Blueberry Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

“Nothin’ but blue skies for now on…”

Anyone who tells you Seasonal Affective Disorder is a load of crap should be subjected to a Pacific Northwest winter. Eugene, Oregon, where I went to graduate school, layered days upon days of glary, gossamer grey light. It’s not that it rained that much there. Don’t get me wrong, it rained. But the greyness was what was most oppressive, climate-coated  emotional shackles. I prefer the monotony of 300 days of sunshine. Blue skies, blue skies with puffy white clouds, blue skies and wind-whipped icicle cold air, as long as there’s sunshine, I’m happy.

Which is to say, that my least favorite month living in Southern California is June. The hazy, foggy mornings that fall under the umbrella of June Gloom are such a downer. I find it hard to wake up, hard to concentrate, hard to do anything but laze around and watch baseball. And since May Grey seems to precede June Gloom with more frequency than it used to, by half way through June I’m cranky as all get out. And by the behavior of my fellow Angelenos, I’d say it’s getting to them too.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that the shortest route to an attitude adjustment has to be ice cream. Take a crying kid and give her an ice cream cone and those tears quickly dissipate into a dirty-faced smile.  Take a curmudgeony grown-up on a hot, sticky day out for gelato and they’re bound to relax. So last week I decided to take my bad mood out for some ice cream.

Inspiration wasn’t too far off. As I was snapping pictures at the Hollywood Farmers’ market for my monthly contribution to Serious Eats’ Market Scene (which, incidentally, was about June Gloom too—there seems to be a theme here), I tried gorgeous tangy-sweet blueberries from Jimenez Family Farm, newcomers to the market. The navy blue orbs were like nature’s Pop Rocks, exploding with flavor that was surprising for this early in the season. Armed with blueberries, I wandered over to Lily’s herb stand and, sniffing around, discovered some lemon verbena. An herb native to South America, it has powerful lemony scent with just a hint of grassy undertones. It’s a nice complement to fruit salad, makes for a refreshing tisane and, I thought, would add a nice lemon quality to the ice cream without adding more acidity. When I told Lily what I was thinking she raised her dark eyebrows skeptically.

The combination of the fruit and the herb was the delightful, summery remedy I was looking for. And it’s cerulean color, tinged with purple, and its creamy richness would have to suffice for blue skies, at least until July.

Blueberry Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 oz lemon verbena
12 oz blueberries, rinsed
pinch of salt
5 egg yolks

Stir together the blueberries, a pinch of salt and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until the berries start to give up their liquid. Add sprigs of lemon verbena and let steep for about 45 minutes. Remove the lemon verbena and puree in a blender until smooth. Pour the blueberry mixture through a sieve to remove seeds and skins, then add back to the pot and stir in the milk over medium-low heat.

Pour the heavy cream into a medium bowl and set a strainer over it. Set aside.

In another medium bowl whisk your egg yolks until they’re smooth. Slowly pour the warmed blueberry mixture into the eggs, mixing constantly, to temper the yolks. (Do this too fast and you’ll end up with blueberry scrambled eggs.) Transfer the blueberry custard base back into your pot and heat again over medium-low until the mixture thickens slightly. You’ll know it’s ready when you can drag your finger through the batter on the back of a spoon or spatula and it doesn’t run together.

Pour batter through the strainer into the cream. Stir to combine, cover with plastic and chill overnight. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Clafoutis catches some rays at breakfast

Sometimes I get a little over-zealous at the farmers’ market, especially in the late-Spring. I stock up on gorgeous gem-colored cherries, tangy-sweet blueberries, pints of radiant red strawberries, baby beets and rainbow chard, forgetting I made dinner plans or agreed to go to a wine tasting later in the week. As I’m unloading my bags and stuffing my crisper until it’s spilling out the seams like Jack Sprat, I realize I’ve bought way more than I’ll have time to eat without a little strategizing. (And sadly there are weeks I don’t realize this until I the strawberries begin looking like a fifth grade science experiment.)

Walking to the old Farmers’ Market on Fairfax and Third last week, Neal and I spied some rhubarb growing in a neighbor’s yard. The plant had already gone to flower, so it wasn’t going to be good eating, even if it wasn’t an integral part of their landscaping. But it got me thinking of the pint of strawberries in my fridge and one of my favorite, simple French desserts: clafoutis.

