I got to sample this cocktail at Kitchen Conservatory last night and thought is was a genius idea...refreshing & fruity yet seasonally festive, something a bit different for the holiday season. This was so good that I'll I'm thinking of making a few for an upcoming backyard bonfire. Kudos to Barb Nack, who served this drink in her Girls' Night Out class.
Pumpkin Spice Pina Colada
Kelly's note: I reduced the ice by half for each drink. If you like an icier beverage, use a full cup of cubes.
For each drink:
2 ounces Coco Lopez cream of coconut
2 ounces pineapple juice
1 ounce spiced rum
1/2 cup of ice
dash of pumpkin pie spice, for garnish (recipe below)
cinnamon sticks, for garnish
Mix all ingredients, except the pumpkin pie spice & cinnamon stick, in a blender and whiz until smooth. Pour into a glass, add a cinnamon stick & sprinkle with a pinch or two of pumpkin pie spice.
If you stir the drink gently with the cinnamon stick, you'll create a spicy swirl. Yum.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Or...at least it used to be. I think I've gotten to the point that I've out-grown it. I used to throw pretty wild "Tarts & Vicars" costume parties, but some resulting drama put an end to that years ago. Plus, I don't have kids to dress up and trick-or-treat with. In fact, I've begun to loathe trick-or-treaters around here...it's usually just a bunch of teenagers sans costumes. I'm now the grumpy old lady who keeps her porch light off and her curtains shut.
This year, I'm hosting a two-person dinner party and monster movie marathon. I'm planning a simple supper: black & orange cheese and fruit platter, green curry, and caramel popcorn. In thinking about my Halloween menu, I wanted something sophisticated but easy, festive but not childish. As a result of my research, I started a list of grown-up party menus. Then, I asked a couple of my favorite foodie/blogger friends to contribute a round-up of recipes. Here's what we came up with...
2 quarts apple juice, divided 1 piece fresh ginger (about 2-inches), sliced 1 cinnamon stick 1/2 teaspoon whole cloves 1/4 cup honey 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 28-oz. can pumpkin puree
bourbon or spiced rum, optional
Pour 3 cups of the apple juice into a saucepan; add the ginger slices, cinnamon stick, and cloves. Bring the mixture to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and cook for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat, add the honey and brown sugar, and stir to dissolve.
Add the pumpkin puree & remaining apple juice. Refrigerate the mixture until well-chilled.
To serve an adult beverage, add a shot of bourbon or spiced rum to a glass of ice. Fill with the pumpkin juice.
Note: If the mixture is too thick for your liking, strain it through a mesh-strainer before serving.
In the middle of a rather trying work week, as I was reading the last 100 pages of Beth Howard’s memoir Making Piece, I was overwhelmed with a pie craving. All of Howard’s talk of the healing powers of pie finally got to me: I NEEDED to make pie. I was feeling a little sad (and angry) that evening, so I raided the kitchen for pie ingredients. A small bag of frozen strawberries wasn’t going to cut it, but I did have a can of pumpkin puree in the pantry...mixed with a couple eggs, some milk, sugar, and spices...and a pumpkin pie was in the oven in less than 30 minutes. The pie was an homage to the approaching autumn, which I am looking forward to after a miserably hot and dry summer. The golden pumpkin pie came out of the oven at 8:30 that night. I stayed up reading until it was cool enough to slice and eat.
And you know what? I felt better. There is definitely something to this pie therapy. As Howard says, "Pie may not cure cancer, but it could cure the blues."
But, I’ve always been smitten with pie. Even though I learned to make pie crust several years ago, I am still so happy every time I make a pie...to start off with a bunch of individual ingredients and end up with something that I made from scratch with my own hands, something that is an entity in and of itself, that is completely different from the pile of things I started out with. Flour, salt, butter, and water become a tender, flaky, golden crust. Fruit, sugar, and cornstarch become a sweet, sticky filling. It's a comfort to create something that makes people happy. The fact that it tastes good doesn't hurt either.
I get it, Beth. I really do. (And yes, we are on a first name basis now. More on that in a couple months. *wink*)
In fact, I get a lot of what Beth was feeling about life and love and loss. And sex. She talks about sex pretty frequently. Of course, sex and food are often closely linked in terms of satisfaction. Pie really is quite sexy (the words itself is sexy.....say it soft and slow..... p i e ). Also, ALL THE PUNS. See...?
