Guest Post Day: Barb Freda of Babette Feasts

Greetings! Today is the annual guest post day of the blogathon where we are encouraged to swap posts with another blogger. I'm delighted to be swapping today with Barb Freda of Babette Feasts. Barb's blog was one of my discoveries during last year's blogathon, so I'm very pleased to have her here. She cooks, she tangos, she participates in triathlons, and she writes about all of these on Babette Feasts. You'll find my post over there today on a delicious South Indian shrimp dish from a sadly out-of-print cookbook.

And below, several worthy and welcome additions to my recipe collections here. Mmm, strawberries!

Strawberry Season

Welcome to my guest post for Sue! I blog over at BabetteFeasts.com, where I write about any and everything foodie, even when I have to make a stretch to make it fit—and lately I’ve been veering off-course now and then, but it’s all good . . . please come on over and visit now and then.

You probably all know that Sue is part of Blogathon2011, which is how we’ve come to guest post for each other (if you visit BabetteFeasts.com today, you will see Sue there). May 16 is guest poster day…so here I am.

I wanted to write about Strawberry Rhubarb pie (well, I really wanted to EAT strawberry rhubarb pie, and writing about it would have given me a reason to eat it), but when I shopped, there was no rhubarb to be found.

(An aside. Years ago, a piece of trivia entered my family’s folklore history. We were told in crowd scenes in movies, when the crowd is supposed to be murmuring as one, that all the extras say: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb…etc. I have no idea if it’s true, but to this day when we make reference to noise (for example), someone often can be found muttering rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb. True.)

So. Instead, I want to highlight a bunch of strawberry dishes I’ve made.

Most recently, it was my daughter’s gift to me on Mother’s Day: Stuffed French Toast.

Recipe Procedure:

1. Make your fave French toast egg-coating recipe.*

2. Whip softened cream cheese with a bit of powdered sugar and vanilla. Spread some of the cream cheese on the upturned side of two pieces of bread. Add sliced strawberries to one piece, then sandwich the berries closed by placing the second piece of bread, cream-cheese-side-down, on top of the berries. Press the bread slices together, just enough so they adhere to each other.

3. Dip the entire sandwich in the egg batter to coat the bread on both sides.

4. Melt butter in heavy skillet over medium heat. Place French toast in skillet and brown until golden on each side.

5.To serve, add strawberries to the top of the sandwich and dust all with powdered sugar.

6. Indulge.

*I have always loved Cook’s Illustrated’s “perfect” French toast batter, which combines 3 tablespoons melted butter with 1/2 cup milk, 1 egg, a bit of sugar (I use turbinado for extra flavor), a splash of vanilla, a dash cinnamon and 1/4 cup flour. The flour seems to give the bread something to adhere to…or visa versa, the flour seems to give the batter a WAY to adhere to the bread . . . either way, it gets fabulously crispy and this is the way I go all the time, even if my dear daughter did NOT go that way on Mother’s Day.

The second strawberry recipe I want you to try comes from Dorie Greenspan and I made this the first time when I was blogging (sporadically) with the Tuesdays with Dorie group. (my name is Barb and I am a failed Tuesdays with Dorie Blogger). Dorie’s La Palette Strawberry Tart is one of the best ways to showcase the berries: a shortbread crust (I’ve been known to ask how could there be anything better: butter and sugar held together by a bit of flour. I love me some shortbread.) topped with lightly sugared strawberries. Head to A Year from Oak Cottage to see the write-up the original “picker” did…and here is MY tart. This is one of my all-time faves, really.

Strawberries showed up last year on Babette Feasts in the form of a strawberry milkshake…ooh, what a treat…Doesn’t it sound so GOOD??

All in all? Enjoy Strawberry Season. It is fleeting. Make some jam, some ice cream, a milkshake, the tart above, some French toast and when you cannot use them all up, lay the strawberries out in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Freeze them, then, once frozen, bag them up in a zip-close bag. Come January, you’ll have a burst of summer to brighten a winter’s meal.

Strawberry Ice Cream Love

For the first time in many years, I'm in possession of a functioning ice cream maker. My friend Annie gave me a little Donvier ice cream maker for my birthday while I was in graduate school--a present she was justifiably pleased with herself for thinking of. (For months before my birthday, she would say, at random moments, "I know what I'm getting you for your birthday," and then laugh. Only when it arrived did I understand.) I made countless batches of ice cream in the Donvier (some with my friend Sarah Hart, who now has become an expert in all things sweet and especially chocolatey. If you're ever in Portland, OR, don't miss her store, Alma Chocolate. Annie (again wisely) sent me some of Sarah's sweets for my birthday a few years ago, and I'm still thinking of the Ginger Almond Toffee.)

Eventually, though, the part of the Donvier that was supposed to stay frozen stopped freezing, and the possibility of homemade ice cream went away. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize that KitchenAid made an ice cream maker attachment for its mixer. I've had a KitchenAid mixer for 6 or 7 years now--why didn't I know that sooner? In any case, I know it now, and last week, my ice cream maker attachment arrived.

