Pickles at Happy Medium

I don’t think there is any arguing with the fact that we live in an instant gratification oriented society. I certainly know it’s true in my life of internet shopping and instant music downloads to my iPhone, but there is one area where I try my hardest to leave that fast-paced lifestyle behind – the kitchen.

I am a card carrying member of Slow Food USA and, as mentioned before on this blog, would probably be quite happy spending my days curing prosciutto in my basement and experimenting with cheese cultures for the different blues and triple creams ripening in my fridge, but the truth is I just don’t have that kind of time. The majority of us have to work for a living so those projects must wait for the occasional, lazy weekend day. Making food and food products from scratch at home is no longer a necessity to be able to eat, but a luxury for those who have the time.

Since I don’t have time to be my own cheese maker, farmer or butcher, I have done my best to find a happy medium. I do grow some of my own vegetables and what I don’t have time to do myself, I try to purchase from the artisans who are taking the time and care to do it right (farmers markets, small batch cheese producers, etc.). This doesn’t mean I’m never at Ralphs buying blueberries shipped in from Argentina. It just means I make an effort not to be there, but when I am, I don’t feel guilty and neither should you.

My favorite happy medium of the summer is refrigerator pickles. They’re quick and easy for the home cook who wants a pickled vegetable by next weekend, but doesn’t have the time or desire to make sure that there are pickles put up for the whole winter. It was quite satisfying and easy with pickled radishes from my own garden and even easier with my recent batch of pickled cucumbers, made from cucumbers purchased at the farmer’s market.

After I picked up two pounds of bright emerald green pickling cucumbers, I went looking for a good way to use them. Most of the recipes I found were intended for huge batches of pickles that were headed for a canning bath and wouldn’t be ready to consume for at least a month. I wanted pickles and I wanted them a lot sooner than in a month. I also wanted to be able to spend the evening with my boyfriend and not gently lowering and lifting canning jars in and out of a pot of boiling water. Instead, I mixed up a basic brine, cut the ends off my pickling cucumbers to allow the brine to quickly penetrate the cucumbers, poured the vinegary liquid over the cucumbers and let them sit, first on the counter and then in the refrigerator. Five days later I had wonderful crispy perfect pickles. Five days may not seem like instant gratification in your book, but compared to a month or two for the canned variety, I was happy. So were the rest of the pickle eaters at my BBQ the next Friday night. We all sat around a bonfire, happily crunching on some of the best pickles any of us had ever had and these are the folks who taste more of my food than anyone else. I can tell when they’re lying, and they were not.



Happy Medium Pickles

2 pounds pickling cucumbers
1 cup white wine vinegar
3 – 4 cups water
1/4 cup salt
4 garlic cloves
1/2 bunch of fresh dill
1 T mustard seed
1 1/2 T coriander seed
1 quart sized jar (or larger)

Rinse the cucumbers, dry thoroughly and chill in the refrigerator for at least two hours. If you've been keeping your cucumbers in the fridge, you can skip the drying and chilling steps. Heat the vinegar and three cups of water in a small saucepan and stir in the salt until dissolved. Set the vinegar mixture aside to cool just slightly. Place a few dill sprigs at the bottom of the jar along with the garlic cloves and half the mustard and coriander seeds. Cut the stem and blossom ends off the cucumbers (an eight of an inch is all you need to remove) and place them in the jar. Pour the vinegar mixture over the cucumbers, adding more water as needed to cover. Place a few more sprigs of dill and the remaining coriander and mustard seeds over the cucumbers. If the cucumbers are not fully submerged, add more dill to force the cucumbers fully under water. Leave the jar on the counter for two days and then place in the refrigerator for two to three days more. Enjoy the pickles within a week of opening the container.

