Strawberry Sorbet

I promised abundance. Mostly because Bruce and I have come home to it. So I thought I'd start celebrating it with an easy sorbet, one Bruce whipped up in no time flat.

If you recall, I gave the run-down on frozen treats here. (And Bruce and I should know, having written this book and this one.) But all those definitions contain exceptions, right? I mean, chefs make buttermilk sorbet these days. It has dairy but it's a sorbet. What gives?

I think it's the lack of eggs and cream. And maybe that does make it a sorbet, even with the dairy. Life's all about trade-offs, right? And compromises. And grace.

Let me repeat that: life needs more grace. It needs more give, bend, flexibility. (And at my advanced age, I know what I'm talking about.) Grace is an old-fashioned word, for sure. Yep, it means Audrey Hepburn, as in graceful. But it also means at peace, as in gracious. But it also seems the very essence of summer. Winter is for Calvinists, grammarians, and other scolds. Summer is for dancers of all sorts, even just those who can dance only in their minds. Like me, who can trip across a flat floor but am addicted to modern dance. Do you watch So You Think You Can Dance? My word, I love that show. I love the grace, even if I can only imagine it in my body.

Anyway, strawberry sorbet. It's summer's grace.

Click to read more ...

Strawberry Gelato

And what do you put on that rhubarb crisp? Strawberry gelato, of course. Because strawberries and rhubarb are just so fantastic together. Like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Or the Captain and Tenille.

Gelato. It's one of my favorite things. I can't keep it in the house. I'll eat right through it. So a batch for a special occasion, with a dessert like that crisp, is just the thing indeed. I can share it with friends and get even more pleasure per bite.

In case you need a run down of your favorite frozen treats, here they are

Gelato: whole milk, no cream, lots of eggs.

Ice Cream: whole milk, cream, eggs.

Philadelphia-Style Ice Cream: whole milk, maybe cream, no eggs.

Sherbet: milk, no cream, no eggs.

Sorbet: no milk, no cream, no eggs.

Make sense? Barely. When we were writing The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book, filled with gelati and sherbets, a sequel to The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, filled with ice creams and sorbets (and a book that's sold over a quarter million copies!), we made a startling discovery about American milk production. It's not as cream-rich as Italian milk.

Most whole milk sold in the U. S. is skimmed in some way--and the amount of fat remaining in it is mandated state by state. California has about the best whole milk in the country. Other states have it less rich. But nobody has it at Italian levels.

So to get that real gelato mouth feel (and yes, that's a technical term), we found we needed to add a little cream to the batch, to compensate for the vagaries of stateside milk production.

So without further ado, let's get to it, to making 1/2 gallon of gelato (if your maker can produce only 1 quart, cut this recipe in half).

Click to read more ...

Summer Pudding

We were sitting in a small cafe in New York a few years ago, back when we lived in the city, and a friend breezed in, hot from a morning walk, blotting her forehead. She saw us, waved a drippy hand, and said, "Have you made your summer pudding yet?"

There are stranger how-do-you-dos, I suppose. Especially in New York. But this one certainly took us back. We shot each other that look that married couples perfect and said, "Um, no."

Well, I'll give her this: summer pudding has since become a necessity around here, an old-fashioned, unmolded, British dessert that requires minimal effort in the heat but pays off big time when served. Plus, it's made with white bread. The kind that I grew up with. (Or as we used to say in the South, "that I come up on.") Sliced sandwich bread. OK, not the stuff with hydrogenated oil and corn syrup. Blech. Instead, sliced white bread that's heavenly soft without anything fake in the mix.

Here's the way to get a summer pudding done.

Click to read more ...

Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

Here's a fond if sad farewell to rhubarb and my favorite berries (although they're not berries but technically fruit). The stalks are turning tough; the strawberries, watery. But what a season it's been! With all this rain here in the Northeast, we've been awash in strawberries. Maybe we've lacked heat to sweeten them, but they've arrived in great abundance.

And so a here's to a dinner-party celebration for the season: a thick, jam-like layer of fruit, topped with a maple oat crumble. What could be better?

Click to read more ...

Strawberry Buttermilk Ice Cream

OK, I'm going to dispense with the blather and get right to the recipe. Because, really, when it's ice cream, there's no point in dithering. So here's some ice cream know-how from the guys who wrote The Ultimate Ice Cream Book and The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book (lots of gelati, sherbets, and semifreddos).

Click to read more ...

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

Not that I'm complaining (much), but it is after Easter and this is what our rhubarb looks like in the garden. (Um, if you want a notion of scale, notice the acorn cap at the top center of the picture.)

When I taught literature at Saint Edward's University in Austin, I always had to talk my students into agreeing with T. S. Eliot that April was "the cruelest month." April 15th and they were in shorts, T-shirts, half of them already sporting well-honed tans. "What does this old guy have against April?" they'd ask. If they were with me now in the Berkshires, they'd have no problem catching on.

Anyway, we wanted some taste of spring this weekend, some way to mitigate April's cruelty around here; so Bruce turned to THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK to make a strawberry rhubarb crisp.

If you know anything about me--and there's no reason you should--you know that I'm a fanatic for crisp (although lately I've sort of been pretty cake-obsessed, thanks to this.) Crisps are like pies but with oats and lots of crunchiness. What's not to like?

Here's how it went down:

Click to read more ...