Blue Cayenne

Cue the pan flutes, or, better yet, throw on an Yma Sumac CD. (If you don’t have a Sumac CD, here is a link: Yma Sumac. Sumac was a 1950’s Peruvian vocal phenom with an amazing five octave vocal range and a legendary temper that befitted the green-eyed Inca princess she claimed to be.)

You definitely need some exotic mood music with this soup.

This is a Peruvian chowder. If you read Blue Cayenne regularly, you know that this Irish girl brakes for potatoes–any kinds of potatoes and tubers, in fact. So, chowder recipes always always catch my eye. Throw in an exotic angle like Peruvian cuisine and you have my full attention.

This chowder is full of all sorts of good stuff–yams, quinoa, red onions, cream, and peppers. Actually, the recipe calls for an unusual ingredient, a Peruvian pepper paste called aji amarillo. Not having any of the paste on hand,  I was able to substitute two minced jalapeños. My soup was spicy but not overly so. (You can buy the paste on Amazon, by the way. Jeff Bezos has everything!)

Here is a photo of the peppers. They are bright orange and orange peppers make me cautious, having foolishly tasted a couple of habaneros in my day. Max Fallowitz, writing on the Serious Eats site, says the amarillos only register medium to hot, though.  Fallowitz waxes poetic when describing the fruity-hot flavor of the aji amarillo: “If there were chiles to taste like sunshine, this would be it.” That’s a pretty strong endorsement. Pretty writing, too.

Here is the recipe.

Serves 8

Peruvian Quinoa Chowder

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Ingredients

• 1 T. olive oil
• 1 Red onion (finely chopped)
• 2 Jalapeño peppers (seeded and finely chopped) or 1/4 C. aji amarillo paste (Note: If you add aji amarillo paste, add it to your taste. I haven't used it in this recipe and recommend that you be careful not to get your soup too fiery hot.)
• 3 T. chopped fresh oregano
• 1 t. kosher salt
• 1/2 t. black pepper
• 1 1/4 Quarts vegetable broth
• 8 Ounces yams (peeled and cut into 1/2 inch dice)
• 1 1/2 C. corn kernels
• 3/4 C. quinoa (rinsed and drained)
• 1/3 C. heavy cream
• Fresh mint leaves to garnish
• Lime wedges to garnish

Instructions

1. Heat oil in a large soup pan. Sauté chopped red onion in hot oil until the onion is a light golden brown. This will take about 4 minutes.
2. Add jalapeño peppers (seeded) and chopped fresh oregano to the onions along with 1 t. kosher salt and 1/2 t. black pepper. Continue to cook until the ingredients are fragrant. This will only take about 30 seconds.
3. Add the vegetable broth and the cubes of peeled yams. Also, add corn kernels and quinoa (rinsed and drained). Bring this mixture to a boil and then lower heat to medium-low. Put a cover on the pot and cook for about 20 minutes or until the yams and the quinoa are tender. You want to stir the pot occasionally. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Remove the chowder from the heat and stir in heavy cream.
5. Serve garnished with chopped fresh mint and a lime wedge.

Notes

If you are going to refrigerate this soup, be aware that the quinoa continues to absorb broth as it sits. Add additional broth to thin the soup before serving it again.

Nutrition

Calories

230 cal

Fat

7 g

Carbs

39 g

Protein

7 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

142

https://bluecayenne.com/peruvian-quinoa-chowder

There are a lot of Peruvian chowder recipes online. This recipe was adapted from recipes that appear in the Milk Street Magazine (https://www.177milkstreet.com/) and Laura b. Russel’s blog (http://laurabrussell.com/peruvian-quinoa-chowder/).

Apricots evoke strong emotions.

For poet John Ruskin, they conjured up a visual and tactile beauty. He described them as “shining in a sweet brightness of golden velvet.”

For Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, theirs was a melancholy comfort. She wrote: “At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it.”

For me, apricots have always occupied a special place in my food world. For a number of years, my mother’s “paradise cake” was a family tradition for my birthday. It was a yellow cake frosted with a cooked puree of apricots and decorated with coconut. It was tart, sweet, and decadent and it was made just for me. So, for me, I guess  the tart-sweet flavor of apricots is like a reassuring hug.  I’ve looked online for the recipe, thinking that there must be a recipe for paradise cake out there somewhere, but so far I’m coming up empty.

Absent a recipe for my mother’s paradise cake, this apricot crumble cake is a sweet-tart delight.

The recipe made its way into my towering stack of “must try” recipes because of the technique used in adding the fruit. Basically, you make the cake batter, spoon it into your cake pan, arrange apricot halves on top of the batter and then sprinkle a sugary crumble topping over the whole thing. As a result, you get a real jolt of the apricots’ tart goodness before you bite into the sweet cake.  For an apricot enthusiast like me, that is a big big plus. The recipe is versatile, too. You could use nectarines, peaches, or plums in place of the apricots. How good is that?“

Every year the apricot season seems like it lasts about fifteen minutes to me. In actuality, ninety per cent of the U.S. commercial crop of apricots is grown in California and the season lasts from early May to late July.

