Lemon Tart

Thirsty Thursdays: Honey Cream Soda

With the those lazy crazy days of summer not too far away each Thursday I'll be sharing a new drink recipe with you- cold, herbal, cocktail, mocktail, liqueur... to name a few.

 

One of my early food memories was The Pop Shoppe. This 80's birthday party institution was a dream for a  kid- a warehouse full of endless varieties of sugary carbonated beverages in all their artificial coloured glory! Your Dad grabbed the shiny red plastic crate and you picked as many as would fit, trying to decide between the shiny coloured lime, cream sodas and grape, over the always popular root beet and cola. When you had crashed from the sugar high that certainly must have followed, you returned the case of empty bottles to The Poppe Shoppe, and the cycle would continue. Hello, recycling genius! Why don't places like this make a come back? I'm not sure if there is indeed still Pop Shoppes around  but those were good times.

Nowadays I have rare pop* cravings but when I need a bit of sparkling sugar I go straight to Boylans who's Red Birch Beer I have a thing for. The thing about such drinks is that they are simply sugar, flavouring and carbonated water. All very readily available and inexpensive ingredients. With most high quality sodas costing almost $2 a drink, I cringe at the mark up, and I also see an opportunity to make it myself.

Cream soda and me go way back. I grew up with a penchant for the garish red cream soda of my youth- my Slurpee of choice as well as  a mean ice cream float. But sometime in my adolescence Vanilla Cream Soda came about and I started to take to those Vanilla Cream Sodas, that is until a string of bad experiences.  Each time I had a particular brand I would end up feeling queasy and then, well perhaps you can guess...( I don't really think a food blog is the place for the that "V" word)  After a few occasions of such incident, each with my very observant best friend, she started cutting me off, even though I still desired said beverage and at the time didn't seem to care about the after effects. But she always did look out for me and she kept me in check and off of Vanilla Cream Soda for a few years. Not sure what was in that drink but something tells me it wasn't the vanilla. Eventually I did get back onto the vanilla wagon, but never went back to that brand and am happy to report there have been no more incidences.

A Crustacean Christmas in May

Yup, Christmas came early for us, because yesterday I came home  with these just caught, just cooked Dungeness Crabs from Prince Rupert, BC, courtesy of my beloved brother-in-law. Since I paid $25 for one crab just a couple weeks ago, I'm fairly beside myself, feeling a little bit like I just got away with something. But don't worry this is all very much on the up and up: licenses, responsible crabbing practices and the like.

Like those special sour cherries for a certain cheesecake, my brother-in-law knows how much my heart swells with the gifts of the ocean and how much the gift of food means to me and I feel a lot spoiled right now. Of course he also knows that I'll more than show my appreciation in the future, so its all a very win win deal. (I've just realized that sentence has a certain dirty ring to it. Well, get your claws out of the sand, I meant I'd be cooking something special for him in the near future. Sheesh.)

 

So what do you do with a windfall of perfectly cooked prized crabs? Well you eat them as is of course, dunked in some boiling water to heat them up and dipped in a wonderful lemon butter. When they are this fresh there is no other way. Well except for cold with a freshly made Aoli. Later this week a crab bisque, a crab salad, and a crab pasta dish will likely show up on our dinner tables, but last night this was as good a meal as it gets.

When serving shellfish for dipping, I make lemon butter in the French fashion which elevates those two flavours by concentrating the lemon flavour, reducing the acidity and emulsifying the two to make a creamy smooth sauce. This sauce is made with the same method used to make a Beurre Blanc, where you concentrate a liquid to a syrup and then whisk in cold butter a little at a time, creating a voluptuous emulsification of liquid and fats.

Daring Cooks: Ricotta Gnocchi

This is a the first challenge of a new group I've joined, The Daring Cooks- a Daring Bakers spin off. Check out my Daring Bakers category for a round up of the previous posts. The Daring Cooks focus on cooking, vs desserts  that the Daring Bakers do.

