No Ice Cream Maker? No Problem!

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Carol

tomato basil balsamic sorbet

I used to get really annoyed by people who talked about their fancy ice creams and frozen lah-di-dahs that they were making in their ice cream machines. Of course, that was because I didn’t own one myself.

This didn’t mean I couldn’t make frozen desserts at home, though. Armed with nothing more than a fork, a freezer and a little imagination, I turned out quite a few batches of granita over the years. And using this low-tech method of frozen dessert production, I managed to hold out for a long time, until I hit a really good sale and went to the store with a gift card in hand. But it’s still fun to make an occasional batch of granita and nice to enjoy its decidedly different texture.

A few weeks ago my recipe for Tomato Basil Balsamic Sorbet was picked up by the New York Times (when you go to the article link click on the bottom left hand photo of sorbet for the recipe; it’s slightly jumbled but all there). I wanted to share the good news, belatedly. And to let you know that even if you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can still use this sorbet recipe and make granita. Here’s how:

After you’ve mixed all the ingredients, pour the mixture into a long, flat pan or dish and place it in the freezer. Wait for an hour, then remove it, take a fork and start scratching the semi-frozen mixture from the edges of the pan inward–since freezing starts around the edges–and breaking up the ice crystals that are forming. Put it back into the freezer, wait a half hour, and repeat. Do this a few more times, waiting 30 minutes between each round of breaking up the ice crystals, until you have a pan full of frosty dessert. It will take somewhere around 2 to 3 hours of freezing and scraping (depending on the chill factor in your freezer) and make somewhere around 4 to 6 servings, depending on your appetite.

Smoky Joe

Here’s another granita recipe I’ve recently devised. I call it Smoky Joe, a coffee granita with  the smokiness of a peaty scotch. Consider it a multitasking dessert that also serves as an espresso, a scotch and a cigar, all in one!

While you’re brewing a pot of strong coffee, make some simple syrup with 4 ounces of granulated sugar, measured by weight, and 4 ounces of water, measured by volume. Combine the sugar and water in a small sauce pan, heat on the stove top and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Smoky Joe requires only five ingredients.

Measure out 15 ounces of the brewed coffee and 4 ounces of the simple syrup and let them cool. (Keep the rest of the simple syrup in a sealed container in the fridge and use it for making cocktails or other desserts.) Mix the cooled coffee and simple syrup with 1 ounce of good smoky, peaty scotch (I like Laphroaig), ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract and ¼ tsp. ground cardamom.

Use the method I’ve described to scratch up an icy, smoky, coffee dessert for yourself. Be sure to scrape all the way down and stir to distribute the cardamom, most of which will settle on the bottom of the dish (if only all sediment were so tasty!).

Use a fork to break up the ice crystals.

One of the really cool things about granita is that it’s so easily tweakable. If you don’t go for the smoke, you can omit the scotch and use another flavoring instead, like Frangelico or Amaretto. Or maybe just a little almond extract or chocolate flavoring. As long as you keep the balance between liquid, sugar and alcohol, it will freeze properly. If it doesn’t, just stir in a tiny bit of water or other non-alcoholic liquid. If it freezes too solidly, it needs a tiny bit of alcohol or simple syrup (or just simple syrup if you don’t want to use any alcohol). This method works with fruit juice, green tea, you name it. The sky is pretty much the limit, so get creative and have fun!

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It’s a Schwinn-Win Situation

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Carol

this is Molly Schwinn

I am not the most athletic type. In fact, I’ve never found a sport or activity I truly enjoy, one I’m passionate about, one I can’t wait to rush out and do each day. While many find exercise invigorating, I find it exhausting, a repetitive grind. When I so much as read others’ blog posts or tweets about their running or working out, I feel a strong urge to lie down and rest.

Until recently. Himself has been bicycling the past few months and has tried to interest me in biking with him. Finally, on Labor Day weekend I decided to call his bluff. I said, “Okay, let’s go to Ventura Beach. We’ll bring your bike, and I’ll rent a beach cruiser, and we’ll spend the day biking up and down the beach.”

The cruiser I rented was old and rusted and gnarly. But it did the trick. Before we’d even gotten properly started, when I had but one foot on one pedal and was coasting from the rental shack toward the biking path, it all came back to me, how much fun bicycling could be. What low-tech freedom was possible on two wheels. We rode nine miles that day, pausing along the way to watch a surfing competition. We munched burritos from a food truck. We checked out a seaside nature preserve. We enjoyed more flexibility than either walking or driving could afford.

