Strawberry tart

Fresh fruit tartlets

Adapted from “The Classic Party Fare Cookbook” by Martha Rose Shulman. This is my go-to book for appetizers; all the ones I've tried have been instant hits. This is only the second dessert I’ve attempted from the book, but I was looking for something a bit different to wish a co-worker happy birthday, since this is her last year with us before she goes off to pursue better things.

Ingredients

Tartlets

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 tablespoons nonfat plain yogurt

2 tablespoons sugar

Zest of 1 orange

2 teaspoons orange liqueur such as Cointreau (I used some of the holiday excess)

Pastry shells made with Almond Dessert Pastry

Fresh fruit of your choice, such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, etc., or a mixture

¼ cup apricot jam

Almond Dessert Pastry

½ cup ground almonds

1 cup flour, sifted

2 tablespoons superfine sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

2 to 3 tablespoons water

Method

In a food processor, mix ground almonds, flour, sugar and salt. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add extract and with the blade running, add enough water to bring dough together.

Place dough on a sheet of waxed paper. Flatten to about 1-inch thick. Cover with another sheet of waxed paper. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

Roll out dough between two pieces of waxed paper until it’s about ¼ inch thick. (This dough is really crumbly and delicate to work with; a cold rolling surface really helps. Cut into rounds if making tartlets, or use waxed paper to help you transfer dough to one larger tart. (The recipe warns it’s tougher to make it into one cohesive tart, and they weren’t kidding.) The dough makes enough for one 10-inch tart, 10 3-inch tartlets or 16 2-inch tartlets. Sadly, I only have the 10-, 5- and 4-inch varieties, so the die was cast.

Press dough into tart pans, pressing up the sides. Take care not to stretch the dough, to avoid shrinkage when it bakes. Use the rolling pin to roll over the tops to cut off any excess. Chill for at least 2 hours, or double-wrap and freeze for up to 3 months. (Can you imagine just having these in your freezer, ready to deploy? We’ll see if I can pull off that trick sometime.)

Preheat oven to 375. Line tarts with aluminum foil, shiny side up. Fill with pie weights or dry beans. Bake full size tart for 20 minutes, small ones for 10, then remove foil. At this point, the recipe calls for baking the full size tart for another 20 minutes and small ones for 10. Big mistake. I caught a whiff after 14 minutes and it was very nearly too brown to use, a waste of a really nice crust. I suggest checking after 10 minutes, maybe sooner.

Let cool for 10-15 minutes until cool enough to handle and carefully remove the pastry from the shells. Let cool completely.

In a food processor, blend together cream cheese, yogurt, sugar, zest and liqueur until smooth. Spread into cooled tart or tartlets. Top with desired fruit sliced to fit the tart or tartlets. Melt jam in a saucepan. Brush over fruit while still warm. Chill until ready to serve.

Rating: Fine, but not as much of a wower as I had hoped for given the ingredient list and how long it takes to make from start to finish. How much of that was due to the crust getting too crispy, I’m not sure. I’d like to try it again in tartlet form and see how that works out. If I ever get to the point where I’m the kind of person who has these in the freezer ready to bake off for a party.... I'd come to that party.

These are the strawberry tart recipes I considered and didn't make from Martha Stewart and this basil-infused one from PBS that looks awesome but not a likely candidate for surviving the trip into the office. But sometime. Dinner party fodder.

Eight farmers market strategies

As much as I savor the fresh food at the farmers market, I enjoy the vendors almost as much. Watching generations grow up at the Midtown market has been a blast, and really, what kind of week is it when you don't get to have Julie from Pflaum Farms wish you a great week?

While the produce is tempting enough on its own, I'm an easy upsell. Two for five? Sure. One vendor is clearly getting into the marketing angle, with fancier appellations like "legendary beans." While buying some of his "heirloom beets," he offered a deal where he'd take a dollar off if anyone also bought beans or flowers. Since I'd already been eyeing his lisianthus, I was an easy sucker. "Take your time," he told the woman there picking out a bouquet from a wide array of choices. "The record is 29 minutes. Her husband left."

Lisianthus are long-lasting beauties. Those tight buds open up to soft lavender rose-looking blooms.

Between the weekend market and the new monthly midweek Nokomis market, I succumbed to way too much temptation. So expect this week to be filled with blog posts about how to use up green beans, peas and zucchini.

My main tactics for making sure all those goodies don't go to waste:

1. First off, get everything out of those plastic bags you might have gotten things in; the produce will spoil less rapidly if it's not trapped in plastic and you'll be more likely to use it if you can see what it is you have on hand.

2. Transfer berries like strawberries, raspberries and blueberries to a glass container, trying to make sure they're in as shallow a layer as possible to avoid promoting mold growth.

