Blue Cayenne

Yotam Ottolenghi.

This Ottolenghi recipe was featured recently on the NY Times food site and it is wonderful. The crumb is light and the almond flour gives this little cake a delightful texture. This cake is so good, in fact, that it is almost worth getting up early on a Sunday morning to enjoy a lemony slice and a cup of steaming hot tea–or, at least, grabbing a slice of the cake as soon as you stumble out of bed and try to remember where you left your glasses the night before. (Here is the link to the original recipe:  Ottolenghi’s Blueberry, Lemon and Almond Cake .)

I’ve posted a few Ottolenghi recipes on Blue Cayenne before and he continues to be a culinary inspiration for me. If you are unfamiliar with him, Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi is a cooking phenom. He operates several highly-rated restaurants in  London and has published a number of well-received cookbooks. He is also a contributor to the NY Times cooking site. (Here is a link to his official site where you will find a lot of his great recipes: Ottolenghi’s Official Site.)

Lest you feel guilty about eating cake, remember that you get to eat blueberries in this recipe and that cancels a lot of the guilt. Blueberries are,after all, a certified health food. Lots of health sites say so. And, if you are of a certain age and still feeling guilty, take a walk down memory lane and be reminded that no less an expert than Fats Domino sang that blueberries (or, at least, Blueberry Hill) can give your mood a boost: Fats Domino and Blueberry Hill.

Native to North America, blueberries are grown from the tropics to the arctic. In peak season now (July is National Blueberry Month!), you can enjoy them for a reasonable price. Blueberries are low in fat, high in vitamin C,  and clock in at only 80 calories per cup. They have the highest antioxidant capacity of all fruits.

With the weather heating up here in Southern California, these are salad days to be sure.

A digression: If you’ve ever wondered about that expression, “salad days” has Shakespearean origins. In Antony and Cleopatra, a rueful Cleopatra laments her youthful inexperience and recklessness– “…my salad days/when I was green in judgment, cold in blood….”  Over time, the expression has changed in meaning. In American usage, the term now refers to a time when a person is at the peak of her abilities–her heyday.

If you have a bounty of summer squash (or a generous neighbor with a garden), here is an idea for a wonderful fresh summer salad that you won’t regret putting on your table. And, trust me, this salad recipe works on many delicious levels.  I am particularly fond of the lemony/garlicky vinaigrette that “cooks” the squash ribbons and of the bite that the arugula gives to the finished dish. Then, there are the roasted almonds…

I recently bought a new mandoline and was anxious to try it out with this recipe. I confess that I have a bit of a  mandoline phobia, but I read a review for this new mandoline, the OXO Chef’s Mandoline 2.0, and was convinced it might fit into my kitchen routine. (The 2.0 incorporates some safely features that my fancy–and expensive– French mandoline doesn’t have.) In this recipe, I was able to (safely) cut the beautiful symmetrical ribbons of squash that you see in the photo of the dish. Who knows? With my new mandoline in hand, there may be no stopping me with this summer’s bounty of beautiful vegetables! Here is the link to the review of the mandoline: OXO Chef’s Mandoline 2.0 Review from Epicurious.

My good luck this year is that my neighbors (and good friends) Sarah and Gene are growing the the mothers of all squash plants in their backyard garden. To my delight, I was able to make this salad with fresh-off-the-vine produce.

Predictably, my friends are struggling to measure up to the challenge of using (or giving away) the increasingly-large output of their three plants. Today, an exasperated Sarah was showing off a two-pound squash that had hidden itself among the leaves of one of her plants. She has a very long way to go before the Guinness World Record people register her squashes in their record books, though. The world’s largest zucchini on record was grown by Bernard Lavery of Plymouth Devon in the UK. That zucchini measured  69 1/2 inches long, and weighed 65 lbs. –something like this. Whoa!

You are probably sitting there reading this blog and wondering how Sarah’s squash compares.To give you an idea of the size of Sarah’s admittedly early entry into the squash competition, we enlisted the help of a reluctant (and more than a little bit cranky) five pound Juliet. You only have to look at that normally sweet little face to understand that Juliet fails to see the humor in being compared to a zucchini. As I counseled her, sometimes life just isn’t fair.

Juliet needs a hug.

This recipe is adapted from one I learned in a recent cooking class at Costa Mesa’s wonderful Sur La Table Cooking School.

