020 by DebbieN

While I was stuck for what to post this summer without ranting too badly, I noticed readers are still searching for some of my inexplicably most popular older posts–how to ripen uncooperative peaches, and how to cook pasta in the microwave. I’m grateful you all are still out there, and I hope some of this helps or at the very least piques your imagination for what’s possible.

Usually I think these unconventional methods are mostly my own odd, quirky ideas about how to cook without turning on a hot stove in 100-degree heat and how not to throw out fresh produce if you can rescue it somehow.

These are no longer fringe questions now that the pandemic has hit so hard. We don’t want to waste money and food or make more shopping trips than we have to. And of course, the 100+ degree weather has suddenly hit hard in the West. So for the first time in a while, I find I actually have a few new things to say about both pasta and peaches, before I move on to some slightly more warped but fun ideas in the next overdue post…

Peaches first (since it seems like the more upsetting food for most of us):

Well, I really thought I was going to post here that I have finally come up with a fast and easy way to “ripen” uncooperative, spongy or bland peaches to edibility without cooking them, but it turns out I already did it 3 years ago. Sometimes I post improvements to older posts and assume people can find them easily and tell that the revisions are better, but obviously not, so I’m going to have to go back to the original peach post from about 10 years ago, which suggested ways to cook peaches in a microwave, and point people forward to the method I use now, which sometimes improves blah peaches enough to be able to eat them raw and like them. It also works well for other kinds of mediocre fruit (see under, strawberries) that need a boost to taste like better versions of themselves.

For those of you who don’t want to poke around, this is basically it:

Peach fix 3.0

Wash, pit and cut up the peaches. Sprinkle on a spoonful of sugar and a small pinch or two (a little goes a long way) of citric acid powder and maybe a spoonful drizzle of water, stir a bit and let it sit for several minutes. They should taste better and be at least somewhat juicy and tart, and maybe start taking some rosy color and flavor from the skin as well.

Notes:

Citric acid is also called “sour salt” or “limon con sal” or “rock lemon” even though it’s not actually made from lemons, just tastes a little like them, and it doesn’t contain any salt. My Armenian corner grocery sells it along with other bags of bulk spices, and Rokeach brand citric acid shakers used to be available in the kosher food aisle of the supermarket. Don’t pay a lot for it, wherever you buy it–citric acid should be inexpensive and an ounce or two will go a pretty long way.
Lemon juice should also work if you can’t find citric acid powder locally or online. But if you have it, citric acid keeps the peaches tasting like peaches, not like peaches with lemon added.
If you have a whole bag of such flavorless peaches to rescue, more than you can actually eat in one go once they’ve sat and macerated a while (“macerating” is just the sweet version of marinating), you can keep them in the fridge in a snaplock container for several days without worrying about spoilage because the citric acid is also a preservative.

Of course, while I was still dawdling over this post last month, wondering if this was more important than my other overdue ideas, the FDA suddenly issued a recall of bagged yellow peaches in at least 12 states for salmonella contamination, and I even got a robocall from the Ralph’s/Kroger supermarket chain offering a full refund if I’d bought their peaches lately (I hadn’t). So I don’t know if this is going to help a lot right now, but maybe the next time you’re in a quandary about bland, spongy peaches and they’re not under a recall, you’ll have at least one more trick up your sleeve. Might work for reviving frozen peaches too.

OK, now the pasta:

Pasta 2020: Lasagne noodles in the microwave

Yes, I know. This is exactly what it looks like. But I finally figured this one out after how many years? too many. You can boil lasagne noodles in the microwave and keep them from sticking together horribly with a fairly simple trick–well, two. And incidentally, I also learned that lasagne, which is plural, refers to the noodles themselves, lasagna is singular and means the whole layered casserole…I’m still going to mix them up, I’m pretty sure of it. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, frugality, fruits, Grains, Microwave tricks, Pasta | Tagged: food, microwave cooking, recipes | Comments Off on Saving Summer, 2020-style: Peaches and Pasta Yet Again

Zwetchgenkuchen: a lighter holiday plum tart

Posted on December 22, 2019 by DebbieN

In spite of the recent weather snarling Thanksgiving traffic a few weeks ago and the upcoming winter holidays this week (Oy! Chanukah starts tonight! gotta get candles!), we still have plums in the market in southern California even now that it’s late December. Which adds a strange twist to the dessert I was going to post about belatedly, because I realize that’s probably not true in the rest of the country, so what now?

