Category Archives: Breakfast

  • Amazing Persimmon Bread

    December 6, 2012

    48 Comments

    bread8While we love cooking with the season, winter can be a bit tough, even in California. Lots of produce is available, but some of it has moderate appeal (we love kale, turnips and broccoli, but not every day) and some is just confounding. We love our pomegranates, but they are hard to eat and you can only sprinkle the seeds on so many salads. The citrus is a bright spot, but somehow tends to end up in desserts and cocktails, and after lemon chicken how many savory dishes are there?. And then we have Persimmons. These bright orange, beautiful fruits light up the farmers market, but what do you do with them?

    bread2bread3For Fuyu persimmons, the round ones, the answer is easy. Treat them like apples and place raw slices into salads or serve with cheese or charcuterie. But what about the heart-shaped Hachiya persimmons, what to do with them? It turns out you need to let them ripen almost to the point of rot over-ripeness and then scoop out the pulp. The pulp will be very sweet with pumpkin and citrus notes. One of the more popular uses of Hachiya pulp is to freeze it and serve it like sorbet, but the other primary use is in baking. And this is where we get to this amazing sweet bread. And we don’t mean “amazing way to get rid of persimmons” we simply mean “amazing”. This bread is one of the best surprises we’ve had here at Putney Farm.

    bread4bread5In some ways, we shouldn’t be surprised. The recipe comes from David Lebovitz, one of the best pasty chefs and food writers in the world, and is adapted from a James Beard recipe. Yep, James Beard. The original recipe comes for his book “Beard on Bread“. So we are working from some very solid source materials. Ironically, the recipe itself is a bit “squishy”. You are encouraged to add or subtract sugar to your taste, add some booze and play with different dried fruit and nut combinations. We even use some white whole wheat flour with good results. But the unifying factor is the Hachiya persimmon pulp. It gives a bright pumpkin note and keeps this bread incredibly sweet and moist. With the fruit, nuts and spice this bread has lovely texture and flavor. You can eat it at breakfast, or as a daytime snack or even dessert.

    bread6bread7And making the bread is a straightforward operation. First you must buy and then ripen some Hachiya persimmons. Leave them out and wait. They are ripe when they feel like overripe tomatoes about to burst (Lebovitz describes it as “water balloon about to burst”). You may also see discoloration on the skin, but that is OK. When the persimmons are ripe, spoon out the pulp and purée in a blender, food processor of food mill. Then you are ready to go. And making the rest of the bread is easy. Chop some nuts and dried fruit, we use pecans and dried cranberries, but walnuts, raisins, apricots or dates will work. Then make a standard sweet bread. Combine the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients, make a batter. Butter some loaf plans, then pour in the batter. Bake for an hour at 350 (the kitchen will smell great), cool and serve. And enjoy, this is the good stuff. So when winter produce gets you down, buy a few Hachiya persimmons, let them ripen and make this bread. It will be a bright spot in winter.

    bread

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  • Apple Cinnamon Muffins (And the sweet smell of victory!)

    October 29, 2012

    25 Comments

    Apple Cinnamon Muffins.

    So what do you do when your team wins their second World Series in three years? Well, you put your happily beaming children to bed, watch a few minutes of the post game, then mix up a tasty cocktail and smile….. and then you go outside and give up a seriously primal scream of joy and relief. UNBELIEVABLE!  And you know what you do the next morning? You sit down with a good cup of coffee and a tasty apple cinnamon muffin and read all the news on how your team kicked-ass won. Your kids are still beaming, the kitchen is warm and smells like fall. Happy days here by the Bay.

    And even if your team didn’t win the Series, you can still enjoy a tasty, spicy apple muffin. If you’re like us, we can get a bit “enthusiastic” when we buy apples. If we don’t eat them out of hand, we take the extra apples that may be getting soft and make applesauce or these muffins. And these muffins are exactly as advertised. They have a pronounced apple and cinnamon flavors and feature a crisp top with a very soft interior. Good for breakfast, but not bad as an afternoon treat, either.

    Like many baking recipes, these muffins come from a familiar formula, but a few tips and techniques do matter. Firstly, we grate our apples in this recipe. Grating provides a more uniform texture and gives you apple flavor in every bite. Secondly, we also butter (using cooking spray) the muffin tin, then the paper cups and the top of the tin. There is a method to the madness, the longer muffins cool in the tin, the tougher they get. If you heavily grease the tin and the paper cups you can get the muffins out of the tin as soon as you can handle them. This makes a big difference, the muffins will be moist and tender. And finally, we substitute half of the all-purpose flour with white whole wheat flour for a “nuttier” flavor. We like the extra flavor, but regular AP flour will work fine.

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  • Peach Lavender Jam

    July 20, 2012

    22 Comments

    Peach Lavender Jam.

    A bit of a “peachy” hue on the blog these days. But when you have a few hundred peaches with a limited shelf life, you work with the peaches (we are also giving them away to friends, whether they want them or not 😉 ). The only thing at the farm we have more of than peaches is lavender. It’s everywhere, and mostly for the bees. But since we have peaches and lavender, we are making Peach Lavender jam.