I love clafoutis, which is essentially fruit and cake batter, but it tastes a cross between custard and a pancake-y Dutch baby. In Limousin, where the dessert originated, it’s usually made with early-Season cherries, pits and all. The little stones inside aren’t edible, but as they cook they add depth of flavor to the clafoutis. When I make the dessert with cherries, I like to pit them, but rather than cutting the cherries up, I prefer to split them by hand to remove the pit but keep them mostly in tact. It adds to the rustic appeal of the dish.

Moreover, I love clafoutis because it’s so hard to mess up. Even the worst clafoutis tastes pretty good, and it takes hardly any time to make.  So I picked up some crimson stalks of rhubarb at the market to make a strawberry-rhubarb clafoutis. I found a recipe from the folks at King Arthur flour that I used as a foundation and set to hulling and halving strawberries and dicing rhubarb. And while the final version made for some good after-dinner treats (and late-afternoon, passing-through-the-kitchen will-power busters), this not-to-sweet version, which I spiked with cardamom and black pepper, was a delight first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee.

Spiced Strawberry Rhubarb Clafoutis
adapted from King Arthur Flour

Fruit
1 lb ripe strawberries, hulled and halved
1 cup rhubarb (about 2 stalks), diced
4 tbsp butter
1/3 cup sugar

Batter
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 whole milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch cake pan or casserole dish.

In a sauté pan, melt the mutter. Add the rhubarb and place the strawberries on top, cooking for about five minutes and giving an occasional shake to make sure it’s not sticking. (The goal is the reduce the fruits’ juices to create a bit of a syrup without turning the strawberries to mush.) Sprinkle the 1/3-cup of sugar over the berries, stir and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook for a few minutes, until the mixture thickens slightly. Pour the fruit into you baking dish and let cook while you make the batter.

In a medium-sized bow, whisk the sugar, salt and eggs together until it is light. Slowly add the flour, whisking until combined. Stir in cream, vanilla, cardamom and pepper. Pour the batter over the fruit. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the cake is puffy and browned on top. Dust with powdered sugar or serve with whip cream or ice cream.

Strawberries from Harry’s Berries@ the Hollywood Farmers’ Market

Sometimes I think I want to just throw in the towel. Writing is hard work, and some days the last thing I want to do, after a full day writing and editing for work, is to sit in front of the computer while the last hours of sunshine and warmth recede into purplish sunsets. To me a bad day writing is like a bad day cooking—you’ve still got something you created in front of you, but do you really want to eat it?

Still, it seems, almost immediately after a string of uninspired days, I’ll be filled with a creative impulse that allows my brain and my ego to shut off just long enough for me to type with abandon. And generally, that inspiration comes from the kitchen, a dish or dessert that rekindles that desire to share, a literary running around with the spoon, eager to feed everyone. I had intended to make a springtime pizza this week complete with a new dough recipe I’m working on in my head. But a succession of incidents left me feeling discouraged, and I never got around to making the dough. As of yesterday, the English peas, fava beans and asparagus for the pizza were still sitting in my fridge, next to the three pints of ruby red strawberries I picked up at the farmers’ market last week.

I love strawberries. In fact, I love them so much, and I ate them with such gusto as a kid (strawberries, strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, strawberry yogurt—if it had strawberry in it, I ate it) that I developed a strawberry allergy. For nearly a decade, those sweet, juicy berries were forbidden fruit. I grew out of the allergy, thank goodness, but to this day I savor every berry like it might be my last. I try not to over-indulge, but the force is strong with me. I can easily eat a pint in a sitting. Surprised that I hadn’t eaten more of them, my wheels started churning.

I learned long ago that pity parties are best with ice cream. So I decided to take advantage of my new loaner, countertop ice cream maker, my semi-sour mood and riff on the strawberry thyme sorbet recipe I’ve been playing with.  (Thanks Adam!) And wouldn’t you know, inside the perfectly smooth scoop of strawberry rosewater sorbet last night was that seed of inspiration that I had been looking for. Now I have two recipes to post!

To spring!

