Shake the Amazing Date! Strike That. Reverse it.

There is something so intriguing to me about these magical little sugar bullets we call dates.  Kind of like prunes or raisins...only not.  I mean, a prune was once a plum and raisin was once a grape.  But a date?  It was always a date.  I'm going to be honest here.  I didn't really know where dates "came from" before last week.  I mean, I knew they grew in temperate areas and that they came from a tree, but I had no clue that it was a palm tree.  I just never bothered to wonder before. Hmmm.  When I think of dates in the U.S., I think California.  Which should probably embarrass me even further since I was born in California and just realized that dates grew on palms.  But in all fairness, I don't remember anything about California except what I've seen in pictures or remember people telling me.  Back to my intrigue with these brown, sticky sources of natural sweetness.  I've always loved date bars and date balls and banana-date shakes, so when I ran across this super simple recipe for a date (only) shake, I knew I had to try it.  I think the key is adding enough ice to make it thick and cold.  Even with no added sugar, it is incredibly sweet.  I almost think you could start out with half the amount of the dates called for and adjust to your taste...although I went with the full twenty.  Jamie calls for throwing everything in a "liquidizer". Ummmm...which I figured was British-speak for blender, but my dates didn't actually "liquidize" in my blender...so I had small chunks.  And while many of those chunks sunk to the bottom, they were not unpleasant.  Apparently I need a stronger liquidizer.

The Amazing Date Shake

from Jamie's America

makes 2 shakes

20 dates, pitted

1 c. milk

handful ice cubes (or more)

pinch ground cinnamon

Put the dates and milk in a blender and blend until smooth-ish.  Add ice and cinnamon and blend again.  Serve immediately.

And I know, I know...palm trees don't take well to Indiana weather.  BUT, I'm pretty sure that was "said" way back when it wasn't as hot as (or hotter than) it is in palm-growing places.





It's Bevvies Week at IHCC!

50 Women Game-Changers (in Food): #7 Madhur Jaffrey - Tapioca Pearl Kheer

In May '11, Gourmet posted a list of 50 Women Game-Changers (in Food) that runs the gamut from food writers to cookbook authors to television personalities to restauranteurs to chefs to food bloggers.  Some are a given.  Some are controversial.  Speaking the names of some brings fond childhood memories.  Speaking the names of others will make some readers cringe.  And of course, some of our favorites were not even included.  We food-lovers are a passionate bunch of people and whether we agree or disagree, every woman on this list has earned her place for a reason.  Being a woman who is passionate about food (cooking, eating, talking about, writing about, photographing), when I caught wind of Mary from One Perfect Bite's idea of cooking/blogging her way through each of these 50 women...one per week...I knew I wanted to join her.  Many of these women paved the way for us in culinary school, in the kitchen, in cookbooks, in food writing, and on television and I think it is a fabulous way to pay tribute to their efforts.  Some of the women on the list have been tops with me for years.  Some I have heard of (perhaps even seen, read, or cooked from) before.  And there are even a handful that I am not familiar with at all.  I excited to educate myself on each of these women game-changers and hope you look forward to reading along.  We are going in order from 1 to 50.

the "Gourmet" prompt...
7. Madhur Jaffrey - As Marcella is to Italy, so is Madhur to the Indian subcontinent. She also is a great spokesperson for vegetarian, and assorted other Asian cuisines. And she is beautiful. And can act.
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I was so excited to see Madhur Jaffrey's name on this list.  From the moment I started reading the eloquent words of her memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees, last year...I was lost in a world of Indian food, culture, and delight.  Jaffrey has a way with words (read my review here).  Inspired and excited by this world of spice and color, I held a Taste of India party that included Jaffrey recipes such as Murgh Korma (Chicken cooked in a Yogurt-Almond sauce), Kaddu (Indian-spiced Pumpkin), Cheese Vali Gobi (Cauliflower w/ Cheese), Phirni (Light Rice Pudding), and Neebu ka Sharbat (limeade).  Many of these dishes have become favorites in our house...and honestly I can't pull out a Jaffrey cookbook without making at least three dishes at a time.  You may also recognize her for her roles in television shows (such as East Enders, Law & Order, Psych) or movies (Chutney Popcorn, Flawless, Partition, Today's Special).  There is so much more to Madhur Jaffrey and I hope you'll check out some of my recommended links (especially her memoir) and get to know her further.

worth further exploration:  (memoir) Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, (cookbooks) At Home with Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, Madhur Jaffrey's Quick & Easy Indian Cooking, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, (movie for foodies) Today's Special, (article) Saveur no.140- Making It Work: Sometimes the kitchen you  want isn't the kitchen you get by Madhur Jaffrey

Tapioca Pearl Kheer

slightly adapted from At Home with Madhur Jaffrey

serves ~4

½ c. tapioca pearls

5 c. whole milk

8 cardamom pods

4½ Tbs. sugar, or to taste

Soak the pearls overnight in water that covers them generously.  Drain well the next day and leave in the strainer.

