Julie and Julia

This evening I went to see the new "foodie" movie, "Julie and Julia." It was very well done and I definitely enjoyed it. It made me realize that I knew very little about Julia Child, although she has been a huge figure in the American culinary scene of past generations. I guess I am a little bit young to have seen the influence she had on home-cooking in the United States.

I think the two cookbook authors whom I have truly learned how to cook from, have been Deborah Madison and Alice Waters. Their cookbooks are my bibles.

Michael Pollan wrote a wonderful article talking about the influence Julia Child had and how she was different from the current chefs who are on the Food Network nowadays. I found it rather eye-opening. 

Now I've just been meaning to get a hold of  The Art of French Cooking...

The Summer Garden

I just got back from vacation up in Oregon. When I went outside to look at the garden, I saw that the tomatoes had been growing and ripening like crazy while I was away. I picked a whole basket of the cherry tomatoes and there were still lots left on the plants. There's also a zucchini growing on the zucchini plant, with some more blossoms around it.

Orange orbs bursting with flavor

So many deliciously sweet tomatoes!

The Big Ones

Box o' Tomatoes

The Lonely Zucchini

Squash Blossoms

Chives

The tomato harvest (with mint and thyme in the background)

With all these delicious tomatoes, I knew I needed to make something for dinner that really highlighted the fresh picked sweetness of these pizza. What better way than a homemade pizza!

This is one of my favorite pizzas, the recipe is from Deborah Madison's, Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. It's called "Zucchini Pizza with Cherry Tomatoes and Goat Cheese." It has zucchini and fresh mozzarella, and then you make a mixture of of the sliced cherry tomatoes with a little garlic, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper. This is sprinkled on top and then you sprinkle goat cheese (feta cheese works as well). As soon as it comes out of the oven you sprinkle more fresh basil and brush the crust with garlic olive oil. The crust is simply a home made pizza dough of whole wheat / white flour. It's very thin and crispy. What really makes this pizza special is the freshly picked, homegrown, tomatoes.

That night's dinner: Pizza!

July Ravioli Making

Any type of pasta is good, ravioli just happens to be one of the best.  Especially when the pasta dough is made by hand and the filling is made from scratch.  Then raviolis become absolutely amazing. Our July meeting took place at Tricia and Lily's house (in their lovely kitchen). Tricia taught everyone her tips and tricks of how to make excellent pasta dough and ravioli. We had a smaller group than usual, but this simply meant more hands-on time.  

Making the dough. Lily slowly incorporates the egg into the flour. 

The trick here is to not lot the eggs escape from the nest of flour before they are mixed in. 

Ingrid making the ricotta and herb filling. 

Vivi chopping basil for the ravioli filling.

Ta da! The filling, all ready to go into the ravioli.

 

Vivi and Chester rolling out the dough with the hand cranked pasta maker. 

Showing off a nicely rolled, thin layer of pasta dough!

One of the coolest tools ever, the ravioli mold. Put one layer of pasta dough, then the filling, then cover with the second layer of dough, go over it with a rolling pin, and voila! One dozen ravioli have been made. 

Makin' the raviolis.

Raviolis ready to be cooked!

The tomato sauce we made to go on our ravioli. This was some of the most amazing tomato sauce ever. I learned that to make authentic tomato sauce like they make in Italy, you need a food mill, and after the sauce has been cooking for a while, you run it all through the food mill and it ends up having an amazingly smooth texture. 

Ravioli with a butter, cream and parmesan cheese sauce.

The ravioli with tomato sauce and a garnish of fresh basil. 

Enjoying the meal!

I really want to give Tricia a big thank you for helping out with this meeting and hosting it at her house!

Alameda Plum Ice Cream

I'm not a huge fan of ice cream. Especially the kind that can be bought in stores. It's too sweet and has too many additives. Generally I lean towards sorbets when it comes to frozen treats. It does not weigh you down like ice cream. However, homemade ice cream is a treat that should be had every once in a while.

On a rare Alameda day that actually felt like summer (as in, it was pretty hot out) I happened to have heavy cream in the fridge and I felt like making a dessert. I decided to make some ice cream. Only a few months ago, did I even learn that my mom actually owned an ice cream maker. I followed the recipe in Alice Water's "The Art of Simple Food."

As Alice says, "Ice Cream is universally loved -- and homemade ice cream right off the dasher is the most desirable ice cream of all. There are basically two versions. The first is simply sweetened and flavored cream, frozen. The second is a frozen custard made with sweetened cream and egg yolks, which produces a richer, smoother ice cream."

I followed the recipe for the custard style. I did a variation on the recipe, using plums instead of strawberries. These plums were very small, rather tart plums that weren't that great for eating on their own. They were off of someones plum tree here in Alameda, because my mom picked them up off of Stephanie's porch through the Alameda Fruit Exchange.


I pitted the plums and then heated them over the stove with some sugar. After this, I pureed them in the food processor. I then made the custard/cream mixture and let it cool. Once it was cool, I added in the pureed plums. I put the mixture in the ice cream maker and let it work its magic!

The ice cream turned out just right, sweet, but with some natural tartness from the plums, and very creamy. It was delicious. It was a pale peachy orange color with flecks of red. It was so rich that it took a very small amount to completely satisfy.

The final product