What a Mess!

With leftover ingredients from Mama's birthday Pavlova, I made the famed British dessert, Eton Mess.  It's true that it's not attractive, but it tastes delicious (I actually first connected the two dishes here).

Eton Mess
whipping cream
meringue cookies
strawberries
sugar

Wash, hull, and slice the strawberries and macerate them with some sugar.  Whip the cream until soft peeks form.  Crumble in meringue cookies (I used one 4-5" Pavlova cookie, but you can use store-bought cookies).  Fold in strawberries.  Serve immediately.

inspired by Nigella Lawson

Greek to Us

We reveled in the Greek Fest again this year, eating our way through the lunch line and the pastries as usual.  In fact, the matriarchs of the sweets remembered Sis and Bud from years past, recalling them even as babies in strollers.  And, as in years past, at least one person mistook Mama for my other son (I know you don't believe me, but it happens regularly) saying, "Your big one was so helpful.  He told the younger ones not to touch anything!"

Anyway, in addition to our usual menu (note to selves for next year:  the kids do not like the chicken souvlaki; they prefer the roasted chicken and gyro), we gorged (well, I did) on gigante beans.  And when I went back to get some to take home for dinner, the woman behind the counter said she had made them and we compared notes.  She uses celery, a bit of parsley, and lots of dill in hers; she was interested to hear that I do mine in a slow cooker, but without dill.  I'm adding dill next time (which will be soon because I bought a bag of gigante beans).   


We bought fewer sweets this year but reveled in the ones we did get:  ravani, a citrus-soaked semolina cake, is still the favorite; diples, which is like Greek sopapillas, were Sis and Bud's favorirtes; Mama likes kataifi; and I still get finikia (honey-walnut cookie), methismena (the label said they make it with beer!), karidopita (the honey-walnut cake), galatoboureko (custard with phyllo).  We skipped kourambiedes and what I now know is saragli, kinda like a baklava roll (Bud got baklava but didn't like the nuts).  Our new favorite is pasta flora.  I know, odd name.  But it's a Greek jam tart, this time apricot, and we were all sorry we hadn't bought a whole one!


There is always next year!


-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Greek Big Beans

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups slow cooked beans or two 15.5 oz cans lima or butter beans, drained and rinsed (or actual Greek gigante beans. )

28 oz can diced tomatoes, with juices

salt and pepper

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley leaves

Heat oil and cook onion, covered, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook another minute or so.

Transfer the onion and garlic to a 3 1/2 to 4-quart slow cooker. Add beans, tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir. Cover and cook on LOW for 4-6 hours. Just before serving, stir in parsley.

Robin Robertson, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker


Or, an alternate "fabulous faux fassolia":   I sauteed onions in olive oil, added some garlic when the onions were translucent, then poured in half a can (or less) of tomato sauce, and added the other half of my cooked limas. This was incredible. Both hot and then later in the weekend cold, just like it had been in DC. Mmmmmmm

Snowed Under

Reading this article on delicious summer shaved ice desserts made my mouth water and my memory turn to summers past.

Like many American kids, my earliest exposure to shaved ice desserts came in the form of a snow cone, with neon, sweet syrup poured on top of it. It always gathered at the bottom of the paper cone and was slurped up past the increasingly insurmountable obstacle of those hard ice crystals. Did you ever finish all the ice? I even had a little icee guy kit that would shave ice to be served in those paper cones with that bright syrup. I think there's a picture of me and my neighbor, in suitable aprons and hats, serving the treat.

My first introduction to non-snowcone style treats was in a Vietnamese "ice cream" shop with my high-school buddy/prom date. This traditional treat was served with shaved ice, cubes of almond dofu (not tofu, it's more like solid pudding/jello), an array of sugared beans, and some kind of syrup on top. Sugared pintos? It worked, though I can only imagine that it was through blind faith in dessert that I took my first bite.

Mama has a pink panda handcranked ice-shaving machine but I can't recall ever making dessert with it, at least not since Chicago. But she dreams awake of the treats she had growing up, drizzled with palm syrup (I think) and sweetened condensed milk. Ma made them once at her house--delicious!

And then in Texas for Aunt Banana's wedding, Mama and I downed a freezing cold tamarind-flavored Mexican raspado in front of the Alamo. This wasn't just a tamarind-flavored snow cone--the ice and syrup melded so you finished the whole thing. Fantastic.

Piraguas, granizados, frio-frio. Bingsu, bao bing, kakigori, golas, chuskis. There's a whole world to explore!

Swedish Love Affair

What is it about Swedish sweets?  We used to live near the Swedish Bakery in Andersonville, our little Swedish (and lesbian) enclave in Chicago, and adored what they could do with marzipan.  It was a treat to go there and choose a box full of goodies for any celebration.  Now we have to make do with IKEA, and that's not a bad compromise, though there is a lot less choice.  And so, tonight, we nibbled on three of our favorites:  the oval, frosted almond tarts; the chocolate-coconut balls (oddly listing rapeseed as the first ingredient?!); and the apricot-marzipan covered, chocolate dipped, artificial arrack rolls (punschrullar).  It was the first time we'd purchased these sweets in their original packaging, as opposed to in the repackaged IKEA container; the first two are made by Delicato, the last by Hagges Finbageri. 

But what is arrack?  Get this:  it's an Indian liqueur and our internet research seems to indicate that the Swedes first began importing it in the 18th century through their Swedish East India Company (did everyone have one of those?).  It's made from either coconut or cashews and was traditionally made into punch, hence the Swedish name of the candy, punschrullar.  The word punch is even Hindi-derived, for 5 ingredients, I guess how many these hot or cold drinks had.    We had always thought it tasted alcoholic, but not obviously brandy or rum.  Ooooh, it's good.  (I could tell you more of what we found, the history of modern Sweden from the  Swedish Empire of the 17th century through the 30 years war all the way down to its supposed neutrality in WWII).

I hope IKEA stays open--and with their decrease in hours, complete lack of floor staff, and rarely fully-stocked store, it doesn't look great--because I don't think I can make any of these Swedish treats on my own.  And I won't be going back ot Chicago anytime soon . . . 

-=-=-=-=-

By the way, I thought my all-time favorite candy, the Anton Berg Plum-in-Madeira confections (which I first had working with a Danish man at a picture library in NYC), were Swedish.  Apologies, they are Belgian.  And divine.  The other flavors are pretty good too.