Strawberry Rosewater Sorbet
adapted from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop

1 lb fresh strawberries
¾ cup sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp rosewater
pinch salt
1 tsp vodka

Rinse and hull the strawberries, then quarter them. Add strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, rosewater, salt and vodka to a medium bowl and cover with plastic. Let the strawberry mixture macerate for a half an hour and stir. Let stand for another half an hour. Puree strawberry mixture, then push through a fine-meshed sieve with a wooden spoon to get rid of any pulp or seeds. Chill mixture for 6-8 hours and then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Strawberry Thyme Sorbet
adapted from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop

1 lb fresh strawberries
¾ cup sugar, separated
1 tsp lemon juice
1 oz fresh thyme springs
¼ cup water
pinch salt
1 tsp vodka

Rinse and hull the strawberries, then quarter them. Add strawberries, ½ cup sugar, lemon juice, vodka and pinch of salt to a medium bow. Let macerate for an hour covered with plastic wrap, stirring occasionally. In the meantime, place ¼ cup water, ¼ cup sugar and thyme springs in a small saucepan, heat until the sugar dissolves. Let cool, then pour over the strawberry mixture. Let macerate for another half hour to hour.

Remove thyme spring and puree strawberry mixture. Run through a fine-meshed sieve to get rid of any pulp or seeds. Chill mixture for 6-8 hours and then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Murcotts at Burkart Farms, Hollywood Farmers’ Market, Murcott Olive Oil Ice Cream

The pile of Murcotts at Burkhart’s farmers’ market stand shrank a little this week, the stack looking more like a pile of bright orange tennis balls left behind on the playground than winter’s citrus bounty. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, you can see the stand above, and the selection is far from paltry. But I’m waxing a little poetic this morning about winter’s waning. There are probably only a few more weeks left in Murcott season, and I’m a little melancholy. I almost packed up my sweaters in defiance of Mother Nature, hoping the razzing would prolong the season just a couple more weeks. But it looks like our wedding is going to be next spring, instead of the fall, and I couldn’t afford to piss her off. I may want more Murcotts now, but next April I want warm days and mild evenings and mountains of springtime produce to help execute the dinner menu that’s slowly evolving in my head.

The Murcott, as I mentioned in last week’s post, is a tangerine that deftly walks the line between tangy acidity and breakfast-orange-juice-sweetness, making it exceptionally easy to eat. While I enjoy them in savory dishes and out of hand, it’s the deconstructed creamsicle that Foodwoolf made last Easter that stands out in my mind as the ne plus ultra of Murcott use. So in homage to the fading winter, sticky-fingered childhood memories sitting on the curb eating a rapidly melting popsicle, and my favorite citrus of the season, I decided to preserve the Murcott’s memory by making ice cream.

I was a bit concerned about adding the Murcott juice directly to the cream and milk, imagining the citrus’s acid turning my dairy into Little Miss Muffet’s curds and whey, so I decided to take a slightly different tack. Inspired by the tangerine olive oil Neal and I tried at Pasolivo Olive Oil while hunting for wedding venues up on the Central Coast, I decided to infuse my favorite fruit olive oil with the Murcott zest to extract the flavor. The result? Murcott Olive Oil Ice Cream that layers flavors like delicate sheets of puff pastry melting into each other on your tongue. The little girl in me was jumping up and down with every bite, oohing and ahhing at the sweet tangy goodness, and the grown-up in me couldn’t get over the featherweight creaminess in my mouth. Of course, if you can’t find Murcotts at your local farmers’ market, you can try this recipe with the zest of almost any citrus. Satsuma mandarin? Key lime? Kumquat? Let your palate be your guide.

Murcott Olive Oil Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
¾ cup heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
½ cup fruity extra virgin olive oil
3 egg yolks
1 oz Murcott zest cut into large strips, pith removed

Pour olive oil into a small saucepan. Add the Murcott zest, gently rubbing it between your fingers to help extract the oils. Bring the oil and zest to a boil then turn off the heat and let stand for 1-2 hours.

In the meantime, heat the sugar and milk in a medium saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the egg yolks with a whisk. Slowly whisk the warm milk mixture into the egg yolks to temper them. Return all of the mixture to the saucepan and warm over medium-low heat until thickens slightly, stirring constantly. You’ll know the custard is ready when you can run your finger through the batter on the back of a spoon or spatula and it leaves a clean line.

