Made kiwifruit jam with a hint of mint. It turned out beautifully! I had reservations about making a tropical fruit preserve, but the tangy sweetness of this chunky preserve is delicious! I also made a batch of buttermilk biscuits to complement although its wonderful on buttered toast...
Les macarons de LaDuree! Aaron's boss brought these back for me from Paris. I haven't had one since I was last there almost 5 years ago. These are my favorite cookies and this is actually how Aaron and I first met... over a conversation about les macarons. It was such a treat to have these with tea. Now I just need to plan a trip back to Paris!
I had some puff pastry in the freezer and decided to make these quick tarts.
I bought these beautiful beets to watercolor, but wound up cooking them instead. There was a recipe for goat cheese and beet tart from Martha (good luck finding it on her website, because I couldn't). The pate brisee recipe she has is wonderful and works for both savory and sweet pies and tarts. This dish turned our beautifully, and tastes pretty good too. The only odd thing is the purple beets are so shockingly magenta that when they hit the melting goat cheese, the dish turns hot pink. Slicing this up looks like left over birthday cake...not so appetizing.
Gotta love those Martha pics... I was seduced by these honey drizzled golden fritters in the current issue, little fried rosettes, honey and walnuts nestled in delicate folds. Mine don't look as dainty, but they are pretty delicious. They remind me of the loukoumades I would get from the Greek Festival at the Greek Orthodox Church in the Oakland hills.
Since I've been making so much jam, I though I'd try something a little different and make Mango Jam. I just received a new cookbook on canning and used a recipe from it. This is the first time I've used pectin, and I have to say I wasn't so impressed. I was reluctant to add anything besides fruit, sugar and lemon juice, but every recipe in this book uses pectin and the author swears by it.
The jam looks great, but I don't think it cooked long enough, so its a bit chunky and thin. It tastes great. I had to modify the recipe entirely by cutting the sugar in half, adding more fruit and tripling the lemon and lime juices.
It too made its way onto buttermilk biscuits, which made Nadia very happy!
Tonight was I enjoyed yet another Indian feast. My boyfriend is trying out a bunch of new recipes. Above is a Thai dessert, sticky rice with coconut sauce and mango. Delicious!
Had the morning to myself (boyfriend and girls were at preSchool) so thought I'd make good use of my time. It was nice to have a focus for a couple of hours. The canning process wasn't so bad, although I could have used another set of hands, but removing the skin from the apricots was a very laborious process! The jam turned out beautifully and I had to make biscuits because what else am I going to do with all of this jam? In the end, I wound up taking warm biscuits and jam to my boy and the girls at preschool. Eat your heart out Martha!
Today I picked apricots with Ellen of the^workshop. Hopefully they will make their way into jam by this evening. Ellen was a better harvester than myself, but we both wound up in the upper branches, reaching for that last bunch.
