Crustless apple crumb pie - of a sort.

This is our third fall in this house. One of the great benefits of living here is that we have a tiny property absolutely packed full of fruit trees and bushes. We've got a plum, two cherries, a peach, elderberry, red raspberry, several varieties of grapes, a hazelnut, and an apple tree. Most of the other fruit producing plants have been an easy gift - they make food, we eat it.

But the apple tree has been a particular pain. It has a terrible infestation of codling moths - which, if you're not in the know, are the most common apple pest and the source of the infamous worm in the apple.

I am dedicated to not using chemicals on our food. For one thing, I believe it's healthier. Second, we can't afford to buy all our produce organic, so growing it offsets our budget by a lot. Third, I have an elderly and beloved dog who walks around on our property and I would not live with myself if the thing which killed her was the chemicals sprayed on and around our trees. So - for the past 3 years I have been systematically cutting the apples off the tree as soon as there is evidence of a worm and immersing them in water for 3 days. We have a massive compost pile. But all this ridiculous work has now paid off in the form of several dozen apples. Their texture and taste seemed similar to a Granny Smith, so we knew it was 'the pie' for them.

Not coincidentally, apple harvest time is also walnut harvest time. You'll note that I didn't mention any walnut trees on our property. But here in rural France, walnuts line the roads and I have collected at least 50 pounds of walnuts that now need to be used. Walnuts + apples=yummy.

I don't have a rolling pin (it got left behind in Greece) so I needed something without pastry. Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible had exactly the recipe I needed. Mrs. Beranbaum introduced me to the technique of reducing the juices of apples after macerating them in order to condense the flavors and use less flour in the filling, resulting in a much more apple-y flavor. I use this technique exclusively in similar desserts. I am seriously telling you that this book has traveled the world with me and is one of 4 cookbooks I won't live without. The flaky pastry alone is worth the price. (I once served this pastry to a French woman in Greece who told me it was THE BEST pastry she had ever eaten, which I take as a very high compliment coming from a French person.

Anyhow, the real key here is the crumb crust - the rest is just apples, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and technique. The crumb crust would work beautifully on any 'crumble' you wanted to make. I wasn't sure on the vanilla, but I thought 'what the heck, we can try it' and I'm really glad we did.

Crumb Crust for one apple (or other fruit) crumble or pie:

2 TB plus 2 tsp. packed brown sugar
1 TB sugar
1/2 cup walnut halves
1/16 tsp salt (I just throw in two pinches)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (dip and sweep) AP flour
1/4 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
3/4 tsp vanilla

Put all the dry ingredients in a mini-food processor and whir until well blended and nuts are mostly gone. Add the butter (don't use it too soft - the crust won't be a crumb) and whir again until it's well incorporated. Sprinkle vanilla over the mixture and use a fork to mix it.

If the butter is the right temperature, I find this crumbs very nicely - with a good mix of large and small bits. If the butter is too soft, it becomes more of a dough - still tasty but not as pretty.

The man of this house doesn't really like apples - they are too 'plebian' for him, but even he has admitted that this is one of his favorite desserts. He eats it with no coercing, which is unusual for him. So, it's delicious and I love it!

Fresh Fig dessert

Figs are difficult. If you live in an area where they grow, you are a fortunate soul. If you don't, the chances of you getting your hands on good figs is slim.

But if you do - what do you do with them? Besides just eating them, of course. Ripe figs are honey-sweet, with a beautiful crunch from the seeds. They don't keep well, either (which is why it's difficult to get them in your hands if you don't live where they grow.)

This way of serving fresh figs for dessert is from the Mayo Clinic. It's about as healthy as dessert gets. I, of course, have tweaked it a bit. Cut your figs in a cross pattern from the stem nearly to the bottom, leaving enough of the bottom to hold the fig together. Mash about a tablespoon of mascarpone cheese into the fig, then top with a walnut half (though I would say for eating purposes it's better if you top it with a few nice chunks of walnut).

My tweaks: Stir a few drops of lemon juice and a pinch of salt into the mascarpone. Sprinkle with praline powder (crunch, crunch) before topping with your walnut.

