Monthly Archives: July 2012

  • Weekly Cocktail #20: The Otto’s Grotto

    July 13, 2012

    8 Comments

    Otto’s Grotto Cocktail.

    As we noted in our previous post, we recently hosted a small Hawaiian-themed dinner party for a close friend and made macadamia nut tart. The tart was great, but we wanted to be sure to have a cocktail to match, so we looked no further than Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, probably the world’s biggest expert on Tiki drinks. We happen to have his tiki drink iPhone App (so cool) and looked for a tiki cocktail that would go with dessert. We searched on the keyword “coffee” and after browsing a few results, the Otto’s Grotto almost jumped of the screen. It sounded like a perfect summer “dessert” cocktail. So we gave it a try (of course, we tested it before we served it to our friends.. ;-).

    The Otto’s Grotto is a cold drink that features coffee, white rum, coffee liqueur (Kahlua, Tia Maria or home-made), Licor 43 and a dash of heavy cream. But this is not a syrupy white/black russian, but more of an ice-coffee with a kick and some depth. Coffee is clearly the main ingredient, but the rum, coffee liqueur and Licor 43 all add extra flavor. The cream adds a smooth note and mellows the bitterness of the coffee. While we served the Otto’s Grotto for dessert, you could serve this cocktail almost any time of day and get a very welcome reception. It’s good.

    Float cream on top for a good presentation.

    As for the ingredients, good coffee is the key here. Great coffee = great coffee cocktail, ’nuff said. As for the other ingredients, this is where you have some flexibility. And decent white rum will do, the alcohol will mainly boost the flavor of the coffee. As for the coffee liqueur, we use Kahlua (without shame), but Tia Maria will work. And coffee liqueur is one of the best DIY liqueurs you can make at home, here is a good article on the subject from Marcia Simmons at Serious Eats (they have some really good cocktail writers). Finally we have the Licor 43, a vanilla and citrus liqueur that is sometimes hard to find. We like it in the drink and it is worth having in your bar, but you could substitute Tuaca. And in a pinch, vanilla syrup and an extra dash of rum will work just fine.

    Iced coffee, just better.

    Building this drink is by no means difficult, but a few little steps will help. Firstly, when you mix the coffee and liqueurs, check for taste. Coffee is a highly variable ingredient, you may want to add an extra dash of coffee liqueur or Licor 43 to balance the flavors. And finally, when adding the heavy cream, it helps to drizzle it on a spoon just above the drink. This will help float the cream on top. While not a necessary step, it will look good. And if a drink tastes this good, you may as well rock the presentation. Happy Friday!

    Otto’s Grotto:

    (Adapted from Jeff “Beachbum” Berry)

    Ingredients:

    • 5 oz. iced coffee
    • 3/4 oz. coffee liqueur (we use Kahlua)
    • 3/4 oz. Licor 43
    • 1 and 1/2 oz. white rum
    • 1/4 oz. heavy cream
    • Mint, for garnish (optional)

    Assemble:

    1. Place all the ingredients, except the cream, and ice into a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly and pour unstrained into a highball glass or goblet. Float cream. Garnish with a sprig of mint, if you like. Serve.
    Related articles

  • Macadamia Nut Tart

    July 13, 2012

    10 Comments

    Macadamia Nut Tart.

    Since we eat mostly from our garden (and the farmers market), we tend to cook simple recipes that highlight the main ingredient. And, to us, that makes sense. If we just spent “x” days/weeks/months growing something, we want to actually see and taste it. But we do like “stretch our legs” every once in a while and engage in some real (read: labor intensive) cooking. And recently we did just that. And it was fun. And this dessert was the star.

    So why make a Macadamia Nut Tart? Our friend Scott had a birthday and we had him and Sydney, his awesome wife, over for dinner. Scott is a big fan of the Hali’imaile General Store restaurant in Maui (he even gave us their cookbook, thanks!) and Carolyn and I cooked a dinner from, or at least inspired by, their recipes. We started with a light seafood salad served on nori squares and a picked ginger cocktail sauce and Thai Tuna Tartare with a small salad of shiso and mizuna. Dinner was sesame crusted Opah with coconut rice and curried cabbage (recipe soon). Cocktails started with the Tahitian Postcard, then Zombies and finished with the Otto’s Grotto (recipe soon). That was all good fun, but Scott is a self-described “dessertarian” and Carolyn found this recipe to make sure we had an over-the top-dessert to close out the evening. And a chocolate crust, ringed with macadamia nuts, then filled with macadamia filling and topped with caramelized bananas seemed to fit the bill.

