Sour Cherry Vodka

Happiness is kayaking and cherry picking on the same day. Paddling is a new hobby for me, but going to the cherry orchard has always been one of my favorite things to do.

I like to look for interesting ways to get the most out of the cherry harvest and make it last.

This time I covered my few precious sour cherries in vodka.

It was a bit of an experiment. The essence of the cherries was extracted after a month, and the resulting infusion is intensely aromatic and flavorful.

Sour Cherry Vodka
Printable Recipe

14 ounces sour cherries, stemmed
¼ cup sugar
16 ounces vodka

Combine all of the ingredients in a 1-quart mason jar and stir until the sugar dissolves. Cover and let infuse at room temperature for about a month. Strain through a fine mesh sieve into a glass bottle.

Makes approximately 20 ounces. Keeps more or less indefinitely tightly sealed in the bar or the pantry. Use in cocktails or blend with freshly squeezed lemon juice, sugar, and chilled soda water for a refreshing spritzer. Combine with simple syrup to moisten cake layers in Black Forest cake.

Sparkling Cherry Limeade

In case you need a little relief from this heat wave…

Sparkling Cherry Limeade
Printable Recipe

1 pound cherries, pitted
10 ounces sugar
10 ounces water
Grated zest of 3 limes
10 ounces freshly squeezed lime juice
2 quarts soda water, chilled

Combine the cherries, sugar, water, and lime zest in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, or until the cherries are tender. Remove from the heat and let cool. Puree in a food mill using the finest disc. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, stir in the lime juice, and chill.

Stir together the cherry-lime syrup and soda water in a large pitcher. Serve immediately over ice.

Serves 8 to 10. Combine the cherry-lime syrup and sparkling water just before serving. If you won't be serving it all at once, make just what you need by mixing 1 part syrup with 2 parts soda water. Good spiked with a little vodka. Syrup keeps for several days tightly sealed in the refrigerator.

Toast to the New Year

Happy New Year's, dear reader! I raise my glass to you. May 2011 bring you health, happiness, and delicious dishes.


Pomegranate-Grapefruit Champagne Sparklers
Printable Recipe

¼ cup pomegranate arils
6 ounces pomegranate juice, chilled
6 ounces freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, chilled
1 750-milliliter bottle sparkling wine, chilled

Divide the pomegranate arils among 6 champagne flutes. Combine the pomegranate juice and grapefruit juice in a pitcher or measuring cup with a spout and divide among the flutes. Divide the sparkling wine among the flutes and serve immediately.

Serves 6. Best in the wintertime, when pomegranates and grapefruit are plentiful. Use freshly pressed pomegranate juice or, if you can find it, Evolution Freshest Pomegranate juice. If you are squeezing juice fresh, you will need 1 to 2 large pomegranates and 1 large grapefruit for this recipe.

New Year's Wishes

Here's to a happy New Year everybody! May 2010 bring you and yours joy and prosperity.

Frozen Kir Royales
Printable Recipe

1 cup Minted Black Currant Sorbet
1 750 milliliter bottle sparkling wine, chilled

Scoop the sorbet into 4 champagne flutes. Divide the sparkling wine among the flutes and serve immediately.

Serves 4. Either store-bought currant or raspberry sorbet would make fine a substitute for the Minted Black Currant Sorbet. The traditional Kir Royale is made with crème de cassis and Champagne.

Black Currants and Purple Lemonade

I desperately needed refreshment after I spent 2 hours picking every single last currant off the bush in the backyard on a 95-degree afternoon. This Purple Lemonade did quite nicely.


OK, so maybe it’s fuchsia. But black currants make me think purple. Also, I didn’t want it to be confused with pink lemonade made with strawberries or raspberries.

Purple Lemonade
Printable Recipe

12 ounces black currants
1 ¾ cups sugar
Grated zest of 2 lemons
2 quarts plus 1 cup water
1 ¼ cups freshly squeezed lemon juice

Puree the currants in a food mill using the finest disc. If the puree has seeds, strain it through a fine mesh sieve to remove them. Combine the sugar, lemon zest, and 1 cup of the water in a small saucepan. Heat until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and let cool. Stir in the lemon juice and strain through a fine mesh sieve. Stir together the currant puree, lemon mixture, and remaining 2 quarts of water in a large pitcher. Serve over ice.