Mayonnaise - How to Cheat

One thing I have noticed over the years is that mayonnaise is an oddly divisive substance. Many hate it with a passion, refusing to let it so much as touch a piece of sandwich bread, while others love it, slathering it on artichokes, mixing in herbs and calling it a sauce, even topping the occasional plate of scrambled eggs with a dollop just because they can. I am a card-carrying member of the latter group. It may be because both my parents are from the South where mayonnaise is more of a staple ingredient than just a condiment. Not a day went by at 3752 Chevy Chase Drive that we didn’t have a huge jar of Best Food’s (Hellman’s for you East Coasters) in the fridge, with another one on standby in the cupboard.

My appreciation of mayonnaise seemed perfectly normal amongst my own kind. In fact, I didn’t realize there was anything wrong with my level of mayonnaise consumption until my sophomore year of college when my roommates looked on, horrified at my decision to fold up pieces of Kraft American singles and dip them into my oversized jar of mayonnaise as a snack. Clearly, my gourmet tendencies had yet to take hold.

For someone who loves mayonnaise as much as I do, I find it surprising that this past weekend was the first time I tried to make mayonnaise at home. I guess it’s due to my devotion to Best Food’s. I never saw the need. I am here to tell you that I have been reformed. I still love my Best Food’s, but there is something completely different and luxurious about homemade mayonnaise. I am also here to tell you about a few mistakes I made with the first two attempts that never emulsified. Making mayonnaise is not as simple as it seems.

If you’re not in the Los Angeles area, then you don’t know that it topped 100 degrees this past weekend and not just in the Valley. It was a hot one and without the benefit of any air conditioning, the idea of vigorously whisking egg yolk while slooooowly adding oil, drop by drop at first, seemed like too much physical exertion for such a hot day. I decided to take a lovely looking recipe from Michael Rulhman and make it in my blender. After all, the blender will certainly whisk vigorously while I have my hands free to add the oil drop by drop. Right? Not so. It turns out, according to The Joy of Cooking, that you need to have egg white included in the recipe if you’re trying to make a blender mayonnaise. Clearly J o C must know what they’re talking about so I transitioned to their recipe which called for using a bit of egg white in addition to the yolk and a Cuisinart instead of a blender. I fitted my Cuisinart with the plastic blade as directed and attempted batch number two. Still no emulsification. Perhaps I added the oil too quickly? Possibly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the plastic blade did not create enough agitation to get the mixture to emulsify.

Already having dirtied two of my major kitchen appliances, I eyed the third. Epiphany. If I used the whisk attachment on my KitchenAid mixer, then who, other than the all-seeing kitchen Gods, would ever know that it was, in fact, a mixing machine and not my own arm that was attached to that whisk? I reverted back to Ruhlman’s recipe and in about five or 10 minutes had a wonderful mountain of homemade mayonnaise sitting in front of me. Success. Who says cheating never gets you anywhere? Truth be told, the energy exerted while washing all of those appliances is at least equal to, if not more than what it would have taken me to whisk the darn thing by hand in the first place.

My final tip on homemade mayonnaise? Once you have succeeded in getting the mixture to emulsify, for God’s sake, don’t ruin it by throwing it in a blender to add fresh herbs. I lost two thirds of my beautiful mayonnaise by trying to turn it into basil mayonnaise in the blender. I managed to break the emulsification and ended up with a runny purple mess in front of me (purple basil). Thank goodness I had set some aside that I was able to combine with hand-chopped basil.


I served this basil mayonnaise next to a gorgeous skirt steak that the boyfriend grilled, but it would be equally delicious on just about any kind of sandwich.