Bring the milk to a boil in a very heavy, medium pan over medium heat.  Add pearls and cardamom and stir them in.  Adjust the heat so the milk is at a good simmer, but does not threaten to boil over, ~medium-low.  Cook for ~50 minutes, stirring the bottom every 5 minutes or so (the milk should not catch at the bottom).  Add sugar and stir in.  Cook another 5 minutes.

Remove pudding from heat and allow to cool, stirring every now and then to prevent a skin from forming.  Remove cardamom seeds and place in large or individual serving dishes.  Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly onto the surface (again with stopping a skin from forming).  Refrigerate.  It will thicken as it cools.

Madhur Jaffrey (August 13, 1933-present)

"...it was a faraway smell, almost as if we were imagining it.  Soon the entire sky was dark with black clouds. Thunder boomed from all sides, accompanied by zigzags of lightning.  The earth seemed hotter than ever.  First one or two fat drops of rain fell, then more and more, until there was a deluge.  Suddenly the heat broke, as if some shell encasing us had been cracked open.  We all....held our faces up to the sky, and allowed ourselves to get thoroughly soaked.  The monsoon season had finally arrived.  We could now feast on monsoon sweets, the squiggly pretzel-shaped jalebis, dunking them in glasses of cold milk as we gazed dreamily at the downpour."  ...one of my favorite, enchanting memories from Jaffrey's memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees

Who is cooking along with these 50 Women Game-Changers?

Mary- One Perfect Bite, Val- More Than Burnt Toast, Joanne- Eats Well With Others, Taryn- Have Kitchen Will Feed, Susan- The Spice Garden, Claudia- A Seasonal Cook in Turkey, Heather- girlichef, April- Abby Sweets , Miranda- Mangoes and Chutney, Jeanette- Jeanette's Healthy Living, Katie- Making Michael Pollan Proud, Kathy- Bakeaway with Me, Sue- The View from Great Island

I am sharing this post with:

this Blueberry is about to Buckle from the heat

  Did I just refer to myself as a blueberry?  Case in point...I am slowly losing my mind.  I'm officially declaring Mother Nature and myself at odds.  It is completely wrong to live in Northwestern Indiana and have to deal with 100° temperatures.  WRONG!  Perhaps I wouldn't be so adverse to it if it were more sauna-like as opposed to the blanket of water I encounter when sticking one toe out the front door.  And I have small toes.  Ask anyone.  My sisters love to give me a hard time (especially youngest sis aka finger toes).  I don't know if it's just the fact that I'm getting old or what, but I've come to despise extreme temperatures in either direction.  In all fairness though, I'm 99.99% positive that if some magical person came over and installed an underground pool in my backyard, I'd totally take back the curses I've yelled out thus far.  Maybe growing up with a pool (in some form or another...grandparents, our house, neighbors, community pool) tainted my sense of heat perception before now (as in the last 10 years or so).  Or maybe it was el niño or la niña or whichever one of those two caused this.  I do hate to be a negative nelly, so I'll stop complaining now...but that wish for a pool-fairy stands.

Something that we get tons of from such wet heat, though...berries!  I'll stand up and clap for that.  I used a big ol' crop of them to make this coffee cake-style "buckle" a few weeks ago.  When we had some actual awesome days in the 70°'s.  Low 70°'s. {sigh}

Traditionally, a buckle is a rich cake batter that has fruit scattered over it and a streusel topping.  While it is baking, the cake batter rises up and around to encase the fruit in batter, which in turn causes the streusel to buckle, creating its distinctive crinkly appearance.*

 

Blueberry Buckle

inspired by Simply Recipes

cake:
  1 c. spelt flour + more for tossing w/ blueberries (I used King Arthur Organic Whole Spelt Flour)
  1 c. all purpose flour  (I used King Arthur unbleached)  

2 tsp. baking powder
    ½ tsp. fine sea salt
    ¼ c. (½ stick/2 oz.) unsalted butter, room temp.
    ¾ c. vanilla sugar (or regular)
    1 large egg
    ¾ c. buttermilk
    1 pint (2 c.) blueberries

streusel:
    ¼ c. unsalted butter, room temp.
    ½ c. brown sugar
    ⅓ c. spelt flour (I used King Arthur Organic Whole Spelt Flour)
pinch fine sea salt
    freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease an 8" spring form pan and set aside.

Sift together the flours, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Cream the butter with sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg. Add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk. Toss the berries with a Tbs. or so flour (this helps to separate the berries and hold them up in the cake) and fold in. Pour batter into the prepared pan. Set aside.

