Cucumber Gazpacho

No summer complete without gazpacho. Geert Van der Bruggen whose brandade I prepared previously, also has a cucumber gazpacho which he serves with fish-filled wraps. I skip the wraps. No summer complete without easy cooking.

Cucumber gazpacho

Serves 2 generously

By Geert Van der Bruggen, in: Velt zine De seizoenen, No. 4, 2010, p. 21.

1 cucumber
1/4 apple, preferably a sour one
a few drops of tabasco (I use red chilli sauce)
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 dl dry white wine (or water or milk)
2 tablespoons fresh white cottage cheese (full cream)
a handful of fresh tarragon (leaves only)
pepper, salt

Peel cucumber and remove seeds. Cut in large pieces, put into blender together with the apple. Add the remaining ingredients including tarragon leaves, then season with salt and pepper. Mix to fluidity, then put in refrigerator.

Serve in glasses, chilled.

Fall Ice Cream: Apple-Quince-Lemon verbena

It's become harder to blog on a regular basis. I write less frequently, with sudden bursts of posts. Somehow I continue my average diet of 10 posts a month. Here we go.

A major disadvantage about cooking at night in Fall-Winter is the lack of natural light. I'm counting: only 122 more days to go to Spring. If you consider ice cream in combination with artificial lux an anomaly, don't think just yet that your ice cream maker should go into hiding.

Here is ice cream with Fall fruit, from Peter Bauwens' book on ice cream, IJs en sorbets uit eigen tuin (isbn 9789044716399) - Ice and sorbets from your own garden. The apples and quince were self-picked.

Apple-Quince-Lemon verbena Ice Cream

2-3 apples
1 quince
agave or maple syrup
a handfull of fresh lemon verbena leaves

Peel and cut the apples and quince in wedges, and stew until tender over low heat, with no extra water, or else the tiniest amount, in an enamel-coated pot. The idea is to let the fruit stew in its own juice. Start with the quince, and after about 20' add the apple. Let cool.

Add 1-2 tablespoons agave or maple syrup to taste, and add the verbena leaves. Give this a brief mix, then transfer to the ice cream maker. Make sure you add some syrup, Bauwens says, because the ice cream tends to taste less sweet afterwards.

Serve at once or store away in the freezer.

Meanwhile I have ogled Dr. Ben Kim's method of banana ice cream: by freezing pieces of banana and by later putting these pieces through the champion juicer. Out creeps creamy delight. So don't store away the juicer either.

At home with a minor bout of flu: apple charlotte

The swine flu season may have blown over, winter may be on its last legs, and here I seemed to breeze through it, were it not for that little flu bug that finally did catch up with me. First giveaway: not wanting coffee in the morning. Second giveaway: throat and a severe cough.

For a situation veering towards bed my favorite resources are linden tea, and buttered crackers with honey, and if I ever may, a honey. But my slightly fevered brain was prone to some strange dietary choices. Some energy may be derived from a slice of apple charlotte, but perhaps not the best kind. And the Sugar Rant was Off. Third giveaway.

Apple charlotte

Serves 4
From Françoise Bernard and her zillion adventures in French cooking.

1 kg of sour apples (e.g. renet - I used a mixture of boskoop and granny smith)
50 g butter
150 g sugar (*) (or 9 tablespoons)
100 g raisins
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

(*) Note: my quantities were slightly off. I had a small yellow baking tin which fitted 500 g apple slices, 50 g butter, 96 g sugar, and 70 g of raisins and dried cranberries. I used dark brown muscovado sugar.

Preheat the oven at 200 °C.

Slice the apples in thin slices.

Butter a high baking tin with 1/3 of the butter, coat with 1/3 apple, 1/3 sugar, and 1/3 butter, then add a new layer of apple, etcetera, until the tin is full, and end with sugar, butter and cinnamon (if you forget to add it sooner).

Press the mixture firmly.

Bake in the oven for 75 minutes with baking foil or a lid over the tin.

Let cool completely before serving.

Deep Purple: Red Cabbage Salad

Cabbage is king in winter, and winter is finally here, with temperatures suddenly reaching below zero, ouch! We're having cold and sunny days, with the promise of a little snow later this week. When you wash shredded red cabbage, the water turns the color of blue ink, but the salad macerating in dressing gives way to vivid reds and purple.

We took off from Michael van Straten's book Super Salads in which he combines three different kinds of cabbage.

My friends don't know yet, but I'm serving this in midget portions as an hors d'oeuvre next Saturday.


Deep Purple: Red Cabbage Salad

1/2 red cabbage, finely shredded
2-3 tablespoons raisins
1 apple
handful of pecans or walnuts
generous sprinkling of sesame seeds
Dressing:
1 teaspoon mustard,
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon cottage cheese
sesame oil,
pepper

Shred the cabbage really finely (finely is key). Combine all salad ingredients. Combine all dressing ingredients really well, and pour over the salad. Preferably let macerate for a few hours before eating.