I first meant to post this recipe for a svelter pastry way back in October, on the heels of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, when plums are usually in season.

Zwetchgen, sometimes spelled zwetchken, or “quetches” in French, (could this possibly be the origin of the famed Yiddish word “kvetch”?–probably not, but it’s fun to think about it) are the elongated, blue-black Italian prune plums, which were in at my local Armenian corner grocery in September-October, along with the divine yellow-green sweet plums for eating raw. Unfortunately, most standard supermarket chains in the US don’t sell either fresh prunes or the yellow-green kind of plum in their produce sections, to say nothing of dinosaur plums (green and brown speckled outsides, variously pink and yellow insides, telltale dinosaur logo on the sticker) or Santa Rosa plums (pinkish-red outside, deep rose-pink insides), so it’s a good argument for seeking out your local mom-and-pop ethnic corner grocers wherever possible.

But my lightened-up method for a plum tart is still pretty adaptable to other fruits you probably do have–apples, pears, thickened berry jams or canned cherry filling, mincemeat, or even, dare I suggest, canned pumpkin? (green tomatoes? even rarer than plums unless you garden, like my in-laws.)

So it’s not that you absolutely must have plums (only for a plum tart, it’s kind of required) nor that you should do the (nearly) unthinkable for a plum tart and use dried prunes somehow. Which, I promise, I am not doing here. Well, maybe they’d work in mincemeat, preferably a vegetarian version with no suet involved. Actually, someone back in the old days of the nursery rhyme probably was using prunes and it understandably fell out of favor when fresh fruits became available more widely during the winter months. Or when some bright young thing started selling premade mincemeat filling in jars…

This lightened-up European-style tart for a holiday or other party tastes good, makes the most of end-of-season fruit, and isn’t overwhelmingly rich or oversweetened. It’s got a thin, delicate crust, an almond filling, and tart, substantial wedges of fruit. The almond extract or amaretto (or you could use rum or brandy or kirsch, or orange liqueur, or orange blossom water if you’re going nonalcoholic) gives it something most American desserts these days sorely lack–not the alcohol, which quickly bakes out, but a depth and complexity of flavor that don’t depend on sugar or butter. Continue reading →

Filed under: baking, Desserts, fruits, holiday cooking, Revised recipes | Tagged: baking, food, Jewish holidays, recipes | Comments Off on Zwetchgenkuchen: a lighter holiday plum tart

Ice Cream Therapy

Posted on June 29, 2019 by DebbieN

Just in time for my daughter’s return last week from college in a part of the northeast where it was still snowing in May, Pasadena entered its first major heat wave of the year–and our AC broke down in honor of the occasion. Fun times!

Today’s topic, as last year and the year before, when I first started this post (and then got side-tracked with all the college application stuff and the very unpleasantly named FAFSA)… and every year at this time, once the heat starts hitting town, is ice cream. Well, ice cream and a couple of lighter, more flavorful and frugal home-brew variations because that’s what’s uppermost on my wishlist, other than cooler air here and cooler heads everywhere. So anyway, imagine it’s two summers ago, not now, for at least the next two parts of this adventure…

Gelato

It started with gelato.

Right before the fourth of July two years ago, I found out that I could take my daughter’s sharps containers to a local sheriff’s office for disposal instead of having to drive to the CleanLA site in west Glendale (not a nice area, and the guys in white hazmat suits make you stay in your car and pop the trunk. They’re not mean about it but it’s still unnerving). When I looked up the Altadena sheriff’s office online, the map showed an unexpected gem across the main street: Bulgarini Gelato, which in 12 or so years of operation and despite its tiny size has become nationally known in the food world.

A friend has been after me for years to visit and try their pistachio gelato, insisting that it’s the real thing because they use Sicilian pistachios and it’s all natural (you know the kind of friend who speaks in italics). Despite or possibly because of how holistic she made it sound, I’d never gotten over there.