    We have lots of these…

    …and tons of this. Let’s make jam.

    This recipe comes from the excellent canning and pickling book “Tart and Sweet” from Kelly Geary and Jessie Knadler. We are by no means experts on canning and pickling, so this book is a great tool with both recipes and very clear guidelines for safe canning. But the key for any home canning / pickling is to use the base recipe and then follow your standard, safe processing instructions. Most setups will be similar, but some equip will vary. Just remember, sterilization is always a good thing.

    As for the actual jam, this is really a peach jam with a touch of floral, herbal and tannic notes from the lavender. The lavender keeps the sweetness of the peaches from overwhelming the flavor of the jam. But the key is just a hint of lavender. Too much lavender and your jam will taste like soap. In fact, you don’t actually put lavender in the jam at all, just steep some lavender in water, strain it out and the add the water to the fruit. Again, go easy with the lavender- less is more.

    The peeling and pitting dis-assembly line.

    This took a while.

    The process of making jam isn’t complex, but it is time-consuming. Making jam is a good activity to do with friends and/or a great way to put your kids to work. First you must sterilize and prepare your equipment. Make sure everything is good order before you start. As for the jam, you need to skin and pit 6 pounds of peaches. This involves cutting an X in the base of the peach, briefly blanching it in boiling water, plunging it in an ice bath and then skinning and pitting the peach. We take an assembly (dis-assembly?) line approach, but even with help, this takes a while. But we don’t do this every day either, so it was (kinda) fun.

    Steep the dried lavender and strain it out.

    Cook the fruit, lemon juice and sugar.

    Blend until smooth.

    Add calcium water, sugar and pectin.

    Once you have the peaches peeled and pitted the work is easier, but still requires time. You need to bring the peaches, some sugar and lemon juice to a boil in a large pot and cook the fruit for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile you need to steep some dried lavender flowers in 1 cup of boiling water for about 20 minutes. Strain the lavender from the water and add the water to the peaches. Then blend the peaches with an immersion blender, or in batches on a stand-up blender. Then add calcium water, pectin and sugar to the fruit and cook until you get a jammy consistency. To finish the jam, put it in hot jars and process for 10 minutes. Then cool and eat. Continue reading →

  • Cherry Clafoutis

    June 26, 2012

    45 Comments

    Cherry clafoutis.

    Nothing makes us happier than growing, cooking, eating and sharing our own food. But there is a slight tyranny to the seasons. If you have cherries, you are cooking with cherries, period. And our Bing cherries are at their peak, so we picked them all. One small tree gave us four large bowls of cherries…all at once. Happily, cherries lend themselves to all sorts of dishes and cocktails (and we do seem to like eating and drinking). So this week you may see cherries in all sorts of dishes. But for now, let’s start with a classic cherry dessert, clafoutis.

    Fresh Bing cherries form our orchard.

    Clafoutis is a French dessert that combines cherries baked in a light batter, often with some added almond flavor. Think of the batter as “flan-meets-pancake” and you can get an idea of the light, yet rich, texture that rightfully lets the cherries star in the dish. Originally clafoutis featured sour or black cherries with the pits still in. Supposedly the pits add extra almond-like flavor, but as we have Bing cherries and like our teeth, we put pitted Bing cherries and almond extract in our clafoutis. You can also use this basic recipe with other stone fruits or berries, but if you want to be technical it would then be a flaugnarde, but feel free to call it a clafoutis- we won’t tell anyone.

    A cherry-pitter is a useful tool if you like cherries as much as we do.

    As for the recipe, clafoutis is a classic dish and there are many recipes out there. We chose to adapt an Alice Waters recipe that adds a few extra steps, but also adds extra flavor. In this case we season and pre-bake the cherries before we add them to the clafoutis. The extra cooking improves the flavor and texture of the cherries, but also leaves behind the base of a syrup you can reduce and drizzle on top of the clafoutis at service. Good stuff. We also prefer to cook clafoutis (and many desserts) in individual ramekins, we think it looks good and makes leftovers easier to handle, but a large baking dish works for this recipe as well.

    Season the cherries for pre-baking.

    Extra cooking for more flavor and better texture- plus you get cherry juice for a sauce.

    Place a layer of cherries in the ramekins or baking dish.

    Assembling the clafoutis is a pretty easy affair. Pre-cook the cherries, save the syrup, butter your baking dish(es), place the fruit in the dishes, make and add the batter and bake. The batter is the only part of the recipe that requires some extra effort, you need to whip egg whites and then fold them into the batter for the right texture. The clafoutis bakes for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees. While the clafoutis bakes, reduce your cherry syrup for a tasty and pretty sauce. When the clafoutis is done, add the sauce, dust with powdered sugar and serve.

    Make the batter.

    Pour batter over the cherries.

    Bake until browned and puffed. Continue reading →