I recently read Susan Loomis's memoir On Rue Tatin, her story of "living and cooking in a French town." It is a quaint tale, one filled with walks to the local pâtisserie &boulangerie, shopping at the farmers market, trips to Paris, and eating meals outside in the courtyard...all while renovating a historic country home. Her chapters are, like most food memoirs, punctuated with recipes inspired by the local fare & contributed by neighbors and friends.
Near the end of my reading, I was motivated to buy a little metal table and chairs for my front porch so that I could take my meals outside. I picked up some small, deep purple plums at my local farmers market (which I'm lucky enough to have just a few blocks from my house) and decided to make the clafoutis recipe Loomis included in her book. She writes:
I was standing in line to buy pears at the market in Louviers from a handsome young pear grower. The elderly woman next to me was being very choosy about the state of her pears and their variety, and I asked her what she was going to do with them. "I'm going to make a clafoutis," she said with a mischievous look. "Oh, no. Everyone who tastes it says it is the best they've ever eaten."
The addition of honey is what Loomis says makes this recipe unique. The technique is also different that the traditional clafoutis I've seen; instead of mixing the batter in a blender, it is folded with whisked egg whites. The result is a kind of double-layered dessert...custard & fruit on the bottom with cake on the top.
Famed chef and cookbook author Julia Child would have turned 100 on August 15. Child learned to cook at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in her mid-thirties & worked for years on her tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the first book to bring classic French food into American kitchens.
Julia and her husband Paul arrived in France on November 3, 1948. Her first French meal, at Restaurant La Couronne in Rouen, featured sole meuniére, oysters on the half-shell, a green salad, her "first real baguette," fromage blanc, and a bottle of Pouilly-Fume.
In the opening pages of her memoir My Life in France, Julia writes:
Rouen is famous for its duck dishes, but after consulting the waiter Paul had decided to order sole meunière. It arrived whole: a large, flat Dover sole that was perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. [...]
I closed my eyes and inhaled the rising perfume. Then I lifted a forkful of fish to my mouth, took a bite, and chewed slowly. The flesh of the sole was delicate, with a light but distinct taste of the ocean that blended marvelously with the browned butter. I chewed slowly and swallowed. It was a morsel of perfection.
[...] at La Couronne I experienced fish, and a dining experience, of a higher order than any I'd ever had before. [...] Our first lunch together in France had been absolute perfection. It was the most exciting meal of my life.
Julia later admits that the meal was "the standard by which [she] would now measure every eatery."
That lunch is my favorite scene in Julie & Julia; Meryl Streep as Julia Child is emotionally overwhelmed with the first bite of sole meunière, a dish that seems so delicious that she cannot express her
satisfaction in words. It's a moving scene that nearly brings me to
tears every time I watch it.
In "The Whole Fish Story" episode of The French Chef, Julia calls sole "one of the glories of French Fishery." Sadly, we can't get authentic Dover Sole in the United States. The fishes that are sold as "sole" here are all flounders, which is a similar fish. Julia explained:
The great difference between the true sole and all other of the flat flounder type of fishes is that you can easily peel the skin from a sole but not flounder; They must be filleted first before removing the skin.
In honor of Julia's 100th birthday, I prepared this historic dish for myself tonight.
I carefully dredged the delicate, white filets & cooked them. I smiled as the hot browned butter made the lemon juice and parsley sizzle on the plate. I took the first bite while standing in the kitchen. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what Julia was thinking when she took her first bite. I could instantly understand why she was so smitten. It was quite delicious. I savored each bite...the nuttiness from the browned butter, the slight tartness from the lemon juice, the freshness from the parsley, the sweetness from the fish.
It was, dare I say it, a little bit magical...even in my midwestern kitchen on a late summer Sunday evening.
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
pinch of fresly-ground black pepper
All-purpose flour, for dredging, as needed
2 ounces clarified butter
juice from 1 lemon
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 ounces whole butter
Season the fish with salt & pepper; dredge in flour.
Sauté the fish in a large sauté pan in the clarified butter over medium heat until lightly browned and cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes per side.
Transfer the fish to a serving platter and sprinkle with the parsley & lemon juice.
Wipe out the pan and add the butter. Heat the butter until lightly browned, 2 to 3 minutes, then pour over the fish.
The CIA says, "Dover Sole is classically served whole and filleted tableside. Steamed potatoes are an excellent accompaniment." On her cooking show, Julia recommended serving the dish with parsley potatoes, cucumber salad, and Riesling. I ate mine with a bottle of white Bordeaux and steamed broccolini to soak up the remaining buttery, lemony sauce.
And what was left, I literally licked clean...standing with my empty plate over the sink. I got butter in my hair.
I think Julia would approve.
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Here are a few other of Julia Child's recipes that I've made:
