Category Archives: All Recipes

  • Weekly Cocktail #17: The Tahitian Postcard

    June 24, 2012

    29 Comments

    Tahitian Postcard cocktail.

    A delightful week here at the farm. We were lucky enough to have our post on the El Diablo cocktail featured on Freshly Pressed, the Huffington Post Kitchen Notes featured the Rose Pearl cocktail and then Debra Samuels, the cookbook author commented on our adaptation of her Sushi Balls recipe. Her words were so kind and gracious. We are so grateful to everyone who reads our blog and shares their blogs and comments with us. Food, drink and the garden really do build the soul and connect you with others.

    Food and drink also take you, at least temporarily, all over the world. And this week’s cocktail, The Tahitian Postcard, certainly takes us to another place. The Tahitian Postcard is our creation and is another “sparkling” cocktail for summer (can’t resist, sorry). It combines rum, lime juice, passion fruit syrup and champagne or sparkling wine. We also include Licor 43, a Spanish liqueur with citrus and pronounced vanilla notes, as an optional ingredient. The recipe itself is an adaptation of the Airmail Cocktail (rum, lime, champagne and honey syrup), but we use the passion fruit and Licor 43 to give a touch of “tiki” to the drink.

    Tahitian postcard and ingredients.

    The key here is a “touch” of tiki…just a touch. The passion fruit syrup, Licor 43 and the rum can all drown out the champagne and lime, so we use relatively small amounts for a balanced, lighter drink without any cloying sweetness. The end result is a bright, sweet and sour cocktail with light body from the champagne. Our friend Roger tried the drink, liked it quite a bit, but noted that he liked the passion fruit “because I couldn’t tell it was passion fruit” and that is the point, a light touch helps with this style of drink. A good tiki drink leaves you wondering what all the ingredients are, and we hope the Tahitian Postcard fits that description.

    As for the ingredients, passion fruit syrup is cheap and widely available. It is also a common tiki drink flavor and worth buying, if you like tiki drinks. The Licor 43 is an occasional tiki ingredient that, as we noted earlier, has pronounced vanilla flavor. The Licor 43 is optional in this recipe. We use a scant amount of the Licor 43 and you could substitute a dash of vanilla syrup or use a golden rum that has vanilla notes and get a similar flavor impact.

    Finally, if you are curious about the name of the cocktail, Tahiti is famous for its vanilla and tropical fruit. About 17 years ago, Carolyn and I were returning from our Tahitian honeymoon. We loved the islands, but have yet to return. With this cocktail we sent ourselves a postcard, and it bought us back, at least for a moment.

    The Tahitian Postcard:

    Ingredients:

    • 3/4 oz. white or golden rum (we use white Demerara rum)
    • 1/2 oz. lime juice
    • 1/3 oz. passion fruit syrup (1/4 oz. if you like drinks less sweet)
    • 2 dashes Licor 43 or vanilla syrup (optional)
    • 5 oz. champagne or sparkling wine
    • Lime twist, for garnish

    Assemble:

    1. Comine the rum, lime juice, passion fruit syrup and Licor 43 (if using) in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and strain into a chilled flute, cocktail glass or coupe.
    2. Top with the champagne and add the lime twist. Serve.
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  • Grilled Eggplant With Salsa Verde (And A One Lovely Blog Award!)

    June 21, 2012

    26 Comments

    Grilled eggplant with salsa verde.

    Recipe below, but please read on..

    We recently received a nomination for the One Lovely Blog award from our friend Erin at Erin’s DC Kitchen. We are big fans of Erin’s take on simple, tasty food and the overall positive spirit of her blog. Check out her site, it will be a pleasant visit. Thanks Erin!

    So now we must pass the award along to one lovely blogger and tell you seven things about ourselves (not sure there is much left, but we will try..;-). As for the nomination, we nominate Cooking in Sens, a blog about cooking and life in Burgundy. If we cook and take photos half as good, we would be thrilled. We love the blog and have made a few of the recipes with great success. Please check them out.

