The Devonia Cocktail

Nov 17 ’08

Filed in food

Here in Oregon, it's fall. The leaves have changed colors, the weather is changing. When I go to the farmer's market, I no longer see plums; root vegetables, apples and pears are the norm now. And the apple cider is here.

I've been thinking about seasonality a lot recently; I figure that, although I can make a drink that tastes like a long summer day on a tropical beach, perhaps in Oregon in the fall I should make a drink that tastes like Oregon in the fall. A few searches on Cocktail DB later, I've found the Devonia Cocktail.

Wow! What a drink! It's not particularly strong — it has less than a full shot of alcohol — but it is extremely smooth and well balanced. Read the rest …

Lemon bars

Mar 11 ’08

Filed in food

I wish that I had a photo of these to show; they were just too delicious, though, and didn't last long enough. The addition of a little bit of almond meal to the crust gives them a complexity of flavor that plays very nicely with the clean tartness of the lemon curd.

Lemon curd is tricky

Lemon curd is a very difficult beast. It's too easy for it to be off-balance: the butter, sugar or tartness from the lemons can easily dominate, and then it's just good, not sublime like it can be. There are no hard and fast secrets for getting the balance right, either, as it depends entirely on the particular lemons you're using. As their sugar levels vary, the amount of juice and sugar you'll need to use to balance out the curd will change. This means that you should taste the curd while it's cooking, so that you can balance it out at the last minute if it needs it.

The second tricky part to a good lemon curd is making it so that it sets properly, and doesn't have those nasty little bits of egg white that cook too soon and gum it up. I came across a discussion of lemon curds online somewhere, and one of the participants had a suggestion which worked perfectly: that's the basis of the recipe below. The secret is two-fold. Read the rest …

Pots de chocolat

Jan 13 ’08

Filed in food

Who doesn't love chocolate?

That's what I thought. Nobody raised their hands.

I love to make desserts that finish a meal in style, and this chocolate mousse certainly fits the bill. The best part is that it's very easy to make.Read the rest …

Macha cukkii: green tea cookies

Feb 04 ’07

Filed in food

Green tea cookies

My upstairs neighbor gave us some macha: Japanese powdered green tea. The Japanese are the only people on the planet who still drink this stuff — it's a very primitive form of tea, and when brewed it's quite bitter. They eat it with sweets that are too sweet, alternating bites of too-sweet with sips of too-bitter, and it all balances out.

I like drinking macha, though; but I'd rather make delicious tasty desserts with it, like this one which I made this afternoon. The recipe is based on the "Rich roll cookies" from Joy of Cooking.Read the rest …

Marionberries make everything better

Jul 16 ’06

Filed in food, plants

Marionberries from Sauvie Island

Yesterday Sally and I went to Sauvie Island Farms to pick marionberries, and what a bountiful harvest it was. After a few hours with only a couple of minor scratches (those things have thorns!), we weighed in with 23 and a quarter pounds of gorgeous marionberries. When they are super fresh off the plant, and are warmed by the sun, they have a wonderful musky spiciness to them that I had never quite experienced like this. To date my marionberry consumption, though non-trivial, has been through farmer's market berries, which are usually picked a day or two before they are sold. As good as those have been, freshly picked is better.Read the rest …

The best vanilla extract in the world

Jan 25 ’06

Filed in food

Over on Chef Vault, bookchiq is speaking lovingly about her recent acquisition of vanilla beans. I'm almost out of my stash of this, but if you've got a lot of vanilla beans you can easily make a large amount of very delicious vanilla extract. All it takes is some patience. I practically grew up on this stuff, and I can't recommend it enough.

Ingredients

New bottle of Jim Beam bourbon 3-6 vanilla beans

Sourdough pancakes

Jan 23 ’06

Filed in food, web design

Ventry sourdough pancakes

A good friend of ours just came up from L.A. to visit over the weekend, and as a special treat I thought I would make a tasty breakfast Sunday morning. I gave our guest some choices, and she settled on pancakes. My current favorite is a recipe for some very, very thick and solid yeast-risen sourdough pancakes. I've been growing the starter for a little over a month, and I have to say that it's very good and getting better. If you make pancakes regularly, you have to make the sourdough starter once, and then just refresh when you make 'em. The recipe these came from is called "Ventry Sourdough Pancakes," from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Home Baking, which is a pretty good book about baking traditions from around the world. In any case, the pancakes from this recipe come out easily a half inch thick, and absorb maple syrup like nobody's business. The sourdough isn't overpowering, and provides a subtle alternative to buttermilk; the yeastiness of them is fantastic. Read the rest …