I didn't have to debate what my inaugural batch of ice cream would be. It so happens that, nearly every night, Alex says, at some point, "I want some strawberry ice cream." And it also so happens that he has a June birthday. Since I never get him strawberry ice cream when he has his nightly ice cream cravings, I thought it was the least I could do for his birthday. I started looking up ice cream recipes online and immediately found references to David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop. It turned out that the Northampton library had it on the shelves, so I went to fetch it with dispatch. What a book. Immediately, I found many, many ice cream flavors I wanted to try. (And it turns out that David Lebovitz's website is even more tempting since it has recipes for baked goods as well.)

But for Alex's birthday, strawberry it was. I made one adaptation and made the strawberry-sour cream ice cream with yogurt instead, which, I believe, makes it strawberry yogurt ice cream. Of course, I will have to try it with sour cream for comparison's sake, but I don't think the yogurt version was lacking anything.

My garden is producing small numbers of lovely strawberries these days (when the birds and/or slugs don't get to them first), but I needed a pound for this recipe, so I bought a quart of local berries. The first step is to slice them and mix with sugar and a bit of alcohol.

Then add the yogurt or sour cream and then the heavy cream:

Then whir it up in the blender (I used my immersion blender right in the bowl) until it looks like a most delectable strawberry ice cream shake:

After that chills for an hour in the fridge, you let the ice cream maker do its thing. The results are sure to please even the most ardent strawberry ice cream fan:


As for me, I'm pondering the flavor possibilities for Fridays' work picnic. Ginger? Ginger with ginger snaps? Coconut? The possibilities are many, and I look forward to contemplating them all. I do think it's fortunate that the freezer bowl requires 18 hours in the freezer between batches. Otherwise, it would be ice cream all the time here, which, while delicious, might also be dangerous. There's a long summer ahead of us, and plenty of time for ice cream.

Strawberry Yogurt Ice Cream
adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop

(Makes about 1 1/4 quarts)

1lb fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
3/4 cup sugar
1tbs vodka or kirsch (I used Absolut Citron, which was all I had)
1 cup whole milk yogurt
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

1. Slice strawberries and toss in a bowl with sugar and vodka, stirring until sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring every so often.

2. Pulse the strawberries and their liquid with sour cream, heavy cream, and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until almost smooth but still slightly chunky.

3. Refrigerate for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Strawberry season

There are many reasons why I'm very happy not to have to go to work in the morning, but in June, one big reason is the strawberries. It's such a nice morning routine, to go out to the garden in my pajamas and look for strawberries. If I were a morning person (or, maybe, a person who had to go to work in the morning and still wanted her strawberries), I'm sure I could manage it--it just wouldn't have the leisurely quality it has now.

Every day for the past week or so, there have been more and more strawberries. Today, I picked almost a pint--more than I actually need for my breakfast. It's kind of a treasure hunt--the ripe strawberries are not always obvious. Next to the garden is a lovely Japanese maple tree, and so there are lots of red leaves that have taken residence in the strawberry patch. I can't just assume that any flash of red is a berry. Plus, the strawberries have spread, as they are wont to do, and so I find them on the other side of the raspberry canes, actually in the grass on the edge of the garden, in the cat mint, casually drifting across the herbs.

Sometimes I wish I were the kind of gardener who kept my strawberries in line, who moved the plants and was vigilant about not letting them spread. From reading my various gardening books, especially Barbara Damrosch's The Garden Primer, I know that I really should impose more discipline on the strawberries (not to mention the raspberries, which, this year suddenly seem to have expanded exponentially), but I can't help thinking that if I have more plants, then I'll have more berries. And it's not like the rest of my garden is so orderly to begin with.

The other thing, I've realized, with the strawberries, is that there's strategy involved. The birds like the strawberries too, and they especially like the ripe ones. Every morning, when I go out to collect what I can, I have to decide whether to pick a strawberry that could maybe use one more day out there, except that the moment it reaches its perfect state of ripeness, the birds might get it. Do I pick it when it's almost, but not quite, ready, or do I wait? There's a philosophical conundrum in there somewhere. Depending on the day, my mood, the berry, sometimes I pick and sometimes I wait. This year's berries seem especially good--bigger than I remember, and sweeter, even when picked a day early. I wonder if that blast of heat last week helped. Somehow, I don't even mind sharing the berries with the birds--at least they're somewhat discriminate. When things get eaten at the community garden (usually by the dreaded woodchuck), everything gets chomped on. I still remember, sadly, the row of carrots, of which every single one had been eaten at the top, as if the woodchuck had just eaten down them until his mouth got too dirty and then moved onto the next one. (I thought of that woodchuck when I read the article in the NY Times a few weeks ago called "Peter Rabbit Must Die.")

In other garden news, I also picked my first bouquet--I don't have enough flowers in either garden for even a little bouquet, but with some of each, it was enough:


































As an experiment, I included some cat mint, to see whether the cats would notice.



I think maybe they noticed.