Mayonnaise
Adapted from Michael Ruhlman

1 egg yolk
1/2 t salt
1 t lemon juice
1 t water
1 cup vegetable oil

Place egg yolk, salt, lemon juice and water in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk on medium to combine. Pour vegetable oil into a glass measuring cup, preferably with a pouring spout. Turn mixer up to medium high and use a spoon to add the oil to the mixer, drop by drop, until about a third of the oil is mixed in. You should see the emulsification coming together as a thick, white, creamy sauce. Each time you add oil you will see the emulsification loosen, then come together around the whisk and then start sticking to the sides of the bowl again. When the mixture sticks to the bowl, you know it’s safe to add more oil. I used the spoon method for the entire cup of oil, mainly because I had already broken two emulsifications that afternoon. If you are brave, feel free to start adding the oil in a slow drizzle after the first third is successfully incorporated. Once all the oil is incorporated, you should be left with glorious, luxurious mayonnaise. Use as you will.

Olive Oil Not Gelato Not Ice Cream

There are two things that happen a lot once your friends and family realize how crazy you are about food. The first is you tend to get food-related gifts for every birthday and holiday. This is a huge bonus. The second thing is that they bring every food-related question to you, assuming you must know everything there is to know about food. Truth be told, this is a huge plus as well. It’s taught me that I really do know a great deal about food because I can thoroughly answer a number of questions that come from the home cook. It also has helped me realize what I don’t know and what I want to learn more about.

The question I get asked the most, with far more frequency than anything else, is to explain the difference between gelato and ice cream. My default answer has been that it’s mainly in the churning process and that if you’re talking about a custard-based ice cream, the ingredients are generally the same.

That default answer was no longer good enough after tasting the olive oil gelato at Mozza in Los Angeles. It was so good I tracked down the recipe in one of Mario Batali’s cookbooks, because as much as I would love to eat at Mozza every time a craving for that gelato hits, my bank account cannot handle the pressure. I dutifully followed Mario’s gelato recipe, but, lacking a gelato machine, I was forced to churn the custard in my ice cream maker. I needed to know whether I could call what I made gelato or if it was ice cream.

After a quick google search I realized this question could have easily been answered a long time ago. It turns out that I was partially correct. Gelato is churned at a slower speed than ice cream which means less air is whipped into the final frozen treat, yielding a much thicker, denser product. Additionally, gelato has less fat than ice cream. What? That doesn’t make sense! Isn’t gelato the richer, creamier version of ice cream? Well, according to Alon Balshan as quoted in Jessica Harlan’s article on About.com, the extra fat in ice cream coats your mouth and the flavors don’t come through as strongly. There’s less standing between you and that intense flavor punch in a good gelato.

Gelato vs. ice cream dilemma solved. What to call my creation? Neither really. I used a recipe for gelato which didn’t include as much fat as ice cream and I churned it in an ice cream maker that whipped in too much air to call the final product gelato. So here is a recipe for Olive Oil Not Gelato Not Ice Cream. If you have a gelato machine, by all means, follow the instructions and end up with delicious gelato. If you, like me, don’t yet possess one, follow the directions, make something quite delicious and join me in adding gelato machine to your long list of necessary kitchen products.

Olive Oil Not Gelato Not Ice Cream
Adapted from Mario Batalio

6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil (I used Valderrama – my current favorite)
3 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream

Place the egg yolks and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and use the whip attachment to beat to the ribbon stage (about five minutes on medium speed). You’ll know you’ve hit the ribbon stage when the mixture is pale yellow in color and it falls back into the bowl in a ribbon pattern. With the mixer running, drizzle in the olive oil and beat until combined. Continue mixing as you add the milk and cream. When everything is combined, freeze according to your gelato or ice cream maker’s directions.

Roasted Tomato Tart with Goat Cheese and Country Pate

This tart recipe is the product of a perfect Sunday – a day I woke up early, feeling well-rested and with nothing on the calendar aside from hours to spend in the kitchen, tinkering with leftover pate and trying to use up pounds and pounds of tomatoes from the bushes now bursting with fruit in my backyard. At least that’s my idea of a perfect Sunday. If it doesn’t sound appealing to you, you may be in the wrong place.

