Instant(Pot) Rendang

Rendang is one of the most delicious dishes in the Indonesian repertoire, and generally takes foreevvveerrrrrrr to make. It's one of the few things I'll ignore my beef ban for, but I never bothered to make it myself. Which is too bad, since then I could a) use good sustainable meat and b) eat twice as much of it. But it occurred to me that, now that I have an InstantPot, things like this should be easy. The idea of rendang is that the beef (or other meat, or even a potato in theory/according to some cookbooks but why) slow braises in coconut milk with a pile of spices, then when all the liquid is reduced out it browns in the coconut fat. The great thing about pressure cookers is they'll get a piece of meat fall-apart tender in no time. The less great thing is, because they're sealed shut, they're shit at reducing down liquid. But even though this recipe required the second step of reducing the coconut milk, the fact that the beef was already well dismantled meant I could do it much faster than in th traditional method, and the whole thing was definitely faster, and required less careful braising. It didn't occur to me til afterwards that I'd want to write this up, so all I have is a photo of the final product on my plate about to get devoured. It's unphotogenic brown mush, but it's crazy delicious brown mush. 100% will make again.

The ingredients are lightly adapted from James Oseland's excellent cookbook Cradle Of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia; method is adapted from this blog, one of the few InstantPot rendang adaptations I could find online. It's a more Malaysian version, though, where I was going for Padang, but I bet it's good too.

NB: There's a lot of ingredients in here, particularly spices and aromatics. Some advance planning/internet shopping may be necessary for the more unusual stuff. Western Indonesia's (and especially Sumatra's) history at the intersection of the spice trades between Maluku in the east (cloves, nutmeg) and India to the west (cinnamon) are strongly reflected in this dish. There's a moment making this where I dropped in the nutmeg and cloves and the whole thing smelled like German Christmas gingerbread - colonialism made scent. (The Germans got it from the Dutch, who colonized the Spice Islands and all of Indonesia, along with some bits of India. The Malaysian version goes even more Indian-influenced, with cumin and cardamom, reflecting British rule over both countries.)

InstantPot Beef Rendang

1.5 lbs good cubed beef, the kind you'd use in stew, with plenty of marbling
1 whole nutmeg
5 whole cloves
6 shallots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
fresh red chilis to taste (one habanero did it for me)
1.5 tsp turmeric powder
a 2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled & chopped
a 2-inch chunk of galangal, peeled & chopped
5 candlenuts (Oseland suggests unsalted macadamias as a substitution)
1 can coconut milk
a 4-inch stick of cinnamon
1 star anise
2 stalks of lemongrass, tied into knots
6 kaffir lime leaves
5 daun salam leaves
1 tsp kosher salt

1) Bash up the nutmeg into pieces under a Pyrex. Put it in a spice/coffee grinder with the cloves, grind into a powder.

2) Put the shallots, ginger, garlic, galangal, chilis, and candlenuts in a tall measuring cup with a bit of water. Use an immersion blender to grind to a smooth sludge. (You can also do this in a small food processor.)

3) Turn the InstantPot on to Saute. Add just a bit of coconut oil to the pot. When it gets hot, use it to saute the flavoring paste, making sure to stir enough that nothing burns. This mode is hot, and at least in mine there's no 'medium' setting option. (It's been suggested you could do this sauteing in a spoonful of the coconut cream from the top of the can. Probably true, but I didn't try it.) After a minute or two, add the ground spices, turmeric, star anise, cinnamon stick, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and daum salam. Stir fry another minute or two. Everything should start to smell really good.

4) Add the beef, coconut milk, and salt. Add enough water to barely cover the beef. Seal on the lid, and set to pressure cook for 45 minutes.

5) Now is a good time to cook something green to go with it, and get a pot of rice ready to go.

6) When the pot beeps, let it sit for 5 minutes then do a manual release. (This is a good time to start the rice.) Take off the top and set it back to Saute mode. Cook down until the liquid is gone and the fat starts to foam. At first you'll only need to stir occasionally, as the liquid thickens things will start to stick and constant stirring gets important. Let everything fry in the remaining fat for a few minutes until it gets nice and brown and/or you get fed up with how badly it's sticking to the bottom. The meat will be totally falling apart here - that's good. You may want to cycle the heat element on and off to keep it from getting too hot at the end.

7) Transfer the rendang into a serving dish and pull out all the whole spices and leaves you can. Consider deglazing the pot with a little bit of liquid and scraping up all the tasty brown bits stuck to the bottom, since there's a ton of flavor in there, but you don't want to be pouring anything too liquidy over the rendang. Serve with rice and a veg.

GBBO Curry

Wow, it's definitely been two years since I wrote anything here. Prof life is busy, y'all. Quick update: Still teaching at Swarthmore, married Matt, got an InstantPot for a wedding present. And somewhere in there we watched a lot of Great British Bake-Off on tv and just loved Nadiya, who (spoiler alert!) won a season or two ago. So I recently followed her on Twitter, where she's generally a ray of sunshine, and found out she has some cookbooks and bought one. And then thus week made the lamb bhuna, because of course that's the first thing I go for.

