‘Tis the season for both fresh local strawberries and rhubarb, so taking advantage of the local, I made my famous (and super easy) crumble bars. They are ready to go quickly and are definitely easier than making strawberry rhubarb *pie* as there you always have to solve the issue of berries being too juicy. Definitely recommend having a go at these!
Afternoon pick-me-up: Roasted Strawberry and Ginger Frozen Yogurt! I’ve never been a huge fan of commercial frozen-yogurt. It always had too much of a tangy flavor, and the low fat nature of it made it become icy pretty quickly. This homemade stuff doesn’t have either of those issues. Of course, I also used full-fat yogurt, which likely helped! 🙂 The ginger adds this touch of brightness and it’s hard to really identify as ginger, but it definitely adds something. And I got to use my ice cream maker to huge success, so might have to try more flavors!
Here is perhaps the quickest recipe I have ever made for a pie/cobbler: mix 4 ingredients together, sprinkle on cherries (also would work with blueberries) and sugar and bake. Seriously … took all of 10 minutes to assemble, 30 minutes to bake. Imagine: putting this in the oven when you sit down for dinner, and have piping hot cobbler straight out of the oven for dessert. Pass the ice cream!
A few weeks ago, a friend was in Spain and he posted a photo of paella to his Facebook profile. More specifically, he posted a picture of a paella plate, empty, where his (apparently) very delicious paella had been. This got me to thinking about paella and that I hadn’t made any in a long time, and that I hadn’t posted a recipe to this site. So, I rectified that tonight by making this version with chicken, chorizo and shrimp. The one thing that I would be careful of is not to oversalt — when you are thickening the soffrito and then adding the stock, it could intensify the salt a lot so be careful. I didn’t oversalt, but it was close. Besides that, it was delicious.
Here’s something different: Lemon cookies. I was looking around at all sorts of recipes, looking for something refreshing and summery — yet in cookie form — and came across something similar but without the candied lemon peel and limocello. I though: How can I approve on this? And these cookies were born. They are light, a little tangy, and definitely refreshing. A real hit. If you don’t have limoncello, you could use a bit of vodka instead, or even an orange liqueur. Give them a try and let me know what you think!