Fresh Fruit/Veggie Pastry Rounds

The small ball comprised of pastry scraps in our freezer caught my eye. It would not be enough for a full-sized tart, but it could make several smaller ones. In the potager, there are berries, herbs, tomatoes, garlic, and mild hot peppers to be harvested. So a visual image begins...something crumbly, creamy, fresh, vibrant, and not lacking in the looks department so you are compelled to pop one or two or three in the mouth. These are versatile and can be served as appetizers/desserts or at a buffet or an informal gathering/party whether indoors or outdoors or in my case, lunch, well actually a second lunch.

1) First come the pastry rounds. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F/232 degrees C. Roll out about one-eighth-inch thick either scraps gathered into the size of a golf ball (made three 2-inch, three 3-inch, and two 4-inch rounds) or some made just for this occasion. Store-bought can be subbed. I used cookie cutters to make various diameters. 

Prick each round all over. Bake about ten to fifteen minutes or until bottom and edges are nicely browned. The smaller ones will get done faster unless you live in a different universe than I do and then all bets are off. Let cool with space between each pastry on a wire rack (I used an old oven rack).

2) The creamy foundation is next in line. Greek yogurt supplies both tang and body. You only have regular yogurt in the fridge like I did? Pour it into a fine wire mesh sieve held over a bowl, cover, and let it drain in the fridge for an hour. It's best if done overnight.

Since I was making both savoury and sweet rounds, I divided the amount into two, and flavoured one with a drop or so of vanilla extract and the other with finely and freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

3) The toppings! Gather what fresh and prepared ingredients you have on hand and what you think will work together.

Strawberries, red & black currants, raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, thyme & lavender

Don't worry if you can't use all the chosen ingredients or if you at the last minute realise, hey, I got this thing that would work just perfectly with blackberries, in my case, blackcurrant syrup (concentrated fruit syrups are very popular in France for making cold drinks among other things).

Green peppercorns, sherry vinegar, capers, raspberry & maple syrup, vanilla extract

Voilà! Raspberries beg to be filled if not with other fruit, then with chocolate chips, either dark or white, and butterscotch ones.

Blueberry-stuffed raspberry drenched in raspberry syrup

Strawberry half and well drizzled maple syrup

Blackberry half and rivulets of blackcurrant syrup

Plate garnished with black and red currant strigs

And the savoury...

Capers, fresh thyme, garlic sliver, half of a tomato slice, a drizzle of olive oil & sherry vinegar

The larger rounds lend themselves more to the veggie garnishes. All of them, however, were wonderful -- tasty, refreshing, and satisfying! The smaller ones easily could be eaten at one go, the others crumbled a bit, but nothing a napkin/plate held under them couldn't solve.

Tomato slice, pepper sliver, garlic, green peppercorns, thyme, fleur de sel, olive oil & sherry vinegar

In the potager, the blackberries are in full fragrance, ripeness, and toothsomeness.

Guide for ripeness: each drupelet needs to be plump and the berry comes off with a slight tug

This is the first season I am using fresh, uncured garlic. It has a lighter taste and when thinly sliced, has perked up many a sandwich.

Individual cloves, yes, papery outer covering, no.

The rain remains abundant.

The day lilies continue to delight.

Purple blur in background is lavender

The plentiful moisture perks up the weeds too! Weeding therefore is the main task at hand presently along with harvesting. The Abelia is flourishing, and the bees are showing their appreciation with much buzzing. There usually are around ten of them working this bush anytime I glance at it.

Early and mid season taters are now dug up and in storage!

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Marla Spivak's excellent TED talk on why the bees are dying (one reason: less flowers!)

Rhubarb, Strawberry, Maple & Lavender Agua Fresca

As summer has arrived officially via the solstice, let's celebrate with a refreshing agua fresca, a light, fruity beverage. Taking advantage of the still juicy rhubarb stalks along with some lavender in the garden, frozen strawberries/coulis, and astonishingly, enough maple syrup to sweeten more than adequately, I concocted a thirst-quenching drink with a sweet tang and a distinctive pink cloudiness which imparted just the right amount of body.

Gather a medium-sized, washed, trimmed-of-any-poisonous leaves rhubarb stalk, several large strawberries, either fresh or frozen, a few lavender buds, maple syrup, and 16 ounces/475 ml of cold water of which I keep a few bottles in the fridge during summer.

Any nicely coloured bits can be reserved for garnishing

To increase the zing, deepen the colour, and to have as a garnish, I used a good amount of frozen strawberry coulis (link to how to make it is at the end of this post) made from berries harvested the previous season. That incredible abundance is nicely complementing the meagre one at present. Though being frozen for nearly a year, their flavour is still tremendous.

Put the fresh (rinsed and hulled) or frozen strawberries, one-inch chunks of rhubarb, lavender buds, and water in a food processor or blender. Mix for a few minutes until everything is broken down; the texture will be far from smooth.

Pour the mixture into a fine-meshed sieve positioned over a bowl. Using a wooden spoon, work it until nearly dry.

If using coulis, add it along with the maple syrup to taste.

If suitably cold it can be quaffed down right now, but the flavours do intensify and commingle when kept overnight in the fridge.