Pour cream into a large bowl or large measuring cup (at least 1 quart) and place a fine-meshed strainer on top. Slowly strain custard into the cream. Then slowly strain olive oil into the custard mixture. Mix and cover. Refrigerate overnight. Give a stir and then freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Serve a scoop of the ice cream with a squeeze of fresh Murcott juice or even candied Murcott zest.

 Grapefruit & Black Pepper Sorbet

Something happened while I was waiting for blood oranges. My friend Suzy brought me a giant bag full of Ruby Red grapefruits from her parents’ house in Palm Springs. Juicy, sweet and wonderfully tangy, these were some of the best grapefruits I’d had in years.

I haven’t always been a grapefruit fan. I thought the yellow-fleshed, sour orbs that my mother served instead of salad some nights when I was a kid were utterly horrible. They made your face screw up so that even the cutest five-year old would look like a Photoshop-warped Popeye. After my mother finally caught on and started buying me oranges, I forgot about grapefruits completely. In fact, I don’t think I gave grapefruits another thought until college, when they were one of the safest things to eat in the cafeteria. Nothing bad could happen to your grapefruit under its leathery skin, and sprinkled with enough sugar—at least until I learned to appreciate their tart intrigue—they were exponentially more edible than the pancakes, though those made fair stand-ins for Frisbees on the disc golf course on campus.

There are dozens of grapefruit varieties ranging in sweetness and in color, for almost white to, well, ruby. There are also Pomelos, which are thought to be an ancient grapefruit variety. These suckers can easily reach the size of a bowling ball, though are more often the size of a baby’s head. Grapefruits are predominantly grown where all citrus does well, in places like Florida, Texas and California. Wander around my neighborhood and you’ll surely find them dangling off trees, just within reach. But be sure to ask the homeowners. People steal our avocadoes all the time and it stinks.

Anyhow, back to Suzy’s grapefruits. I ate them out of hand, in salads and brûléed. But there were more grapefruits than Neal and I could imagine consuming before they went bad, so I harnessed my inner David Lebovitz (you do know David Lebovitz, right? Author of the Perfect Scoop, one of my all-time favorite cookbooks), took a well-deserved break from wedding research, and concocted a sorbet recipe, with a kiss of black pepper to spice things up.

Not wanting to be wasteful, I peeled all of the grapefruits first and set about to candying their zest with a super-simple recipe I got from Cookstr. Remember those gummies that your grandma kept in the candy dish? The candied zest was like those, except it wasn’t stale and it tasted like real fruit. Together, the zest and the sorbet made a remarkably refreshing dessert, perfect for the warm weather here in Southern California, but an equally nice get-away treat if you live in the colder reaches of the country and have access to good citrus.

Candied Grapefruit Zest

Grapefruit & Black Pepper Sorbet

2 cups fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice (about 4 grapefruits)
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Using a paring knife, peel the zest off the grapefruits in wide, long strips, and reserve for your candied grapefruit zest.

In a saucepan bring sugar, water and ground pepper to a simmer, making sure all the sugar is dissolved. Whisk simple syrup into grapefruit juice. Refrigerate overnight and freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Pistachio Persimmon Cupcakes

Do you remember when the cupcake was just a lowly children’s birthday party treat—just yellow Betty Crocker cake with some shelf-stabilized, not-even-sure-if-it-contains-cocoa chocolate frosting? It was simpler then, before New York’s Magnolia Bakery threw down the first whisk in the cupcake wars. There was no sneaking off into the bathroom to eat a Sprinkles carrot cake cupcake where no one could see you lick off all the cream cheese frosting first, no hiding the pink cardboard boxes from your coworkers in the bottom drawer of your desk, no snatching the paper-wrapped delights out of a little girl’s hand saying you just want a bite…

My cupcake conversion began while I was an editorial assistant at Harper Collins in New York City. I had left my job managing Le Zinc, a TriBeCa bistro owned by Karen and David Waltuck of Chanterelle fame, to become an editor. I wanted to cultivate poets and edgy fiction writers over two-martini lunches, but ended up answering phones and writing flap copy for books I had never read and didn’t want to. I struggled to pay my rent with the smallest monthly paycheck I’d earned since manning the Moonbounce on a ranch in the eighth grade, and dozed at my desk after waiting tables until 3 a.m. in an effort to make ends meet. I toiled under the flickering fluorescent lights 12-hours a day, even though I finished my work in six, filing, answering phones and writing rejection letters. And I watched intently as the people I wanted to be, the Editors, shuffled miserably from marketing meeting to marketing meeting, lunched with agents, ate dinner with writers and used vacation days to actually edit the books they bought. I could see my workaholic life unfolding before like an origami prison. In fact, there were only three things I liked about my job—the audio department, my proximity to the cookbook editor’s office, and afternoon forays to Buttercup Bake Shop on 2nd Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street.