Makes about 3 quarts. For sparkling Purple Lemonade, substitute soda water for half of the second quantity of water.

Pomegranates

I’ve got a thing for pomegranates. I’ve absolutely loved them since I was a little girl. My mother would sometimes surprise me with a big shiny pomegranate, a rare treat, my favorite treat. I would patiently clean the entire thing and then suck the juice out of a handful of arils at a time. I still do that sometimes, but now I usually just buy fresh pomegranate juice. What can I say, I’ve also got a thing for immediate gratification. Though it is a bit tannic, Evolution Freshest Pomegranate juice is, by far, the best I’ve found.


Pomegranate Potion
Printable Recipe

1 ½ ounces vodka, chilled
6 ounces pomegranate juice, chilled
4 ounces soda water, chilled

Combine all of the ingredients in a chilled martini glass and serve immediately.

Serves 1. The vodka really brings out the flavor of the pomegranate juice, but feel free to leave it out if you prefer a nonalcoholic beverage.

Margaritas

Since I was missing Texas, I decided it was time for a visit. So here I am in Texas. And when I’m in Texas, I drink margaritas.


Traditional Margarita
Printable Recipe

1 heaping cup ice cubes
1 ½ ounces silver tequila
1 ½ ounces freshly squeezed lime juice
¾ ounce Cointreau or triple sec
¼ teaspoon sugar

Combine all of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously. Pour into a chilled margarita glass and serve immediately.

Makes 1 strong margarita. If you like, rim the glass with salt by dipping into lime juice and then immediately into kosher salt. This style of margarita is found throughout the American Southwest.

No Such Thing as Too Much Chocolate

At my house, when we run out of chocolate, panic ensues. There’s shrieking and stomping of feet, a real tantrum. You see, each day when my husband gets home from a long day at work, he makes a beeline for the pantry and helps himself to a big handful of couverture. If he finds the bin empty, he becomes very, very unhappy. Unlike my husband, I don’t yell or scream, I quietly agonize over when I’ll get my next fix.

I buy chocolate by the 10-kilo bag for personal consumption.


So the good news is we don’t run out often. A new 10-kilo bag of Callebaut dark chocolate callets* is always greeted by laughter, dancing, and general jubilation. We rip open the bag, drink in the intoxicating aroma, and feel at ease, knowing that all is right in the world once again.


Best Ever Hot Chocolate
Printable Recipe

½ cup heavy cream
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped or scant 2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups milk
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Bring the cream to a bare simmer in a small, heavy saucepan. Place the chocolate into a medium bowl, add the hot cream, and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the milk. Return to the saucepan and heat to a simmer, stirring frequently. Stir in the vanilla, ladle into mugs, and serve immediately.

Serves 2 just 1. This is the richest, creamiest, most decadent hot chocolate ever. Hot chocolate made with powders and mixes doesn’t even come close. For a flavored hot chocolate, infuse the cream with orange zest, Earl Grey tea, mint, cinnamon, chile powder, or even your favorite liqueur. Serve topped with marshmallows or lightly sweetened whipped cream.

*Callets are essentially high quality chocolate chips. I prefer to work with callets because, unlike bar chocolate, they’re ready to melt, with no chopping required.

Advance

My advance check just came in the mail today! It’s actually the second half of my advance for Seared to Perfection, and it means that the publisher has officially accepted my manuscript. And what’s more, I recently found out the book is going to have photos! I celebrated with fruity martinis.


Cassis Martinis
Printable Recipe

1 heaping cup ice cubes
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
¼ cup vodka
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon crème de cassis

Combine all of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously. Pour into chilled martini glasses and serve immediately.

Makes 2 servings. If you like, rim the glasses with sugar by dipping into crème de cassis and then immediately into sugar.