It’s a shame, in a way, because Bulgarini is the living result of a rescue operation–the owners did an apprenticeship in Italy to learn the old-style from-scratch processes for making real gelato, just as all the old guys were retiring and all the gelato shops were going to factory-made, synthetically flavored powdered mixes.

My husband and I had been to Italy… 25? can it be? years ago for a conference (the only way we could have afforded it then), when real gelato was still available. We quickly figured out how to order anything at one of the bustling gelaterie in Florence: sharpen your elbows and your tongue, know which of the 30 or 40–or more–flavors you want (spinach? avocado? rose? fior di latte? kiwi? cassata?), get to the front of the throng and have your money ready, because it’s gonna cost you. But a tiny cup–at an outrageous 3000 lire (right before the Euro took over)–held two or three distinctive flavors you ate with a tiny spoon and that didn’t melt as fast as ice cream, so you had more time to keep tasting as you wandered around the city, taking in the sights.

Bulgarini was almost the opposite experience. At mid-afternoon on a hot July day, the whole shopping plaza was silent and dusty and it took some time to locate the gelato shop in a group of new indie businesses off to the side of the deserted RiteAid. The gelateria was dead quiet, just a few customers trickling in at a time, though steadily. No need for elbows or decisiveness. Leo Bulgarini, the owner and artisan gelato maker, stood to the side with his arms folded, not saying anything as he supervised the girl behind the counter, who spoke a tiny amount of English and was obviously pretty new. There were only ten or twelve flavors in the case, reasonable for handmade in such a small shop, and none of them spinach or avocado–also reasonable, since most customers here probably wouldn’t be ready to chance them.

As in Florence, the prices on the chalkboard were authentically astronomical–the smallest cup was $7 for up to two flavors, plus an extra dollar for the Sicilian pistachio. Which I got anyway because that was the mission, even though I kind of gulped as I forked over a twenty, and asked that the second flavor be nocciola–hazelnut. I figured the super-dark chocolate and the fruit flavors were things I already knew I liked, and they might clash or overwhelm the subtleties of pistachio. The hazelnut would be just different enough to be interesting as well as a test of truth in flavor, because chocolate and fruit are easier to be convincing about and because commercial hazelnut flavoring tends to be disappointing–oversweetened and often synthetic.

In any case, I tasted and was floored. Really floored, but too shy in that environment to say anything.

When the silence threatened to become extra-awkward, I ducked out into the shaded courtyard and tasted it again. The Oregon hazelnut was so clean, so crisp, so exactly and precisely hazelnut and nothing else–not faint, not sweet or faked with extracts or overdressed in any way–that it was actually more impressive and possibly more Italian than the Sicilian pistachio that followed. The texture was right too–slightly stretchy, not super-rich, and it didn’t melt right away, so there was time to eat it in small experimental tastes.

Was it worth seven or eight bucks for a 3-4-ounce serving? There’s no way I could make a habit of it–it really is too expensive for a snack. But for a special occasion, the real thing is worth a try. My husband was overscheduled for his birthday that year, and we were away the next, but he’s just going to have to clear his slate so I can drag him back before his next birthday. Maybe tomorrow, actually.

Ice cream parlor ice cream

A few weeks after the Bulgarini experience, we flew east to see my mom and do college tours in Boston and then hung out with my sister in Maine. After a day or so of dank heat we finally admitted it was more than we could handle–what can I say, we’ve gone soft since moving to the land of 10% humidity or less. We gave in to temptation that afternoon and sampled hand-cranked ice cream at a local ’50s-style ice cream parlor. There was an impressive list of flavors on the chalkboard–easily more than 40, including licorice, various berries and several different variations on chocolate, caramel and coffee. We all liked it well enough, but I was the only one who got something other than your basic oversized milk-chocolate-caramel-cappuccino.