The bhuna was pretty great. Even though I didn't quite follow the recipe. First of all, it comes with a recipe for garlic naan, but instead of 200 grams (1 1/3 cups) of flour (yes, it's ll in grams and weight measurements. Brits.) I somehow misread and put 800 grams (5 1/3 cups) in the food processor, and didn't notice til I'd mixed in the other dry ingredients so it was too late to turn back, and so I quadrupled everything else too and we ate a LOT of naan. Which really isn't a bad thing. (NB: My kindle version of the book says 'add the water' in the naan recipe but doesn't ever say how much. If you believe the BBC version, it's 100ml - just under half  cup, or 7 tablespoons - for a normal 200g-of-flour batch. Also: 1 cup self-rising flour = 1 cup all-purpose + 1.5 tsp baking powder + 1/4 tsp salt, says King Arthur.)

Then also the recipe called for 800 grams (1 3/4 lbs) lamb, and I only bought just under a pound, and because the recipe already only uses half the curry paste it makes and I didn't want to divide by four, and also yay leftovers, I made up the difference with eggplants. And left out the bell peppers b/c eew. And made it in the InstantPot instead of on the stovetop, because that thing is magic for getting tender falling-apart meat bits. (As Chekhov said, introduce an InstantPot in the first paragraph, you have to use it in the third.) So what follows here is almost but not really the real thing, converted into cups and pounds for us Yankees, and really quite tasty. Cheers.

InstantPot Lamb-Eggplant Bhuna àla Nadiya
~1 lb lamb cubes
2 medium-small eggplants
7 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh ginger
2 small onions
2 hot peppers or to taste
5+ cloves of garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp turmeric
1.5 tsp curry powder, whatever that means to you
1.5 tsp garam masala
chopped cilantro

1. Roughly chop the onions, garlic, chilis, and ginger. Use a small food processor or, even better, an immersion blender in a tall measuring cup to whiz them into a smooth paste together with the oil, salt, spices, and 1/3 cup of water.

2. Chop the lamb into bite-sized cubes if it isn't already. Same with the eggplants.

3. Put the curry paste in the InstantPot, turn it on to the Saute function, and cook 5-10 minutes, until it starts to separate. Stir a lot - the saute setting is blazing hot and burnt curry paste is no good (though a little sticking & browning is just fine).

4. Add the lamb to the pot and brown the sides for another ~5 min. Add the eggplant and stir to coat with curry goo. Add 2/3 cup more water, put on the lid, and set to pressure cook for 30 min. This is a good moment to cook the naans (see BBC link above) and/or put on some basmati rice.

5. When the InstantPot's finished doing its thing, let it rest for another few minutes then vent the steam. take the top back off, set it back to Saute, and cook another 5-10 mins, stirring, til the sauce reduces. The eggplant will suddenly collapse into mush, which is fine. Taste for salt, serve with chopped cilantro.

Eggs & Tomatoes

Shakshuka. Why have I not written about shakshuka yet? 1) It's easy to throw together with minimal planning (if your pantry looks like mine, which for your sake I kind of hope it doesn't). 2) It's delicious. 3) It's got possibly the best name in the history of food. I'm on winter break (ie grading/course-planning/conference-talk-writing month), so time to make up for my past shakshuka negligence. Mea culpa.

Wine recommended.

Shakshuka is North African, or Israeli, or well what culture within spitting distance of the Mediterranean doesn't have some version of eggs baked in tomato sauce for dinner? There's likely as many versions as there are people making it: the NY Times published one, as did Yotam Ottolenghi (actually several from him); my version takes Smitten Kitchen's version as a starting point and then departs from it entirely. As usual, I make no claims to authenticity. All I'm saying is it tastes good.

Shakshuka!
1 lg (28oz) can crushed or diced tomatoes
1 fist-sized onion, or a leek
1-5 cloves garlic, to taste
1 can chickpeas
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika (or way way way less if you use the same uber-smokey kind I have)
1 tsp cayenne
olive oil
S&P to taste
good crumbled feta
1-2 eggs per person
chopped parsley and/or cilantro
good sourdough/pita/other bread to serve with
Optional other additions: 
harissa paste or powder
spinach leaves
crumbled sausage (merguez?) or bacon
diced bell or spicy peppers (I take it these are fairly traditional. Whatevs.)
Other veggies as desired

Leeks! Green parts welcome.

1) Rinse & chop the onion/leeks. Toss them in a cast iron skillet with some olive oil and saute til soft/translucent. If you're doing peppers of any sort, this is probably the moment to add those too.

2) Mince the garlic. Add to the saute party, along with the spices.

2.5) At this point, you or your forward-thinking cooking companion will realize that if you're gonna turn that leftover pizza dough in the fridge into pita breads, you'll need the cast iron skillet for that. Transfer everything to a Dutch oven. (This step optional.)

Stuff in pot.

3) Once everything's nice and fragrant, pour in the tomatoes and the drained, rinsed chickpeas. Let simmer until the sauce is thick enough to make indentations to set the eggs into. Near the end, stir in any spinach leaves or cooked sausage. Salt & pepper to taste.

4) Preheat the over to around 400. Use a spoon to make dents in the top of the sauce, then crack eggs into them. Don't scramble the eggs first, since that will make them runny and they'll just go everywhere instead of nestling in their little holes. Trust me.

Ignore runny scrambled egg in the upper right. Don't do that.

5) Crumble feta all over everything. I like a good Bulgarian sheep's milk feta, but take your pick.

6) Put a top on the pan and bake for around 10 minutes, until the eggs are set to your liking. Runny is good. Broil for the last few if you want the cheese to brown and bubble a little. If you forget, you could use your creme brulee torch to get the same effect, but only if you're totally insane. Don't look at me.