A delicious variant of this would be ginger (which is a perfect flavor pairing for figs). In addition to or instead of the walnut, top your fig and cheese with lovely, perfect candied ginger. If you love ginger (like I do), you could chop some of the bits and mix that into the mascarpone. Yum! I candy my own ginger here in France, but if you have access to The Ginger People ginger bits, go with that. Nobody does candied ginger better - it's soft, hot, chewy, sweet - in other words, perfect!

This is a great make ahead dessert. It's easy, it's tasty and refreshing. It's also a bit unique, if you aren't a big 'fig eater'.

Desserts from France: Crepes with peach jam

If you're wondering why the headline says peach jam but the picture features something reddish/black, I'd like to introduce you to the black peach. As of now, it appears to only grow in my neighbor's yard, a situation I shall quickly remedy by planting every single pit I can get my hands on. Come 3 or 4 years from now, I'll be the queen of black peaches. Or someone will.

Anyhow, I had this wonderful peach jam that didn't quite fit in the jars. As you know, any 'leftover' sweets MUST BE EATEN IMMEDIATELY or the world will stop turning and everything on the Earth's crust will be swept off the mantle, leaving a big hunk of rock. It's such a small price to pay to save all of humanity, so I went ahead and planned my use.

One of the wonderful things the French have give us is crepes. Now, I'm going to be honest - American desserts as a rule are far superior to other country's desserts, taken on a whole. That's because we got the best of all the ethnic stuff and aren't trapped by our traditions. But, crepes make a wonderful dessert from France and are dead simple.

Here's the 'recipe' if something so simple can be called a recipe:

1 cup flour
1 cup milk (maybe plus a bit)
2 eggs
2 TB butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar

(If you're not making dessert crepes, leave out the sugar and double the salt)

Mix it all together until is very pourable - about the consistency of kefir, if you are familiar with it. Pour a Tablespoon of oil into your frying pan then wipe it around with a paper towel. It should just have a sheen of oil, any more and your crepe will slide around the pan. Put it on a medium high heat, then add about 1/4 cup of batter, quickly rotating the pan to evenly coat the bottom with batter. If your crepe won't run, or comes out too thick, add a bit of milk until it works right.

Cook until the whole top has lost its gloss and you see bubble forming underneath. Turn it. I use a knife and my fingers, but you can use a good sharp spatula to turn it over. Let cook for about 10-15 seconds, then fold in half and half again and remove from the pan.

You need to be fast, crepes cook very quickly. The first one is usually a throwaway - it doesn't color correctly and you rarely get the batter right straight away. So if your first one is awful, that's how it's supposed to be.

The beautiful thing about crepes is that they don't soak up liquids, so they are great for something that clings, like a loose peach jam or similar.

Arrange your triangles to look nice, add whatever your topping is and you have a lovely, easy, not very filling dessert. And because a lot of people think it's hard to make crepes, you might impress someone.

Olive Oil Desserts

I like to explore unique dessert ingredients. I once made a carrot cake (my guy's most favorite dessert) while in Greece. The carrot cake is ubiquitous in the US and not unheard of in England, but when the Greeks found out this cake had been made with carrots, they developed sudden stomach aches. They were confounded, offended, and shocked that I would put this vegetable into a dessert.

It sounds funny, I suppose, if you've always eaten sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and carrot cake, but these ingredients are exotic in some parts of the world. Never mind that the Greeks have 'spoon sweets' made of rose petals, tiny eggplants, and immature walnuts in the husk.

What I'm saying is that a dessert ingredient is only exotic if it's new to you. It's part of our cultural heritage, these vegetables used in desserts. And that's great.

To quell the Greeks' disturbance over my 'crazy' carrot dessert, I thought I'd explore olive oil desserts. There are not many, but they do exist. One is an olive oil and lemon sorbet and the other is an Olive Oil Cake. Both of these recipes include an olive oil and fruit compote, which really is a great way to serve something unique and delicious. What is important when you're making a dessert with so few ingredients is that you use the absolute best pure olive oil and ripe fruit.

