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A Sangría Celebration (Three Varieties, One Delightful Party)

8 Aug

Robert Frost once said “Good fences make good neighbors.” He was absolutely correct; the better defined the boundaries, the easier it is to get along.

However, there are times when border crossings become extremely attractive and even critical to survival – such as when you’re home alone with a toddler during a hurricane, or when it’s been sweltering hot for days and on the other side of the fence there is a sparkling pool.

Fortunately for me and Leandro, our next-door neighbors have come through in the clutch on just such occasions. We spent a hurricane with them as well as a couple of heat wave days and not only were they lifesavers, but they were totally fun.

So it was time to show our appreciation. And what better way than to pass several gallons of several varieties of refreshing home-made sangría over the fence for an impromptu sangría-tasting pool party?

We did just that a couple of days ago, serving the sangría in honking big pickle jars (I was inspired to use them by a recent wedding in New Paltz that I’ll be blogging about soon, but the observant reader will quickly surmise that I have a lot of empty pickling jars because I haven’t been on the Ball about preserving and pickling this year…).

Each of the following three varieties had its fans among the tasters. My personal fave was the Pimm’s blend (Hail Brittannia), Allen and Lynne liked the tartness of the cranberry blend and Alyssa and Barbara demolished the white wine and Limoncello. Big plus about neighborly imbibing? No driving involved!

But I knew I had really made the grade when the college kids started sending instagrams of their drinks to their friends from their smart phones! A couple of said friends actually turned up at the house, having abandoned their barstools where they were actually spending their own money on sangría that was apparently not as good….

Red Wine and Pimm’s Sangría (a salute to Team GB and the London Olympics)

3 Litres light-bodied red wine (12 cups or 3 quarts) such as Pinot Noir or Chianti

7 Tbs mango orange juice

3-6 Tbs Pimm’s or orange flavored liquer like Grand Marnier

3 Tbs sugar

Mixed sliced fruit: apples, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, oranges, lemons

½ -1 Cup ginger ale or seltzer

In a large bowl or two pitchers, mix wine, juice, Pimms and sugar. Add fruit and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.  When ready to serve, top with ginger ale or seltzer, or let each individual top off their cup with their choice of fizzy drink. Use loads of ice!!!

 

Red Wine and Brandy Sangría (tart!)

1.5 litres red wine such as Pinot Noir or Chianti

4 Tbs cranberry juice

3 Tbs brandy or orange-flavored liquer

2 Tbs fresh-squeezed orange juice

1 Tbs sugar

Orange and lemon slices

¼-1/2 Cup ginger ale or seltzer

Mix everything except the orange and lemon slices and fizzy drink in a large bowl or pitcher. Add fruit, refrigerate for several hours or overnight. When ready to serve, top with ginger ale or seltzer, or let each individual top off their cup with their choice of fizzy drink. Use loads of ice…in the glasses.

 

Fruity White Wine and Limoncello Sangría

2.5-3 Litres dry white wine such as Sauvignon Blanc (I can’t drink Pinot Grigio because of headaches, but if you like it, it would work here)

4 Tbs Limoncello/limoncini

6 Tbs orange mango juice

Sliced peaches, nectarines, strawberries, apples, oranges, lemons

¼-1/2 Cup ginger ale or seltzer

Mix everything except the fruit slices and fizzy drink in a large bowl or pitcher. Add fruit, refrigerate for several hours or overnight. When ready to serve, top with ginger ale or seltzer, or let each individual top off their cup with their choice of fizzy drink. Pour over ice!

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Watermelon, Tomato and Feta Salad

2 Aug

I am just back from a speaking engagement in Puerto Rico, where I had the chance to visit with great friends and have some delicious meals! But…you’ll have to wait for that, as it deserves a juicier post than I have time for (secrets of Kendra’s delicious grilled lamb coming soon to this blog!).

Watermelon and Feta go so well together and so well with tomatoes!

