Lyonnaise Garlic and Herb Cheese (aka Boursin's Mama)

French Friday with Dorie

After last week's tart, it was nice to have a simple recipe to prepare, but even though it was simple to prepare I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it. While I was catching up with some recent tapings of The Martha Show that I had on the DVR, I was inspired by an appearance by Beatrice Peltre from La Tartine Gourmande where she made tartines with spring vegetables, ricotta cheese spread and smoked salmon.

Dorie's spread of ricotta cheese (I used part skim) mixed with minced garlic, shallot, some parsley, chives, tarragon, some olive oil and red wine vinegar was a perfect dressing for a sandwich. I added just a little bit of lemon juice and zest and salt to the herb cheese for some extra flavor. 

Since we were having a late afternoon lunch and both of us were starving, I spread a thick layer on the country bread. I topped it with some baby lettuce, and some prosciutto. I had some fava beans from our fresh farm box that I had blanched and I found some cute little mini heirloom tomatoes at Trader Joes that I added to the sandwich. I knew they would fall off and be a little messy in an open-faced sandwich, but that's part of the fun of eating outdoors, isn't it?

I also made Dorie's basil coulis and drizzled some over the tops of the tartines. The basil and olive oil gave the tartines so much flavor and was just the right touch. This was a perfect lunch for a warm spring afternoon.

There are so many different toppings that you could use with this spread on a tartine. Beatrice used the smoked salmon on a bed of watercress which I think would also be delicious. I will be experimenting more with this, for sure. One tartine was not enough for John and since he's not used to eating open-faced sandwiches, he rolled his up so the veggies wouldn't slide off. He was still hungry after his tartines, so I made him a second one, but sliced the tomatoes and added another piece of bread on top so he could eat it American-style.

Both versions were given a thumbs up. You can visit French Fridays with Dorie to see what the rest of the group made with their herb cheese spread. 

Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk Ice Cream

Spring Social Event: Cooking the Books

It's spring, it's warm outside, it's time for Di's Spring Social Event! Every season, Di from Di's Kitchen Notebook hosts a seasonal blogging event, and invites her blogging friends to blog about a theme-chosen recipe. This event's theme is Cooking the Books and she invited us to share a dish from one of the books from our bookshelves. I selected Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream because it has been on my bookshelf since late last summer and I just made my first ice cream from it. The ice cream flavor of choice? Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk.

I made a few slight changes to the recipe. Not intentionally, mind you, but because I have been having this problem when reading through the recipes in my cookbooks lately where I think I have read it through enough and grasped what I am supposed to do and discover later that I actually ended up doing something a little different than I was supposed to if I really had followed the recipe the way it was written. You will get my slightly adapted recipe at the end of this post. Anyway, back to the ice cream. You toss strawberries with sugar and some lemon juice and roast them for about 8 minutes. I roasted mine a few days before I made the ice cream and after they cooled I put them in the fridge.

The base for this ice cream includes a milk and cornstarch slurry and cream cheese which is combined with milk, heavy cream, light corn syrup, sugar, and buttermilk for a wonderful creaminess. What I like about Jeni's recipes is that you don't have to let the base chill for hours. You put the base along with the strawberries in a Ziploc bag, seal it, and plunge the bag into a large bowl of ice water and let it sit for 30 minutes. After that time you pour the base into your ice cream mixer and let it churn for 25 minutes or until it reaches the desired consistency.

The end result is the creamiest and most flavorful ice cream. One of the parts of this recipe that I seemed to have glossed over was the pureeing of the strawberries which Jeni says in the intro that they never put pieces of strawberries into ice cream because they turn into hard, flavorless chunks because of their high water content. Well, not only did I put the chunks of strawberries in my ice cream, I put the whole pint of strawberry chunks in it. According to the recipe, you are supposed to puree the strawberries which flavors the ice cream. Well, next time I may try pureeing the strawberries or at least half of them, but I have been given strict orders from my husband not to change a thing because it has become his favorite ice cream in the world. It even tops Gunther's Pistachio ice cream which has been the favorite of our house for many years. If you love strawberries and cream, you will love this ice cream.

Thank you to Di for hosting another seasonal blog event. Please check out her lovely blog and see what books and recipes her other blogging friends selected.

Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk Ice Cream

(slightly adapted from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream at Home

1 pint of hulled and sliced strawberries

1/3 cup brown sugar

Juice from one lemon

1-1/2 cups whole milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 ounces cream cheese at room temperature

1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt

1-1/4 cups heavy cream

2/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

1/4 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a pyrex dish (I used one of my pyrex pie dishes) toss the strawberries with the sugar and lemon juice until it is mixed well. Roast for 8 minutes or until the strawberries are soft. Let cool slightly and use right away or keep in fridge until ready to use.

2. Mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl until smooth. Mix the cream cheese with the salt in a medium bowl until smooth. Fill a large bowl with ice and water.

3. Combine the rest of the milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, and buttermilk in a saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a rolling boil and let boil for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Put the saucepan back on medium-heat and cook and stir, with a heatproof spatula, until the mixture has thickened (about 1 minute).

4. Gradually whisk the hot mixture with the cream cheese until smooth. Add the strawberries and blend well. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag, seal, and submerge in the bowl of ice water. Let it cool for about 30 minutes.

5. Pour the ice cream base into the frozen canister of your ice cream maker and churn until thick and creamy. (about 25 minutes). 

6. Pack the ice cream (if you can keep your family from eating it straight out of the ice cream canister) into an air-tight container that can go in the freezer and press a sheet of parchment paper over the surface of the ice cream and seal. Freeze in your freeze until firm (about 4 hours).

Peanut Butter and Banana Cream Pie

BAKED Sunday Morning

After making the double chocolate and banana tart for French Fridays with Dorie, I was a little hesitant about making another banana dessert that uses citrus to keep the bananas from turning black. This recipe uses orange juice instead of lemon juice and the flavor all but disappeared. 

What I had to do for this recipe was find a substitution for my favorite Nabisco Vanilla wafers because after reading the label on the box I saw that they have high fructose corn syrup. Have they always had it and I just didn't pay attention? Somehow I don't think so. Anyway, I have to read labels these days because the instant I eat anything with HFS I break out across the bridge of my nose. It's annoying and not very attractive, plus it makes me wonder that if I have an instant reaction to something that I am eating then it most likely is not good for me. My family now jokes that I am a human barometer for high fructose corn syrup. It took me awhile to find these 'natural' vanilla wafers in the cookie aisle. I was amazed at how many cookies have high fructose corn syrup in them.

These wafers taste really good with the vanilla bean and I thought they would complement the pudding part of this dessert because it also has vanilla bean. When I make this again, however, I will cut down on the amount of sugar for the crust because these cookies are much sweeter than the Nabisco wafers and much crispier. If you break this recipe down into steps and do the crust, it doesn't really take that long to make because you can make the pudding while your crust is cooling and then take off and do errands or clean the house while the pudding and crust are chilling in the fridge. The pudding is so creamy and delicious with the vanilla bean! I also really, really like the peanut butter topping and licked the mixer bowl clean afterwards. So very tasty. The top of the pie needed something and bananas were optional so I decided to skip those and decided to drizzle the top with some chocolate. Thank you for the inspiration, Kris!

What you end up with is a delicious dessert that has a layer of cookie, vanilla bean pudding, bananas, and peanut butter cream with a little bit of chocolate. This is a perfect dessert, especially for the summer because you eat it when the pie is nice and chilled. This photo was taken after 3 hours in the fridge, but I put it back in and we had some more later and it was firmer and just as good. It's like eating a childhood favorite of banana pudding with cookies and peanut butter. Check out the rest of the group's pies over at BAKED Sunday Mornings and get the recipe.

Double Chocolate and Banana Tart

French Friday with Dorie

This recipe has all the ingredients for a perfect dessert. Chocolate and bananas and more chocolate...and more bananas. So I am still left wondering why this wasn't a hit with us. It started out well with Dorie's wonderful sweet tart dough made with some unsweetened cocoa powder. So far, so good. Next, I made the caramelized bananas which turned out pretty well. 