Eek! It’s July 1.

Time to gather some of the last of this year’s crop!

apricot crumble Cake

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Ingredients

Ingredients
• For the Cake
• 1 C. all-purpose flour
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1/4 C. granulated sugar
• 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 3 T. whole milk
• 1 t. vanilla bean paste
• 3/4 stick unsalted butter (melted)
• 5-7 ripe apricots
For the Crumble
• 1/4 C. plain flour
• 1 t. ground cinnamon
• 3 T. granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 t. cold unsalted butter (cubed)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease an 8-inch cake pan and cover the bottom of the pan with parchment paper.
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon and sugar together in a large bowl.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk egg, milk, vanilla and melted butter together. After mixing, add the liquid ingredients to the dry flour mixture, stirring carefully until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Spoon this batter into your 8-inch cake pan, spreading the batter to evenly cover the bottom of the pan. You won't have a lot of batter!
5. Halve apricots and remove the pits Arrange apricot halves (cut-side facing up) on top of the cake batter. Press the apricot halves gently into the batter.
6. Prepare your crumble topping. Place flour, cinnamon, and granulated sugar into a bowl. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour mixture until the mixture takes on the texture of wet sand. Sprinkle this crumble mixture over the apricots.
7. Bake apricot cake in a 350 degree F. oven for 35-40 minutes. When your cake is done the crumble topping will be slightly browned and a skewer inserted into the center of the cake will come out clean.
8. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove from the pan and let the cake cool completely on a wire rack. This cake is excellent served slightly warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Nutrition

Calories

6355 cal

Fat

537 g

Carbs

423 g

Protein

40 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

139

https://bluecayenne.com/apricot-crumble-cake

This recipe is adapted from one that appears here: http://eatlittlebird.com .

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JOIN ME FOR THE WAVE!

IT’S STONE FRUIT SEASON, PEOPLE!

In my mind, it doesn’t get better than stone fruit season–ripe as it is with the promise of baking and aromas and pleasurable eating, but, alas, not everyone is feeling the love this year. There is a wonderful apricot tart recipe as the end of this post, but, first I want to tell you a cautionary tale about a small breakdown in grocery store etiquette. The story begins in the fruit aisle.

I was gathering fuzzy orange-gold apricots into my biodegradable produce bags at my local Jon’s Supermarket the other day when, out of nowhere, I was approached by a lady wearing a wide flower-patterned headband that partially covered her medusa-like reddish hair.

“What are you going to make with all those apricots?” she asked as I was filling my second bag and as she was picking up a bag of her own. (There were a gazillion apricots filling the store’s bins, by the way. There was no shortage.)

Startled, I mumbled that I was going to bake an apricot tart because Jon’s apricots looked beautiful. “It’s always hard to find good apricots,” was my distracted but not unfriendly reply and I kept bagging.

For some reason, my answer seemed to irritate my new friend at the apricot bin.  Before I could even begin to tune into the drama unfolding around me, she had pivoted to face the apple aisle and yelled to “Bob,” a casually-dressed man who apparently was her husband, “She’s going to make an apricot tart!” The edge to her voice made her point clear. She might as well have added, “Can you believe that?”

Soon it seemed that people in the vicinity of the apricot bin were staring at us curiously. Bob, however, just proffered a half-disinterested “what?” and kept studying the sale produce. Not to be ignored—especially, apparently, by Bob—the apricot lady yelled to Bob again, this time even more loudly. “She’s making a tart,” trailing out the word tart as if it were a foul four-letter word.

I just stood there. What in the world? Had I wandered into some kind of Sterlingesque cultural minefield by admitting that I was making a tart? Was I being pranked? Candid Camera, maybe?

Or, wait! Was it me? I checked the strap of my purse to see if I was still wearing my Bernie button. Nope. I was clean. No triggers there.

Or, wait–again! Maybe it was just her. Maybe road rage has found its nasty way into the produce aisles, reducing one of our last areas of semi-civility to dust. Or, maybe she just needed a hug…or an apricot.

Whatever. I tied the little twisty tops onto my bags of apricots and ducked into the anonymity of the check-out line. (What? You thought I was going to leave the apricots behind just because I was being harrangued by a stranger? Blue Cayenne had a post deadline! I can be one tough cookie when I need to.)

As I drove home, I made it a point to refocus upon my plan to bake the beautiful apricot tart recipe I had bookmarked in David Lebovitz’s book, Ready for Dessert, and to write a bit about the glories of beautiful apricots. I’d gotten my groove back.

Here is that part of my post.

After I had enjoyed every moment of baking the tart–It is superb, by the way– I started doing a little more research on apricots. Did you know that, fragile as they are, apricots have been around for thousands of years, probably first being cultivated in China and Central Asia? Or that thereafter, they were carried across the Eurasian steppe by what one writer colorfully described as bands of “nomadic, horseback-riding tribesman?” I didn’t know that but reading the history of apricots set me to musing; can’t you just picture rough-and-tumble warriors, pockets packed with apricots, bare-chested except for tight little leather vests…  Nevermind.

