A QUIET REVOLUTION {for jamie oliver}

 
Like so many of you, I'm a huge fan of Jamie Oliver and the tireless effort he has put into changing the eating habits of young people not just in the UK, but across the globe. With obesity a national epidemic here in the United States, we need all the help we can get, don't we?

Back in May, when Jamie's team asked if I would do something to celebrate Food Revolution Day this year, I jumped at the chance. I wrote this little piece for the JOFR website...

Revolution sounds like an immense undertaking. Huge. Monumental. As a kid who wanted to make changes in our world, I was deeply intimidated by this notion. Did I have to be another Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez to make a difference? I felt paralyzed by the enormity of the task.

I've come to realize that every day when we go to the market, cook for our family and friends, it's not just for nourishment and enjoyment, but is a small political act as well. Caring about the people who grow our food, who raise eggs and animals for meat and dairy, even setting aside a patch of earth to grow some of our own herbs, fruit, and veg... all these small acts (when you see them over and over again across the globe) make up a revolution.

Thankfully, Jamie Oliver recognized the radical and profound possibilities of such humble ventures. He has empowered us all to act in small ways together.

I knew I wanted to do something to celebrate Jamie's Food Revolution Day this year. At first, I imagined something big and elaborate like hosting a cooking class for kids, or throwing a huge party. But then I remembered that simple cooking for, and with, my family and friends is enough, and more true to who I am.

We asked Otis, our middle-schooler to bring his buddies to our house for supper. Then, we invited their parents, and our wonderful neighbors and their kids. Our evening was loose, organic, and informal. We followed the classic American tradition of grilling burgers and sipping root beer floats. We chatted, ate, laughed, and enjoyed each other's company.

If this simple joy is revolution, I'm in.

CHOCOLATE DIPPED ICE CREAM SANDWICHES

Come June, my head spins as end-of-the-year school functions approach with rapid fire. And this year, I also find myself in the last week of finishing the manuscript for my book, which feels very much like giving birth to a 3rd child! Life is extremely busy, and can feel like a bit of a whirlwind for someone like me who enjoys being social, but also craves slowness and quiet.

My natural clock keeps telling me it's time for summer vacation - my inner teenager wants to sleep 'til noon, laze around in the sun, read trashy novels, and gobble ice cream sandwiches while belting out, "School's out for summer... School's out forever..."

Have you tried an It's-It? Ice cream, sandwiched between two oatmeal cookies, then dipped in chocolate... that's right. That's the kind of summer treat I'm craving these days. It's-Its were created in San Francisco in the 1920s and you can still find them tucked into ice cream freezers all over the West Coast. When I saw a recipe for homemade It's-Its in Jennie Schacht's charming new book, I knew I had to make them with Lilah and her buddy, Anni.

I hummed Alice Cooper the whole time.

INGREDIENTS - slightly adapted from Jennie Schacht's I Scream Sandwich!
(printable recipe)

Oatmeal Cookies:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour {GF folks: I use Pamela's Bread Mix and Flour Blend}
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• generous pinch of sea salt
• 1 1/2 cup rolled oats {GF folks: be sure to buy GF oats}
• optional: 1/2 cup raisins

Chocolate Shell:

• 1/2 pound semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons coconut oil

 Ice Cream: Jennie makes her own, but I was too lazy this week.

• Store-bought vanilla ice cream for filling. For those of your who can't tolerate dairy, try Coconut Bliss... it's really creamy and good. {GF friends: be sure to check the ice cream label to be certain it's gluten-free}

Preheat oven to 350.

First, go ahead and make your cookies. In a standing mixer with the paddle attachment, or using a medium mixing bowl with a hand-mixer, cream together butter and sugar.  Add egg and vanilla. Blend until ingredients are integrated.

In a separate small mixing bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. While the standing mixer is still whirling, slowly add the dry ingredients. Finally, add oats to the batter. Mix until batter is well blended.

Line 1-2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop dough onto the lined cookie sheets. Jennie very wisely suggests making 24 tablespoon size cookies. (We went ahead and made 14 bigger cookies - piggies, I know. From here on out, I'll stick to Jennie's reasonable portions!) Give the cookies some room to spread during baking, and use your fingertips to flatten the dough a bit, flatter disk-shaped cookies make for more manageable ice cream sandwiches.

Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes until golden, rotating the cookie sheets halfway through baking to ensure even browning.  Let cookies cool for 5 minutes on their baking sheet, then transfer them to a rack to finish cooling.