However, rather than leave you high and dry, here is a bright new salad to entertain you. It takes minutes to prepare, and — if Dr. Oz is to be believed — the combination of watermelon and a bit of balsamic is a powerful enzyme that will aid in digestion and perhaps weight loss.

So here it is:  a fast and refreshing salad that use seasonal fruits and vegetables at their peak. And it’s pretty gorgeous too!

Serving suggestion: Mexican-style margarita glasses!

Watermelon, Tomato and Feta Salad

Dressing

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

½ tsp balsamic vinegar

Pinch salt

Grating of pepper

Salad

20-30 grape tomatoes, sliced in half (about one Cup)

1 Cup watermelon, cubed to match the size of the tomato halves (seeded if necessary)

1 tsp fresh mint, chopped

½ Cup crumbled feta

In a small bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients.

In a larger bowl, place watermelon, tomato, feta and mint. Pour dressing over. Stir in mint. Combine all gently and serve.

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Golden Tomato Pasta Sauce (freezeable! or make from frozen tomatoes…)

30 Jul

“Tis the season for the tomatoes to overwhelm. In fact, last year we were so overwhelmed that I had tomatoes in the freezer all winter. The texture isn’t as good as in the middle of summer, but the incomparable bright, fresh flavor is still there.

Yes, these icebergs are actually frozen golden tomatoes (yellow seems a bit more prosaic here). The freezer burn was minimal and the flavor was great!

So this is a terrific simple sauce that you can make from frozen or fresh. Instructions for blanching appear at the end!

Golden Tomato Sauce

Golden Tomato Pasta Sauce

¼ Cup extra virgin olive oil

1 Cup shallots, chopped

¼ tsp hot red pepper flakes

1 Tbs oregano (less if oregano is not your favorite; this is a pretty generous amount)

Pinch sugar

5 lbs golden tomatoes, cored, blanched and peeled*

10-20 basil leaves, chopped

Heat olive oil at medium-high in a heavy-bottomed soup pot until liquid and fragrant. Add shallots, stir to coat and lower heat to medium low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until shallots are soft and translucent. Stir in hot red pepper flakes, oregano and pinch sugar and cook one minute. Add tomatoes, bring to boil then lower to a lazy simmer and cook for an hour or until fat begins to separate from tomatoes and you have reaced desired consistency. Add basil leaves and cook for an additional five minutes. Serve over pasta, as pizza sauce or on bruschetta, or freeze in quart containers for another day.

*To blanch and peel tomatoes, set a big pot of water to boil. In the meantime, core the tomatoes and fill a big bowl with ice water. When the water is boiling, drop tomatoes in so they fit comfortably. They blanch in under a minute, generally. As soon as you see the peel start separating from the flesh, pull them out and drop into the ice water. You can leave the peel on if you are going to freeze them (in gallon freezer bags is fine) or peel once they have cooled to use immediately.

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Chickpea and Tahini Salad III (Perfect Picnic Salad)

21 Jul

I am forever putting together cold chickpea salads for the summer.

Tahini is, of course, one of my favorite condiments for this purpose. For the uninitiated, it is a sesame paste, very thick, that keeps for a long time in the fridge and is critical to Middle Eastern cuisine. A tablespoon adds a depth of flavor, a teeny bit on the bitter side, and a thickness or creaminess of texture to sauces and dressings that I like a lot. Try a basic dressing from a Mediterranean Buffet , a   version with soy sauce, or another with tomatoes and herbs. Which I guess means I should call this Chick Pea and Tahini Salad IV, but whatever!)

This time I had dill in the fridge needing to be used up so I figured I would try it. The result was fresh and good. Mint would be a terrific substitute or addition. You can really go in many directions with this one! You can mix it with rice or use it to top a green salad or just eat it right out of the mixing bowl with a spoon while standing in front of the fridge (not that I would ever do that. Uh-uh. Not me).

Light and fresh – perfect side for supper!