Apricots are called a lot of names around the world—golden apples, Armenian plums, The Precocious One, yellow plums and on and on. They’ve also insinuated themselves into colloquial expressions. There is an absolutely wonderful Turkish expression that goes like this: “It doesn’t get better than an apricot in Damascus.” (Translation: You can’t show me anything better than that!)

The Persians have an apricot saying, too. When someone makes an improbable boast, the sarcastic response is sometimes, ” when the apricots bloom…” or, “Tomorrow there will be apricots.”  The apricot expression is the Persian equivalent of  “when pigs fly.”

Lest you dismiss my promise of a great apricot tart recipe with references to apricots blooming tomorrow, here it is– and it’s a delicious gem of a recipe, too. Worth the wait.

Me? I’m going back to buy more apricots tomorrow. I’ve found an Ottolenghi recipe for Poached Apricots with Pistachios and Amaretto Cream that I just can’t wait to try.  Tell you the truth, though, I’m really hoping not to run into that downer of an apricot lady again. If I do, maybe I’ll try telling her the one about the nomadic, horseback-riding tribesmen.

Apricot-Almond Paste Tart

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Ingredients

Dough
• 1 C. flour
• 1/2 C. sliced unblanched almonds
• 1/4 C. granulated sugar
• 1/8 t. salt
• 1/2 C. cold unsalted butter (cut into 1/2-inch pieces)
• 1 large egg yolk
Filling
• 1/2 C. flour
• 1/3 C. packed light brown sugar
• 3 ounces almond paste (crumbled)
• 1/4 C. sliced unblanched almonds
• 4 T. cold unsalted butter (cut into 1/2 inch pieces)
• 12-14 fresh ripe apricots (about 1 1/4 pounds)
• 1 T. cornstarch
• 1/4 C. granulated sugar (more to sprinkle on top of the finished tart if the apricots are less-than-sweet)
• Chopped fresh apricots for garnish

Instructions

1. Prepare a tart pan by greasing it lightly.
2. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
3. Make the dough in your food processor fitted with the metal blade. Process 1 cup of flour, 1/2 C. sliced almonds, 1/4 C. granulated sugar and the salt until the nuts are finely ground. Pulse the chilled butter pieces into the flour mixture and continue to process until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Now, add the egg yolk and process until the dough just begins to come together and form clumps.
4. Remove the dough from your processor and press it into the bottom of your tart pan with your fingers. Try to get the dough evenly distributed in the tart pan and be sure to push some of the dough up the sides of the pan so that your tart will have a pretty edge. Cover the tart pan with plastic wrap and let the dough chill in your refrigerator for at least an hour. The dough will feel fairly firm when you remove it from the refrigerator. Once removed from the refrigerator, use the tines of your fork to poke holes into the bottom of the tart shell. Make about a dozen holes. Bake the tart shell in your 400 degree F. oven for about 20 minutes. If the shell begins to puff up while baking, press the dough down with the back of a heat-proof spatula. When the tart shell is baked, remove it from the oven and let it cool while making the filling.
5. Decrease oven temperature to 375 degrees F.
6. Use the same food processor with the same metal blade for making the filling. There is no need to clean the bowl. Process together 1/2 C. flour, brown sugar, almond paste and 1/4 C. sliced almonds until you can see that the almond paste is broken into fine pieces in the flour mixture. Add 4 T. chilled butter and process the mixture until the butter pieces have begun to break down. The butter pieces should now be about the size of peas. Set aside but move quickly to put the tart together.
7. Prepare your fresh apricots by halving and pitting them and slicing them into 1/2-inch slices. Toss the sliced apricots into a bowl with the cornstarch and 1/4 C. sugar (or a bit more if your apricots aren't particularly sweet).
8. Spread the apricot slices (now softening in the sugar/cornstarch mixture) evenly in the bottom of the tart pan. You wil want to include as much of the cornstarch and sugar mixture that is now clinging to your apricots in your pie. The cornstarch will thicken the apricot juices so that your pie won't be runny. The sugar will diminish any excessive tartness in the apricots.
9. Sprinkle the almond/flour mixture over the apricots that you have now arranged in the tart shell. Using your hands, be sure the crumbly almond/flour mixture is distributed evenly on top of the apricots.
10. Bake until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is beginning to brown. This will take about 30 minutes. Watch your tart carefully at the end of baking. You don't want your crust to burn. Remove your tart from the oven and let it cool to allow the fruit juices to thicken and to make it easier to cut neat slices to serve your guests..
11. This tart is best served warm or at room temperature and would be spectacular with a scoop of good quality vanilla ice cream.

7.8.1.2

136

https://bluecayenne.com/apricots

You can buy Lebovitz’ book at Amazon. Here is the link: Amazon.

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