    So here are seven more things about us:

    1. We do read cookbooks for fun. And our kids are starting as well. Now we need to put them to work.
    2. As noted before, we have less success with zucchini than we should. Somewhat embarrassing.
    3. We buy too much kitchen gear, but are getting better…a little. Sort of. Maybe.
    4. Sometimes we cook simple food because we don’t want extra dishes.
    5. Once we got to 40, wine started giving us the occasional headache. Cocktails and beer took over at the farm.
    6. Sometimes there are so many gophers we (I) feel like Bill Murray in Caddyshack (and want to “solve” the problem with similar measures).
    7. We can’t wait for tomatoes and fresh corn…like it really bothers us it’s not here yet.

    Now back to cooking. The Grilled Eggplant with Salsa Verde recipe is a simple one, but worth sharing simply because it answers the question of what to do with eggplant. Such a beautiful vegetable (technically a berry, btw), but often many cooks just put it in Eggplant Parmesan or Baba Ghanoush. Both great dishes, but we like quick preparations and grilling the eggplant does the trick. As for extra flavor, salsa verde packs a big punch from the herbs and oil. It is great on many dishes and we use it often on fish, like this dish. But it is great on almost any grilled vegetable.

    Just a few ingredients for the eggplant.

    Make your salsa verde and slice the eggplant.

    Brush oil on the eggplant, sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook on a medium grill.

    Assembling and cooking this dish is as simple as it gets.  Most of the work with salsa verde is in chopping the herbs and then adding the oil and other ingredients. For the eggplant, simply slice it lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices and brush with olive oil and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook on a medium grill until browned on the outside and soft in the center. The temperature here is key, if the fire is too hot the outside will burn before the center is soft. Lower the heat a bit and take your time. A grill pan indoors will also work, again use medium heat and take your time. You will still need less than 10 minutes. And then you can enjoy one lovely dish.

    Continue reading →

  • Sushi Balls: Sushi At Home

    June 21, 2012

    28 Comments

    Sushi balls. Fun sushi at home.

    When we started writing this blog, one of the promises we made ourselves was to use the blog as motivation to cook new things at home. And so far we are making progress, but mostly with new tools like sous-vide and using “molecular gastronomy” ingredients in baking. But the next step was for us to explore new cuisines, and we went right for Japan.

    We love Japanese food and have a favorite local sushi bar and are even members in a Sake tasting club (great fun), but rarely cook anything other than tempura at home. But we decided that needed to change. So we bought Debra Samuels’ “My Japanese Table”, a cookbook with Japanese recipes adapted for the American kitchen. Samuels is a well-regarded food writer for the Boston Globe and lived /cooked in Japan for ten years, so we took the plunge. So far the cookbook is a good read, with plenty of simple recipes for Japanese basics like teriyaki and tempura. But we know what we wanted to do at home, sushi. And this recipe is why we bought the cookbook. Sushi balls are very pretty sushi that you can make at home. And its fun…really.

    Smoked salmon, salmon roe, seared ahi, shrimp, cucumber and shiitake mushroom.

    Usually the big issue with making sushi at home is actually constructing the rolls. Sushi rice is super-sticky and the shaping tools are uncommon for most home cooks. Without constant practice, home sushi can look like a train wreck. And while the flavor of the sushi can be good, the presentation is a big part of the dish. One way to handle this challenge is to simply prepare the rice and ingredients and then present them with nori as a buffet for hand-rolls. But with Sushi balls, anyone can make an attractive individual piece of sushi. You can even have fun and experiment with presentation.

    The trick is to simply place the fish or veggie on a square of plastic wrap, then place a tablespoon or so of rice on top (be sure to keep your hands moist with water when handling the rice).  Then bring up all the corners of the plastic wrap and twist tightly into a ball. When it unwinds, you have a well-shaped sushi ball. It only takes a few tries to get the hang of it, and then you can experiment with different combinations of ingredients. Samuels suggests cooked shrimp, lightly salted cucumbers and smoked salmon. We added some seared ahi, salmon roe and browned shiitake mushrooms. Cooked crab or scallops would also be very good additions. But feel free to experiment based on taste and budget (and this is an inexpensive dish).