I liked Buttercup better than Magnolia, then considered the Holy Grail of New York cupcakeries. Where Buttercup cupcakes were moist and airy, Magnolia cupcakes were sweet and dense, the kind of confection that makes your teeth feel like 80 grit sandpaper. Paired with a hot cup of coffee or a cold glass of milk a Buttercup cupcake could make you forget your boss yelled at you in front of dozens of people for something you didn’t do, forget that you hadn’t written or read anything of substance in months, forget that you were much happier working 70-hour weeks at the restaurant where you were, surprisingly for an industry that’s known for its brutality, treated with some respect.

These days I don’t need a cupcake to wipe out the gloom of my workaday life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t crave them now and then, dream about them even. About a month ago I dreamt about these deliciously light, not too sweet, pistachio persimmon cupcakes. And since that dream I’ve been trying to figure out how to make them.

The first trick was picking the right persimmon, which are in season right now. I generally prefer the Fuyu, which looks a bit like a dusty tomato and doesn’t have the astringency of the Hachiya, another common variety. But I also like it for its firmer texture so pureeing it didn’t seem to make sense. I used pistachio flour from the Santa Barbara Pistachio Company, but you could also grind pistachio kernels to a fine powder on your own. For my first batch of cupcakes I chopped it up and folded it in like apple cake, but they tasted much more like a quick bread. I needed to get more lift out of my batter and I wasn’t quite sure how to do that, so I talked to Alan over at the Cook’s Library and read up on leavening. In the end I decided to increase the baking soda and add another egg. I was also careful to fully cream the butter and sugar and to fold in the dry ingredients by hand, so as not to overwork the cake. On my fourth attempt I finlly hit the jackpot. I iced them with a simple buttercream (using real butter and just a little almond extract) and fresh chopped pistachios (which are deliciously fresh, having been harvested over the past few months).  But be warned: these slightly fruit cupcakes are addicting. I ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner until they were gone.

Pistachio Persimmon Cupcakes

4 large eggs, room temperature
1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup), room temperature
¾ cup persimmon puree
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
¾ cup sugar
½ cup pistachio flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
½ cup toasted, chopped pistachios

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two cupcake trays with your favorite cupcake cups.

In a medium bowl sift together the dry ingredients (except the sugar) and set aside. Then, in another bowl, combine the persimmon puree, milk and vanilla.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. By hand, alternate folding in the flour mixture and puree until just incorporated; be careful not to over mix.

Fill cupcake cups about three-quarters full and bake in the center of your oven about 20-25 minutes, until lightly golden and a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.

Let cupcakes cool before icing with a simple buttercream or cream cheese frosting and roll in toasted, chopped pistachios.

Fresh bread, gorgonzola and quince paste

Fall is by far my favorite season and, since the trees here refuse to play dress-up in their crimson, persimmon and gold-colored October wardrobe like a stubborn child refusing to have fun, it’s the one I have to work the most to capture. Autumn comes in from the edges in Southern California. It’s most obvious in the morning—when the light is a little more slanted, illuminating the palm trees and mountains to the east with a pumpkin-tinge—and in the evening, when Orion rises in the sky, the stars on his belt sparkling like Paris Hilton’s bling. It creeps in at the farmers’ markets too, with apples and winter squashes peppering the farmers’ tables along with grapes and figs and dates.

But this year the weather here tells a different story. The summer-like blistering heat marches on like an oppressive regime. So I’m trying to bring the season in from the edges through cooking. Last week I made braised short ribs and slow-cooked chicken. I made sfratti (walnut cookies for the Jewish New Year) and bought a tiny kabocha squash all with the hope that if I ate the foods of fall, somehow I could make it feel more like fall. Mostly it just made my apartment even hotter than it was outside.