Once cookies have cooled completely, scoop (slightly softened) ice cream between two cookies to make a sandwich. Stick the prepared sandwiches in the freezer on a parchment-lined baking sheet to chill thoroughly before dipping them into the chocolate shell.

Making the chocolate shell... Gently melt chocolate with coconut oil in a double boiler, or microwave. Once the chocolate is warm, liquidy, and smooth, stir and you've got your dipping chocolate.

Take each fully-frozen ice cream sandwich, and dip it halfway into the the melted chocolate. Let the drips fall away and then return the dipped sandwich to your cold, parchment-lined baking sheet.  Freeze the sandwiches again for 15 minutes, until the chocolate had chilled and hardened.

Eat and enjoy! Wrap any extra ice cream sandwiches in parchment and store them in the freezer until you're ready to munch again.

makes 12 ice cream sandwiches (we made 7 monster-size sandwiches, but I will definitely stick with a more manageable size next time)


Happy Summer everyone!!!

If you want more summer ice cream deliciousness, check out Phyllis' genius recipe for S'Mores Ice Cream on Food 52...

CREAMY CORN PUDDING

My girl Lilah doesn't like to brush her hair. She's way too busy playing imaginary games, collecting rocks and flowers, listening to Harry Potter on CD, kicking butt in Tae Kwon Do, and sometimes she is just too busy... cooking.

When my friends Leslie and Ethel gave me a copy of their book At the Farmers' Market with Kids, I was stoked, and so were Otis and Lilah. My kids like their time in the kitchen, especially when they're in charge. With corn still in its late-summer sweet spot around here, the corn pudding recipe seemed like the one to try. Lilah was the chef, and I was her assistant.

Leslie and Ethel's book gives clear directions for young readers and highlights simple tasks for even younger kids. Lilah and I had a blast making these creamy puddings.

Needless to say, you don't have to be a kid to enjoy this recipe...


INGREDIENTS from At the Farmers' Market with Kids by Leslie Jonath and Ethel Brennan
{printable recipe}

• 1.5 to 2 cups fresh corn kernels, cut from 2 large ears of corn
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 shallot, minced
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped chives
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup grated white cheddar
• 3 cups milk
• 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal

Preheat oven 350. Butter one 8 inch baking dish (or I used four 4 inch ramekins).

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Saute the shallot, chives and corn kernels, stirring occasionally until corn has softened - about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a medium bowl whisk together eggs and salt. Stir in grated cheese and set aside.

In a medium sauce pan, bring 2 cups of milk to a gentle boil. Whisk in corn meal. Lower heat, stir regularly, and cook corn meal until it resembles a thickened porridge - about 5 minutes of cooking.

Remove sauce pan from heat, whisk in the remaining cup of milk, the corn mixture, and the egg mixture. Pour into buttered baking dish(es).

Bake the pudding(s) for about 45 minutes until the tops are golden brown. A toothpick stuck into the center of the pudding should come out clean.

Eat and enjoy!

Serves 4-6

STRAWBERRY LEMONADE POPSICLES

Summer is approaching at warp speed and I'm not complaining. Otis and Lilah have begun a pre-summer ritual of running around the backyard with our neighbors Aidan and Emmett every evening. I feel like I'm channeling my own mom and generations of parents as I call the kids in after the sun has nearly set. When they tromp upstairs for bed, they are breathing hard and falling-down tired just as kids should at the end of a full day.

After dinner recently, all fours kids kept coming into the kitchen mumbling things like "I'm still hungry." I suggested making popsicles together. "Yes" they all chimed in. So I put the kiddos to work squeezing lemons, washing berries, tasting everything as they went, and making a good sticky mess of the kitchen.

I love to see the satisfaction kids take in their own kitchen creations. Who need store-bought pops when making your own is this simple, healthy and fun!

INGREDIENTS
(printable recipe)

• 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (Meyer's if you can get them)
• 1 1/2 cup strawberries, stems removed
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup light agave syrup

Place all ingredients (including the water) in a blender and mix well. If you aren't patient enough to make popsicles, you could go ahead and drink the strawberry lemonade you just made. Otherwise, fill a popsicle mold with the liquid and freeze until solid.

Enjoy on a long summer evening!

A Summer note: We are packing our bags to hit the road for a month this summer. Get ready for travel photos and recipes soon! xxoo

AMAZING MINT CHIP ICE CREAM

Don't we all dream of lounging around in our pjs eating ice cream on a weekday? Well, my boy Otis had Spring Break last week, and that is just what he did.