Combine ingredients for the streusel with your fingers or a fork until crumbly and pea-sized (just grate as much nutmeg as you'd like...I use ~⅓ of a whole nutmeg). Scatter evenly over batter.

Bake for ~45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack.  Gently run a thin-bladed knife around edge of pan to help release buckle and remove from pan.

*source: wiseGEEK

**King Arthur Flour sent me a coupon for one free bag of flour.  This in no way influenced any of my opinions stated in this post.

I am sharing this post with:
Ott,A's Iron Chef Challenge: King Arthur Flour

Spicy Kalamata Sourdough Loaf

Even though my kitchen winds up being like 1000° when I bake something lately,  I just can't help myself sometimes.  The name alone was enough to convince me that I needed to try this loaf of bread.  I wish that I had a smaller brotform (or that I had used a bowl instead) so that I would've ended up with a rounder, taller loaf...but really that's just aesthetics...because this loaf does not lack at all for flavor.  It's the kind of loaf you want to wrap up and tuck into a picnic basket with a bottle of wine, some thinly sliced ham, a few hunks of cheese, and a bottle of chilled white wine.  Now if you'll excuse me, my blanket is getting heavy...I'm heading off to sit under a shady tree.  Just me and my picnic basket.

SPICY KALAMATA SOURDOUGH
adapted ever-so-slightly from the Bewitching Kitchen
makes 1 loaf

200g (200 ml) water at room temperature
142g sourdough starter (at 100% hydration)
¼ tsp. instant yeast
280g bread flour + more as needed
85g dark rye flour
9 g salt
¾ c. (~80 g) kalamata olives, halved
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 Tbs. fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
2 Tbs. fresh oregano leaves, chopped

Dissolve the starter and the instant yeast in the water in a large bowl. Add the flour, mix to incorporate (or use a mixer w/ dough attachment on low speed), then cover with a plastic wrap and allow it to sit for 20 minutes.

Sprinkle the salt on top, and gently knead it in for a few minutes.

Once the salt is incorporated, add the olives, red pepper, rosemary, and oregano and knead by hand (or with the mixer at low speed).

Let the dough rise for 3 hours, kneading quickly three different times...once every 45 minutes or so.

Shape the dough into a round, place in a banetton/brotform or a bowl lined with well-floured linen with the seam up. I imagine you could free-form it, too if need be.  Let rise until almost doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 450° F during last 20 minutes or so of rise time.  Place a baking stone on middle shelf.

Slide into oven and spray with a mist of water, then close the oven door. Bake for 30 minutes, then lower the temperature to 425° F for another 20 minutes or until done.

Remove to a rack to cool.

This may not seem like a lot of spice...but it packs a lot of heat!  It's salty and sour and spicy all at once.  And extremely addicting.  I like as-is or toasted or as the bread on a sandwich.  I probably at half of the loaf toasted and spread with a layer of cream cheese with a big dollop of Tomato Jam...which I got from the super cool Meredith from Anchovies and Butter (along with a jar each of Peach Jelly, Apple Cranberry Jelly, and New Mexico Pepper Jelly...awesome!  Thanks Meredith☺).

I am sharing this post with:
BBD #42: Bread for a Picnic
*Yeastspotting!

Agua de Tuna - Fresh Prickly Pear Water

Oh the stories I've heard about what happens when you eat too many tunas.  I'm not going to share the specifics, because can I just say...it's not pretty.  When Mexi was just a wee niño, he and his cousins had tunas at their fingertips (not to mention the nopales/cactus paddles that go hand in hand...how cool! ...says the girl raised in the Midwest).  Tunas, otherwise known as cactus fruit or prickly pears are fabulously juicy and refreshing hot weather treats.  The purple variety stain your hands as if you were handling peeled beets or berries, yet they taste like a cross between a watermelon and a cucumber (to me, at least).  The pesky part comes in the seeds that run throughout the fruit.  Usually you just swallow them...but to make some long stories short, if you're going to swallow the seeds, don't eat more than a couple of tunas at a time.  Or your drain will get clogged.  Which may lead to painful doctor visits.  I've always heeded this warning because said stories conjure up some painful thoughts...and I am NOT going there.  That said, if you blend them and strain out the seeds, you have nothing to fear.  No little hard pellets to get stuck anywhere unpleasant.  Enough said?

Agua de Tuna
Fresh Prickly Pear Water
yield: ~2 qt.

1½ lb. tunas (prickly pears), purple or green
~8 c. cold water, or to taste
~1 c. superfine sugar, or to taste

Peel your tunas (prickly pears), halve them and throw them into the blender with a couple of the cups of water; purée until smooth. 

Strain through a sieve into a pitcher to remove the seeds and pulp.  Stir in remaining water and sugar.  Adjust water (and/or serve it over ice) and sugar amounts to suit your tastes.

I am sharing this post with:
Tasty Tuesday at Naptime Creations