Chickpea and Tahini Salad III

1 Tbs lemon juice or red wine vinegar (start with half a tablespoon and increase to your taste)

1 Tbs tahini

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs dill, chopped

28oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbs red onion (a quarter of a medium red onion), sliced thin

Mix or whisk lemon juice or vinegar and tahini together in a bowl. Add remaining ingredients and stir to mix well.

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Sauteed Golden Beets with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Parsley

18 Jul

If you are a glass-half-full kind of person, our beet harvest was great. If you are a glass-half-empty kind of person, then it pretty much sucked.

What happened was that each beet seed actually contains as many as eight little beet plants waiting to happen. We didn’t really understand that, didn’t thin them enough and ended up with fantastic, lush beet greens, but nothing at all in the root department.

Observe the only three actual beetROOTS we managed to harvest

Tiny, right?

If that doesn’t give you an idea, how about this comparison with our largest beetroot, and a golden beet from Restoration Farm (our CSA).

David and Goliath

But, the three little beetlets were very tasty…me, Pedro and Myrna each got a bite and what we got, we liked.

However, let’s go to the issue of the LARGE Golden Beets. We got a nice bunch from the farm and while I love my other recipes: with beet greens and orange, or with goat cheese, I wanted something new and easy. The beauty of beets is that you can roast them ahead (preferably in the cool of the evening) and make the dish a couple of days later. This was light yet satisfying and quite effortless. Pretty too!

Sauteed Golden Beets with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Parsley (inspired by Vegetables by James Peterson)

2 lbs beets, roasted and peeled*

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbs finely chopped parsley

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Slice the beets into rounds, between  ¼ – and ½ -inch thick. Heat olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat until loose and fragrant.  Add garlic. When garlic begins to sizzle, slide in the beets and stir gently to cover. Cook for about five minutes, just to heat beets through. Sprinkle the parsley, salt and pepper over, cook for one more minute and serve.

*Beets are easy to roast. Preheat oven to 425°. Wrap unpeeled beets (with about an inch of stem) individually loosely in foil and roast for about an hour, until a fork goes through foil and beet easily. Allow to cool and then peel.

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Vegetarian Chili (or, yet another good bean recipe!)

16 Jul

I hesitate in summertime to do beans from dry because I don’t want to simmer anything for an hour in this heat! (I am sure a slow-cooker would be a solution, but I don’t have one and don’t have room for one). So, it’s cans for me, and if they have a pull-off top, even better. I want to minimize all movement in the Hazy, Hot, Humidity of a Long Island summer (Ditto for wine bottles…a screw top is high up on my ratings rubric right now; corks take too much work!)

In fact, I want to keep cooking to a minimum, so rather than season my ground beef or even have to defrost and simmer the pre-made stuff I have stocked in the freezer, my “chili” has gone vegetarian. I call it “chili” because I add chili powder, but I make no claims to authenticity. If you want to call it rice and beans with chili seasoning, by all means do. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” to quote a certain lovelorn 13-year-old from Verona.

Whatever you call it, it will be ready to eat in about 15 minutes, and I call that fast!

Vegetarian Chili (or rice and beans with chili powder!)

1 Tbs olive oil

½ medium onion, chopped fine (about 1/2 Cup)

½ medium red bell pepper chopped fine (about 1/2 Cup)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 heaping Tbs tomato paste

15.5 oz can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp chile powder

2 tsp chopped fresh cilantro

1 tsp thyme

Pinch red pepper flakes

1 bay leaf

Salt to taste

Heat olive oil at medium-high in a saucepan until loose and fragrant. Add onions, stir to coat and reduce heat to medium. Add red pepper and garlic and sauté for 5 minutes, or until vegetables are translucent and soft. Add tomato paste, stir in to coat and cook for a minute.  Stir in beans, oregano, chile powder, cilantro, thyme, red pepper flakes and bay leaf. Add ½ Cup water (more, if you want it more liquid) and cook for 15-20 minutes. Salt to taste and serve with white rice or wrapped in tortillas with cheese, shredded lettuce, salsa and all that fun Mexican restaurant-type stuff.