Otis can groove with some serious savory cooking and he is a master when it comes to chopping veg, but he also swoons for making sweets. Fresh Mint Chip Ice Cream seemed like a good way for us to celebrate the Easter Break, the green explosion of spring, and our bountiful backyard mint patch.

Otis says this is the best ice cream he has ever tasted (and we all know that 11-year-olds are ice cream experts!)  I personally think the whole recipe is quite dangerous. I found myself wanting to slurp the minty custard before I even froze the stuff - need I say more?

INGREDIENTS thanks to David Lebovitz

(printable recipe)

• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cup sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 packed cups fresh mint leaves
• 5 egg yokes
• 5 ounces dark chocolate, chopped and melted

Warm milk, 1 cup of cream, sugar, and salt in a medium sauce pan, over medium heat. Stir to melt sugar. When sugar has dissolved, add mint leaves to the pan. When everything is hot and steamy, remove the pan from the heat. Cover, and let the mint leaves steep in the warm milk for an hour.

After an hour of steeping, pour the minty milk mixture through a strainer into a medium mixing bowl. Using the back of a wooden spoon, press down on the mint in the strainer to release as much flavor as you can, then toss out the mint leaves and wash your strainer. Return infused milk to the medium sauce pan and rewarm over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally.

(Pour the remaining cup of cream into a large mixing bowl. Place strainer over the top of the bowl, and set aside.)

Whisk egg yokes in a separate, smallish bowl. Pour a ladle or two of the warm infused milk into the yokes and whisk to integrate. Then pour all of the yokes into the sauce pan with the warmed minty milk. Stir continuously with a spatula and cook custard, over medium heat, until it begins to thicken. (Lebovitz says the mixture is done when it reaches 170 degrees, or is thick enough to coat the spatula.)

Pour custard through the strainer into the large mixing bowl holding the cream. Stir. Place mixing bowl over an ice bath and continue stirring until the custard has cooled. Transfer to a covered container. Refrigerate for two hours, or even overnight, then freeze in your ice cream maker, following the manufacturers instructions.

While your ice cream maker is working its magic, put a storage container into the freezer to chill.

When your ice cream machine is done, pull the chilled storage container from the freezer and drizzle some melted chocolate across the bottom. Then add some ice cream to the container. Then drizzle more chocolate over the ice cream. Use a spoon to break up the mixture and you will have nice broken streaks of chocolate (homemade chocolate chips!) running throughout the ice cream. Continue adding layers of ice cream and drizzled chocolate. Place your now marbleized ice cream into the freezer to firm up again before serving.

Enjoy!

My talented friend and fellow blogger, Phyllis Grant of Dash and Bella, recently posted a recipe for Mint Stracciatella Ice Cream. If you don't already follow her blog already, you should - everything she does is delish and I imagine her ice cream is no exception!

RUSTIC APPLE TART

Simple pleasures. This is what it's all about for me these days. When P, the kids, and I were on the road last year, slowness was our theme. Action and adventure does not describe our travel style - we had tons of family time and savored it deeply. I really believe the serenity of our time away added years back onto my life.

I am trying to figure out ways to integrate this attitude into our American lives. Lilah still finds great happiness in imaginary play and collecting twigs and flowers. Otis now goes to our local middle school and only gets in the car once in while.  Paul and I are trying to limit our commitments and spend lots of time at home enjoying our kids. Little things.

What does this have to do with food? In our family, where much of life revolves around eating, this means taking time to harvest blackberries and picking apples with friends on their bucolic land in West Sonoma County.

Rach and Justin invited a slew of us to spend the day with them. It was true Indian summer. The leaves had started falling, a bit of crispness cooled the air while still being warm enough for kids to swim, pluck juicy concord grapes from the vine, and pick apples... Life is good.

I like how uncomplicated this apple tart is - just apples on buttery pastry with a sprinkle of sugar. Simple pleasure. But I also enjoyed gussying this apple tart up a little bit with a drizzle with Homemade Caramel Sauce and voila .... Caramel Apple Tart, anyone?

INGREDIENTS adapted from David Tanis' Platter of Figs
(printable recipe)

• 1/2 recipe flaky pastry dough
• 2-3 pounds apples 
• 2 tablespoons Turbinado sugar 
• Homemade Caramel Sauce (optional, but highly recommended)

Prepare your dough as per the instructions here. A couple of notes:

First, you only need half of the recipe for the pastry dough for this recipe. Have fun making a tart of your choice with the other half.

