Happy new year fruit salad

Every January 1 we eat a home-cooked brunch. This year we had lots of friends over and prepared all sorts of delights: pancakes, cheese grits, frittata, biscotti... It was fun and delicious-the perfect start to 2011. One of my personal favorite things that we made this year was a fruit salad that consisted of stewed dried fruits and pears. It was delicious-we ate it on top of our pancakes, but I imagine that it would be great on top of ice cream, alone with a bit of whipped cream, or even straight out of a jar.

This recipe is an adaptation/combination of the winter fruit salad on the smitten kitchen blog, a fruit compote that my mom makes, and poached pears. This time I used the spices that were suggested in the winter fruit salad recipe (star anise and vanilla bean) but I imagine that there are many others that would be delicious in addition to these or in combination with them (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg...)

Happy new year stewed fruit salad

Ingredients

8 cups of water
4 star anise
6-8 large pears, cut into quarters (I used a combination of Bartlett and Bosch)
1 vanilla bean, split down the center lengthwise
About 20 dried apricots, cut in half

About 10 figs cut in quarters
About 10 prunes cut in half
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups of granulated sugar


To make the salad

(best prepared the day or night before you intend to eat the salad so that the fruit have time to stew and then cool in the fridge)

1.) Combine the water, sugar, star anise, vanilla bean, and lemon juice in a sauce pan. Bring the mixture to a boil on the stove top, and allow all of the sugar to dissolve, stirring occasionally.

2.) Once the sugar is dissolved, turn the heat off and add the dried fruits and pears to the mixture and transfer to a slow cooker. Slow cook the fruits for 2-3 hours.

(If you don't have a slow cooker, you can simply slow cook the fruits/sugar water mixture at a very low temperature in a sauce pan on the stove top--put a lid on top of the pan).

3.) Once the pears are soft but not falling apart, transfer the mixture to a jar or bowl, and once cool enough, place in the refrigerator to cool. The next morning, enjoy your fruit salad on top of pancakes, ice cream, or on their own.

Note: The morning on which we ate our fruit salad we reduced some of the liquid from the fruit salad in a sauce pan on the stove top until it became a thick syrup. We used this as a delicious spicey syrup for our pancakes, in addition to the fruit. YUM!

Dark chocolate tart with ginger snap crust

As it turns out, size does matter. At least it matters when it comes to baking. Unfortunately I discovered the importance of size yesterday when I used a 2-inch-too-large-in-diameter tart pan to bake the chocolate dessert that I'm about to describe. Nonetheless please note that I'm still posting about yesterday's experience. And that's a testament to how awesome this recipe is.

Because yes, even though my baking equipment was all wrong and I lazed-out when I should have made accurate measurements of ingredients (instead I quickly said to myself, "to my little eyeball that looks roughly like 1 and a half cups, sure!"), we still thoroughly enjoyed this tart. Yes, we loved it in spite of the tart not being aesthetically pleasing, the crust being TOO crumbly, and the unhealthy amount anxiety that I experienced about baking times, and when I patted the crust dough into the pan.




Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let me tell you why this recipe rocks: Point 1.) If one uses the correct pan size as well as the appropriate ingredient measurements, the crust recipe is a friggin' cinch and involves only crumbling up some ginger snaps and blending those crumbs with melted butter! Point 2.) PLUS the crust is friggin delicious, boasting a buttery ginger-y flavor. Point 3.) The filling is, like the crust, super simple in terms of preparation requirements and requires the mixing of only a few ingredients. Point 4.) Most importantly, the overall product is a very rich chocolate tart that is delicious and will satisfy any chocoluv-er's (sorry for the pun) cravings.


One final point. What I love even more than chocolate alone is chocolate with a sprinkling of salt on top. I failed to add this magical touch to the tart that I prepared yesterday but intend to do so each and every time I bake this again. If you are into the salty-chocolatey thing too, then I highly recommend that you do the same.



The recipe is posted here, on the smitten kitchen blog, which she found in Bon Appetit. If you check out her post on this recipe you will see how beautiful this tart can come out. I think she used the appropriate tart pan size. And measured out the ingredients properly. Ah, the perfection. She makes me sick, really.

Turkish Coffee

• 
  

After a delicious thanksgiving dinner, our gracious host posed the usual pre-dessert/post-dinner question: tea or coffee? Only one of about 15 guests requested tea. All others asked for coffee. Why, you might ask, was coffee such a hit that evening? Well, it's because the coffee in question was not your run of the mill American style coffee. Rather, it was Turkish coffee that would be served that evening.

G.'s mom was up for the task of preparing mass quantities of Turkish coffee (she's a pro!) and I, opportunist that i am, jumped at the chance to get a lesson. Turns out the process of turkish coffee preparation isn't tooooo terribly difficult (of course I say that after having only observed the process), but it does seem to require a great deal of patience. Preparing Turkish coffee is not a simple matter of grinding coffee beans, placing those in a filter, and hitting "start" on an automatic machine. Nope. Turkish coffee prep requires standing over the stove and waiting for water to boil not once, not twice, but about six times! The process is well worth it though, because Turkish coffee is a treat to drink. It's dark and rich, and could easily stand in as a dessert substitute. There is also something extremely ceremonial and communal about drinking Turkish coffee. And it comes with fortune telling (i'll get to that later)!!

The following is what I learned about the preparation of the coffee:

To prepare Turkish coffee, you must begin with very finely ground coffee beans--they should be ground to the point of being powder-like. You can purchase finely ground coffee for this purpose at your local Arabic food market. I'll bet you will find one hiding in your area if you search. If you are in the triangle area, you can try Jerusalem Grocery or Almadina Supermarket, both of which are in Raleigh, or the Mediterranean Deli in Chapel Hill.


Next, place your water to boil on the stove top. Turkish coffee is prepared using a special pot that looks like the one picture below. If you want to purchase one, again, I'd check the local middle eastern food store in your area.

Before the water is boiling, you can add a bit (1-2 tablespoons) of sugar if you like your coffee to be sweet (G's mom does this, and I love how it comes out). Once the water begins to boil, add the coffee: approximately 1 heaping teaspoon of coffee for each cup of Turkish coffee.

Note here that a traditional cup of Turkish coffee is about the size of one shot of espresso for us: small. The coffee pots that are intended for Turkish coffee preparation generally have a marking to indicate the number of cups that the pot will prepare.


Now is the fun part. After you have added the coffee to the boiling water, quickly remove the pot from the burner and stir the mixture briskly. At the start the mixture will appear very dark and sludge-y. You are aiming to reduce the sludge and end up with a very smooth looking liquid (having the appearance of dark but clear coffee).


Once you have stirred the liquid (a long teaspoon is preferred for mixing), return the pot to the burner and bring the mixture to a boil again. Then, once it begins boiling, quickly remove the pot and mix once again. Repeat this process about 6 times until the liquid becomes lighter (it will still be very dark) and clear of residue.

Once you are satisfied with the consistency of your coffee, pour into small mugs. Note that the coffee is generally served black, and G.'s mom says that adding milk/cream will distort the flavor.

• 

After the coffee has been drunk, there will tend to be dark grounds left over at the bottom of the cup. Now comes the fortune telling part! You can turn your mug over and allow the residue to drip out, into your saucer. There will be images left over in the cup. Once these have dried, they can be used to tell your fortune.


G's mom told us our fortunes. Apparently I have a very big, positive event, and an accomplishment in my future! I hope that the coffee grinds are right.