 7) Top with chopped parsley and/or cilantro, then scoop into bowls and eat with warm bread. Possible other variations include replacing cumin, cilantro, and feta with oregano, basil, and romano (ricotta?) for ouvo alla shakshuka, or whatever other national spin appeals to you. Buon appetito.

Also ignore shitty camera phone photos. Next time I'll charge my actual camera battery before cooking. Maybe.

Insanity Cake #2

Ok so I realize that this is my second post in a row about a truly insane birthday cake that if you have any sense at all you'll never make. But it's my blog and I can, so I will. Backstory: N's birthday was on Friday. When I asked what kind of cake he wanted, he suggested chocolate (duh) chevre cheesecake with rum and raisins. Which is incredibly sweet - the chevre part was for my benefit, since goat's milk is way kinder to my system than cow's milk - but also kind of weird. So I considered for a while and came up with this monstrosity. I'd been wanting to make him the amazing Raw Brownies from My New Roots, because they're amazing and chocolate (duh). I'd also been wanting to make the chocolate tart from my Payard cookbook, even though that got shot down as an idea in the initial round of cake planning. And he did say cheesecake. So... a layer of cheesecake? Under a layer of tart? With the raw brownies as a shell? Chocolate (duh), flavored with rum and cinnamon. Anything else?

I called my sister, who is a far better baker/far more insane than me. The two layers, she said, need some differentiation - just cinnamon up the bottom. And why make the bottom layer chocolate cheesecake when it could be marbled? It occurred to me that the whole thing was going to be a pile of very creamy textures; some crackle and crunch would be nice. Chopped almonds? Bruleed top? Both! I ordered a creme brulee torch on Amazon. I googled cheesecake recipes. I got the torch, realized my existing tin of lighter fluid wouldn't fill it, and not one of the drug stores in New Haven carries butane (really?!?), and ordered that on Amazon too. I de-milkified the whole thing to the extent possible, added graham crackers to the crust because cheesecake, went shopping, and baked for a total of about six hours. Mark Bittman, in his How to Cook Everything, says that replacing the cream cheese in his recipe with ricotta is just fine, so I figured replacing half of mine with goat cheese wouldn't be a disaster. Halfway through baking I realized - after ripping apart my pantry to find it - that my block of good chocolate had been finished in an earlier project, and ran out to get more, only to discover that my options were milk, white, or unsweetened, no bittersweet to be found. So I bought milk chocolate and finished my cocoa powder compensating (don't do that). And on Friday I snuck into N's apartment while he was in rehearsal, bruleed the top, drizzled the whole thing in melted chocolate, lit a candle, and surprised him. And it was fantastic. Totally over the top, rich, decadent, insane, and delicious. And totally worth it. Happy birthday.

Some notes: I've given instructions below for both low- and high-lactose versions. I used goat cheese and almond milk, but go ahead and use all cream cheese and heavy cream. I flavored with cinnamon and rum, but you could leave one out, leave them both out, replace the cinnamon with orange zest or the rum with creme de menthe or or the almonds with hazelnut or whatever flavor combination strikes you. Also, while the marbling of the cheesecake was cool, it all ended up kind of mixing together so you could skip a step and just make it all chocolate or plain. Your call. The original recipes list baking times as rather shorter than what I found necessary, so keep an eye out and check for doneness with a toothpick early and often.

Bruleed Chocolate Marble Cheesecake Tart Brownie Cake with Cinnamon and Rum Because Why the Hell Not.

Brownie crust (Adapted from My New Roots):
2 cups walnuts
1 cup almonds
5 cinnamon graham crackers (Omit if you want it gluten-free, or for Passover, or whatever)
2 ½ cups pitted dates
1 cup cocoa powder
2 tbsp coconut oil
¼ tsp. salt
(This will make extra. Enjoy the rest sprinkled over ice cream, eaten with a spoon, or pressed into another pan to make the originally-intended brownies.)

1) Make the crust: Whizz nuts in the food processor until well ground. Add graham crackers, and whizz again. Add remaining ingredients and blend until it starts to look kind of like garden soil and sticks together when you squeeze it. If it's not sticky enough, add more dates. Be sure to get the pits out first if you want any of this to work.

1) Dates. 2) Nuts & Grahams. 3) Ready to go. 4) Finished consistency.

2) Grease a 10x10 pyrex dish (I used coconut oil). Press the dough into the pan to form a layer a quarter-inch thick over the bottom and sides.

Marble Cheesecake (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup heavy cream/coconut creamer
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely
1/2 cup (goat) yogurt
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
4 oz of the mildest goat chevre you can find (or another half package cream cheese)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
cinnamon
rum

3) Make the caramel. Yes, this is nuts, but as the original recipe points out, it's also not hard and very delicious. Put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed pan (I used my cast iron) over medium-low heat, and stir fairly constantly. First it will clump up, then melt into a clear pale puddle. Keep going til it hits a nice golden brown. Pour in the cream or coconut creamer. It will bubble and get all steamy and the sugar will harden up again. Keep stirring. Let the sugar re-melt. Be careful when you can't resist dripping a bit on your pinkie to taste; this stuff's hot. Pour half out into another pan and set that aside over low heat.