Second, please don't roll the dough too thin or the edges get pretty charred before the apples can cook all the way. (Tanis suggests rolling the dough into a 16x11 inch rectangle. I had more success when I made a thicker 11x6 inch oval of dough.)

Place the rolled out dough (on a parchment-lined baking sheet) into the fridge while you prep your apples.

Preheat oven to 375.

Peel and core apples and slice them thin. Take the prepared dough from the fridge. Lay the apples on the dough in long layered rows. ( If you aren't going to serve your tart until later, Tanis suggests covering the prepared tart in the fridge for up to 8 hours.)

Sprinkle Turbinado sugar over the apples and pastry. Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the apples are tender.

We found the tart to be most delicious when served warm and drizzled with caramel sauce. When we ate the leftovers, we'd quickly warm up a slice in the oven before noshing.

Enjoy!

What else is cooking?

• Monika's awesome short film about making apple tart
• Emma's quince and apple pie
• Adrianna's spiced apple chips
• Caitlin's pear tart

BOLINAS BLACKBERRY JAM

I'm feeling nostalgic these days.

I want my kids to have those memories. You know the ones where you wander through mysterious verdant paths searching for berries to pick. Where you have a basket in hand. A few minor wounds from thorny bushes. Fingers stained with berry juice.  Those memories.



Just after I put together this post to share with you, I got a very kind email that seemed amazingly prescient. Pam Fitch, the dear mom of Paul's best friends, wrote to me about how my husband would pick blackberries in the San Juan Islands when he was a kid visiting for the summer.  Pam would promise to make jams and cobblers, if the kids took the time to pick berries. I guess Paul spent most of his time eating his berries long before any could make it back to the kitchen.  When I shared the email with Paul, we both smiled at our long love of the blackberry hunt. For both of us, the memories are just as sweet as the fruit.

Here's to carrying on the tradition and joy of picking blackberries. Foraged berries may be funkier than those gorgeous specimens we can buy at the store, but we picked 'em ourselves, damn it. Now let's make some jam with our bounty....



INGREDIENTS
(printable recipe)

• 2 1/2 pounds or 5 cups of blackberries
• 3 - 3 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 lemon (zest and juice)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Wash the berries. Place berries  and sugar in a dutch oven or stock pot.

Zest the lemon and blanch the zest in hot water for 2-3 minutes to remove the bitter oils from the skins. Add blanched zest, along with the juice of the lemon, to the dutch oven. Stir everything together.

Set the dutch oven on the stove top over high heat. Stir berries regularly to avoid burning. You want the mixture to cook and bubble away vigorously. Taste periodically for sweetness and add a little more sugar, if you think it needs it. Trust yourself. I personally like my blackberry jam nice and sweet.

While your jam cooks, get your jars ready. A while back, Paul took a preserving class with local jam goddess, June Taylor, who taught Paul a very easy sterilizing technique: place clean jars on a baking sheet in a 250 degree oven while your jam is cooking (for at least 10 minutes). Paul also puts a glass Pyrex pouring cup in the oven along with the jars to sterilize the all the glass. He then washes the lids and seals in hot soapy water. (If you use Weck's glass lids, you can sterilize them in the oven too.)

Set everything aside when sterile and wait for jam finish cooking.

Your jam should be done as it becomes thick and syrupy after about 10-15 minutes of bubbling. There is a whole jamming mystery about achieving the proper set and there is also a lot of subjectivity about this notion. I followed Paul's suggestions and he said to look for the the foam to lessen and the bubbles settle down a bit as the jam reaches the point of doneness.

Scoop hot jam into the jars using the sterile Pyrex pouring cup. Be sure to use a clean paper towel to wipe any excess jam for the lip of the jar before you pop the lids on. Seal immediately and the hot jam locks everything into place.

Enjoy!



makes 6 cups

WAFFLE POTATOES

I know. I know.

Simple cooking is my thing and what am I doing making my own waffle cut potatoes? Well, my boy Otis, who is just shy of ten, wanted to make dinner for the family. He had a menu in mind... steak, salad with walnuts and his own signature salad dressing, and waffle cut potatoes. How could I deny my boy the fun of cooking this delicious meal? I kept reminding myself that at least the steak and salad were simple enough.

In the end, these potatoes were indeed labor intensive and really really good.  Otis' first dinner party (he invited our neighbors to join us) was an elegant and tasty affair. I was impressed with his ambition and determination....and all of our bellies were very happy.