I served both of these desserts to non-Greek people for whom carrots are okay dessert ingredients and olive oil was exotic. The cake with citrus compote was a real hit - in part because people feel better about eating a dessert with healthy olive oil than they do about butter. The lemon-olive oil sorbet was not as great a hit, but would be an excellent finish to a light meal or especially at an olive oil tasting.

Don't be afraid to think outside the 'box' when it comes to dessert ingredients - the 'box', as you can see, is of our own making.

Lemon cake with blackberry sauce

This recipe is my interpretation of a lemon cake with blueberry sauce found on epicurious.

I chose it because it was a low-equipment cake recipe. I don't have a lot of equipment, having moved several times in the past few years. I have no mixer and I don't have cake strips, so a simple cake is all I can manage (and happily, all I need) for now. Still, lemon desserts are my absolute favorite, and I love cake though I'm not a big fan of frosting.

Most of the flavor in this cake comes from the icing glaze, which is understandable - I've never met a lemon cake that didn't have to be soaked in lemon syrup to be lemony. I have blackberries on hand because it's that time of year, and I do love to use what I've got. Plus, the mustiness of ripe blackberries is beautiful alongside the tart lemon.

It's a lovely casual cake - it doesn't get fancy, but not every cake needs to be fancy.

Lemon Blackberry Cornmeal Cake:

Glaze:

• 1 1/2 cups (packed) powdered sugar, sifted
• 2 tablespoons (or more) fresh lemon Juice

Cake:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cornmeal
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice, let stand a few minutes
  
• 2 large eggs
• 1 TB finely grated lemon peel
• 3/4 tsp vanilla (I used limoncello, because I had it on hand).
  
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted, cooled

Make the glaze. Add enough lemon juice to make it a thick paste. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Butter & flour the bottom of a 9 inch pan.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the eggs into the milk mixture. Add liquids and lemon zest to dry ingredients, fold in just until there are no dry lumps. Scrape batter into prepared pan, put in the oven. Bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out dry. Remove and spread the lemon glaze over it (up to about 1/2 inch from the edges - it will run) while it's still hot.

For the sauce: Smash 2 cups of blackberries (or most any berry) with 1/2 cup of sugar - bring to a boil then let it cool.

Serve. Eat. Be happy.

Greek Yogurt for a better world

Ok, so 'for a better world' is a slight exaggeration. Still, I deeply believe that Greek Yogurt is probably the single best thing that rocky peninsula on the Med has given us. And when one considers that a Greek island - Crete - is the basis for the Mediterranean diet, that's sayin' somethin'.

We'll get around to making Greek yogurt in a minute, but first: a little history. Back when I moved to Greece, the US had not yet embraced Greek yogurt, aside from specialty stores.

In Greece, there are several kinds of yogurt available, but the one we call 'Greek' yogurt is the traditional one - σταγγιστο. Strangisto means strained, which should give you a hint at how making Greek yogurt is done. When I mentioned my newfound love to my Mom, she told me that the States had now embraced ΦΑΓΕ, or Fage. ΦΑΓΕ (pronounced FAH geh, means 'to eat' but is an acronym for the family's company name) is a Greek brand, but while they probably make the best φετα (feta cheese), their yogurt is definitely not the best Hellas has to offer. If you're ever in Greece I cannot recommend strongly enough that you eat gobs of ΝΟΥ ΝΟΥ (pronounced noo-noo) yogurt - full fat (which is 10%). Its creamy goodness makes you believe in every impossible thing you've ever heard of.

After making Greek yogurt, there is no better way to eat it than the traditional ways: with spoon fruits or honey. Spoon fruits will be covered at later times, including the upcoming candied green walnuts and other lovely tasty preserves.

With all of that said: Recipe for making Greek yogurt at home.

'Proper', or traditional Greek yogurt is 10% fat, a feat achieved partly by adding cream to the milk and partly by straining off the non solid portions. I've tried it with the cream, but didn't find it made enough difference to worry about. I just use whole milk.

Make yogurt. Line a colander with a sterilized cheesecloth. Add yogurt. Wait until the yogurt is reduced by about 1/2. Throw away the whey, chill the yogurt. Eat.