I planned on making a tomato tart to start using up the stockpile of tomatoes currently occupying my kitchen counter. On a whim, I sliced up the leftover pate from our Saturday night cheese plate and included it in the tart. It added an amazing richness, but if you’re not a fan of pate, by all means leave it out, just be sure to put something in its place to help boost the flavor. A slather of Dijon mustard along the base of the tart would be a welcome replacement. Additionally, use any cheese that you like or have on hand. This recipe was created from what was already in the pantry and your version should be too.

The following recipe is long enough so I won’t waste anymore of your time going on and on about how much I love the Pâté de Campagne from Monsieur Marcel or how, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can make your own goat cheese for the topping. I’ll just leave you with the recipe for your own adaptation. Enjoy.

Roasted Tomato Tart with Goat Cheese and Country Pate
Dough recipe adapted from Once Upon a Tart

2 1/2 cups flour
3 T semolina
1 t salt
12 T butter (1 1/2 sticks)
3 T shortening
4 – 8 T ice water

4 large tomatoes (heirloom paste tomatoes if possible)
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
15 thyme sprigs
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 pound good quality country pate
2 oz goat cheese



Heat oven to 375*
Place the flour, semolina and salt in a food processor and pulse until combined. Cut the butter into small pads and add to the food processor along with the shortening. Pulse until small crumbs start to form. Pour the mixture into a bowl and drizzle in the water starting with 3 T and adding more, 1 T at a time, if needed until the dough comes together as you stir it with a wooden sppo. Divide the dough into two balls and form into discs. Wrap the discs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes (you will only need one disc for this recipe).

While the dough is chilling, slice the tomatoes to a 1/4 inch thick and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Season liberally with salt and pepper and spread the thyme sprigs and minced garlic over the tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, discard the thyme sprigs and allow to cool.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface. Transfer to the tart pan and pierce the dough all over with a fork. Chill the dough in the tart pan for an additional 30 minutes. Line the pan with foil and place pie weights in the tart shell. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the foil and pie weights and return to the oven for an additional 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.
Slice the country pate very thinly and lay over the base of the tart shell (the bottom may not be completely covered). Place one layer of tomatoes over the pate, sprinkle lightly with salt and repeat with a second layer. Crumble the goat cheese and spread around the top of the tart. Return the tart to the oven and bake until the edges of the cheese are starting to brown. Let cool slightly before cutting and serving with a simple mixed greens salad.

Semifreddo Popsicles

I always get a bit nostalgic for the summers of my childhood around this time of year. The advertisements for back-to-school shopping are starting and I can walk into any bookstore to find some of my favorite food magazines already touting the best stews for fall. When I was growing up, summer seemed to last forever. Those were the days before we scheduled every spare minute of a child’s life with sports and activities and year-round school had yet to catch on. If you weren’t enrolled in summer school, which I rarely was, you had a solid three months, from June through the end of August or even Labor Day, to enjoy the summer, and enjoy it we did.

As with most things in life, my memories of summer center on food. The American flag cake my mother made using blueberries and raspberries for the Fourth of July one year, eating almost every family dinner out on our back patio with citronella candles burning to ward off the bees and oddly enough, because I don’t think we used them that much, the Tupperware popsicle molds that we experimented with one year.

The only clear memory I have of trying out the molds is the ultra-gourmet diet coke popsicle I created. While I did like to play with food when I was young, my experiments, much like this one, rarely produced something you would actually want to eat.

I’ve seen many recipes for truly gourmet popsicles that far outpace my diet coke concoction. From puréed fruit mixed with prosecco to coconut milk with lime juice and most recently, a semifreddo recipe frozen in popsicle molds for individual servings. That is the recipe that pushed me over the edge and sent me out on a search for my own set of molds. It was surprisingly hard to find the old-fashioned popsicle sticks. Since most molds come with their own plastic stick, grocery stores, at least the ones by me, don’t seem to carry them anymore. I ended up in an Office Depot in the craft section to hunt them down. Tools in hand, I rushed home to try my hand at a semifreddo (first one I’d ever made) and making my own popsicles (first foray into the non-diet coke flavored arena).