1) Sugar starting to melt. 2) Post-cream. 3) Re-melted with cream. 4) Plus chocolate & yogurt.

4) Stir the chopped chocolate into the caramel still in one pan and stir til everything melts. Still over low heat, stir in the yogurt. you should end up with something nice and creamy. (If you want a firmer cheesecake, use slightly less yogurt, down to a quarter cup total/eighth of a cup per half-batch.) Turn off the heat.

5) Stir another quarter cup of yogurt into the caramel in the second pan. You should now have one pan of chocolate caramel and one of plain. (Or do these sequentially, washing the pan in between. Just realize that the second batch of caramel will be hard by the time you finish the first, and you can re-melt it in the microwave but use about 60% power and beware that it gets hot fast.)

Whipped cheeses.

6) Use a mixer to whip half of the cream cheese and half of the goat cheese til fluffy. Beat in the chocolate caramel at low speed. Beat in one egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla, a tablespoon or so of rum, and a good shake of cinnamon.

7) Repeat step 4 with the non-chocolate caramel in a separate bowl. At this point you've got one bowl of plain cheesecake filling, one bowl of chocolate, and a lot of dirty dishes.

Payard Chocolate Tart

8 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup cream or coconut creamer
1/4 cup milk or almond milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp rum

8) Put the chopped chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Pour the milk and cream into a small pot and bring to a simmer. Pour over the chopped chocolate and stir til melted. Let cool 10 min.

9) Whisk in the beaten egg, vanilla, and rum. Stick in the fridge.

Etc.

Raw or turbinado sugar

Chopped almonds

Melted chocolate

10) Preheat oven to 350. Pour some of the plain cheesecake into the crust, then some chocolate, then some more plain, etc, til you've poured it all in. Use a chopstick or the handle of a butterknife to swirl it around til it's all marbled. Bake about 35 min.

11) Pull the cheesecake out the the oven. Sprinkle with some chopped almonds and extra clumps of crust mixture and pour the chocolate tart mixture over. It'll still be a bit goopy and you won't  get nicely defined layers that's ok. Return to oven. Start checking for doneness after 15 minutes. The middle should be a little wiggly and the edges a bit cracked. This might take another half hour, so keep checking with a toothpick and don't despair. Pull out and let cool a bit.

A done cake.

12) Brulee: Cover any exposed crust with tin foil. (I didn't; that's why mine got singed.) Sprinkle an even layer of sugar over the top of the cake. Go to with the blow torch. I found this worked best if I went over an area once lightly so it got little beads of melted sugar, than again to melt most of it, then a third time to get any spots I'd missed. Once you get the sugar bobbling you can lay off with the flame; it will melt the bits around it and fill most little holes itself, and that way you avoid burning the sugar. If you do catch a bit on fire, blow it out, pull it off, fill the gap with more sugar, and re-brulee. 

13) Drizzle melted chocolate over everything. Scatter chopped nuts over the melted chocolate. Stick a candle in the middle. Yell 'Surprise!'. Enjoy.

A Moveable Crisp

My timing here is impeccable - now that blueberry season is thoroughly and inarguably over, I'm posting a recipe that calls for something like 6 cups of blueberries. Brilliant. But good frozen berries will work just as well, and soon enough it'll be summer again (right? right???), so I'm just gonna ignore that and go ahead and post anyway. Feel free to just bookmark this and come back in 9 months or whatever. Fine.

Two things happened to make this recipe happen. One was that my mother and I went blueberry picking, and it was a gorgeous morning, and the blueberry bushes were just bursting, and we had these big plastic buckets that hold more than you think, and long story short we ended up with something like twelve pounds of blueberries. The second thing is that my dear dear friend A., who lives in Syracuse, invited me up to his place for dinner. Which ended up more like munching/drinking/talking til all hours. But the food was damn good. (Pro tip: grill lime slices briefly before making mojitos out of them, for a lovely smoky caramelized flavor.) Me being me, I decided to make a blueberry crisp to bring along (along with a pile of cherry tomatoes from the garden, and some zucchini...). And no, plain crisp would not do. This would be coconut blueberry crisp! Because kind of like prosciutto, coconut makes just about everything better. And unlike prosciutto, coconut actually goes well in (non-savory) baked goods. And so a crisp was born.

Doggie bags.

Two last wrinkles. 1) This crisp would be gluten-free, because my mother doesn't keep any normal flour in the house so that wasn't an option. And 2) this had to be something I could carry out in bags and assemble on-site at quarter to midnight after a couple of mojitos, 'cause a pan of crisp sitting on the passenger's seat for the hour-and-20-minute drive up to Syracuse is just asking for trouble, and besides it's so much better warm out of the oven anyway. What I ended up with (and made a second time the next week for a bbq at my aunt's place) was totally portable and pretty fantastic. I suppose you could probably use any kind of berries or even chopped fruit, like peaches or apples (see, it is seasonally appropriate!). Sub in different nuts, different spices, whatever. Ditch the flax seed (though I promise it's delish, and adds both protein and hippie street cred) or double it. Mess with the spices at will. But here's the basic idea.

Blueberry-Coconut Crisp To-Go
Filling:
6 cups blueberries
~1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 cup shredded dried unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup almonds and/or walnuts
a good pinch of salt

Topping:
3/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup some sort of flour (I used tapioca, regular will do)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup coconut
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
1/2 cup almonds and/or walnuts
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 stick unsalted butter, at room temp

Assembled.

