Purple Pie

 

 
It got too hot to bake frivolously, but I wanted pie. I saw a recipe for a refrigerator pie, and the idea of pie that requires no baking sounded good, but the ingredient list turned me off: oreo cookies, toasted sweetened coconut, coconut cream, whipped cream, cream cheese, fruit juice, and raspberries. I thought that sounded like a terrible thing to do to raspberries, so I streamlined the whole flavor/texture thing and came up with this.

for crust:

5 oz gingersnaps, I used Trader Joe's Tripple Ginger
4 T melted butter

filling:

8 oz cream cheese
3/4 cup blueberry jam
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup water + a couple tablespoons
1/4 oz envelope unflavored gelatin

1 additional cup heavy whipping cream
a pound of blueberries

Crush up the cookies and mix with melted butter.  Press firmly into the bottom of a pie pan and refrigerate until needed.

In a small dish, soften the gelatin in a couple tablespoons of cold water. Add 1 cup boiling water and stir to dissolve. Once the gelatin is completely dissolved and has cooled somewhat, put it together with the cream cheese, jam, condensed milk and 1/4 cup heavy cream in a blender and blend the heck out of it. Set aside.

Whip the cream until it holds soft peaks. Gently mix in the jam blend then pour half of it into your pie dish. Add a layer of berries, then the rest of the filling. Refrigerate over night, then garnish with whatever you have lying about.

1. Do bother to soften the gelatin in cold water first. If you just throw it in the boiling water, it tends to clump up in this really annoying way.
2. I bet you could use any flavor of jam/fruit/cookie combo for this. Strawberries with a Nilla Wafer crust. Peaches with a pecan sandy crust. Cherries with crust made of almond biscotti. Orange marmalade with chocolate graham crackers.
3. I used a spring form pan. If you want to do that too, first cover inside of the ring with a layer of foil, then insert the bottom to hold the foil in place. When the pie sets up, remove the ring then peel the foil away from the pie.
4. The white stuff in the picture is about 2 oz cream cheese, with enough cream mixed in to make it act like frosting, and enough lemon juice to make it a little tart and enough powdered sugar to make it a little sweet. Dump it on the pie, push it around to make a circle and heap up any leftover berries in the middle.
5. Next time I think I'll use something else for crust. The gingersnaps taste good, but I think they overwhelm the berries. David disagrees, though, so use your best judgement.

Basically, this is just whipped cream with a little jello in it to keep it from going flat. There is a thing called fool which is almost exactly  like this, except without the cheese and gelatin, so it's very sloppy and you just eat it out of a bowl and there's no crust. Fool is nice, but there isn't much textural interest. A cookie crust definitely adds some thing to the whole business. Also, the concept of an icebox pie seems quintessentially American to me, which makes it an appropriate thing to eat for Independence Day, which is when I made this thing.

Blueberries, Cashews, Vinaigrette

 
At some point, it finally got warm enough for me to be interested in eating greens. I've never met a store-bought salad dressing which I liked enough that I thought I would consume a whole container of it before it went bad. They're usually gooey, or slimy, or intensely sweet, or all of the above. Even the better kinds are just sort of Ok. No big surprise there- by definition they are designed for the mass market, and for a degree of shelf-stability undesirable in a home made food.  Most of the time I just dash some balsamic vinegar and olive oil on my salad and call it good. Unfortunately, this can get a bit monotonous. Here's something zippier:

Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons fresh ginger, grated very fine
1 small clove garlic, also grated very fine
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 cup light soy sauce
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons olive oil

I find that keeping my ginger root frozen makes it grate better, but that's the closest this recipe gets to food-ninja technique. I keep the dressing in the fridge and slop it on greens, or chunks of tofu. It's pretty good on rice too. You have to be a bit careful though because it'll give you garlic mouth somthin' powerful.

