Strawberry Buttermilk Shake

At the Farmer’s Market on the weekend they were selling the first of the seasons strawberries and I was humming and hawing about buying a few flats for jams for jam…Banana Split Jam lead me to ice cream which lead me to a malt and all of a sudden I am diving off the deep end into a butter milk recipe.  A Roasted Strawberry and Butter Milk Milk Shake!!!

I can never figure out the right time for a milkshake. Are they meant to be treated like a beverage? A dessert? I considered getting one at breakfast a while back, because I was at a place where you could get fries with your eggs and that kind of beautiful chaos in meal order struck me as good a time as any to suck down a pint of liquefied ice cream.

I would never choose a milkshake over a bowl of ice cream. I like to eat my food, not drink it. Milkshakes are just lazy ice cream, and worse: They take something beautiful and sacred and return it to its pre-beautiful, pre-sacred state. Why even churn it if you’re going to melt it back down?
However I can’t resist the pleasure of indulging in butter milk…Butter milk Mashed Potatoes, Butter Milk Biscuits, Butter Milk Scones, Butter Milk Ricotta Cheese, Butter Milk Pancakes.  So here I go making lazy ice cream with delicious butter milk with roasted strawberries for dessert. 

Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Shake
For the roasted strawberries:
1pound strawberries (from the market if you can get them), hulled and halved
3 to 4tablespoons turbinado sugar, depending on sweetness of berries
Pinch salt
4 to 5thin lemon slices
Heat oven to 375° F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat (the rim is important: the berries will release a lot of juice!), and toss the berries with the sugar right on the baking sheet. Sprinkle them with a pinch of salt, and lay the lemon slices evenly over the top.
Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the fruit is soft, has released its juice, and the juice has started to thicken just slightly. Remove the lemon slices and let cool completely. These can be made a day ahead.
For the milkshake:
1pint good vanilla ice cream
1/4cup good-quality buttermilk
Leaves from 3 healthy mint sprigs
Roasted strawberries
Pile everything in a blender and blend! Feel free to add a little more buttermilk if you like a thinner consistency. Pour into glasses and serve.

Grow, Harvest, Cook, Eat...and shake it

Jenn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca

Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca...
There is many translations of puttanesca sauce and where it came.... Some believe that it was a sauce created by a restaurant owner who had many guests come to his restaurant to eat late one night as he was about to close. He didn't have enough of any one ingredient to make a meal for them all so he took everything out of his kitchen and put it together to make this legendary Italian pasta sauce.
Another not so endearing tale is puttana in Italian means whore. As told by my dear friend Carlo, it was a quick and easy pasta sauce for the puttanas to make in between customers, hence the name puttanesca sauce.
I was also told that puttanesca sauce was named after the term whore because it had everything in it. Because Italians are so frugal they would not throw away any food. They would just make it into this amazing tomato sauce recipe.
And finally one theory is that decent married women would see the ladies of the evening walking on the streets and they would through sauce made of left overs onto them from the balconies of their homes screaming PUTTANA, PUTTANA!
My inspiration for the Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca comes from my general LOVE of spicy tomato sauce and basil pesto. Today I have made a spicy fresh dried tomato basil pesto with a fiery heat that accumulates until your addiction rages out of control...as they say "Hot as a whore house on dollar night."

Here is one of many versions of this famous pesto:
Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca (yields about a 125ml glass):
* 140 g Sun-dried tomatoes
* 50 g pine nuts
* 1 garlic clove
* 1 shallot
* 15ml olive oil
* 30 g Parmesan cheese
* Some fresh oregano
* 2 tsp capers
* 1-2 anchovy fillets (according to taste, very salty!)
* 6-8 black olives
* 1 red chilli (if you like)
* Black pepper
Preparation:
1 coarsely chop the shallot and garlic. Together with the anchovy fillets in some olive oil Sauté until the anchovies break up.
2 golden brown toast the pine nuts in a pan without any fat.
3 may pit the olives. Coarsely grate the Parmesan. Chili and the sun-dried tomatoes coarsely chop the. All the ingredients in a high container and process with the hand blender pesto. Season with pepper, salt if necessary (caution! The anchovies are very salty!)


Grow, Harvest, Cook, Eat

Jenn