Ahead of time:
1)  Put the blueberries in a plastic ziplock or container. Coarsely chop (or grind in a food processor) the nuts. Put all of the filling ingredients in a bag (apart from the blueberries). Put all the topping ingredients except for the butter in another bag.

2) Go where you need to go.

3) Preheat your host's oven to 375. Put the blueberries in a roughly 2-quart baking dish. Toss with the contents of the 'filling' bag until everything's evenly distributed.

4) Borrow half a stick of room-temperature butter from your host. Cut it into small chunks, put it into a big bowl, then use a pastry blender or your hands to mix it with the contents of the 'topping' bag until everything starts to bind together. (You could probably use coconut oil here if you wanted to be vegan about it.)

5) Sprinkle the topping over the filling to get an even crust. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the filling is bubbly and the top is golden brown. Let cool as long as your self-control allows. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Baked.

End-of-Summer Bliss

-Sweet corn kernels, cut off the cob,
-Sauteed in butter,
-With salt and pepper,
-And a generous handful of chopped fresh basil.

That is all.

Pepper Pops

So you know how I said last time I'd be posting popsicle updates? Well here's one already. (I'm in Germany for the week, so keeping this post short and sweet. Like a half-eaten popsicle.) In my searches for interesting flavor combinations I'd come across a few pop recipes involving strawberries and black pepper, which frankly struck me as kind of weird. (Not that that ever stops me, but.) And then the inimitable Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen posted her own version, so I had to try it. These are a combination of that and a roasted strawberry-pink peppercorn-orange zest pop I found at The Vanilla Bean, but with juice instead of zest because a) it fills up more space and b) I'm too lazy to zest, particularly when there's a bottle of fresh-squeezed OJ sitting in the fridge. (Yes, I'm perfectly happy to hull and roast strawberries but not zest an orange. I never claimed to be consistent.) These probably aren't the popsicles you'd want to serve to a roomful of children - they're tart from the lemon and a little spicy from the pepper - but there's no kids in sight where I am and frankly I think they're delicious. (Would I be writing about them otherwise?) And then there's the added bonus that since any resident little ones won't be wanting to eat them anyway, nobody'll mind if you follow SK's suggestion and slip a little tequila into the mix. (I didn't but I can't imagine it'd be anything but wonderful.) So without further ado:

minus one small bite.

Bright Pink Grownup Spicy Sour Strawberry Popsicles
(makes 2 half-cup pops; multiply as necessary)
3/4 cup hulled and halved strawberries
1 tbsp maple syrup
drizzle of olive oil
a pinch ground black pepper (start small, increase to taste)
small pinch salt
just over 1/4 cup good fresh OJ
just under 1/4 cup lime juice (tweak OJ/lime ratio to taste)

1) Preheat the oven to 400. Spread the halved, hulled strawberries on a baking sheet, then drizzle with olive oil and the maple syrup and sprinkle pepper over. Roast about 20 minutes, til the strawberries start to collapse, but watch out that the juices don't burn. (Browning is fine, blackening isn't.)

2) Scrape roasted strawberries and all the gooey mess around them on the pan into a glass measuring cup. They've probably reduced down to about half a cup. Fill the measure up to the full cup line with slightly more OJ than lime juice (exact amounts will vary depending on how much strawberry you end up with and how tart you want it).

3) Dump all that in the blender with a small pinch of salt. Whirr, taste, adjust, pour, freeze.

Popsicle-palooza

It's time.

I've been saving this one up for a while, trying to make as many kinds of popsicles as I could before posting. And while this is nowhere near 'as many as I could', it's still a heck of a lot of popsicles. I'll probably update as the summer goes on. Hell, why stop at summer, I'll probably update indefinitely. But summer is nice in that there's all sorts of wonderfully delicious fruits and herbs and things popping up in the garden and the farmers market, which makes for some spectacular pops.

Clockwise from top: stone fruit medley, cucumber gin & tonic, jasmine rhubarb, blueberry basil lemonade, honeydew-mint, and mixed berry smoothie.

It started early this summer, when I got a craving for ice pops that just wouldn't go away. Specifically the apricot rice pudding pops from last summer's Bon Appetit, which are fantastic (tweaked recipe below). After a week or so I gave in and ordered some molds from Amazon (pro tip: I later found the same ones at TJ Maxx for half the price), and started pureeing and freezing basically everything I could. And then I caved again and bough a recipe book from People's Pops, who make incredible if super-hipstery pops in Brooklyn, and tried a few of their recipes. And it was all delicious.

Matcha green tea, piña colada, roasted plum with rosemary, and blackberry-nectarine.