These came out delicious and rich and sweet, but not overly so. When I make them again, I won’t use my dark-yolk eggs. That deep yolk color made the popsicles more yellow than the beautiful off-white I was going for. Other than that, these are perfect as is. The original recipe called for frozen raspberries, but I went with fresh. Use whatever you have on hand.



Raspberry Semifreddo Popsicles
Adapted from Donna Hay

2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 T vanilla bean paste
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup cream
2 cups raspberries

Place the eggs, egg yolk, vanilla and sugar in a heatproof bowl and place over a bowl of simmering water (you can use a double boiler, but a bowl works better with the electric mixer). Use a handheld mixer to beat the mixture for 6 - 8 minutes until thick. Set aside.

Beat the cream to stiff peaks using a stand mixer or clean off the handheld mixer and use it. Gently fold into the egg mixture. Divide the raspberries between 12 popsicle molds. Pour enough semifreddo to come about one inch up the popsicle mold. Tap the molds against the counter to get the semifreddo to settle into the base of the mold, around the raspberries, then finish filling the molds with semifreddo. Cover the molds with aluminum foil and insert popsicle sticks through the foil - this will help the sticks stay upright while freezing. Freeze until solid, about six hours.

Parsley Lemonade

I can’t think of anything more refreshing than a glass of homemade lemonade on a hot summer day. At least, I didn’t think I could. Then my boyfriend’s mother told me about the parsley lemonade she enjoyed on a recent lunch date. What better way to make lemonade even more delightful than to add in a bunch or two of fresh herbs? And why didn’t I think of that? There was no doubt that parsley lemonade would be served at my next BBQ and truth be told, it’s been served at every one since as well.

Rather than worry about everyone at the BBQ walking around with flecks of green, chopped parsley stuck in their teeth, I steeped the parsley in a simple syrup to infuse the flavor without leaving any parsley in the final drink. This kills two birds with one stone – you have your flavoring and sweetener in one mix.

If you feel like stocking up on some new glassware, good old-fashioned mason jars make a great vessel for this drink. Sur la Table sells a great set with handles that are sturdy enough to have survived a number of our backyard BBQs.



Parsley Lemonade

1 bunch parsley
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
3 pound bag of lemons*
Water or sparkling water to taste

Remove large stems from the parsley and roughly chop. Place water and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the chopped parsley to the pan and let heat for one – two minutes more. Remove from heat, cover and set aside until cool and the parsley flavor is infused, about an hour. In the meantime, juice the lemons.

When the simple syrup is cool, combine it with your lemon juice. You now have your concentrate. You can either mix the concentrate with water to taste and let your guests serve themselves, or keep the concentrate separate and let each guest decide if they would like to use sparkling or still water and mix each drink to taste. Garnish glasses with a sprig of parsley.

*If desired, roll the lemons between your palm and the countertop to help release all of the juices before juicing.

Pickled Radishes

Every year I have quite the supply of radishes at the beginning of summer. It’s the first thing that will sprout in the garden and I tend to get a little overzealous tucking radish seeds into every spare nook and cranny. I like radishes in my salads, but after a while, I really have to find something to do with the huge supply, especially when they’re getting large and overgrown in the garden because I can’t use them up fast enough.

When in doubt, pickle. That seems to be my mantra in the garden this year. Pickle or can everything in sight, so it can be enjoyed later in the year, when the best days of my garden are behind me for the season. My tomatoes are just starting to come in, but I’m already looking forward to making tomato jam and paste to put away for fall when I’m lamenting the all-too-short tomato season.



With the radishes I decided that rather than canning, I would whip up a quick brine and keep a jar of pickled radishes tucked in the fridge for a week (that’s about as long they will last without canning or preservatives) for intermittent snacking. We ended up devouring most of these during a BBQ with friends. They were great on burgers as well as on their own on the side.

