Sunday Nite Dinner » simple

Strawberry Kuchen

Chuck — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:28:58 +0000

Over the last few weeks, Hungry Bear and I have bought a ton of strawberries from Rodriguez Farms, our favorite strawberry vendor at the Serramonte Farmers' Market. The berries were sweet, juicy and a great value, a flat (12 baskets) was only $14. And their organic berries were just a few dollars more.

Needless to say, we've eaten a lot of fresh strawberries lately and needed to make something with them. After pondering what to bake, we decided to turn our amazingly simple blueberry kuchen recipe into a strawberry kuchen. The only changes to the recipe were the substitution of lemon zest and vanilla extract for the cinnamon.

The end result was a delicious strawberry pie that was a snap to make. We love the buttery crust of this kuchen. The baked strawberries turned into a wonderful compote and the pie looked beautiful topped with the fresh berries. We served the kuchen with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and the combination was magnificent!

Strawberry Kuchen Recipe

SND Note: When cutting in the butter, we just used our hands to squeeze the butter and flour mixture into coarse crumbs. If the strawberries are super sweet, reduce the sugar in step 2 to 1/3 cup.

Ingredients

1 cup flour plus 2 tablespoons
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar plus 2 tablespoons
1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) butter, slightly softened and cut into small pieces
1 tablespoon white vinegar
5 cups fresh strawberries, halved
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest of one lemon

Directions

Preheat oven to 400°F (204°C). In medium bowl, mix 1 cup flour, salt and 2 tablespoons sugar. Cut in butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle with vinegar and shape into dough. With lightly floured fingers, press dough into 9-inch springform pan about 1/4 inch thickness on bottom, less thick and 1 inch high around sides.
Mix remaining 2 tablespoon flour and 1/2 cup sugar in a medium bowl. Add 3 cups strawberries, vanilla extract and lemon zest and gently mix together with sugar and flour. Evenly distribute strawberries on top of dough. Sprinkle any remaining sugar and flour mixture on top of strawberries.
Bake on the middle rack for 40 to 50 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling bubbles. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack for at least 30 minutes. Arrange the remaining 2 cups strawberries on top. Run a pairing knife around the crust edge to separate from the pan before opening springform. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Makes 8 servings

Tags: easy, fruit, kuchen, pie, simple, strawberries, strawberry

Blueberry Kuchen

Chuck — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:17:59 +0000

Last August, my parents came out to visit me in San Francisco. One of our excursions was to the Serramonte Farmer's Market, our favorite farmers' market for fresh fruit. My mom was very excited when she saw the fabulous blueberry vendor. She immediately bought a couple of quarts of blueberries and made three blueberry kuchens for us and friends.

The kuchen was simple to make and it was absolutely delicious. Hungry Bear got the recipe from my mom, but sadly, we didn't make a kuchen before blueberry season ended. We thought we'd have to wait until summer before finding high quality, reasonably priced blueberries again.

A few days ago, we were trying to survive the craziness at Costco and stumbled upon big packages of fresh blueberries. Hungry Bear declared that we should buy some blueberries and make a kuchen! It turns out the blueberries are from Chile and the growing season down south is November to March. So much for eating local, as the blueberries looked too good to turn down, and we needed a blueberry fix badly!

We searched our email archives and found the blueberry kuchen recipe my mom sent and made it yesterday for dessert. It was really easy to make and only required fifteen minutes of prep time and forty or so minutes of baking. Our kuchen turned out great with a nice golden crust and a not too sweet, jam-like blueberry filling. Fresh blueberries were added on top of the filling and each bite of the kuchen sent us to blueberry heaven!

Blueberry Kuchen Recipe

SND Note: In step two of the recipe, a sugar, flour and cinnamon mixture is sprinkled over the blueberries, which leaves a few pockets of undissolved sugar on top of the filling after baking. Next time, we would mix the sugar, flour and cinnamon with the 3 cups of blueberries before adding them on top of the dough.

Ingredients:
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar plus 2 tablespoons
1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) butter, slightly softened and cut into small pieces
1 tablespoon white vinegar
5 cups (725 grams) fresh blueberries
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 400°F (204°C). In medium bowl, mix 1 cup flour, salt and 2 tablespoons sugar. Cut in butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle with vinegar and shape into dough. With lightly floured fingers, press dough into 9-inch springform pan about 1/4 inch thickness on bottom, less thick and 1 inch high around sides. Add 3 cups blueberries on top.

2) Mix remaining 2 tablespoon flour, 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle evenly over blueberries. Bake on the middle rack for 40 to 50 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling bubbles. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack. Sprinkle with remaining 2 cups blueberries. Cool for at least 30 minutes. Run a pairing knife around the crust edge to separate from the pan before opening springform. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Makes 8 servings

Update February 11, 2008: The first picture in this post won the DMBLGIT Feb 2008 Edibility Award! We are very honored to win the award. It's the first time the blog has won anything! You like us, you really like us!

Tags: blueberries, blueberry, easy, fruit, kuchen, pie, simple

Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey

Chuck — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:42:31 +0000

This past week, Hungry Bear and I hosted Sunday night dinner. I love pulled pork, but I don't like most BBQ sauces. They are usually too sweet and tangy for my palate. Instead, I decided to make pulled pork with all of my favorite Vietnamese flavors. The entire menu was...

Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey
Vietnamese Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Fumi Salad (Asian Cole Slaw)
Pumpkin Loaf

The Vietnamese pulled pork was fantastic with great flavors from the caramel sauce, lemongrass and chili peppers. Although I was very pleased with the results, I want to make it one more time and tweak the recipe a little bit before I share it with you.

However, I will share our curry cauliflower soup recipe. We first had this soup last year at Chapeau!, which is our favorite neighborhood French restaurant. It was served as an amuse-bouche. We loved it so much that we had to try to replicate the recipe.

The soup is easy to make with only a few ingredients. It's a simple puree of roasted cauliflower and onions with a touch of curry powder and cayenne pepper. Our version of the soup is a golden brown color due to the slightly caramelized onions. We'd rather have the extra flavor from the browned onions than to try to keep it a creamy cauliflower color.

The key ingredients in this soup are the honey and cayenne. After drizzling the honey on the soup, don't stir it in before you eat it. The honey is not there to sweeten the soup, but rather to contrast the spiciness. The recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne, but I recommend adding as much cayenne as you can tolerate enjoyably. The soup needs to have heat to get the full effect of the soothing, sweet honey.

At dinner, the soup was a big hit and a great starter course. It will definitely warm you up on a cold day!

SNDsters: Garry, Karen, Mark, Jane, Hungry Bear, Chuck

Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey Recipe

Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets (6 cups)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 onions, sliced thick
2 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
2 cups low-sodium chicken stock
2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
honey

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spread cauliflower florets on a baking sheet, drizzle with 2 tablespoons of oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Roast until florets are browned, about 25 - 30 minutes.

2) In a medium stockpot, heat 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Add onions and sauté until they turn brown. Stir in curry powder and cook until fragrant, 1 - 2 minutes. Add chicken stock, water and cauliflower. Cover and bring to boil and then simmer until cauliflower is soft, about 5 minutes.

3) Puree the soup with a stand or immersion blender until smooth. Return to pot if using a stand blender, reheat if necessary. Add cayenne pepper, salt and pepper to taste. Serve in bowl with a drizzle of honey.

Serves 4

Tags: cauliflower, cayenne, curry, easy, honey, puree, roasted, simple, soup, spicy