That's the simple version. The more complex version is this:

Sterilize all equipment by boiling in water for a few minutes. Heat the milk to 185F or thereabouts, hold for 30 minutes. (this step encourages the milk proteins to align themselves correctly). Cool the milk to 110F. Add your starter (which can be a new, unflavored live active culture yogurt or a freeze dried yogurt culture). Insulate the mixture to hold it as close to 110 as possible. I usually keep it in a hot water bath, but you could also hold it in an oven with the pilot light lit or put it in a cooler with jars of boiling water. Whatever keeps it warm without getting it too hot and killing the culture.

Wait some hours. If the above part seems tedious or difficult, you could use a yogurt making machine.

Don't fuss with the yogurt. If you mix it around, the proteins won't bind and the texture will be wrong (though the taste will be just as good.) After some hours, use a spoon to see if it's ready. It's ready when it has a firm consistency which doesn't stick to the spoon. If it's slimy, it's nearly ready - check it every half hour.

When the yogurt is set or nearly set, do the cheesecloth/colander thing above. Chill. Eat. Enjoy.

While some might think of baklava as the eponymous Greek dessert, for me a Greek dessert is one of two things: fresh fruit or yogurt. Baklava is fine, it's okay, it's even good. But it's not an everyday treat. You could do worse than finishing each day with a plate of homemade Greek yogurt and honey. Much worse.

Stay tuned: I'll be candying green walnuts and if this crazy, ovenlike heat ever breaks, I'm going to make lemon hazelnut, lemon walnut, and lemon-black walnut biscotti. I will also be using my remaining raspberries in a profligate manner: to make real raspberry gelatin dessert.

Raspberry Jam in 3 ways

Starting last week, my raspberry canes are producing about 4 cups of raspberries every day. They seem to be slowing, but not by much. While I enjoy a handful of raspberries, even I cannot eat 4 cups every day. The same can not be said for the black cherries I ate last month, but there is no better way to use a really ripe black cherry than to eat it whole and fresh. I'm not ashamed.

Anyhow, I filled the tiny freezer we have with raspberries for later use, but when that was full I still have pints and pints of red raspberries needing to be used, and fast. Since we used about a pint of raspberry jam every week last year, it won't hurt to have some on hand, and I had sugar - so off we went.

The results are fantastic. The first batch, pictured above, had 4 cups of raspberries and 4 cups of sugar. Recipe found randomly online. Cooked until it jelled on a cool plate. The result, to my taste, is too sweet (though arguments can be made that such a state doesn't exist). In addition, it set well, but was a bit 'sticky'. Still, how bad can it be? We'll eat it.

Second batch was mostly like the first, except I used 6 cups of berries and 4 cups of sugar. I was tweaking the recipe, figuring if it didn't set, I'd strain the seeds and we'd have a fabulous raspberry dessert sauce. Again, I cooked until it jelled on a chilled plate. This batch turned out more to my liking. Not quite as sweet, set beautifully. The weird thing was that both of those batches, despite the significant difference in raspberry amounts, made exactly 3 jars of jam (they're about the size of a pint jar). What's up with that?

The third batch was something of a disappointment. I used to love strawberry season for many reasons, but very close to the top of the list was freezer jam. Certo makes a liquid pectin, which, when combined with lemon juice, berries, and sugar makes a wonderful, beautiful, fantastic no-cook jam. I never had a bunch of raspberries to use this with, but if I had I would have. Unfortunately, Certo products are not available in France, and I've never seen a remotely similar product until now. Daddy has introduced a product called 'Ma Nouvelle Confiture' which supposedly makes a no-cook jam. So I bought it and used 200 grams of raspberries, mixed with their sugar/powder product. It's fine, it's good, I won't spit it out. But it's not what it would have been if Certo had been involved. The biggest complaint I have is that it's really, really sour. The sourness almost overtakes every other aspect of the jam. Still, we'll eat it - probably with some Greek yogurt, because the natural creamy sweetness of Greek yogurt makes almost everything better.

That's it for now. Coming soon: Raspberry mousse (without the raw eggs, so not technically a mousse, but the intent is there) and my adventure with making Greek yogurt. I've done it before, so it won't be a disaster. Until then, may all your desserts be worth the calories.