Recipe: Red, White, and Blueberry Tart

Red, White, and Blueberry Tart

Unlike most items that come from my kitchen, the fruit tart I made this weekend to celebrate Independence Day was almost exactly what I intended to make. Most of my friends know that just because I say I’m going into the kitchen to make X dish doesn’t mean anything like X will happen. Usually it’s something radically and completely different. I like to joke that my favorite happy accident was the time I went into the kitchen to make my friend J some oatmeal cookies and came out with a crown roast (true story!). This holiday, however, I really did go into the kitchen intending to make a fresh fruit tart because of the golden raspberries I’d just picked out of our garden. Of course I’d originally intended for it to be more like a galette-style tart, which uses a completely different kind of dough, but I didn’t find out until I was already in the kitchen that (hold onto your rolling pin, folks), I actually HAD NO WHEAT FLOUR. Yep, you read that right. I completely forgot that after making the Venison Empañadas and the Zucchini Galettes for our Memorial Day “Weekend in a Cooler” extravaganza, I was completely and utterly out of all wheat flour in my house. Oops.

Recipe: Rustic Rhubarb-Citrus Cake

Rustic Rhubarb-Citrus Cake

As a general rule, The Big Guy and I don’t eat fresh fruit in the winter. One of the difficulties that comes with educating our palates with locally grown, organic food, is that we’ve become horribly picky. We fully realize that most fruit has to travel too far to get to us, especially during the winter months, but we should really be honest here. Melons in Michigan in February taste foul, almost spoiled. And let’s not go into the red styrofoam strawberries, shall we?

When the first of the locally grown hothouse rhubarb starts appearing at the market, I’ll admit to a certain amount of fruit-based desperation. We’ve been without anything but keeping apples for so long that we jump on the opportunity to include something different in our diet that hasn’t been frozen to survive storage. Rhubarb definitely fits that bill.

Recipe: Chocolate-Citrus Marbled Bundt Cake

Chocolate-Citrus Marbled Bundt Cake

A few entries ago I alluded to plans within plans as an explanation for my lack of posts. The start of those plans is the creation of a blog for the source of my frequent kitchen maunderings, though there are those who would argue the application of said term. Perhaps kitchen ramblings is more accurate, as I eventually get around to a point in the kitchen, even if it isn’t the point I’d originally intended to make. Although I’ve never really come right out and said it, my friend Lisa over at Cooking by the Seat of My Pants correctly IDd the fact that my Chef’s Jacket (and I use the capitalization here quite intentionally) serves as my alter ego of sorts. The Jacket has, to my mind, frequently taken over my consciousness as a sort of Hyde to my normal daily Jekyll. 

Recipe: Venison Stock, Demi-Glace and Bouillon

Bones for stock by Jack Letourneau

We took two deer in this year’s short hunting time (full-time jobs put a crimp on travel time to the family farm). But you know we made venison stock and it’s now sitting comfortably in the freezer waiting to be made into soup and other things that require liquid with flavor. Think about it: does your recipe say stock or water? 99% of the the time I’m going to pick stock. It hardly seems fair to call this a recipe for the simplicity of it, but I’ve had several people ask me why we use the bones from the deer we take every year. There’s no  simple answer here that doesn’t delve into my personal spirituality so let’s leave it at Grandma’s reason “Waste not, want not. Besides, it’s cold out. Stay warm in the kitchen.”

Recipe: Ratatouille Chili

Ratatouille Chili

I have a confession to make. I’m really not sure what to call this recipe. I call it ratatouille chili because it’s as much ratatouille as anything else, with the vegetable choices, but I didn’t go into the day of cooking thinking “Gee, chili sounds like a great idea since the temps are in the 90s and I’m clearly not warm enough in this sweltering kitchen.” When faced with the bounty of our weekly produce shipment from Maple Creek Farm, especially since it was the double shipment to make up for our absence during vacation, one does not think clearly beyond “Sweet heavens I can’t close the fridge door. I’ve got to take charge of this.” And did I mention the eggplant harvested from our garden while we were gone? That clearly needed using up as well.