Then I found some quince—the yellow-green, lumpy fruit in the apple family with leathery skin like a pomegranate, the astringency of a persimmon when raw and an ethereal, sweet citrus-like flavor when cooked. The fruit has been around for more than 4,000 years in the Mediterranean and Asia, but is just starting to gain popularity here. Only a few farmers grow it, including Mud Creek Ranch in Santa Paula (California), and it’s season is short (late September/early October through December). It tastes delicious poached in vanilla syrup, red wine or honey, or stuffed with spinach—all great symbols of the fall. And because it’s naturally high in pectin, it also lends itself well to jams, jellies and, my favorite, quince paste.

Called membrillo in Spanish, quince paste is customarily served with Manchego cheese, though it contrasts nicely with other salty cheeses like parmigiano or pecorino. Try slathering a pat on fresh bread with gorgonzola, too. Because it keeps well, up to three months in your fridge, it’s easy to make and have ready for unexpected guests, or to serve as a no-fuss appetizer during the rapidly approaching holiday season.

Until I can feel the fall, I’ll be eating quince paste on everything—even if I’m wearing a sundress and the air-conditioning is on all the while.

Quince Paste
adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients
4 medium quinces (about 2 pounds), fully ripe
¼ to ½ cup water
2-3 cups sugar
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 1-quart terrine.
Clean and dry quinces. Place in a small roasting pan and cover with foil, then bake in the center of the oven until tender. Transfer pan to a rack to cool.

When quinces are cooled enough to handle, peel and core them using a sharp knife.

In a food processor puree quinces with ¼ cup of water until smooth (if mixture is too thick, add a little water at a time, up to another ¼ cup, as needed). Push quince puree through a fine sieve into a liquid cup measure. Note the amount of puree. Transfer to a 3-quart heavy saucepan and add the equivalent amount of sugar and lemon juice.

Cook puree over moderate heat until thickened and begins to pull away from side of pan. If you do not cook the puree long enough it won’t set (though it will still taste good). Pour into terrine and smooth the top with an offset spatula. When paste has reached room temperature, cover with plastic and chill in the refrigerator until set, about 4 hours.

Run knife along sides of terrine and invert onto a platter. Slice and serve. Wrap unused paste in wax paper and then plastic wrap. It should store, refrigerated, up to three months.

Farmers’ Market Iron Chef: Battle in the Kitchen

With just 20 minutes remaining in Battle Apple I knew I was toast. I hadn’t made my apple vinaigrette, the batter for my apple fritters or heated my fry oil. Across fthe kitchen island stood my fellow food blogger and Foodbuzz Iron Chef challenger, Foodwoolf’s Brooke Burton, looking as relaxed as if she’d just come back from a beach vacation. And worst of all? The sweet-tangy smell of apples, caramelized sugar and cinnamon was making me hungry.

The competition seemed simple. Choose an ingredient at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market to plan a 3-course meal around. Each blogger-chef would have two hours to prepare their food, which would be judged on taste, plating and originality by a panel of food savvy professionals. But less than 24 hours before we were to take up our knives, we suddenly found ourselves without a battlefield, for the second time.

Chef’s Kitchens, a cool commercial kitchen co-op located in West Los Angeles was originally going to be our Kitchen Stadium. That is until we found out we needed food handlers’ licenses and liability insurance. Our second Kitchen Stadium was to be a friends’ home, that is until the über-pregnant hostess realized that we’d be taking over her kitchen for the better part of a day. Suddenly scrambling for a location the day before the event, Brooke and I called every connection we had in the food world to try and track down a kitchen large enough for two people to cook in. Bon Appetit’s test kitchen? No chance. Sur La Table’s cooking class kitchen? Not with a day’s notice. A restaurant that doesn’t do lunch service on Saturday? Are you kidding! If it weren’t for the graciousness of Pizzeria Mozza server Pilar Arias the whole thing would have fallen apart.