I came away with an important realization: Ginger just isn’t as common as it should be, it’s a great flavor that really deserves a comeback. But it shouldn’t be stuck in sweet, bland basic vanilla superpremium ice cream that’s starting to drip before you even get out the door. Even after I told the girl at the counter to give me only half the softball-sized scoop she was aiming at my cone, and she complied, puzzled that anyone would ask for less instead of more, it was just way too much. My husband went for two flavors, two full scoops. I’m still not sure how he possibly managed it, and I was watching (queasily). Oy. Boys are just into stunt portions is how I explain it.

When we got back home to California, our cat was fine, the kitchen hadn’t crawled away, and reality sat waiting on the doorstep: school was only a couple of weeks down the road and it was hot here too–though not as humid, at least. I suggested ice cream (light, not Haagen-Daz)–and my daughter glared; after the excess version from Maine, she was trying not to, which was probably smart for all of us.

The skinny versions

If you can’t get to Altadena or Maine, and you’re not sure a $5+ pint of ersatz supermarket gelato is the real experience (it isn’t) or you want a flavor that’s not so predictable, you can make gelato yourself for not very much money. Cookbooks from the 1990s abound with recipes (though probably not the spinach or rose flavors), and you might be able to find a Brazilian recipe for avocado ice cream online.

The basic idea for gelato is to make an egg and milk custard and blend it with fruit, nut pastes or other flavorings before freezing. Some use cornstarch in addition to or as a substitute for some of the eggs, and that’s as traditional as all-eggs in some parts of Italy. The base ingredients are inexpensive either way. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Dairy, Desserts, Eating out, frugality, fruits, haute cuisine, kid food, Microwave tricks, nuts, Revised recipes | Tagged: Desserts, food, recipes | Comments Off on Ice Cream Therapy

Days of watermelon and roses

Posted on August 28, 2018 by DebbieN

We spent much of August getting my daughter ready for her first year of college in upstate New York, about as far away from Los Angeles as you can get and still be in the lower 48. Last-minute saves in the kitchen this time around included about a quarter of a small watermelon–5 or 6 inch-thick slices that I stuck in the freezer in a bag with the air squeezed out, hoping they wouldn’t be completely awful to use up somehow once we got home. I assumed it would be as hot when we came back as it was before we left, and that frozen watermelon in any form would be just about right.

Of course, today Pasadena is in the 80s and Boston and points north are in the 90s for a massive heatwave. Everything seems a bit topsy-turvy in this country to tell the truth, and as I’ve remarked more pointedly before, has for some time.

But at this moment, a world without Aretha Franklin in it– daring, flashy, cantankerous, exuberant, frank, funky, ambitious and endlessly talented–doesn’t seem right.

I have a treasure of hers that I picked up from the local Goodwill’s vinyl bins a couple of years ago: a red-labeled 45 whose B side was in perfect, untouched, glossy condition–“Prove It,” a number I only realized later that I had heard before, because honestly it was unremarkable even with her singing it.

The A side, on the other hand–scratched, worn down, dusty grooves, battle-hardened, loved to death and beyond, deservedly so. I quickly snatched it up for $1.99 and took it home, protected inside the cover of a hardback. Would it still play, was there any magic left? I stuck it on the turntable, nudged the needle arm over and lowered it as gently as possible.

Even though our speakers are o-l-d and not that great to begin with, the music just leaped out at me. Hearing the classic twang of the guitar intro and Aretha’s intricate runs on Chain of Fools puts shivers up my spine anyway, but this was the real thing. Vinyl, even old scratched vinyl from the ’60s, when I was three or four years old, is so much more evocative than the sound you can get from an mp3 it’s a sin.

Red is always how I’m going to think of Chain of Fools and Aretha Franklin, but looking back, she often chose a light pink for herself–one of her outfits on Soul Train for a live performance of Rock Steady, several of her later appearances too. I’ve never been a big fan of pale pink or Cadillacs, but I still love her exuberance and a song that full of juice and humor.

And that brings me back to the frozen slices of watermelon and what I did with them yesterday.

I knew that once it was frozen, the watermelon would probably have to stay frozen, because thawing it out would almost certainly cause it to collapse into limp mush, and what a shame (although I didn’t actually test that out, I would put good money on it).

