Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

 It’s strawberry season!  If you have ever gone to the grocery store looking for strawberries and been sorely disappointed with the total lack of flavor the little red berries have given you you clearly didn’t go in the spring.  First, stop shopping for strawberries in the fall or winter.  Second, stop shopping for them in a grocery store.  Wait until spring and go to a farmers’ market.  These otherwise relatively expensive little berries are cheap and SO sweet this time of year.  The season is short so go now!  Buy them, eat them, enjoy them, freeze them for later, OD on them.. whatever you do, eat them now.  Strawberries are pretty much perfect this this time of year. 

There is a small farmers’ market at Rose Park on P Street on Wednesdays that runs May through October.  It’s on my walk home from work and I stopped by this week to see what they had.  After resisting the urge to buy an entire herb garden worth of plants (my apartment balcony seriously lacks gardening space) I bought strawberries and rhubarb from one of the stands and walked the rest of the way home with tall rhubarb stalks peaking out of my bag. 

I found a recipe for a Rhubarb Crisp published in the New York Times and figured it wouldn’t hurt, and would actually probably greatly enhance, the recipe if I added strawberries! 

 Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

adapted from the recipe published in the New York Times on May 14, 2010

Ingredients:

6 tbs cold butter, cut into small pieces

2 1/2 lbs of rhubarb, trimmed, tough strings removed and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces (I had no clue how much rhubarb this was so I just bought 5 stalks.  It all depends on what you want your rhubarb to strawberry ratio to be of course)

1 quart of strawberries washed, little leafy heads cut off ,“cored” and halved

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tbs orange zest

1tsp orange juice

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon ( I used cardamom and used a lot less…just a sprinkle because I feel like it’s a much more powerful spice than cinnamon)

pinch of salt

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup pecans (I used walnuts, mostly because that’s what I had on had but I also just prefer walnuts if a recipe calls for nuts.  Maybe that’s why I had them in the first place!)

Directions:

Heat your oven to 375 degrees.  Grease an 8 or 9 inch baking dish (or whatever you have really.  I’m sure you could use a large pie dish if you wanted to) with butter.  Toss the rhubarb and strawberries with the white sugar, orange zest and juice and spread into the baking dish.

Put the cut up pieces of butter, brown sugar, flour, cardamom, and salt into a separate bowl.  The recipe calls for pulsing all these ingredients in a food processor until the mixture forms pea size balls.  I just used my fingers to mix it all together.  It was satisfying and worked just as well.  Working with your hands gives you an excuse to lick your fingers anyway.  Add the oats and walnuts and combine!

 Crumble the mixture over the fruit and pop in the oven until the top starts to brown…about 45 minutes.

As it turns out crisps are not the most attractive dessert.  Despite how tart yet sweet it tasted my dessert was not photogenic.  Poor thing.  Don’t let the pictures deceive you, this stuff was good!  The cooked fruit with the crunch of the walnuts and the sweet topping was a great combination.  I wonder if it would be good over vanilla ice cream or pound cake.  Since I made an entire cake pan worth I guess I’ll have plenty of occasions to try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy strawberry season!

This recipe is dedicated to my awesome aunt in Brooklyn who I failed to mention in my last post.  It’s because of her that I have an ice cream machine!

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream – a preview of summer

It almost feels like summer and what better way to usher in warm weather and long nights than ice cream!  Mint chocolate chip has always been my favorite flavor.  What’s not to love about green colored ice cream with chocolate in it?!  I’ll admit rainbow sherbet was a close second but mint chocolate chip was always my go-to kind.  While I’ve moved away from the green colored brands I still like the more natural looking scoops. 

I made it to the end of the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook and found TK’s dessert section.  It was almost like fate.  Right next to the cherry ice cream recipe that will probably go untouched was one for mint chocolate chip! Perfect!  Unlike the other Thomas Keller recipes this one was relatively simple! 

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

as found in Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home

Ingredients:

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1/2 cups loosely packed mint leaves

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

10 large egg yolks

3 ounces 55% chocolate chips

 Eggs, Cream, sugar, mint, chocolate. It couldn’t be more simple!

Directions:

Separate the yolks from the white.  Ready.. go!       

 

 

 

 

 

Going…

 

 

 

Going…

 

 

 

 

… gone!

 

Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan and add the mint (picked from the stem and washed…. mine was really sandy!)  Turn the heat up to medium until it reaches a simmer, then turn the heat off and let the mint “steep” for about 20 minutes to transfer all the minty goodness from the leaves to the milk and cream.  I found local milk and cream at my Whole Foods so I am going to call this “slow” ice cream.  The creamery sells non-homogenized dairy products.  Other than promoting laziness I’m not really sure why milk and cream are homogenized to be honest.  Nothing wrong with a little shaking before drinking! 

 

Strain the leaves out of the liquid, add 2/3 of a cup of sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat to dissolve said sugar. 

While the sugar is dissolving whisk the remaining sugar into the egg yolks until the whisk leave a faint trail.

Slowly, add the hot milk/cream mixture to the yolks a 1/2 cup of at a time, making sure not to curdle the eggs. Strain the mixture back into the pan.  (Prepare an ice bath and set it aside for later).

Put your saucepan over medium heat and stir it constantly to make a custard.  Make sure to scrape the sides and bottom so it doesn’t get lumpy or gummy. Stir until the mixture thickens enough to coat your wooden spoon.  When it gets to this point take it off the heat, strain it into a bowl and put the bowl into the ice bath to stop the cooking process.  Leave the custard in the ice bath, stirring once and a while, until it cools off.  

Put it in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight.

I left mine in overnight (cooking it hard work!!)

 

 

The following day, pour the mixture into your ice cream machine and “follow the manufacturer's instructions”. When the mixture is the consistency of frozen yogurt add the chocolate pieces, let it churn a little longer, and then put it in Tupperware to freeze and then eat!!

I added a few pieces of chocolate on top! Can’t hurt.

Here’s to warmer weather, longer nights and a glimpse of the summer to come!