The Secret Ingredient
Some of the farmers were still setting up their stalls when Brooke and I arrived at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning. The sparkling blue sky shimmered like the nearby ocean, making the colors of the produce pop. Butternut squashes looked more peachy, herbs more green. But nothing looked more beautiful, or more quintessentially fall-like, than the varied shades of green and red and yellow apples from Cirone Farms. Mike Cirone dry farms approximately 30 acres of orchards in See Canyon, near San Louis Obispo, growing popular varieties like Red Delicious, Gala and Fuji, and heirloom apples like Spitzenberg, Muutsu, Red Stripe, Bellweather and Newton Pippon. Tasting through the apples, which ranged from super-tart and firm to sweet and softer, we knew we’d found our ingredient, our secret ingredient. Battle Apple was on.

The Heat of Battle
Years ago, when I still thought I was going to make my living as a poet, I wanted to publish a literary journal called Celoso with my friend Chris. Celoso is the Spanish word for “jealous” and we wanted publish poetry that made us jealous we hadn’t written it, poetry that would make us work harder. The spirit of Celoso is what makes Iron Chef such a joy to watch. It showcases talented chefs taking on their culinary idols, sometimes even their mentors, not necessarily to prove they’re better chefs, but to push themselves creatively.

Celoso carries over to my food writing and, ultimately, to my friendship and writing partnership with fellow blogger Foodwoolf (aka Brooke Burton). So it seemed appropriate to lock knives in an Iron Chef-style competition, not to see who was a better cook, but as a way to push us to cook better, to be more creative and to craft a better story.

Dicing, slicing and sautéing, we threw ourselves into Battle Apple like professionals. Pilar’s kitchen island was buried under an orchard’s worth of apples, peeled skins strewn about like fallen leaves, bowls crashing like bolts of thunder.

My menu:

Fennel Apple Salad with Apple Vinaigrette
Apple Risotto with Grilled Pork Tenderloin and Apple Salsa
Apple Fritters with Homemade Ricotta and Almond Honey

Time management and only having two burners (we were sharing the stove) were going to be my biggest challenges. My strategy was to immediately get the pork tenderloin into a brine, then to start the ricotta, which takes about 20 minutes to make. But I spent most of my first hour peeling and cutting apples. Once I started the risotto time started to slip away from me. While it was cooking I couldn’t do much else. With all that stirring, stirring, stirring I felt like a witch over her cauldron.

All the while, I was watching Brooke cook. As she peeled and pureed I started to wonder if my dishes were complex enough. Were the apples going to stand out as well in my dishes as they would in hers. Could grilled pork tenderloin really complete with the oily richness of seared duck breast. Then our chairman announced I had 20 minutes remaining and all concern over Brooke’s cooking vanished. I felt doomed. I dumped all of the ingredients for my fritter batter into a bowl and started whisking while reading the directions for the first time. Oops. I was supposed to whip the egg whites and fold them into the batter, which should have been resting for an hour; that would explain why it looked like playdough.

I tried to save the batter and quickly race to make my dressing, heat the oil and plate all my dishes, but I had to call for backup. In the end, I went over my time (I believe Brooke did too). Luckily Alton Brown was nowhere in sight.

My best dish was, hands down, the pork and risotto (recipe tomorrow). Using Muutso, Red Stripe, Newton Pippin and Spitzenberg apples, the dish had wonderfully varied textures and balance, plus a kiss of spice from the apple salsa. The risotto was creamy and delicious and the pork was cooked perfectly on the grill. I do believe one of our judges gave it a perfect 10, for taste. But the fritters cost me. They weren’t crisp or particularly flavorful.

So “Whose Cuisine Reigned Supreme?” Foodwoolf won Battle Apple by three points: 68-65.

White Grapefruit & Epazote Sorbet

Last month, while I was researching a story on the Best Ice Cream in Los Angeles for Serious Eats I had the pleasure of hanging out at Tara Kolla’s Silver Lake Farms for the afternoon. It was there, with the bees buzzing around four different varieties of mint and picture-perfect roses that I first tried epazote, plucked fresh from a tall mint-like plant. I rolled the spiky green leaves between my fingers to extract some of the Mexican herb’s perfume, which was quite pungent, almost petrol-like, and spicy. I took a bite and was intrigued by its zesty, fennel and coriander-like flavor. I couldn’t get it out of my head. All I kept thinking was, this would be good with citrus.