You can’t really buy watermelon ice cream or sorbet in this country, not at the supermarket anyhow, and I’ve never actually eaten any, not even as gelato in Italy, where (at least 25 years ago, when the artisanal gelaterie were still making it traditionally instead of from powdered mixes) they had just about everything you could put in gelato form and all the flavors came out really specific and vibrant and fresh.

I wasn’t sure a watermelon ice I could make at home would actually taste good on its own, and I had something a little more offbeat in mind for the flavor since watermelon is kind of subtle. But it’s popular world-wide, from Africa to east Asia as well as throughout the western hemisphere, which gave me a few ideas.

Right before we left for New York I’d interviewed someone who was born in Iran about his father’s legacy, and then while we were traveling I saw David Lebovitz‘s blog post on “booza”–the Lebanese version of Turkish dondurma or “stretchy” ice creams in exotic flavors. So I was thinking maybe rosewater and a pinch of clove with the watermelon. And maybe a dollop of yogurt in there somewhere for body so it wouldn’t be too much like a granità. And maybe…

Well, it could either be good, inedible or just plain strange–and it turned out something between good and a little strange, so I’m counting it as a good rough draft, and we’ll call it unusual, exotic, still a bit subtle but flavorful, specifically watermelon with rose. And pink.

My experimental ices tend to be low in sugar and fat, so the texture is a bit icy, sherbety or snow-cone-y rather than creamy. They’re still refreshing and I try not to let anything be cloying–rosewater can be, so I kept it to a teaspoon for what made about a quart in volume, and I added lemon juice, which helps a lot and keeps it from becoming “soapy.”

I don’t know–maybe this would be better as popsicles or paletas, but I like the snowiness, and the watermelon flesh definitely contributes that delicacy even without an ice cream maker.

And this one was pretty encouraging–cool, smooth, both down to earth and exotic, unexpected. Maybe a little like the Queen herself.

Watermelon Rosewater Sherbet

makes about 1 quart

1-1 1/4 pounds (500ish grams) watermelon slices without rind or seeds, sliced and frozen all the way
3-4 T sugar or to taste
squeeze of lemon juice and/or pinch of citric acid, sparingly, just to taste
3-4 T nonfat milk-and-cultures only Greek yogurt
1/2-1 c. skim milk, just as needed
1 t. rosewater
pinch of ground cloves, optional–this was the part I’m not sure I’d repeat; it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t quite ideal either in combination with the watermelon, the rosewater and the tartness. So probably leave it out.
NOTE, a year later: I tried another batch with cardamom instead of cloves and it really freshened and complemented the watermelon and rose. I shouldn’t have been surprised–it’s traditional in both Iranian and Indian cooking to combine rosewater with cardamom. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Microwave the frozen watermelon slices 30 seconds on an open plate, just enough to thaw a tiny bit so you can cut them into inch-or-so chunks for the blender or food processor and not break the blade. Add the lemon juice or citric acid, the sugar, the yogurt and rosewater (and pinch of clove? leave it out?) and a splash of milk, pulse to start it blending. Pour just enough extra milk through the processor spout to create a smooth thick icy milkshake-like blend, then pour the mixture into a 2.5 quart snaplock container with a lid and still-freeze, stirring briefly with a whisk after half an hour and returning it to the freezer.

If you want an actual sorbet with no dairy, make a simple syrup by boiling equal amounts of water and sugar for a few minutes to dissolve and thicken slightly, cool it to room temperature and blend it with the frozen watermelon and flavorings, leaving out the yogurt and milk and regular sugar. The usual sorbet proportions are about 3/4 cup of sugar (so about 3/4 c sugar, 3/4 c water, boiled up to a syrup and cooled) for a quart of finished sorbet. I find that a bit much sweet-wise and not as refreshing but it will deliver the kind of standard texture and cohesiveness you get in commercial sorbets.

Filed under: Desserts, frugality, fruits, haute cuisine | Tagged: food, recipes | Comments Off on Days of watermelon and roses

Saving summer

Posted on July 31, 2018 by DebbieN

Between the continuous stream of political, humanitarian, economic and diplomatic firestorms set by the Trump administration and the actual forest fires here, it’s been a long, hard, hot summer in California and much more stressful than summer should be. I water cautiously, keep moving forward, and try to keep my family healthy and myself from letting it take over.