My salad hasn't got anything particularly Asian about it, but the dressing reminds me of the stuff that comes on salads in Japanese restaurants. I tried this with raisins and pine nuts, but I think I like the blueberries better. They almost have a citrusy thing which does well with the garlic and sesame. I could go either way on cashews vs. pine nuts, but visually, the cashews are more interesting.

Fallen Chocolate Souffle Cake

A number of years ago, someone gave me a subscription to Gourmet Magazine. I got tired of tripping over the stack of mags and finally clipped out the recipes that I thought I'd be likely to use within my lifetime. Now that the magazine is defunct, I sometimes wish I'd kept the whole things, until commonsense kicks in and I realize that way lies the path to an appearance on Hoarders.

Instead, I present to you, this cake. I am happy to say that I have no idea which issue this recipe came from. Oh. Haha- there  it is at the bottom of the clipping. February 2004. How serendipitous.

12 oz bittersweet chocolate. I used most of one of those Pound Plus dark chocolate bars from TJ's.
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, although I ignored the 'unsalted' part as usual, and used salted.
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar- That's 12 tablespoons, which becomes relevant during the instructions.
5 large eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup AP flour

Pre-heat oven to 350. Butter a 9-inch springform pan. The instructions say to line the bottom of the pan with a circle of buttered wax or parchment paper, but I think that's silly. I just dusted the buttered pan with cocoa powder, since the bottom of the pan comes out and makes a perfectly good thing to serve with.

Melt the chocolate & butter in a double boiler over barely simmering water. You could do this in a microwave, but you risk over-heating the chocolate and curdling the batter. I like the double boiler method, because it is a bit slow, but more controlled.

While the chocolate is melting, separate the eggs. Put the whites and the salt into a fairly big mixing bowl and whisk the bejebus out of them until they make soft mounds around the whisk. Add 6 Tablespoons of sugar, whisking between each one to prevent the eggs from deflating. Continue whisking violently until the whites form stiff shiny peaks and there is no separate liquid left in the bowl.

Keep an eye on the chocolate. Stir it a bit every once in a while. As soon as the chocolate is melted, take it off the heat. If you stick your finger in it, it should be pleasantly warm, that way you know it isn't too hot for the eggs.

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar & vanilla together, then drizzle into the chocolate. Then whisk in the flour.  Once the chocolate & yolks are combined, give the whites one last beating to take up any liquid that has separated out. Mix about a third of the whites into the chocolate to lighten the texture, then gently fold the chocolate mix into the rest of the egg whites.

The instructions say to bake it for 35 to 45 minutes, but I am suspicious of my oven's functionality. I actually raised the temperature to almost 375, and went for about 40 minutes. Since it is a souffle related thing, I can't keep opening the door to look at it, and I felt little anxious about it. I guess I should get a new bulb for my oven light. Sigh. As you can see, the point of the thing is that it poofs up quite a bit in the oven, then falls down as it cools and forms a macaroon-like crust. Let it cool for a good 10 or 15 minutes before you take the sides of the pan off.

It looks pretty good, but it came out a little dry. 5 minutes less in the oven, I think. The topping definitely is a plus.


Strueberry Glue

a cup each of frozen strawberries & blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

Put the berries & sugar in a little saucepan on medium. As soon as it begins simmering, mix the starch with a teaspoon of water and stir it in. Wait til it thickens, and remove from heat.

I liked a number things about this recipe right off the bat. It uses the entire egg, for one thing. I am not totally against recipes that use uneven quantities of whites & yolks, but I'd rather not have leftover bits and parts in the fridge. Also, it allows you to adjust the degree of sweetness quite a bit. I didn't add quite the full amount of sugar called for. I prefer more chocolate and less sweet, the older I get. The recipe does not call for anything exotic or expensive, which is unusual for a Gourmet Mag recipe, neither does it require an unusual investment of time, technique or bizarre equipment. An electric mixer would be a nice thing to have for the egg whites, but it took me very little time to do it by hand and I got a good upper-body workout at the same time.