    Make a dough for a chocolate crust.

    Macadamia nuts and sugar, hard to go wrong.

    Process the nuts and sugar for the filling.

    The inspiration for the dessert comes from the Hali’imaile General Store, but Carolyn’s actual recipe is an adaptation of a tart from King Arthur Flour. We like their recipes, as they tend to adapt restaurant-style baking to home kitchens. And in this case, the recipe did not disappoint. While we would never call this “simple” baking, it is less work than you might think and the steps are well-defined. If you like to bake (or have a rainy afternoon to burn) making this recipe is time well-spent. And the tart will certainly taste, and look, great.

    Roll-out the dough for the crust.

    Place the dough in the tart pan.

    Line the crust with whole macadamias and then blind-bake the crust.

    The recipe has a few discreet steps. Make a chocolate crust, blind-bake the crust, create a macadamia filling, assemble, bake and then layer on and broil (or torch) the bananas and sugar. Each step is not hard, they just need be done in sequence, and you need to take your time. The only tricky step is broiling or torching the sugar into a crust on top of the bananas- it requires close attention, but is worth the effort. This tart is not an “anytime” dessert, but it is great for special occasions.

    Add the macadamia filling and bake.

    Add the sliced bananas.

    Broil or torch the top with sugar, cool and serve.

    Continue reading →

  • Simple Garden Recipes: Apricot Shrub (And a Bonus Cocktail)

    July 12, 2012

    22 Comments

    Apricot shrub and apricot shrub soda.

    Last Apricot On Earth Cocktail using apricot shrub.

    Let’s get right to it, a fruit shrub is basically an equal mixture of fresh fruit, sugar and vinegar. Yes vinegar. But shrubs are better than you might think (actually quite tasty) and were a very popular way to preserve fruit in the days before refrigeration. And rather than tasting of vinegar, shrubs are sweet and very tangy. The vinegar acts as a flavor enhancer, somewhat like salt on savory foods- you don’t  know it’s there, but everything tastes better. A cool trick, and one that works with most summer fruits. And if you like cocktails or home-made soda, you should know about shrubs. But first a little “back story”…

    Blenheim apricots. Yum.

    Last week Carolyn and I traveled to wine country and then, ironically, started drinking cocktails. Happily both Napa and Sonoma have a number of restaurants and bars that feature world-class drinks, as well as excellent wine lists. One of the best places we visited was Bar Terra, an extension of the very well-regarded Terra in St. Helena. Bar Terra features a less formal and more “bar-driven” menu of smaller plates, wine and hand-crafted cocktails in a very welcoming atmosphere. The food and service were very good, but we did go for the drinks, and Bar Terra did not disappoint.

    The best cocktail we had at Bar Terra (and our entire trip) was a creation that is a riff on the Last Word, that just happens to have apricot shrub. If you are unfamiliar with the Last Word it is a roughly equal combination of gin, lime juice, maraschino liqueur and green Chartreuse. It sounds like a train wreck, but the Last Word is real alchemy, all the flavors blend into a well-balanced, refreshing cocktail. And the recipe invites mixologist to play around. We often ask good bartenders to make a Last Word variant, and the team at Bar Terra struck gold. Their version of the Last Word included dry gin, apricot shrub, maraschino liqueur and yellow Chartreuse (and maybe a touch of lemon juice). The drink was an absolute winner with the apricot shrub supplying both sweetness and tang, the gin and Chartreuse herbal notes and the maraschino liqueur some nutty flavors. And if you didn’t know a shrub has vinegar, you would never place the flavor, you would just notice a lovely, palate-pleasing “zing”. You can’t wait for another sip. We didn’t get a name for the cocktail, but we have an adapted recipe below, and in honor of Bar Terra we will call it the Last Apricot On Earth.

    Rinse your apricots.

    Pit and quarter the apricots.

    We’ve known about fruit shrubs for some time, as they are popular in cocktail circles, but the cocktail at Bar Terra finally motivated us to make shrubs at home. And as we are near the end of apricot season, and there are Blenheim apricots available, we chose to make a “cold shrub” of the apricots before they were gone. Making the shrub is very easy. Simply mash and then macerate equal parts fruit and sugar, let a syrup form for a few days in the fridge and then strain and add an equal part of cider vinegar and mix. You can try the shrub immediately and it will be tasty, but it will “mature” and the flavors develop more with a few days / weeks. And it is not a vinegar, more like a preserved syrup. If you want a full breakdown on fruit shrubs Michael Dietsch of Serious Eats has a good article here.