I’m also looking for an effective civil rights and humanitarian aid group to contribute to–the Southern Poverty Law Center is one; there are also several mothers’ groups raising funds for legal representation for immigrants separated from their children. As I discovered last year during hurricanes Harvey and Maria, making donations for humanitarian aid is an important way to help yourself as well–it’s something concrete you can do that will actually make a difference, and it makes you feel less overwhelmed and powerless as an individual.

Whenever I step back from the newspapers for a bit, though, I look around me and see the brighter side. I consider that my daughter has finished high school with both honors and friends, and for a change doesn’t have summer homework. She’s working in a job she loves, is learning to drive and is nearly on her way to college, which we are all looking forward to. She’s ready and I’m proud of her (although I’m still not quite ready to see Ladybird).

I’m working for a community book festival this fall that promises some fun and challenging authors, I have some interesting new freelance assignments, and my first e-book project is nearly ready for publication. And I’ve started experimenting again in the kitchen–something I really didn’t have the time or concentration for during graduation and its immediate aftermath.

The heat wave is a big factor in my cooking; Pasadena tends to get over 90 F most days of summer (and plenty of times from September to April too), and the past few weeks have seen temperatures in the 100s midday. So the freezer and microwave are essentials in my book. So is eating or preserving enough of the bounty of summer produce while it’s at its best to keep it from going to waste even in the fridge. Because I always tend to go overboard at the greengrocer’s–last year or the year before it was nectarines (this year too). This year it’s plums, strawberries, any other berries I can get at a good price.

Instant Frozen Yogurt

Most berries are good if you just wash and freeze them while they’re still in decent shape. Mix three or so ounces of frozen blueberries or blackberries with a 4-ounce/half-cup dollop of plain nonfat Greek yogurt and a teaspoon of sugar in a small plastic cup or snaplock container (the plastic is a better insulator than ceramic cups or glass) and you have nearly instant all-real and nicely purple frogurt–the small berries get the yogurt freezing the right way, right in the cup, within about 30 seconds as you stir.

But what if the berries are going a bit ugly and soft–like strawberries?

There’s nearly no point in trying for homemade strawberry frogurt or ice cream unless you really personally like it. Sorbet, I can definitely see, but for my money, strawberry ice cream is generally an insultingly pale pink, not terribly fresh, and tastes duller than plain vanilla. It would be a lot better to stick some actual fresh strawberries or a not-too-sweet fresh strawberry purée on the side of some good-quality plain vanilla because you’d have a real contrast between two actual flavors, not one mediocre pink in-between.

Well, what about jam?

Strawberries are one of my favorite fruits—fresh and raw or else frozen, unsweetened. But I actively dislike most strawberry jam—the cooked, oversweetened blandness bears no resemblance to the fresh, tart wild-tasting fruit I love.

Commercial strawberry jam is not only unbearably sticky-sweet and gluey but the fruit itself, when you encounter it, is usually a slimy dull gray lumpette with five o’clock shadow, something to pick out cautiously rather than savor. It’s not the best of the fruit to start with, and it’s now overcooked and showing it.

But there are still some really heavenly strawberries out there going overripe on the market produce shelves, and I had about half a pound left just a little too long in my fridge after a party. I discovered by fooling around that strawberry jam or at least compote that still tastes like strawberries is possible to do at home if you microwave it lightly instead of cooking it to death. And I even liked it.

Could I keep the tartness intact? Could I keep it lightly cooked enough to still taste fresh and like strawberries to me? Could I keep it from being slimy?

Based on a few of my other impromptu microwave fruit spreads (peach, plum, apricot, kumquat) and fruit-rescue attempts (faux sour cherry, nectarine sorbet) I decided I’d give it a quick try in the microwave Continue reading →

Filed under: breakfast, frugality, fruits, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, sauces and condiments | Tagged: food, low-carb cooking, recipes | Comments Off on Saving summer

Take two on pears

Posted on April 5, 2018 by DebbieN

When pears are good, at the peak of ripeness and aromaticity, they’re very very good, and biting into one will see the juice roll down your chin. When they’re not at their peak, or even when they’re frankly over the hill, you can still use them to advantage.

