House Spouse

Thank you Mark Bittman for reminding me that I don’t have to lug out the ice cream maker to make a cold treat.

I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to make paletas at home before they were featured on The Minimalist. I have a record of making somewhat adventurously flavored popsicles (i.e., flavors that go beyond fake strawberry, lemon, grape, etc.), but for some reason had never ventured into the ice-y treats con leche. There’s no time like the present, so I ventured away as soon as I got my hands on some fruit that would pair perfectly with one of the dried guajillos currently occupying a hefty space in my pantry.

If you do a search for paletas made with chiles, you’ll find that most of your results will be recipes for mango lime and chile paletas. I read a few to figure out what ingredients I’d need and set about to concocting my own.

Mango Lime and Chile Paletas

Ingredients
2 ripe, medium mangoes, peeled and cored
juice of 2-3 limes
sugar (start with less than 1/4 c; how much sugar you use will depend on the sweetness of your mangoes and your own taste)
1 dried guajillo chile, seeded and stemmed
1 tsp Mexican chile powder
approx. 1/2 c. water or milk

Combine ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. Taste, adding sugar and liquid as needed. Pour into a popsicle mold and freeze.

I can’t think of anything more quintessentially Georgian than peach cobbler. So, in a thinly veiled attempted to prolong the feeling that we were still vacationing down South, I made one. I’m not terribly into baked fruits and have little (no) experience baking cobblers. I love to make crisps, but wanted to keep it real. These peaches, after all, were bought directly from an orchard in Peach County. I used a recipe from a cookbook that I reviewed last December when I was still writing and editing for Drive Thru. The book is called A Love Affair with Southern Cooking and the recipe is titled “Country Peach Cobbler.” Perfect.

Unfortunately, between just Andrew and me, we’re having trouble polishing off this thing! We’ve got that strawberry pie (which I’m more drawn to) and being that it’s bathing suit season, I’m trying really hard to be disciplined (although I should have been worrying more about that about three months ago). I’ve rarely had a dessert stick around for more than a day or two, but here we are, four days later…

(recipe after the jump) Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the Deep South. I love to visit it. But I also love returning home from it, especially with a trunk full of ripe strawberries, fresh peaches, and sweet Vidalia onions. I’ll get to the peaches and onions later, but for now, let’s talk about strawberries. Oddly enough, I am not a big fan of most berries, but I do love fresh, ripe strawberries. The small ones are best, eaten plain without all the whipped cream, sugar, lemon juice, or whatever else gets added to what are just perfect on their own. Why then do I mention “pie” in the title of this post, when pie includes all of these inhibitors of perfection, and thens some? Well, not all people share in my strawberry appreciation philosophy, namely my step-mother who upon seeing the large bag of berries on her counter top when she arrived home from work the day we picked them, immediately set about cramming them all in a single Ziplock bag and refrigerating them. Oy.

In all due respect to the magnificent woman who is more like my friend than my parent, she thought she was doing me a favor. “The berries were hot,” she informed me in her thick Greek accent, which she proudly possesses twenty some odd years after emigrating to the U.S. “You don’t want them to be hot.”

I pulled the berries out of the fridge and found most of them bruised or crushed. As I began separating them into three bags hoping the salvage them from all becoming mush, I tried so hard not to “scold” her. To not be the uppity daughter from the city who comes into her house wagging her foodie finger telling everyone what’s best, what’s appropriate, how to make that better. I told her I was annoyed and left it at that. (If you know me, you appreciate my self control in this situation.) Later on, when she apologized for the fifth time, I consoled her (and myself) by letting her know that when I got back to Chicago, strawberry season would be just starting and I could buy them to my heart’s content.

And so, I made a pie my first day back in the Midwest. The kitchen isn’t too hot yet, so turning on the oven doesn’t make us feel as if we’re in hell (oh, and it will. Too soon!). I modified a recipe for fresh strawberry pie from this month’s Gourmet, using graham crackers instead of the shortbreads for the crust.

(Recipe after the jump) Read the rest of this entry »