    Macerate fruit with sugar in fridge for 12-48 hours. 48 hours is better.

    Strain fruit syrup and add the vinegar.

    Continue reading →

  • Simple Garden Recipes: Maraschino Cherries And Sweet Refrigerator Pickles

    July 11, 2012

    26 Comments

    Homemade maraschino cherries.

    Sweet refrigerator pickles.

    The bounty of summer often comes with a vexing question that basically boils down to, “what am I supposed to do with all of this stuff?!?” Wether you garden, join a CSA, shop the farmers market or simply succumb to the temptations of a roadside fruit stand, when we get summer fruits and veggies we tend to get a lot of them. All at once.  And not all produce stays fresh for very long. Abundance can have a (very slight) downside.

    Now possibly the best answer to this “challenge” is to share with friends, assuming they aren’t already overwhelmed with their own produce. But when generosity fails, preservation is the next step. Now if you want to get serious about preservation, we suggest you visit Wifemeetslife for an intro to canning- Alison has some great posts. And if you want to add some booze into the mix, then we suggest a visit to Boozed + Infused, where Alicia makes incredible fruit-based infusions.

    We can’t keep up with Alison and Alicia (although we are trying) but we do often use some short-term preservation techniques to extend our produce. For our cherries we make quick “maraschino” cherries and for cucumbers we make refrigerator pickles. Both are easy to make and extend the life of our produce by a few weeks. Oh, and both taste great.

    Just cherries and Maraschino liqueur.

    Just a quick simmer, then jar and chill for two days.

    As for the maraschino cherries, we take our end-of season cherries, lightly cook them in maraschino liqueur and then pop them in the fridge and let them macerate for two days and then the are ready and will last for a few weeks. While sour cherries may be the ideal, we use Bings or Vans and they are very tasty. Contrary to the bright pink, overly sweet store-bought maraschinos, home-made maraschino cherries are just a touch sweet with a bit of tartness and some crunch. The liqueur adds some lovely nutty flavors to the cherries. And they are not particularly boozy. We put the cherries in cocktails, on top of ice cream, between layers of cakes (yum) and simply eat them out of hand. Good stuff and a good excuse to buy one more basket of cherries (and add some maraschino liqueur to your bar).

    Cucumbers, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt and spices. Simple.

    As for the sweet refrigerator pickles, we love our cucumbers fresh, or in quick pickles, but we like this recipe so much it is one of the main reasons we grow cukes and buy a lot at the farmers market. Making these pickles is a snap. Simply cut up some pickling cucumbers (Kirbys are good here) and a bit of onion and then quickly/lightly cook in a solution of brown sugar, vinegar, salt and spices. Let the mixture cool and then put it in the fridge, the pickles will keep for about 10 days, but they won’t last that long. The pickles are sharp, sweet and crunchy with just a touch of spice. We eat them out of hand but also put them on sandwiches or serve them with burgers and hot dogs at cookouts. We also chop the pickles up into a quick relish- so good. And our kids love them, so it is a good way to get a few more veggies in their diet. Continue reading →

  • Chad’s Squid With Frying Peppers

    July 10, 2012

    15 Comments

    Chad’s squid with frying peppers.

    As we move deeper into summer our garden and the farmers market start to show an abundance of small “frying peppers”. Frying peppers make up a family of small, usually sweet, thin-skinned, peppers that start with a lovely pale green but will move to a deep red over time. While they have a variety of names (Jimmy Nardello, Shisito, Cubanelle, Italian frying, or Padron) most frying peppers are best served in simple preparations that highlight their sweet, grassy flavor. Many recipes simply suggest a quick, high-temperature fry in some olive oil and a touch of seasoning. That is a good way to enjoy frying peppers, and we do, but we also want to include them in main courses.

    Frying peppers, a real summer treat.

    Happily, our friend Chad (the professional chef and all-around good guy) made a simple, but incredibly tasty, recipe that combines squid and frying peppers. Chad made this last summer when peppers were in season and we couldn’t wait to try it again. The recipe combines sweet, buttery squid with the more herbal sweetness of the peppers, a dash of lemon and wine (if needed) provide some acidity and suddenly you have a light, balanced and very addictive dish. And a dish you can serve as an appetizer or a main course. And it takes just a few minutes to make.

    Simple ingredients but great flavors and textures.

    And this weekend our peppers came in, and the farmers market was full of early frying peppers (we had to augment our Jimmy Nardellos, we will plant more next year). And in a stroke of good luck, the fish guy at the farmers market had frozen, cleaned squid available. So we decided to go ahead and make the dish. A few quick text messages from Chad (thanks!) to confirm the basics of the recipe and we were off to the races.

    But first, a quick note on preparing and cooking the squid / calamari. Squid are affordable, widely available and quite tasty, but can be intimidating, particularly when you have to clean them yourself. Our advice is very simple. Don’t clean them yourself. Buy them cleaned or have your fish monger do it, squid are still inexpensive even when sold cleaned. If you must do it yourself, here is a good link on how.

    Saute the peppers and onions in a bit of olive oil.

    Otherwise, the key to cooking squid is that it either cooks very quickly over high heat, or low and slow in a braise. This recipe is a quick / high-heat recipe. But this means that it helps to cut the squid into pieces that are the same size so they cook evenly. If you have uneven pieces, the small pieces will be tough by the time the large pieces cook. The squid are done when the pieces are opaque and the edges curl. The best way to be sure the squid is done is to simply try a piece after a minute of cooking and keep testing. If tender and buttery, it’s done, take the squid off the heat. The squid will still cook a bit more from residual heat.

    Quickly cook the squid with olive oil and a dash of lemon and wine.

    As for making the dish, it is a very simple preparation. Clean the peppers, slice and the remove the seeds. Sauté the peppers with a few slivers of sweet onion in some olive oil until the skins slightly blister, about 6-8 minutes, and lightly season. Meanwhile slice the squid and then fry, over very high heat, in some olive oil for just 1-2 minutes.The squid will release liquid that provides the base for a light sauce. Add a dash of wine, a squeeze of lemon and then add the peppers and onion to the squid. Taste for seasoning and add salt, black pepper and some red pepper flakes if you like a touch of heat. Serve with rice, pasta or some crusty bread.

    Combine the peppers and squid, season and serve.

    We enjoyed this dish as much as the first time we tried it. The squid was buttery and sweet and the peppers added incredibly fresh flavors. It simply tasted like summer. And it is a light and healthy dish as well. So if you have frying peppers this summer, the first thing to do is just fry and eat them. But if you want to use the peppers in something more, try this dish out, it’s a winner. Thanks Chad!

    Chad’s Squid With Frying Peppers:

    (Adapted from Chad Callahan)

    Notes Before You Start:

    • There are many varieties of frying peppers, but you want small, thin-skinned peppers. Taste them for heat before you start the dish. Red or green varieties both work.
    • Frozen squid are not only fine for this dish, but preferred. Freezing helps tenderize squid. Continue reading →

  • Peaches! And Updates From The Orchard and Garden

    July 9, 2012

    37 Comments

    Our first ripe redhaven peach. Sweet, tangy and juicy.

    Our redhaven peach trees are heavy with fruit- the nets are paying off.

    Our days away from the garden certainly came with a few surprises. The big surprise is that some of our redhaven peaches are already ripe with others on the cusp! Wow- very tasty, very cool and very rewarding. The netting on the trees really paid off, the trees are brimming with fruit. We just posted a peach cocktail, but expect many peach recipes in the coming weeks. Summer is really here.

    Unexpected, but welcome mission figs.

    Macintosh apples starting to color.

    Another very pleasant surprise is the mission figs. We planted a more mature tree after gophers killed the last one. We did not expect fruit this year, but it looks like we have it. Same thing for the Macintosh apple tree, we have quite a few apples on a young tree- way beyond expectations. We are very grateful for the luck we have, as we all know the garden can also dish up some disappointments.

    Artichoke blossom there are bees in there, look closely.

    One happy, but expected, development is the blooming of the artichokes. The blossoms are one of our all-time favorites, the color just pops. Nothing quite like it- and the bees agree, they love the artichoke blossoms and literally dive in. The thin purple needles of the flower constantly move with the bees. After giving us so many tasty artichokes to eat, the plant still gives us (and the bees) something extra, something special. Delightful.

    Carrots growing but still need more time.

    Sugar snap peas. We just had these at lunch.

    Zucchini always seem to grow by 2 feet when you leave the house… Continue reading →