Slightly underripe pears slice thin and stay crisp in salads or on a cheese platter, something like jicama or underripe watermelon. They’re just barely sweet, not unctuous enough to upset the balance with a sharp vinaigrette or an aged cheese.

Ripe pears can substitute well in a variety of desserts for either apples (when still firm) or bananas (when very ripe, or even overripe and getting mushy).

And they lend a note of European sophistication to many desserts (and salads, and even main dishes) thanks to a dry aromatic twist to their sweetness–not exactly bitterness, more like something that plays well with the bitter notes of almonds, hazelnuts, bittersweet chocolate and dry red wine. These are flavors that don’t mesh as well with most apples due to their more overt sweetness and higher acidity, and probably not so well with bananas either due to the novocaine factor. (Although I’ve never actually tried to pair bananas with cabernet, I can just imagine it. Not promising.)

So even if you’re not a big fan of raw pears, the occasional bargain bag may be worth considering for desserts. If you can get them organic at a decent price, do, because pears are on the “dirty dozen” list for absorbing pesticides. Trader Joe’s sells bags of 6-8 small to medium (3.5-4 oz.) organic pears for about $3 at this writing. But what if, as happens occasionally, the child who insisted she wanted them instead of apples yet again has eaten two, and the rest have sat neglected in the fridge for long enough to turn?

Overripe pears don’t look very nice on the outside and may have gone bland and/or brown, but they’ve still got what it takes if you peel them and cut away actual bad spots. If they’re only a little overripe and still flavorful, use them for a sorbet or microwave them for a minute or so to turn them “micro-poached.” If they’re really soft and going brown, peel and core them, remove all the brown bits and then mash or blend them as you would ripe bananas to give body and moisture to a cake or torte.

Here are two easy microwaveable desserts that use ripe to overripe pears and are Passover-worthy but can work anytime.

Micro-Poached Pears with Chocolate

This one’s very fast and impromptu–make just one pear or a few at a time and add a little time just as needed.

It can be hard to find chocolate that’s labeled kosher for Passover. Depending on your level of observance, consult the Orthodox Union’s Passover Guide, which changes year to year but lists brands with kosher certification or acceptability even without a mark. If you eat kitniyot (beans, legumes, corn and peas, some spices, seeds and nuts) you can probably eat most chocolate that contains soy lecithin and vanilla. If not, look for the specially marked Elite chocolate bars that are kosher certified for Passover–for the Orthodox Union in the US, it’s the regular OU symbol (a capital U in a circle) but with a capital P superscript at the right. Other kosher certification at the Orthodox level is most likely to be the Hebrew letter kaf and/or a paragraph of Hebrew text naming the certifying rabbinical authority and location, sometimes with a circular seal containing the text (usually this is if it’s an Israeli product). There may be other certified or acceptable chocolates made with vanilla beans rather than extract (or without vanilla at all) and without lecithin–some of the high-end organic brands, for example.

Ripe to very ripe pears
Dark chocolate, your preference for cocoa percentage, brand, etc.
optional: turbinado or regular granulated sugar, cinnamon, powdered ginger etc. for sprinkling (check the OU site if you need to; regular granulated sugar is certified as-is but brown sugars aren’t always, and ground spices need to be certified for Passover)

Wash the pears, split in half and trim out the seed core and stem threads.

Lay the halves face up on a dish or plate that can go in the microwave. Place a square of chocolate on each half about where the core was.

Microwave 1-2 minutes per pear, just until the chocolate starts to melt and bubble and the pears are tender. Sprinkle with turbinado or other sugar and spices as desired before or after microwaving.

Eat with a knife and fork–add blackberries or a dollop of yogurt on the side if you want. Let it cool a little before digging in–I’m never that good and the roof of my mouth sometimes suffers for it.

Making the best of bad pears

The second recipe is yesterday’s riff on the Banana Ginger Almond Torte (from the I can haz cake?! Passover breakfast menu scheme…) crossed with my lightened-up version of Nigella Lawson’s “Damp Apple Almond Cake.”