Apricot Floats

Oregon strawberries are amazing. They’re so soft, red all the way through to the core, and bursting with juicy sweetness. Each year, I look forward to strawberry season, it’s my favorite time of the year. My husband loves strawberries too. We like to pick our own, and we eat so many before we even get out of the field, we make ourselves sick. Yesterday, we drove all the way out to Sauvie Island for u-pick strawberries, but the strawberries weren’t ready yet. I almost cried. I had even called ahead to check, and I was assured that they were ripe. Several eager strawberry eaters were stooped among the rows, picking. But thanks to some unseasonably cool weather, the strawberries were tart, and most certainly not ripe. Almost ripe, but not ripe. Unlike all of those other people, I am willing to wait for the perfect strawberries and will go back next week.

But the farmers market did have apricots. My consolation prize. How is it that the strawberries weren’t ready, but they had apricots at the farmers market? Never mind that. Their aroma was so intoxicating, I just had to have some. Many of the apricots were already bruised and mushy. I took my time picking through the pile looking for perfect specimens, ripe but still firm. I got about a dozen before I sensed my husband’s patience wearing thin. He was already at the front of the line to pay. I didn’t plan on making anything with the apricots. I just like to eat them fresh, out of hand. And anyway, I figured they needed a day or two to get sweeter.

I didn’t plan on making anything, but I guess I had baking and, more likely, dessert, on the brain. It’s a good thing I keep homemade tart dough in the freezer. Before I knew it, I had made apricot-custard tartelettes.


The happy byproduct of the making the tartelettes was the apricot poaching liquid. And to think, I wasn’t even sure if I would bother keeping it. Until I tasted it. It was even more delicious than the tartelettes. I put soda water and vanilla ice cream on the shopping list.

Miraculously, the unseasonably cool weather cleared up and the sun smiled on us just in time for us to drink our floats!

Apricot Ice Cream Floats
Printable Recipe

1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
4 small apricots, ripe but firm
1 quart vanilla ice cream
2 cups soda water, chilled

Combine the sugar, vanilla bean paste, and 2 cups of water in a small saucepan. Heat until the sugar dissolves. Halve the apricots and remove the pits. Add the fruit and pits to the pan, bring to a bare simmer, and simmer gently for about a minute, or until tender. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Discard the pits. Puree the apricots in a food mill using the finest disc. Add the poaching liquid to the puree and chill.

Scoop the ice cream into 4 chilled glasses. Blend together the apricot mixture and soda water and divide among the glasses. Add straws and enjoy right away.

Makes 4 servings. Apricots that are slightly tart are perfect here, as their acidity will balance the sweetness of the syrup and ice cream.

Teacups

I make a small pot of tea almost every evening, sometimes bergamot, sometimes jasmine. I sip it slowly as I leaf through cookbooks. It’s my favorite wind-down ritual.

I grew up in a tea drinking family. We would always drink hot green tea after a rich meal, sometimes accompanied by a small bowl of sour cherry preserves. My mother (or was it my grandmother?) liked to tell me that it aided digestion. She served tea in these.


All my life, I’ve been drinking tea out of Japanese rice bowls. A very serious faux pas. But mother laughs, she was sure they were teacups. My family’s from Uzbekistan, and they’re the closest vessel to the traditional Uzbek pijala she could find here.


The pijala is broad, allowing the tea to quickly cool just enough to drink, and it’s small enough to enjoy several warming refills. It’s the perfect teacup. The orange and white pattern depicts the famous silk textiles of Uzbekistan. A blue and white pattern shows the cotton flower, one of the country’s major crops.

I still haven’t been able to find a set of authentic Uzbek pijalas in the U.S. I must go shopping in Tashkent.

A Pot of Tea
Printable Recipe

4 cups water
2 tablespoons loose leaf bergamot tea, my favorite is Sadaf Special Blend Tea with Earl Grey (available in Middle Eastern markets), in a large tea ball


Use lots of tea leaves steeped for a short time for the sweetest brew. Heat the water to a bare simmer. Add the tea and swirl for about half a minute. Do not oversteep or the tea will become bitter.

Pour yourself a cup, observe the golden color, inhale the fragrant steam, and sip, sip, and repeat.