Yields 4 Servings

Summer Squash Carpaccio with Arugula

20 minPrep Time

20 minTotal Time

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Ingredients

• 1 pound small zucchini (a mix of green and yellow)
• 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 C. fresh lemon juice
• 1 garlic clove (minced to a paste)
• Sea salt
• 3 ounces arugula
• 3 ounces pecorino toscano or parmesan cheese (shaved)
• Freshly-ground black pepper
• 1/4 C. toasted sliced almonds

Instructions

1. Using a mandoline or a vegetable peeler, slice squash into ribbons. Set aside.
2. Whisk oil and lemon juice together in a small bowl. Add garlic paste and sea salt. Lemons vary in their acidity, so you may want to adjust the amount of the lemon juice in your dressing to your taste. Pour this dressing over the squash you have sliced and allow the squash to marinate in the dressing for at least five minutes. The squash will begin to soften.
3. Mix arugula and cheese into the squash mixture. Adjust seasonings.
4. To serve, arrange the salad on a pretty serving plate. Sprinkle toasted almonds over the salad and enjoy.

Notes

I've found that lemons vary in the acidity of their juice. To my taste, this salad dressing is best when it has a real sour bite. My recommendation is that you taste the dressing after it has been allowed to sit and mature and add extra lemon juice to your taste.

Nutrition

Calories

76 cal

Fat

8 g

Carbs

1 g

Protein

1 g

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68

https://bluecayenne.com/salad-days-summer-squash-carpaccio-with-arugula

Wow!  Just wow!

What do you get when you combine a shortbread crust, a frangipani custard base and beautiful just-in-season apricots from the farmers’ market?  This tender and absolutely stunning tart!

Take my advice and eat this tart just warm from the oven when the warm apricots literally melt in your mouth as they float on top of the smooth almond custard and when the shortbread crust is at its peak of crispness.

(Full disclosure: Only because I want to be absolutely sure I capture in words the essence of the dish, I’m eating one several slices of this tart as I write this blog. It is, after all, what I owe the people who are kind enough to read Blue Cayenne. Never mind my powdered sugar mustache. Dignity flies out the window when you are eating a warm apricot tart. Trust me.)

This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Patricia Wells’ cookbook Patricia Wells at Home in Provence, a cookbook for which she won a James Beard award. Wells was born in  the United States (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) but now divides her time between Paris and Provence. Sounds like the good life to me. She has a new highly-regarded cookbook, My Master Recipes. (My Master Recipes by Patricia Wells.)

Here is a link to the original recipe: Patricia Wells’ Verlet’s Apricot Tart. (Maison Verlet is a tea shop on the Rue St. Honore in Paris. It has been serving coffee and sweets (and tea) since the beginning of the 20th Century.)

Yields 8 Servings

Apricot Tart

30 minPrep Time

55 minCook Time

1 hr, 25 Total Time

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Ingredients

• For pastry:
• 8 T. unsalted, melted butter (cooled)
• 1/2 C. sugar
• 1/4 t. almond extract
• 1/4 t. vanilla extract
• 1/2 t. fine sea salt
• 1 1/4 C. plus 1 T. unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 T. finely-ground almonds (for crust)
• 2 T. finely-ground almonds (to sprinkle on bottom of the tart shell after blind baking)
• For filling:
• 1/2 C. creme fraiche or heavy cream (or a mixture)
• 1 large egg (lightly beaten)
• 1/2 t. almond extract
• 1/2 t. vanilla extract
• 2 T. honey
• 1 T. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 pounds fresh apricots (pitted and sliced)
• Confectioners' suger for garnish

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease a tart pan.
3. For the pastry: Combine melted butter and sugar. Add remaining ingredients and stir to form a soft cookie-like dough. Using your fingers, press the dough into the prepared tart pan. Bake crust for 12-15 minutes until it is slightly puffy. Sprinkle 2 T. of ground almonds on the bottom of the blind-baked crust.
4. For the filling: Combine creme fraiche or heavy whipping cream in a large bowl. Add egg, flavor extracts and honey and mix ingredients with a whisk. Whisk in the flour.
5. Pour the custard mixture into the blind baked crust. Arrange sliced apricots on top of the custard.
6. Put tart pan on a baking tray. (This will protect your oven from drips.) Bake tart for 55-60 minutes until the custard is firm and the crust is a nice golden brown. Sprinkle immediately with confectioners' sugar. Cool on a rack.

Nutrition

Calories

587 cal

Fat

25 g

Carbs

75 g

Protein

19 g

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

7.8.1.2

63

https://bluecayenne.com/apricot-tart