The next week I went out and bought myself a Schwinn. Her name is Molly. She’s short, with 24-inch wheels, and low to the ground, but that’s just fine, because so am I. After a childhood of hearing, “You’ll grow to fit it,” I’ve finally got a bike that fits me. Not one I’m expected to someday fit.

We name our vehicles, which may seem funny, but then we know a family that names its appliances, both large and small. My coffeemaker doesn’t have a name, but then it has never exhibited enough personality to merit one. My bike did immediately. Molly’s a peach.

Now I’m having fun, not only riding each day, but seeing how many errands I can run and leave Lola at home (that’s the car).

farmers' market run

Himself and I rode to the Studio City Farmers’ Market one weekend. It was great fun, having lunch, visiting with friends and picking up produce for the coming week (and not having to bother with the nightmarish parking situation there!). Before I got the rack installed and a pannier to attach to it, I bungeed a basket to the handlebars to hold our farmers’ market plunder.

grocery run

I have more options for transporting things now. The rack and pannier make carrying gallons of milk and bottles of wine much easier to carry. Wonder if I can manage a Christmas tree…

a chauffeured sandal

I pedaled to the Halloween store and bought a wig. And to the shoe repair place to pick up my mended sandal. And to the hardware store for bits and pieces that didn’t require a motor and four wheels to carry.

On every ride I notice things I never notice while driving. This might be one of the best benefits of all.

Lola is getting ever so lonely. But I’m not buying as much gas these days. And I’m feeling better. And my clothes are getting a little looser. Now the exhaustion I feel after a long bike ride is a good one. A satisfying kind of tired that will fade by the time I’ve cooled down and finished chugging my water. This is a new thing for me. I’m digging it!

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Happy 4th Blogoversary to Hungry Passport

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Carol

Four years ago today I posted my first blog entry. Most unwillingly. Himself had been pressuring me, trying to make me understand the importance of having this type of presence on the Internet. Finally I relented and began blogging.

For the most part I’ve really enjoyed it. Blogging has enabled me to explore and comment on an awful lot topics, most of them food and travel related. I’ve experimented in the kitchen, sampling cuisines, dishes and ingredients I never thought I’d try. One blistering hot day I even baked meringues in my car (see “Solar Powered Oven, Courtesy of Honda”). Blogging has in turn fed my other writing. The professional stuff, the paying stuff.

Some days, though, I’d sneak up behind my blog and shove it off a cliff. Run it over with the car. Read it so much bad poetry that it slashes its wrists in despair. Because sometimes I feel like I’m so busy looking at everything with an eye toward what I might blog about it that I miss out on the enjoyment of the actual experience. And sometimes it seems like the blog gets in the way of my paying work, which it’s supposed to be feeding. And then there’s the gnawing feeling that if I write something really great and post it on the blog, I’ll never be able to sell it, since it’s already out there for free.

I know I shouldn’t look at it this way, because it all goes hand-in-hand. These days a lively web presence with lots of followers is crucial to a writer’s success. As in relationships with other humans, I guess my relationship with my blog is always going to be an up and down thing. Some days will be better than others, and the best I can hope for is that the ups outnumber the downs. I’m betting that they will.

I checked the list for appropriate anniversary gift giving, and the traditional fourth anniversary gift can be either fruit or flowers. The modern gift: appliances. I can’t think of any appliances I need (yeah to that!). Flowers just invite themselves to be played with, nibbled on and destroyed by the cats. So I guess I’ll go out and buy a bag of apples or pears and make a tarte tatin or something. And with a contrarian attitude taking hold, I’ll enjoy that tarte but I won’t be blogging about it!

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Oh the Comfort of Comfort Food

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Carol

Fried catfish, fried okra, hush puppies (no way but fried!), cole slaw for health reasons, um, yeah…if we Southerners could figure out how to fry slaw we would!

Yet another trip back home to Tennessee and yet another person or two who said, “I’m afraid to cook for you…you’re a chef…you won’t like what I fix…It’s not fancy…It’s just everyday stuff…” I wish I could take everyone I know, grab them by the shoulders and with my nose almost touching theirs say, “You have no idea how much I love home cooking! Feed me, pleeeez!”