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Grilled Potato Disks (Like fries, only better!)

12 Jul

French fries are such a temptation, especially on the way back from the beach in the summer, when your mouth is salty, and the kids are encrusted with sand, and the sun is hot and you are tasting those carefree high school memories and suddenly you are driving past All-American Burger with all those crowds of similarly sand and salt encrusted summer folks lined up for their Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Fries…well, how could you not?

Well Pedro (yes, he of the crazy-ass diet) has come up with a worthy alternative that you can do on the grill at home. These grilled potato disks are crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside, and just seasoned enough to not need much else. They are my mom’s new favorite; sort of French fries with virtue. Because they are so simple, they go with virtually anything on the regular summer grill menu – burgers, steaks, fish, corn. Love it!

Grilled Potato Disks (Like fries, only better!)

1 Tbs olive oil

½ tsp Adobo powder

3 medium potatoes (Yukon Gold preferred), peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch rounds

While the grill is heating up, in a bowl, stir adobo and olive oil together. Brush the potatoes with the oil mixture and lay on grill, reserving  extra oil. Using tongs , take potatoes off grill when they begin to brown, about five minutes (as they will be spread over the whole grill, you will need to judge hotter and colder parts and shift potatoes accordingly). Dip them in the oil mixture, shake excess off gently and lay them back on the grill for another five minutes or so, until nicely browned. Serve sprinkled with salt, with ketchup or with mayo-chipo-ketchup.

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White Sangría (Finding a use for that sweet white wine you’ll never drink and can’t regift)

6 Jul

Disaster looms!

Sweaty, hot day, kids bringing up the blood pressure with the noise and the moaning and the constant warfare, and between you and your buddy, Beth, there is only one (big) bottle of sweet white wine for dinner prep.

I assume you realize that the wine is for the cooks, not for the cooking and that you know by now that sweet wine is not my thing.

This is a problem of great magnitude. A good cocktail between moms can do a great deal for a meal that is edible and thus brings us closer to World Peace.

The absence of anything worth drinking, however, is a problem. That still stops us (we have not yet crossed that line). Well, stops us temporarily. Only until we find some way to doctor up the unacceptable tipple into something that can properly take the edge off the day without getting us completely shellacked.

Fear not…with a minimum of ingredients you can transform that icky, sticky, sweet syrup into a pitcher of refreshing, well-balanced and pretty cocktails with a perfect harmony of sweet and tart. You might even share with Beth’s husband. See, now everybody’s happy.

Behold….White Sangría. Ahhhh.

White Sangría with Sweet White Wine

3 cups sweet white wine

1 orange

1 lemon

 five slivered strawberries

1/4 cup seltzer

Pour wine into pitcher (you can pour it over ice if you like, or make it straight up and then pour into ice-filled glasses, depending on how diluted you want it).

Wash the outside of the orange and lemon and take some of the zest off with a peeler and toss in pitcher. Reserve additional zest for your next pitcher. Peel orange and lemon, and cut in half. Reserve one half of each for your next pitcher. With the active halves, squeeze a bit of juice into the pitcher, then remove pith and chunk up. Toss orange and lemon chunks into pitcher. Stir, add strawberry slices, top with seltzer (club soda), give it a whirl and start pouring!

 

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Kid’s Party Snack Alternative: Bagel Buffet, Starring Cream Cheese Two Ways!

26 Jun

My pizza party days are over. I used to like the occasional slice, but once you have a kid and start attending kids’ parties with alarming frequency, the whole pizza thing becomes tedious (and hard on the waistline), except for the part about not having to figure out lunch for your kid for a day. I like that part a whole lot.

Mind you, I have served pizza at a number of Leandro’s parties. Three regular pies, sliced in 16ths, for the kids. Another one or two pies for the parents. Guilty as charged.