    Rinse the rice and drain.

    Ingredients for Sushi-zu seasoning

    Cooked rice, sprinkled with Sushi-zu seasoning.

    Now that shaping the sushi is less of a challenge, the real effort goes in making the sushi rice. While in sushi bars “mastering” the rice can take years, it is something you can do well at home- on the first try. The trick is to buy the correct rice and follow all of the steps. For the rice you need short grain japonica rice, which is available in most supermarkets. Don’t substitute long grain rice. As for the steps, you must rinse the rice and then either soak it for cooking or use a rice cooker- the recipe deals with both. While the rice is cooking you make the Sushi-zu seasoning of rice vinegar, sugar, salt and mirin. When the rice finishes cooking, you place it in a bowl and then gently sprinkle and mix the Sushi-zu seasoning with the rice. Then fan the rice to cool it down. The rice should stick together but not be mashed or “gluey”.  But if you use the right rice and follow each step you will get consistent, tasty, results.

    Slice cucumbers, sprinkle with salt, wait for 5 minutes and drain. Done. Continue reading →

  • Bonus Cocktail: El Diablo

    June 19, 2012

    107 Comments

    El Diablo cocktail.

    Some good summer cocktail karma here at the farm. First we get cherries to play with, and then we stumble on a classic recipe and just happen to have all the ingredients and the drink turns out to be very, very good. And the cocktail, of course, is the El Diablo. The El Diablo is a combination of tequila, lime, crème de cassis and ginger beer served on the rocks.  The El Diablo packs a lot of flavor with the sour lime, sweet Cassis and the spice of the ginger beer, but it has a light body and is quite refreshing. And the color speaks for itself (and for the name of the drink).

    Surprisingly, the El Diablo is a creation of “Trader Vic” Bergeron, who is mostly known for tiki drinks. But Vic published this recipe in 1946, so it predates the Moscow Mule, a similar ginger beer-based cocktail. It is also something of a surprise to us that the El Diablo is not more popular, but not everyone has crème de cassis or ginger beer hanging around the house. But both ingredients are worthy additions to your bar.

    If you are unfamiliar with creme de cassis, it is a sweet blackcurrant liqueur that is most commonly used in the Kir (white wine and a dash of Cassis) and the Kir Royale (Champagne and a dash of Cassis). Kirs are very tasty drinks, and are still popular in France as a pre-dinner apéritif. We drink Kir Royales occasionally, particularly when we want to spruce up average champagne or sparkling wine. And that red color will show through in almost any drink, as will the deep, sweet fruit of the Cassis. Good stuff, and a little goes a long way, one bottle can last for years.

    El Diablo and ingredients.

    As for ginger beer, it is basically the original ginger ale. It tends to be spicier and less sweet than mass-market ginger ale. A few years ago, ginger beer was hard to find. But as the Dark ‘n Stormy and Moscow Mule have reemerged with the cocktail renaissance, so has ginger beer. Ginger beer is available in most supermarkets and liquors stores and is a good substitute for ginger ale in most recipes.

    Trader Vic wasn’t just about rum.

    We became aware of the El Diablo in a Serious Eats slideshow about the drinks at KASK, a bar in Portland. Here is their cocktail menu. (I think a trip to Portland is in order.) After some more research, we found that mixologists have played with the original recipe for years- so while the base flavors of ginger, lime and Cassis are in all recipes, the ratios can vary widely. We like a little more lime and ginger, but other recipes go heavier with the Cassis. The one constant is using 1.5- 2 oz. of blanco tequila. But feel free to play around, these are fun experiments for summer and the flavors play very well together.

    The El Diablo:

    Ingredients:

    • 1 and 1/2 oz. blanco tequila
    • 3/4 oz. lime juice
    • 1/2 oz. crème de cassis
    • 3-4 oz. ginger beer (or ginger ale)
    • Lime wedge or wheel, for garnish.

    Assemble:

    1. Place tequila, lime juice and Cassis in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Add ginger beer, stir lightly. Garnish with lime wedge and serve.
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