Some were more caramelized than others, but they tasted good. I spread a thin layer of nutella on the bottom of the tart shell that was Dorie's Bonne Idée. The caramelized bananas were then spread over the nutella followed by a layer of chocolate ganache. The next step was where I think the recipe went wrong for me. Sprinkling lemon juice over the sliced bananas to keep them from turning black and then spreading an apricot glaze over the bananas once they were arranged on the top of the tart probably was what kept our taste buds guessing what the strong flavor was that none of us could put our finger on.

We never did figure out what it was, but perhaps I put too much lemon juice on the bananas and mixed with the apricot glaze created a really strong flavor. The components of this tart eaten separately was delicious. The sum of the parts of this tart just fell short of a good dessert. I really wanted to like this, but even after having a second piece the following day, it just tasted okay to me - not bad, not great - just okay. Was it the bananas we didn't like with it? Who knows? But I think I would have preferred it just as a double chocolate tart.

I am guessing that I am in the minority this week and that the rest of the group fared much better with this tart than I did and hopefully got better reviews with their families. Check out their links over at French Friday with Dorie.

Provençal Olive Fougasse

French Friday with Dorie

When I read the intro to this week's recipe, I was intrigued when Dorie said that the fougasse is not a solid loaf of bread because holes are made into it and the bread is often oddly shaped, called pains fantaisies or fantasy bread. This alone made me want to make it. I have never made this kind of bread before and really looked to the photo in the book as a guide.

Having looked for olives packed in oil for another Dorie recipe, I knew they weren't going to be easy to find. I live in California where olives are abundant, but are packed in water. I found another jar of oil cured olives, however, at World Market, but this time they were from Provençal. Perfect!

I decided to make only one loaf and halved the recipe. I had another moment like last week where I forgot completely what I just read and didn't add the extra cup of water and olive oil until after I had already started mixing the flour and yeast mixtures. Sheesh! It turned out that this dough was forgiving though because it came together fairly well.

Since it had been a warm day (90 degrees!) I let it rise covered on the counter for about 2-1/2 hours before stirring it and putting it in the refrigerator to rest. When I got off work the next day I took it out and rolled it out a little on a floured surface and used my pizza cutter to make some cuts in the dough and gently pulled the slashes apart to make holes. I brushed the water and olive oil mixture on the top and sprinkled liberally with kosher salt.

I baked the bread on a silicone-lined baking sheet for 10 minutes and rotated the pan and baked for another 10 minutes. While this was baking you could smell the fragrant rosemary and I couldn't wait to try a piece. I let it cool on a rack for about 10 minutes before taking it outside where my husband and daughter were working out in the yard.

For me, it was like eating a very flavorful pretzel. All it needed was some mustard. I really liked it and so did my daughter, but John, the one who will eat an entire jar of olives at one sitting was on the fence about this and all he would say was, "I'm not sure..." Later he said that he didn't like the flavor combination - something was a little too much, but he wasn't sure what it was. The dough has a little bit of lemon zest and minced rosemary, in addition to the olives. I looked at the jar of olives and they were packed with thyme, so I am wondering if the rosemary, thyme, and lemon combination was what he didn't like.  I liked it so much that I took a large chunk to work the next day to eat as a snack.

I will totally make this again and experiment with the shapes and flavor combinations. This was one of the most enjoyable breads to make. Check out French Fridays with Dorie to see what the rest of the group thought about their bread.

Malted Waffles

BAKED Sunday Morning

I don't own a waffle maker, so I thought I would have to skip this recipe or make malted pancakes instead, but I checked with my daughter and she had one. These are so easy to make. The only change I made was with mine - I used peanut butter instead of butter on top because that is how I always fix my pancakes (or I should say my once a year pancake). I added some mini chocolate morsels and some syrup and had the most delicious breakfast. I mean, how could it not be good with all that sweetness on top, right?

John was able to give me a more honest opinion about the flavor of the waffle because he had his waffle with just a little bit of maple syrup. He said that it was delicious and really didn't even need the syrup and had a second waffle plain. One of the reasons why I don't make pancakes very often is because they seem too heavy to me, especially in the morning. The malted milk powder and the buttermilk really gives the waffle a lovely flavor without the heaviness that you find in restaurant waffles. 

I'm glad there is batter leftover to make some more later. Head on over to BAKED Sunday Mornings to see what the other's thought about their waffles and you can also get the recipe while you are there.