Here's some things I've learned about making popsicles:

1.  All you really need is something you can fill a mold with. I was gonna say 'liquid', but actually that's not true. Thick glop works pretty well too (see i.e. banana fudgesicles below). That can be as simple as fruit juice or a pureed plum, or as complex and full of spices and herbs and alcohol and whatever as you like. Personally I like a little textural contrast, like chopped cherries in a nectarine puree, whole blueberries in lemonade, or nuts and granola in an almond milk-banana mixture. (Yes, really. Best breakfast ever.)
2. Almost everything will work, but not everything everything. I tried two different black tea-based pops, and both ended up tasting funny. Pureed blueberries end up kind of slimy, making for a not-great pop: either strain out the juice and use that, leave them whole or halved in the mix (very pretty), or make sure they're just a small percentage of the total pop. Carbonated beverages will expand more than other things, so leave more room than usual at the top. Too high a percentage of alcohol and it won't freeze (though then you just get a booze slushie, and there are worse things.) 
3. Taste the mixture before you freeze it and adjust as necessary. Add a little acid to make the flavors pop. Supposedly things taste less sweet when they're frozen (?), so some say to add a little more sweetener (sugar, maple syrup, honey) than you normally would. I dunno. Experiment. If you hate what comes out, run some hot water over to melt it down the sink and try something else.
4. Know how much your molds hold, so you can make an appropriate amount. Mine are a half cup each, but models will vary, particularly if you're using juice cups or ice cube trays instead of actual molds. If you make too much, or don't have enough to fill a mold, remember that these are basically smoothies and can be drunk directly from the blender. A glass liquid measuring cup is good both because a) it's a measuring cup and b) the little spout makes it easier to pour into the molds without dripping everywhere.
5. They're really photogenic.

Ginger-peach, apricot-pistachio, and watermelon-kiwi-lime.

These are all vegan (I think one calls for honey, just use sugar), and (almost) totally fruit-based, so I see nothing wrong with eating, like five a day. As always, play around with these. Where I use almond milk, sub in real milk, or coconut milk, or hemp milk, or whatever. Replace my maple syrup with white sugar/brown sugar/agave/honey/dates. Sub peaches for nectarines. Roast the fruit to intensify the flavors, or not. Strain it for a more refined texture, or leave chunks in the puree. I like to leave the skins in for berries and stone fruit (looks like confetti!), but you can take it out. Same for berry seeds. If you don't wanna buy molds, use cups, with spoons for sticks. Just for the love of god use good, ripe fruit. Crap fruit = crap popsicle, so don't expect to use rock-hard peaches and underripe strawberries and get a good result. If it's good to eat, it'll be good to freeze.

Ginger-peach and peach-tarragon.

I've put a bunch of pop recipes here that I made and liked. More are described in the photos but not spelled out; a general recipe for those is to chop/puree the things in the name, then freeze. If there's an herb or aromatic (tarragon, ginger), you can either blend it straight into the mix or get a more pervasive flavor by steeping it in a little boiling water and adding that instead, either straining out the herb or, again, blending it. You can find more ideas on my popsicle board on Pinterest, as well as this one, this one, and this one. Or just google 'popsicle recipes' and wait for the 4.5 million or so hits to pop up.

Stewed apricot with star anise, bubble tea, jamaica (aka hibiscus flower, aka red zinger), banana-granola, chocolate banana faux-fudgesicle.

Banana-Granola Breakfast Pops
Ok seriously, I was skeptical when I first tried these. But for real, after all that, they're my favorite. (Well, tied with the stone fruit bonanza pops below. Those things were awesome.) Think of it kind of like oatmeal, but frozen. And wonderful. The original recipe came from The Frosted Vegan.

3 parts banana
1 part almond milk
A few drops of vanilla (or almond) extract
A spoonful of maple syrup
2 parts granola
Half as much fresh berries
A small handful chopped nuts (optional. Actually, everything but the banana, milk, and granola is optional)

1) Toss the first four ingredients in the blender, and puree til smooth. (Add more milk if the bananas won't puree, but give it a good go before you do.) Taste, and adjust for sweetness.

2) Pour the banana goop into a pyrex measuring cup (or something else with a spout; this gets gloppy). Stir in everything else. Pour into molds. Freeze.

The best place for a popsicle: a backyard barbeque.

Stone Fruit Cornucopia

Stone fruits are my favorite fruits. To make this pop I basically went to the grocery store in mid-June, bought every kind of stone fruit they had, and mixed them together. Turns out that was a great idea.

Ok, so I skipped the peaches and apricots, so sue me.

White nectarines
Plums with white/pale yellow insides
Peaches
Red/purple/black plums
Sweet cherries

1) Chop the nectarines, peaches, and light plums. Eat the peaches. Put the nectarines and plums in the blender and puree.

2) Chop the cherries and dark plums into a small dice. Mix everything together and pour into molds. Freeze.

Blueberry Basil Lemonade
Boil enough water to fill half your molds, and add torn basil leaves and a bit of sugar. (I used Thai purple basil.) Set aside to cool. Add a squirt of lemon juice. Halve about half your blueberries and leave the other half whole. Mix, pour, freeze.

Apricot-Star Anise
Slice your apricots into wedges and add to a pot with enough water to half-cover them. Add a pinch of sugar and a few star anise pods. Simmer til the apricots get nice and soft and fragrant. Pull out the anise - these don't puree well. Blend, taste for sweetness and acid,  pour, freeze.

Apricot-Pistachio
Slice your apricots into wedges, and add to a pot with some almond milk. Smash up some pistachios and add them too. Simmer til the apricots get nice and soft and fragrant. Blend, taste for sweetness and acid,  pour, freeze.

Piña Colada
Blend 3 parts coconut milk, 2 parts fresh pineapple, a pinch of cinnamon, a bigger pinch brown sugar, and a splash of rum (Malibu?) until smooth. A squeeze of lime would be nice in place of the cinnamon too. Freezing is totally optional for this one, though if you're just gonna drink it you should up the rum content.