If you have a favorite brine recipe, by all means use it and please share it with us! In a pinch you can even use a pre-packaged jar of brining spices. Though I prefer to make my own concoction of mainly mustard and coriander seeds, I was out of both and not wanting to run to the store, I settled for a pre-made blend I had at home. I recommend taking the time to go through and pick out come of the cloves and anything else you’d rather not include. The cloves would have overwhelmed the flavor of this batch of pickles.



Pickled Radishes
Makes about 4 cups (I had a lot of radishes to use up, feel free to reduce this recipe)

5 bunches store bought radishes or a good pile from your backyard*
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups water
2 T kosher salt
1/4 cup brining spices, picked over to remove cloves
2 dried bay leafs
Jar large enough to hold the radishes

*The amount of radishes is intentionally not precise – at the end of the process, you will simply pour over enough brining liquid to cover what you have.

Rinse the radishes and slice thinly using a mandoline and set aside. Combine the next seven ingredients in a saucepan and bring barely to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar and salt. Remove the mixture from the heat and allow to cool slightly (for about 10 minutes). Place the radishes in a jar and pour in enough brining liquid to cover. Discard remaining liquid. Place the jar of radishes in the refrigerator and let sit for a day (if you can wait that long). These pickles will last about a week in the refrigerator.

Tomato and Burrata Salad

It’s a difficult thing to admit, even to myself, but sometimes I do not want to cook. A recent virus kicked off my latest spurt of time out of the kitchen which was extended a few weeks by a trip up north and the guilt that ensued for not adding anything to Apples and Butter for weeks upon weeks. I have been here, quietly perusing your sites and finding so much inspiration, just not adding much to the conversation myself. This past weekend, the push I needed came in the form of a little red globe of perfect, first-tomato-of-the-season ripeness I found hiding at the back of one of my potted cherry tomatoes.

The day I pull the first tomato of summer off the vine may as well be a holy day in my household. At the very least it’s the equivalent of a national holiday. The anticipation begins in March when I put the first seedlings in the ground and wonder why they don’t produce tomatoes the very next day. It’s a cruel, three-month waiting period until the flowers turn to green tomatoes and the green tomatoes ripen into voluptuous red globes that seem as though they will burst at the seems if left on the vine for one more minute.



The cherry tomatoes I pulled off the vine needed a very basic preparation to let the homegrown tomato flavor shine through. I grabbed a fresh package of burrata out of the fridge and opened my new bottle of Valderrama olive oil (more about that another time) that was waiting patiently on the counter for the perfect first use. This was definitely it.

With burrata and homegrown tomatoes as the star ingredients, the dish only needed a sprinkling of fresh herbs to finish it. Basil would be ideal, but since my bushes had not quite jumped into production, I settled for finely chopped parsley - a decent substitute in this situation.

For a presentation worthy of photographing (though I would have gladly thrown everything together in a bowl and dug in with a fork) I shaped the burrata into quenelles, a football shape which is formed by moving the cheese back and forth between two spoons, smoothing the edges as you go. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, this, more detailed, explanation may be helpful.



Wherever you are, I hope it’s warm enough that you too are enjoying the first homegrown tomatoes of summer.

Cherry Tomato and Burrata Salad
Serves 1 (this recipe can easily be doubled, though if you’re pulling your first tomatoes off the vine, you, like me, may not want to share)

Handful (10 +) of cherry tomatoes
4 quenelles (or spoonfuls) of Burrata (about a 1/2 cup)
1 T best quality olive oil
1 T chopped fresh herbs of your liking
Sprinkling of Maldon sea salt

Place the burrata quenelles on four opposite sides of a plate (think north, south, east, west). Slice the cherry tomatoes in half and arrange them among the burrata. Drizzle with olive oil and finish with a sprinkling of herbs and salt to taste. Try not to inhale everything in one bite.