This first challenge is hosted by our lovely founding members Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Creme Puffs in Venice and is Zuni Cafe's Ricotta Gnocci.

This is a rather famous dish from the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. I remember seeing Chef/Owner, Judy Rodgers make her fabulous Zuni Ricotta Gnocchi on Martha Stewart many years ago.  The idea of this gnocchi with no flour intrigued me and while I came across them again over the years in passing and then about a year ago when I finally acquired the fabulous cookery tome, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook (one of my prized cookbooks) I had not made it a priority to try them out. Which is why groups such as this are so important to a cook like me, always looking for something new and spectacular. 

After making these beauties I'm excited to add another recipe to my repertoire. This is a rare thing in fact. With a large cookbook collection, the magazines I subscribe to and the dozens of food blogs I frequent, as well as my own thoughts and ideas, I'm overrun with recipes. The truth is with the number of dishes I cook, only about 5% of them make it to my permanent repertoire - that valuable recipe file in my head of tried and true classics that will never let me down. This is one of them and what an exciting addition it is.

So what about this dish makes the grade? Well, for one, the ease of the dish. Now I say this with reserve, because to be honest this was a tricky dish to get right. The ingredients are few, the technique is sparse, but with a little practice these are indeed one of the easiest, fastest items I've ever made. The other reason this becomes a classic is the taste. They are ricotta cheese, pure and simple. They can be flavoured like I did with lemon zest, but mostly its about the ricotta. The last reason this recipe is so special is its adaptability. The number of ingredients, especially vegetables, it pairs well with are never ending and it is one of those dishes than indeed will elevate that special bunch of fresh picked asparagus or sweet cherry tomatoes and make those vegetables better than they are alone.

Lemon Luvs: Truffle Salt

I love truffles, as you may know from a previous post. I've been using white and black truffle oil for years to perk up mushroom pastas and soups and anything else that could use a dash of decadent heady flavour of truffle oil. While I've never been fooled that these products would replace the glories that are genuine wild truffles, they have a flavour all their own that has its place in the kitchen when used thoughtfully and with restraint. Restraint being the key word. Too much truffle oil on anything is not a good thing. Unlike too much truffles in something, which isn't possible! So given my interest in this flavour it made sense that when in Seattle's Pike Place Market I would sniff my way into a little truffle shop,  La Buona Tavola. To be honest though, most of the products in there I'm not interested in, aside from any fresh Italian truffles they might sometimes have in the cooler. When a woman tried to sell me a very expensive jar of truffle flavoured salt I automatically put my salesperson defenses on. I quickly realized that of all the products on the shelves, this was the only one she wanted to make sure I knew about and she seemed pretty persistent that this was an important culinary secret ingredient. Call me gullible, call me hungry, but I started to become convinced and I plunked down $18US for 100g of truffle infused salt. I left, wondering if I'd been had.

The first time I opened it I was surprised at the truffle aroma that came out of the jar. There was no hint of artificial truffle flavours and in fact is generous with truffle bits. I made creamy French style scrambled eggs and since at the time fresh truffles were out of the question, I would use this as not an alternative but a reminder of truffled scrambled eggs. That dish with a healthy dose of truffle salt and just a drop of black truffle oil, instantly transported me. Truffles and scrambled eggs are one of the worlds most perfect dishes and for me the best way to enjoy a truffle if you ever have the opportunity.

New Domain!

Hello all lemon tart followers. Just wanted to bring to your attention that I finally was successful in Domain Mapping my blog. Not sure why it took me so long. I'm not so tech savvy I guess. My new address is www.lemontart.ca. Please make a note in your bookmarks. You'll still be pointed here using the old  address, but I spent all this time on it, I'd like to see it used. Afterall its much easier to remembers- in fact its downright catchy if you ask me. It feels so grown up to have my very own domain!

I leave you with Kahlua Chocolate Sandwich Cookies as a thank you...