3. Wash and spin dry any greens immediately so they're ready to use just like those store-bought boxes.  That includes beet greens, which otherwise wilt very quickly. I chiffonade the beet greens and store them to toss into risotto, into pasta, or just sauteed with garlic and olive oil on the side. (If you're using a plastic box, putting a paper towel in the bottom helps soak up moisture that would encourage spoilage.)

4. If you've got beets, wash those in the leftover lettuce-washing water. The sooner after picking that you roast them, the more tender they'll be and less time they'll take to cook. Put them in a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and add at least a 1/4 inch of water to the bottom of the pan. Cover with foil and roast at 400 for 50 minutes or until tender, adding more water as needed. When cool, peel and store for a salad of lettuce, sliced beets, goat cheese crumbles and balsamic vinaigrette.

5. Put on some tunes and shell those peas. No way will I ever get around to that on a weeknight. Store in a glass container. Ditto with green beans: snap the ends off and store.

6. Peel back husks of corn and silk the ears, if you plan to grill them, or husk and silk them if you plan to blanch them. (A great topping for corn: soften a stick of butter, mix in 1 tablespoon thyme leaves, the zest of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a sprinkling of paprika.)

7. If you don't have a plan for how to plan to use the largesse, chances increase that it becomes compost fodder. Haul out the cookbooks, fire up the Epicurious app, or if you've got magazine back issues like me, just grab a couple of July issues from past years. Since I'm me and can't help that, I create a chart of what all I've got to use up and note which recipes I want to try. I also try to keep up my tickler file in the computer slugged "Ways to use up ...." Otherwise I can never find back that really great-looking recipe that I saw in November that called for oodles of fresh tomatoes or fresh cucumbers.

8. If you wind up with too many greens like arugula, kale or collard greens and are running out of new recipes, remember that you can always just blanch them in hot water (or broth if you want to add more flavor) and toss them in the food processor with garlic, pine nuts, a sprinkling of salt and as much olive oil as you need to make a pesto. Any pesto freezes well, so you can add it to pasta or vegetables mid-winter.

Zucchini, mozzarella and tomato frittata

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to use up zucchini largesse, so I figured this one was worth a try.

Zucchini and tomato frittata

July 2014 Better Homes & Gardens

Ingredients

8 eggs

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small zucchini, thinly sliced lengthwise

½ cup cherry tomatoes, halved

2 ounces mini mozzarella balls

2 tablespoons chopped walnuts

Method

Preheat broiler. Mix together eggs, red pepper and ½ teaspoon salt.

In a 10-inch oven-safe skillet, heat oil. Saute zucchini on both sides until slightly brown. Add tomatoes. Pour egg mixture on top. Top with mozzarella and walnuts. Cook until edges begin to set. Lift edges to let liquid run beneath. When the mixture is about 4 minutes from fully set, transfer to under the broiler for final cooking.

Makes 4 generous wedges, 281 calories each. (How they calculate down to that 1 calorie beats me.)

Rating: This was really close to being pretty tasty. Nice texture, nice ingredients, but it fell a bit short. The original recipe called for ¼ teaspoon salt, which didn’t seem to make much of a dent against all those ingredients, so I upped it to ½ teaspoon above, which I think would yield better results. And I think some fresh or dried herbs would have given it the added flavor boost it needs. But hey, it’s one fewer zucchini in the house.

Fish tacos, Baja Minnesota style

We spent the day spent soaking up the sun, scenery, gorgeous breeze and fabulous people watching along with 30,000 fans at Spring Creek Motocross park. Motocrossers have the best T-shirts, if they bother to wear them. Dave’s favorite spotted today: Motocross is like showers, if you don’t do it every day, you stink.

Yep. So after a shower to wash away the grit, it was time for some fish tacos, our way.

Ingredients

Firm fish fillets (cod works well), figuring two goodish-size fillets will yield enough for 4 to 6 tacos

Tacos, warmed up and covered with foil in a 200-degree oven

1 lime, divided 

Toppings:

Grated cabbage, about two tablespoons per taco

Pico de gallo: Mix 4 tomatoes chopped small, 1½ tablespoons chopped jalapeno, ¼ cup chopped onion, juice of half a lime, 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, salt and pepper to taste

White sauce: Mix ½ cup mayo, ½ cup plain yogurt, 1 minced garlic clove, ½ cup fresh tomato salsa, two large tomatoes chopped small, 2 tablespoons chopped onion

Guacamole: Mix two peeled, pitted and roughly mashed avocados, 1 clove minced garlic, juice of half a lime, 1 chopped serrano or jalapeno pepper, 2 tablespoons chopped onion, 1 finely chopped medium-size tomato, and salt to taste

The toppings take a while to prepare, so start with them first. Let each one stand at room temperature while you prepare the others. Cover the guacamole until you’re ready to use it so it doesn’t discolor. If you’re feeling lazy and only have time for one of these, make it the pico de gallo.