Cream cheese with chives

By the time they get served, the waxy cheese is getting hard, the crust is soft, and chewy and the sauce, whatever it was, is gone. Besides, regular slices bore the hell out of me. Call me a snob, but if you lived in Italy for a couple of years and ate wood stove-crispy thin pies (slice? Cosa e? Ma scherzi.…) topped with seasonal veggies and homemade sausage with a carafe of the charming local plonk most Friday nights out with your charming boyfriend who didn’t mind your bit of flirting with the charming Italians who owned the place….well, a leaden slice of regular from a box choked down to the soundtrack of overexcited preschoolers and bounce-house kiddie-pop might also feel somewhat wrong to you.

Maple-Walnut Cream Cheese

Anyhoo, I wanted to change it up just a little this time around. It’s not just the pizza thing; it’s that I like to cook and entertain and this seemed to me to be an chance to manifest my own self in a more public forum than usual. It is all well and good to set yourself up as a food blogger because your child has been indoctrinated to believe that what you are making him is good stuff. It’s quite another thing to lay it out there for public tasting and scrutiny.

And of course, the other reason is that in my universe, you honor your guests by serving them nice food.

We celebrated Leandro’s birthday at the Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center at Jones Beach. The time was from 10 am-noon on a Sunday. If you have ever been in downstate New York on a Sunday morning, you will understand that bagels are the only appropriate response. It’s like the venerable five o’clock cocktail, only heavier on the carbs. So I went with pre-sliced mini-bagels from Seaford Bagel – convenient, but with ample opportunities to prepare a few spreads of your own.

Buffet table note: cheese and ham slices and mustard and mayo rounded out the buffet. Not one of my 50 Shades of Martha moments on the decor, but it worked well enough. A Box of Joe, juice boxes, and bottles of water completed the spread.

In my own defense, I am not completely bonkers and did not bake the main event: The “birthday cake” was cupcakes, ordered from Stop & Shop. Yes. A chain grocery store. Did you really think I was going to bake an effen cake!?! They were, by all accounts, delicious, topped with butter cream and decorated with Spiderman, Hello Kitty and other rings. Eternal thanks to the wisdom of Marianne/Madrina, for her bagel shop and cupcake source recommendations.

Among the spreads were tuna salad and egg salad (click to get those recipes from earlier posts), and the following two easy cream cheese variations. The maple-walnut spread was especially popular (and so easy it’s almost embarrassing). The kids mostly ate straight-up butter or cream cheese. But the parents and big kids who came to show solidarity were All Over the buffet table and even made a few to-go bagels. (Hector and Sean, I am naming names!!!). We also had plenty of bagels left over to pack in the cooler for our glorious, post-party beach afternoon.

I hope you’ll try them next time you want to bring up your bagel buffet game without killing yourself. Don’t pay for store-made. These are too simple and the praise too gratifying.

Thanks to all of you who came and made this day one of Leandro’s best and most memorable ever. I will eat your party pizza every time and enjoy your company, so don’t fret or hesitate to invite us to the next one. Leandro needs the break from his mom’s obsessiveness!

Cucumber slices are an easy dress-up for cream cheese and chives or tuna salad

Cream Cheese with Chives

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 Tbs chives, chopped

1 tsp green onion, chopped fine (including white part!)

In a bowl, mix all ingredients thoroughly. Chill at least a half hour for flavors to incorporate.

Maple Walnut Cream Cheese

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 Tbs real maple syrup

½ tsp vanilla extract (if you actually have maple extract, you can use it here)

½ cup chopped walnuts, plus walnuts for garnish

In a bowl, mix the cream cheese, syrup and extract. Stir in the walnuts and chill for at least 30 minutes. Turn the cream cheese into your serving dish and garnish with whole walnuts.

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Blueberry Pound Cake

23 Jun

When it comes to baking, I am seriously out of my comfort zone. I am a mas o menos (more or less) type of girl: more or less on time (usually less, but I get to my job, the airport, and the train station on time. Anything else, well, I try my best, but often get sidetracked. I have a lot of roses to sniff).