I didn’t think about the epazote again until a couple of weeks later when, at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, I discovered the sweetangiest white grapefruits. Then, like an old diesel backfiring, I was struck by the notion to pair the grapefruit with some epazote in an earthy-tangy-sweet sorbet. The herb lady looked at me like a poor, lost child when I told her my plan. Epazote sorbet? Oh, there, there. Drink some water; the heat must have gone to your head.

Was there something I was missing?

Epazote, I learned, is common in Central and South American cultures, where it’s as ubiquitous as cilantro. And it’s used in dishes like black beans and mole, where it serves the additional purpose of being a natural anti-flatulent. Nowhere in my research did I find any instances of epazote being used for anything that wasn’t savory. But the advantage, I deduced, to not having a cultural bias toward pairing epazote’s dominant flavor meant that I could imagine it in all sorts of incarnations that someone familiar with its taste might not.

Undeterred, I continued, albeit cautiously. Inspired by the Hungry Cat’s Greyhound Proper, a delicious pairing of gin and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, I proceeded to concoct a sorbet recipe that incorporated the epazote, though I used it sparingly. The resulting dessert is delicious, refreshing with just a hint of licorice-like earthiness. The epazote is remarkably tame, so much so that I might add a little more next time, but it was tasty just the same. It’s ideal as a palate cleanser between courses, though it makes for a light, tangy dessert after a heavy meal. I can’t wait to go the farmers’ market next week to let the herb lady have a taste.

So the next time you’re exposed to an unfamiliar ingredient, trust your instincts and play! You may just find an entirely new culinary use for something others consider mundane.

White Grapefruit & Epazote Sorbet

1 cup fresh-squeezed white grapefruit juice
2 cups water, separated
1/3 cup gin (Tanquerey or Plymouth)
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp fresh epazote, chopped
pinch of salt

In a saucepan, heat sugar, pinch of salt and one cup of water to create a simple syrup. Once the sugar is dissolved, add half the grapefruit juice, the gin and the epazote to the pot; cover and allow to cool. When the mixture has cooled add the remaining grapefruit juice and water and transfer to a medium mixing bowl or large measuring cup, cover and refrigerate overnight. Strain epazote leaves and freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Heirloom Tomato Tart

Tomato season has officially begun and I’m a woman obsessed. All of the delicious, funky-looking heirloom varieties scattered across the tables at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market last Sunday tempted me like Tribbles. They were so fresh. They smelled so good intoxicating. And then I tried one, the juice dripping from my chin and between my fingers. Before I knew it, my bag was overflowing with Cherokee Purples, Golden Jubilees, Brandywines, Marvel Stripes and Black Crimsons from Tutii Frutti Farms, all bumping up against each other in the hot August sun.

The trouble with Tribbles, if you’ve seen the Star Trek episode, is that they multiply at breakneck speed. Initially there was one, but suddenly there are so many Tribbles that Kirk and Uhura can’t figure out what to do with them all. While my tomatoes didn’t exactly reproduce in my bag or on my countertop, I’ve ended up with way more than I’d planned to use and a freshness meter counting down like a time bomb.

Overripe tomatoes are as bad as, if not worse than, under-ripe ones. They are like being forced to eat raw slugs. Fortunately, cooked tomatoes, if done right, can mask the texture of a softening tomato, concentrating the sugars and elevating the tomato-y flavor to something quite decadent. (It’s why Nancy Silverton’s Mozza Caprese, with oven-dried tomatoes, is always so delicious.) Unfortunately, it can’t do anything for an unripe tomato. Nothing can.

Combine the flavor explosion of these heat-improved tomatoes with flakey, buttery puff pastry and you have a recipe for…Well, you have the recipe for an easy-to-make tomato tart! (You can use this same recipe for the bounty of figs showing up at farmers’ markets, too.)

Heirloom Tomato Tart

1 Sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
2 Medium-sized heirloom tomatoes
1 egg, beaten
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Place puff pastry sheet on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with egg and bake for 15 minutes or until lightly-golden.

While the puff pastry is baking, cut off the tops of the tomatoes, seed and slice. You can slice them into rounds or half moons, depending on the shape of the tomato.

Remove the puff pastry from the oven and let cool, but keep oven on. When cool, arrange tomatoes on the pastry, drizzle with olive and sprinkle with salt and fresh-ground black pepper. Place back in the oven for five minutes to heat the tomatoes. Drizzle again with olive oil and finish with fleur de sel. Serves four.