Cucumber Gin & Tonic
Cut into matchsticks enough cucumber to half-fill the molds. Mix one part gin to two parts tonic (or seltzer water), enough to almost fill them the rest of the way. Add a bit of sugar (seriously) and a squirt of lime. Leave enough room at the top of the molds so these don't bubble over everywhere like mine did.

Add mint and call it a mojito.

Banana Faux-Fudgesicle
Blend bananas with a good bit of cocoa powder, a spoonful of maple syrup, a touch of vanilla extract, and just enough almond milk to make it go. A bit of cinnamon or some chopped almonds would work well too.

Roasted Plum and Rosemary (yes, really)
Halve your plums, pull out the pit, and roast them at 400 for about 10 minutes til they get nice and soft. Meanwhile, boil a sprig of rosemary leaves and a bit of brown sugar in some water. Take out the rosemary (too tough), blend it all together, etc.

Roasted plums, rosemary syrup.

Apricot Rice Pudding Pops
(adapted from BA)
1 1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 lemongrass stalk, pounded with a mallet and tied into a knot
2 tbsp ginger, minced
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp short grain rice (arborio, sticky/sweet, etc)
1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/4 cup brown sugar
pinch of salt

1) Soak the rice in a bowl of water. Simmer the milks, lemongrass, ginger, and vanilla in a pot. Don't let it boil, or the coconut milk can separate.

2) Pull out the lemongrass and toss it. Puree the spiced milk and ginger until smooth. Drain the rice. Put the rice in the milk/ginger mixture, add the sugar and pinch of salt, and simmer about half an hour, without stirring.

3) Stir in the apricots, pour into molds, freeze.

Watermelon-lime-kiwi. Figure it out yourself.

Peach-Tarragon or Ginger-Peach
Steep some tarragon leaves or chopped ginger in boiling water. Puree with sliced peaches and a bit of sweetener.

Rhubarb-Jasmine
Brew some strong (but not bitter) jasmine tea. Chop some rhubarb into inch-long pieces. Just cover with the tea, add honey, and simmer til the rhubarb gets all soft and starts to fall apart.Mash the rhubarb up a little with a fork, pour, freeze.

Blackberry-Nectarine
Puree nectarines. Set aside. Puree blackberries with a little coconut milk, some lemon juice, and brown sugar. Pour alternating layers of nectarine and blackberry purees into molds.

Raspberries work well too.

Etc, etc.
Make a smoothie. Freeze it. Bam.

The End.

Pickled

So you know how last time I said it was way too hot to cook so I gave you a crockpot recipe? Well the last few days it's been too hot to even turn on the crockpot. Like tonight, I went to scramble an egg for dinner and couldn't even take it. In other words, sandwich and microwave time. (Except for two nights ago, when I set my toaster oven out on the back stoop to bake some stuffed summer squash. Yum.) And you know what goes great on those sandwiches and doesn't require any added heat at all? Pickles.

I just finished reading Michael Pollan's new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, on (surprise surprise) cooking, and all the anthropological/archaeological/evolutionary/biological/chemistry-ical issues surrounding it. I've been a Pollan fan ever since I read The Botany of Desire back in high school, and this one very much lives up. The first section is on roasting meat, with a focus on Carolina bbq (nom nom nom); the second is on soups and stews and braises; the third is on baking bread; and the final section is about fermentation of all kinds: cheese, alcohol, kimchee, pickles. It was the last that grabbed me the most, maybe because it's so far removed from the others: instead of an active process of chopping and adding and kneading and stirring, with the aid of a lot of heat and a bit of time, with fermentation the work is done by a (relatively) lot of time and a million micro-organisms, the same things other modes of cooking kills. There's all sorts of claimed health benefits about eating the kinds of live cultures (aka bacteria/fungi/etc) that live in fermented food (google "microbiome", or see Pollan's piece for the NYTimes magazine, or read anything Sandor Katz ever wrote), so that's cool. But I think what got me is the largely hands-off nature of the project: you're not constructing a product, or directly setting up a chemical reaction, you're creating the conditions for an ecosystem. And, ok, then eating that ecosystem. As Pollan says, it's less like cooking and more like gardening.

So a few days after I finished the book I'm walking around with fermentation on the brain, looking for an opportunity to try it out, when an article pops up in the Dining section of the Times about real lacto-fermented pickles, complete with recipe. And the day after than I find pickling cucumbers at the farmers' market downtown. Needless to say, by that night I had a batch going on my counter.

Any you know what? Pollan was right: there was something downright magical about the process. Lord knows I've seen some pretty sweet transformations enacted in my kitchen before: I've braised meat, baked bread, boiled bagels, made yogurt (successfully) and paneer (fine til I burned it), cooked a pile of tomatoes down into a pot of sauce and a pile of apples into apple butter, roasted Chinese duck and rotisseried Thai chickens and souped and stewed and chopped and sauteed with the best of 'em. But something about the time (3+ days) and the almost total lack of having to do anything combined with the fact that hey, you know that jar I set out the other night? There's something totally different inside it now, and it smells awesome - all that made it feel like something of a miracle. (Ok, the yogurt was a close second: rather less time, more stirring, less chopping, equally dramatic transformation, also technically fermentation. And granted he idea of bacteria doing something weird to food left out on the counter is hardly revolutionary - that's why we invented refrigerators. But still.) And yeah, the pickles were awesome.

Pickles!