This mas o menos personality thing is well suited to making stews, marinades, pasta sauce. You don’t like how things are going? Add a dash of this. A pinch of that. A heaping tablespoon of cumin, a squirt of hot sauce, more garlic, of course. Cooking at home is a jam session, a sudden-onset sick guitar lick, ad-libs, improvisation, invention, spontaneity. Kick, save, and a beauty!

But when you eff up a baking recipe, there is often no heroic rescue, no sleight of hand, no inspired solution, no excuse, no fashionably late (although you can blame it on your preschooler; on some level every mistake you make is somehow attributable to the kid. Milk that while you can!)

There’s a quote from somewhere that states: “Cooking is an art. Baking is a science.” I dropped high school Physics in the first quarter with a D, but came very close to going to art school.

Therefore, I approach every baking project with a bit of anxiety. And when I have anxiety about something, I try to get someone else to do it for me. So, when my friend, Beth, had a few minutes to hang out when dropping off my son’s best friend for a playdate, didn’t I just enlist her to help me make pound cake?

She’s an experienced baker whose grandmother taught her right, while I am from two Caribbean families who quite rightly had little interest in turning on an oven in the middle of the tropics. Freezer pops? They are on it. Grill? Sí señor. But bread? That’s something you buy. Let someone else sweat that.

So in just minutes, I learned a lot from Beth. Measure the flour after you sift it. Dredge the blueberries before folding them into the batter. This is how to flour a pan.

Poured about a quarter of the batter without blueberries…to keep the kids happy. The kids were happy.

However we did – and I am not throwing blame here, but I don’t think it was me! – invert the order of a critical step a, missing the wet ingredient before dry. My stomach sank. Did I just invest two sticks of butter and six local, organic ($$$) eggs into a disaster? Am I going to have a pile of shit at the end of this?

But no, Beth carried on calmly, added the missing ingredients and moved forward. And wouldn’t you know, it turns out that sometimes, with a bit of calm, even a baking mistake can work out.

This was the best damn pound cake I have ever had and I think you should make it. Now.

And if any of your mistakes turn out to be just fine, let me know. Cause the laws of physics are not always as bad as they seem. And baking is better with friends.

Blueberry Pound Cake (adapted from Cook’s Illustrated Classic Pound Cake)

16 Tbs unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 16 pieces

3 large eggs, plus 3 large yolks, room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 ¾ Cups (7oz) all purpose flour (Cook’s Illustrated recommends cake flour, but I didn’t have that)

½ tsp salt

1 ¼ Cups (8 ¾ oz) sugar

1 Cup blueberries (If using frozen, allow to thaw. Drain juice, keeping the berries).

Flour for dredging berries

Place butter in a bowl to soften slightly (20-30 minutes). Use a fork to beat eggs, yolks, and vanilla in a bowl or measuring cup and let stand at room temperature until you are ready to use.

Preheat oven to 325°F with rack in the center of the oven. Grease and flour a 9×5-inch loaf pan.

a)      Beat butter and salt with a wooden spoon until shiny, smooth and creamy, about 5-7 minutes. Gradually add the sugar, beating steadily, until all sugar is incorporated and the mixture is light and fluffy.

b)      Sift flour over butter mixture in three additions with a rubber spatula until combined. Be very gentle!

c)       Then add egg mixture and do the same, mixing until just combined.*

Dredge the blueberries in flour until well-coated. Fold blueberries into the batter and pour into prepared pan, smoothing top with rubber spatula. Bake cake for 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes, until a toothpick stuck into the center comes out clean. Let cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert cake onto wire rack, turn right-side up and cool completely for a couple of hours. Cake can be store at room temperature for about three days.

*Note: The original recipe called for steps b and c to be in the opposite order from what you see here. Beth and I inverted the instructions by accident, but the cake suffered no discernable problems from our mistake. So it’s your call whether you want to try it the Cook’s Illustrated way or The Accidental Baker way. The recipe here is The Accidental Baker way.

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