Memphis has some really good restaurants, and I’ve had great meals there. But one of the joys of going home is being nourished and sustained by the foods I grew up with–you know, Comfort Food. Food we enjoyed in simpler times, when we worried about little if anything. Food that consequently made us feel better when we actually were worried about something, because of its power to invoke that sense of well-being we enjoyed earlier in our lives. So when I’m in Tennessee I want country ham, dry-rubbed pork ribs, pulled pork shoulder, fried catfish, cornbread (the good stuff, the REAL stuff), fried green tomatoes, black-eyed peas, okra, collards…You get the idea. I don’t cook this way in Los Angeles, except on rare occasions, like Thanksgiving. And LA, for all of its international cuisines, has few decent approximations of Southern food. So I indulge when I’m home and let that carry me until my next trip back to the South.

thick-cut, barbecued baloney from Big Daddy’s

One of those delights is barbecued baloney (no, not bologna!), thick cut, grilled, slathered with barbecue sauce and served on a hamburger bun. I’d forgotten how good this is until earlier this month, when I attended my college homecoming at Bethel University in McKenzie, Tennessee. We enjoyed these sandwiches at a tailgate party, courtesy of Big Daddy’s, double-dosed with barbecue potato chips. (by the way, I can’t believe how young college students are these days…) I don’t eat like this all the time, but special occasions call for special food. I can’t tell you who won the game, but I know I enjoyed the pre-game sammich!

Another of my favorite treats from home is fried dill pickles, which I made for an Oscar party I catered here in LA a few years ago. After getting past the idea of trying something that sounded so very odd, the Angeleno crowd swooned over them and clamored for more. As soon as I’d send out a couple of baskets of hot, freshly fried pickles, newly-smitten and hopeful munchers would show up at the kitchen door with empty baskets in hand. The pickles were a huge hit.

fried dill pickles….little bites of heaven…

If you’ve never had fried dill pickles before, then you certainly should give them a try.

Gather the following:

1 32-ounce jar of dill pickle slices (you may not use them all, but you’ll have plenty on hand for the next time you get a hankering)

1 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp. Louisiana Hot Sauce (or ½ teaspoon Tabasco)

¼ cup all-purpose flour

½ tsp. garlic powder

1 cup cornmeal

1 tsp. black pepper (don’t add any more salt–the dills are salty enough)

peanut or canola oil for frying

Here’s how you make ’em:

Drain pickle slices well, spread them on layers of paper towel and blot dry. Set aside. (The more completely you dry the pickles, the better your results.)

Preheat oil in a deep pan to 375°F. (The temperature of the oil will fluctuate as you add and remove pickles. Just do the best you can to keep the oil hot enough so that the pickles cook quickly and don’t get soggy from too low a temperature.)

In a large bowl combine buttermilk, eggs, Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. Stir in flour and garlic powder.

In a smaller bowl combine cornmeal and black pepper.

Dip drained, blotted pickles into buttermilk mixture and then dredge in cornmeal.

Fry a few at a time in hot oil for about 2 to 3 minutes, or until golden brown. Drain on layers of paper towel. (If you crowd the pan it will lower the temperature of the oil and give you gloppy, heavy results.)

You can dip them in something like a cool ranch dressing if you’d like, but that seems unnecessary to me.

Note: You can do this with kosher spears, but what usually happens is that the peel of the spear resists being bitten through, and the breading comes off in the first bite, leaving you holding the fried breading in your hand, with an incredibly hot, bare pickle spear hanging out of your mouth, burning your lower lip and chin (does this sound like the voice of experience or what?). And you want some crunch in each bite, so plain ol’ hamburger dill slices are just what you need.

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National Day on Writing

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Carol

Me & Blaze, my amusing muse

Today is National Day on Writing, and the National Writing Project is asking writers, “Why do you write?”

I just found out a few minutes ago, so there’s no time for pre-celebration preparations, no putting up of the Writing tree and covering it with typewriter keys, spools of ribbon and bottles of liquid white-out, with a little figure of Mark Twain perched atop the highest branch. And no time to give the topic more than a quick paragraph or two in the middle of a busy day. That’s probably a good thing—usually we’re able to cut to the chase and say what needs saying most when we don’t have time to over think things and agonize over every single word.

So why do I write?

I’ve been writing as long as I’ve known how to string words together. It’s as much a part of me as my blue eyes, my short stature and my sense of the absurd. Unlike those other characteristics, though, it is, thankfully, the one characteristic through which I can accomplish something…share what I’ve learned, share what I think, share what I feel. Often I write because I don’t know what I think about something, and through the process of kicking around a few words on the subject, I gain a little insight into it.

Essentially, writing is how I respond to the world. I write because I can’t not write. Just like I can’t not breathe. It’s part and parcel of who I am.

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