Only, obviously, I had 5 small way-overripe pears to deal with. Brownish to quite brown on the outsides. But good enough inside to yield about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of pear once they were trimmed. And the result was seriously delicious.

Continue reading →

Filed under: baking, Desserts, Diabetes, frugality, fruits, holiday cooking, Microwave tricks, nuts | Tagged: cooking, food, Jewish cooking | Comments Off on Take two on pears

Fast fix for ripening peaches

Posted on June 30, 2017 by DebbieN

People are STILL hitting up two of my early posts on possibilities for improving spongy, underperforming peaches that don’t ripen properly even after being left out on a countertop in a paper bag for a day or so (the best-known strategy).

My recommendation back then was first of all to try to buy local or US produce because under-ripened imported fruits are heat-treated at Customs, which disrupts their potential for ripening naturally off the tree or for keeping well.

If your only options for fresh peaches and nectarines are supermarket fruit shipped long-distance, and the produce you get doesn’t ripen on its own within a day or so at room temperature, even though the color’s right, my next suggestion was to cut up the fruit, leaving the skin on, and microwaving them with a little sugar and lemon juice. What you’d get wouldn’t be full-on raw, fresh peaches magically fulfilled to the height of the season–they’d be cooked, suitable maybe for peach jam, and they’d be tolerable, not exquisite, but it was better than having to throw them out in disappointment.

Neither the paper bag scheme nor the microwave scheme produce particularly stellar results with spongy peaches. Also, even though it may work, a 24-hour wait isn’t terrible but it isn’t particularly fast either.

Back then I thought the old Victorian-era trick of cutting up fresh strawberries and sprinkling a spoonful of sugar on them, then letting them sit out a bit to macerate–ten minutes? half an hour? who knows–wasn’t working on the spongy peaches. And maybe it wasn’t, or maybe I just wasn’t waiting long enough (ten minutes might not have been enough). But with domestic underripe peaches that aren’t rock-hard, it does seem to improve them quickly without cooking them.

The sugar draws out some of the juices to the surface but it also seems to enhance the color and perhaps creates a bit of conversion to riper flavor within the fruit itself.

Caveat: the peaches I bought yesterday were US peaches, and they had a tinge of aroma to them. They’re not rock-hard after sitting out on an admittedly warm counter near a window overnight, and they’re not hideously spongy and flavorless like the ones I bought when I was really upset about it in the original post. But they’re not really going sublime on their own either, or at least not as fast as I thought they should. Given their high color when I bought them (which used to be the other main signal for ripening and flavor potential), I wasn’t happy to find that they weren’t ready yet this morning.

I took the most yielding one, washed it, sliced it up in a bowl and took a bite–underripe, tart without the sweet (at least there was some tartness, though) and that hard yellow that isn’t really peachy yet. Potential, perhaps, but I’m impatient, as everyone knows.

So I dusted on a little sugar, turned the slices in it to get some contact, and waited about 10 minutes. Which may not be enough to see anything obvious, but it did make the slices noticeably juicier and they also seemed a little sweeter than the amount of sugar would account for. Not perfect, but not bad.

Half a guess based on the success of my faux-sour cherries experiment and last year’s nectarine sorbet (which I did again just last week):

If your peaches are really not tart either, just dull, you might try either a squeeze of lemon, or preferably, if you have it, a light dusting of citric acid powder along with the sugar. Citric acid will give them tartness that goes with their own flavors, so you don’t end up with something that tastes specifically like you added lemon. Let them sit a while and see what happens–take a sample taste and if it’s good, eat them, and if not, you can always go ahead and microwave them.

Filed under: cooking, frugality, fruits, shopping | Tagged: food, fruit, recipes | Comments Off on Fast fix for ripening peaches

Slow Food Fast

Subscribe to SlowFoodFast!

Noshing on

Recent Posts

Contents

Archives

Now Reading

Copyright, Disclaimer, Affiliate Links

Microwave Tricks: Passover Haste and Fresh Apple Sauce

Oasis

A Quick Wish for a Better 5781

Saving Summer, 2020-style: Peaches and Pasta Yet Again

Zwetchgenkuchen: a lighter holiday plum tart