Left over from making Chicken Pot Pie, some pastry dough once it was rolled out, well pricked, and baked in a hot oven for about ten minutes made just the right companion especially when topped with frozen coulis.

The melting strawberry ice oozed ever so wonderfully into the crevices of the crumbly pastry.

As much as I love the alluring taste of this agua fresca, I equally love its resembling the palest pink shantung silk flecked with purple and red.

In the garden the calla lily is the Queen of Cool!

Though I appreciate the vivid colour of the bougainvillea's bracts, I adore its true flower, a tiny, delicate star twinkling in a blazing sky.

Shasta daisies never fail to make me smile when I am in their company.

These daisies are a fast way of filling up the bare parts of a garden.

That's English lavender in the background, which is almost finished blooming

The second blooming flush by the super fragrant climber, Falstaff, has this pair of quartered-roses caressing each other's velvety petals.

Though the sky overhead provides all the blue anyone could want, I still love when it manages to make an appearance in the garden. Right now, that job rests completely on perennial geraniums.

The sun setting behind this anemone dahlia infuses it with a muted glow.

Coral bells may not consciously use their wiry stems to touch tenderly a lavender bloom on the other side of the path, but there's no harm in imagining they do.

With summer, come consistently high temperatures and as the potager faces south, I only can tend the garden with any amount of effort before ten o'clock and after eight o'clock. The rest of the time I can be found indoors sipping agua frescas!

The first tomatoes are coming in on the lower right corner!

À la prochaine!

RELATED POSTS

Iced coffee caramel float
Cantaloupe granita and caramel cream parfait
Carmelised blackberry ice-cream sundae
How to make strawberry coulis

Hot Sandwich Wraps...and the twilight garden

If the Borscht Dumpling God decrees there will be a surplus of that nice soft dough made just with milk, flour, and salt, I'll stretch my culinary noodle so to speak and make some fresh pappardelle. However, one early evening saw my rolling that pliable mass into a circle which demurely asked to be left whole. Inspired by its shape, round and round I went in the kitchen gathering ingredients -- a few fresh sage leaves there, veggie oil here, and some eggs way over there. A mental image of a pan-fried sandwich wrap stuffed with speckled-with-sage scrambled eggs gradually came into focus.

For one 20 cm diameter wrap, thinly roll out some dough (mix 600 grams of plain, white flour, 325 ml of milk, and 1/2 tsp salt together and then knead about five to eight minutes until smooth which makes five pieces the size of baseballs, so a lot but they can be frozen or kept in the fridge for about a week) the size of a golf ball into a circle more or less -- any irregularities will not be noticed after it puffs up in hot oil.

Cover the bottom of a heavy skillet with an 1/8 inch (.3 cm) of oil and heat over moderate flame for a minute or two. Carefully ease the dough into the pan.

Let it fry for a couple of minutes or until it is covered with air bubbles and is nicely brown, and then flip it over. Reserve warm.

Rinse and chop a few fresh sage leaves. Pour off the excess oil in the skillet. Scramble some eggs beaten with the sage in what will still be a well oiled pan.

The Calm One replaced our spatula with one of my favorite colour, royal blue!

Blot it if so desired, put on a plate and arrange the eggs well inside one half of the wrap. Pick up the edge closest to the eggs and neatly tuck them within the first roll which needs to be nicely packed. Continue tightly rolling to the other side.

Cut into four pieces, their warmth comforted, their taste pleased, and their substance fulfilled.

As I gobbled down these using my hands, that fork is just for show!

Well fed, I returned to the garden to finish up the day's work and to take some photos in the twilight because such a setting shows a different side -- flower details are not washed out by abundant sunshine while the darker background makes their delicate outline be seen more clearly. The abelia, beloved by bees, is covered with tiny, sparkling flowers.

Their red sepals are pretty too!

The late season potato variety, desiree, which I had sowed just a mere two weeks ago, is flourishing in that lusty way happy plants have.

The potted bougainvillea is putting out its first flush of fabulous, pink bracts. Their actual flowers are tiny and inconspicuous.

These lilies are planted close to the front pathway which makes it easy to get a whiff of their heady fragrance when we are coming and going.

The perennial day lilies took several seasons after their planting to feel at home. Though a flower lasts just a day, they put out an abundance of them successively.

The shasta daisies are wonderful perennials to have in the garden; they are beautiful, generous, and flower all the way into autumn.

Hydrangeas, like peonies, usually don't do well in our long, dry, hot season, but I appreciate whatever they do.

Think of tucking a few perennial herbs here and there because they add so much to both the kitchen and garden. When picked fresh they perk up pasta, eggs, soups, stews, spreads, quick and yeast bread batters in the way only they can. Additionally they are great for garnishing. Outdoors they give both unusual foliage and flowers. Fennel which is now about six feet tall and whose feathery foliage is past its prime is putting out flower caps. By autumn they will be transformed into seed clusters. The young green seed tastes like dill seed while the mature grey-brown ones resemble caraway.

David Austin's Falstaff is revving up for another bunch of blooms.

That purple glow in the left background is lavender

I tried to photograph a murmuration of starlings who were flying to a couple of spruce trees for roosting, but instead I accidentally got this appealing shot of the mellow setting sun -- the sky in the upper half is a warm, pink-tinged gray while the lower half is tinted a cool blue-gray.

À la prochaine!