Sour Dill Pickles.
These are fermented. In other words, no vinegar; all the work is done by the yeasts and bacteria on the skin of the cucumber and floating around in the air. No, it's not dangerous; according to Pollan the FDA has had zero confirmed reports of food poisoning from this sort of thing. The lactobacilli like the salt, and they out-acidify any nasty-making competitors. But do read Katz or Pollan if you're interested in the actual biology behind it, and don't eat it if it smells funny (rather than like pickles).

pickling (kirby) cucumbers
1tbsp (non-iodized) salt to 1 cup water (brine)
flavorings: smashed garlic
dill
caraway seeds
celery seeds
jalapenos
etc

1) Rinse the cukes in cold water. Wash out enough jars to hold them. (No need to sterilize, but do be sure they're clean.)

2) Boil enough water to completely cover the cucumbers in the jars. (May I recommend using an electric tea kettle to avoid heating up the kitchen while you're at it.) Dissolve 1 tbsp salt for every cup of water. Don't use iodized salt; that screws things up. Add a handful of ice, set aside and let cool to room temp.

3) Slice the cucumbers into spears or chunks. (Or don't.) Seed them. (Or don't.) Smash some garlic cloves. Chop some fresh hill, or get out the dried stuff. Slice some jalapenos. Or use whatever other seasonings you like, or none. Put the cucumbers in the jars, packed fairly tight so they don't float. Put in the herbs and things. Pour enough brine over top to completely cover the vegetables so they don't get moldy.

4) Set the jars in a dish (in case they bubble over) in a not-too-hot part of the house (good luck) and cover loosely with the lids. Watch and wait. After a day or so you should start to see little bubbles, and maybe smell something intriguing. After 3 days the water will be cloudy and you'll have pickles. Taste. If they're good, screw the tops on tight and stick 'em in the fridge. If you want them more sour, leave out for another day or two, tasting occasionally. Eat with a nice cold sandwich. Attempt with other vegetables than pickles if you're feeling adventurous.

Cool Beans

It's too hot to cook. Ever since I heated up my apartment to 87 degrees (87 degrees!) by making a pot of ratatouille, I've been making sandwiches, nuking leftovers, and occasionally boiling a little pot of pasta or sticking something in the toaster oven. (Or staying at my parents' house, where 90% of the cooking this time of year is done by my father on the grill.) So when I say to make this soup on the stove, ignore me. Seriously, don't do it. When I actually cooked this, a month or two ago, the temperature was normal and I could boil a pot of chickpeas without also boiling myself. From, now til September I'm recommending the crockpot method, which I haven't actually tested out but hey, what could go wrong? At the very least it's far less likely to turn your kitchen into a sauna. Which frankly right now is my highest priority, so.

This is a lovely soup, which I found on Pinterest (original here). It's basically liquid hummus, for better or worse. Given my feelings about hummus, I'm going with better. That said, it's one of those flavors that I love for the first half of a bowl and then kind of feel like enough's enough, so I'd suggest having a small bowl as an appetizer or alongside a salad and/or sandwich instead of making it your whole meal. But don't listen to me. (Do you ever?) Alternatively, it would make a good sauce for something like falafel, or maybe a dressing for a Middle Eastern-ish salad. In which case you'll want to make a whole lot less, unless you eat a *lot* of falafel.

Chickpea soup with olive oil, sumac, and lemon juice.

Chickpea Soup
2 cups dried chickpeas, or 1 big can canned chickpeas (dried tastes better but requires advance planning, never my strength when it comes to dinner)
4 cups broth of some sort (chicken/veggie)
water
1 big onion, diced
2-4 garlic cloves, minced
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. cumin
salt & pepper
olive oil
Garnishes: sumac, paprika, lemon juice, feta, parsley, cilantro and/or whatever else looks good, to taste

1) If you're using dried beans, soak them overnight first. If not, open and drain the can of beans.

2) Saute onion until it's translucent and beginning to brown, then add the garlic, cumin and bay leaf, and saute a minute more until everything's fragrant. (Note: On a hot day, skip this step. You miss out on all the wonderfullness that comes with a good Maillard reaction, but also a lot of sweat.)

3) Dump everything but the garnishes in a pot or crockpot. Cook until done. Crockpot: low heat. Stovetop: gentle simmer. Here's a handy table to make sense of cooking time, given all the variables.

	Crockpot (low setting)	Stovetop (gentle simmer)
canned beans	45 min?	30 min?
presoaked dry beans	7-8 hours	1-3 hours
unsoaked dry beans	are you nuts?	derrr… 4 hours?

Figure 1: Approximate cooking times

Do keep in mind though that those are very approximate, and a lot will depend on the freshness of your beans, the alignment of the planets, the will of the gods, and so forth. Keep checking, stirring, and adding water as needed. (Crockpot dry beans can be left to cook while you go off and have a productive/beach-filled day, just start checking near the end of the process.)

4) When the chickpeas are nice and soft, pull out the bay leaves and blend the whole mess til smooth. (Immersion blenders are good for this, if using a blender blender make sure to tilt up the little clear plastic bit in the middle so steam can escape, don't overfill, and keep a hand on the top to thwart explosions.)

5) Serve drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with whatever of the above garnishes sound good to you, alongside something Mediterranean: a cucumber-tomato salad, tabbouleh, a sandwich (grilled cheese? with feta and arugula?), or at least a nice chunk of bread to sop it up with.