Warm tacos, cover with foil and keep warm on a plate at the lowest oven setting. Sprinkle fish fillets with the juice of half a lime and grill until fish flakes easily (using a grill rack helps keep fish from falling through the grate). Pile tacos with fish and dollops of your choice of toppings.  Serve with a wedge of lime along side.

Or what the heck – dip the fish in cornmeal batter and fry it. Or just heat oil in a skillet and pan-fry the fish. Either way, you’ve got yourself the start of a fish taco, and then the toppings take it from there.

The white sauce is the closest I’ve found to the concoction they put on your standard fish taco in a San Diego restaurant without pretensions (no uppity pineapple-mango salsa). Since we don’t get to our favorite Ocean Beach taco source very often, we needed something to get us a fix. You don’t need a super ton of this per taco.

The guac is essentially Rick Bayless’ guacamole picado. The pico de gallo is essentially Martha Stewart’s.  The mix of all three, that’s essentially Baja Minnesota. If you don’t know where that is, well, you’re not from there.

Oh, and a big shout out to the home-town boys for making a good show of it at the track today, and to La Crescent Wine and Spirit for stepping up and sponsoring the national. That place is now officially on one of our road trip destination stops.

Roasted fish with mustard salsa

Note to self: Next time resist temptation to put food on plates that mimic the colors of the food.

 Yes, we're back to fish. There has to be some sort of atonement for the recent homemade ice cream transgressions. 

Roasted sea bass with mustard salsa

Adapted from “The California Cook” by Diane Rossen Worthington, a collection of California cuisine.

Ingredients

2/3 cup fresh tomato salsa (see below)

1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro or parsley

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

4 to 6 fish fillets (sea bass or other firmer fish)

Method

Place fillets on pieces of parchment or tin foil big enough to form packets. Combine salsa, mustard, olive oil, herbs and juice.  Spoon a heaping tablespoon of mixture on each fillet. Enclose fillets in parchment or foil. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes. At this point you can either serve the packets on plates or remove the fish from the packets to a serving plate. Serve along with remaining mustard-salsa mixture.

Fresh salsa: Chop 2 large tomatoes, 1 small hot pepper, 2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion, 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, 1 minced garlic clove, 1 teaspoon lime juice, salt and pepper to taste.

Rating: While I like both separately, I was somewhat skeptical about how a mixture of Dijon mustard and salsa would meld, but it definitely worked. Nice fresh salsa, very moist fish. The fresh salsa by itself is quite nice. The recipe gave the alternative of purchased salsa, but I can’t imagine that would be anywhere near as tasty.

Accompaniments: A salad of baby garden greens tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette and topped with sliced roasted beets and crumbled goat cheese. Oh, and plain brown rice because I was feeling too lazy to think of something fancier.

Strawberry ice cream

“Another prefect day, all jade and sapphire. No place can have more beautiful days than Minnesota when it behaves,” Sinclair Lewis said. Today was one of those very well-behaved days that make you remember why we live here.

After Dave brewed a batch of beer, we wandered down to the sun-soaked patio at Sandcastle, back for more fish tacos and people watching. Then it was time for a spot of gardening, including my favorite kind: Time to pick what passes for a blueberry harvest. It’s small, but it’s ours, and this year we made sure to get to it before the birds and squirrels.

Then we grilled asparagus from the farmers market and pork chops from Jagerstatter Farm, with a side of quinoa tossed with vegetables sautéed in cumin-garlic oil. 

I was in the market for the perfect ending to a pretty much perfect day, so I hauled out the ice cream maker to use up some of the quarts of strawberries we got at the market.

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream

Adapted from “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz, a cookbook devoted to ice creams, sorbets, granitas and other such goodies.

Ingredients

3 ½ cups sliced fresh strawberries

¾ cup sugar

1 tablespoon vodka or kirsch (I used vanilla-flavored vodka)

1 cup sour cream

1 cup heavy cream

½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Method

Toss sliced berries with sugar and vodka to dissolve sugar. Let macerate for one hour at room temperature. In a food processor, pulse together strawberry mixture, cream, sour cream and lemon juice. Refrigerate for one hour. Process mixture according to ice cream maker’s instructions. Makes just over a quart.

Rating: Wow. This did not disappoint. The recipe says to try to eat this soon after it’s been churned. No worries there. I used low fat sour cream because that’s what I had on hand. If it suffered from the substitution, we didn’t. There may have been some discreet bowl licking involved. Hard to beat fresh market strawberries over homemade vanilla ice cream, but I think this does it. Definite keeper.