summer

vegan sweet corn chowder

Sad sad sadness. Summer is nearing the end.

It’s still hanging on, but not for long. One good thing about this time of year though, is…

CORN!

I seriously love fresh sweet corn at the end of summer. Something about that sweet earthy bursting crunch.

While grilling the whole ear and just rubbing it in salted butter might be the very best way to enjoy corn, there are so many things you can do with corn when it’s in season. One of my ultimate favorite things to do with corn in the late summer is take a whole mess of fresh vegetables and make up a sweet, thick, creamy, earthy chowder.

I think my love of corn chowder really took root a few years ago when I was unemployed for a short time. I used to work for a fundraising walkathon called AIDS Walk New York, and while I absolutely loved being involved with them, they could only offer me work for about six months out of the year. This left me scrambling to find work waiting tables or slinging lattes for the other six months, over and over until I was finally able to find a full time permanent position somewhere else.

One year, a great friend of mine found herself unemployed at the same time that I was laid off from the walkathon. We spent a lot of time together helping each other look for work and prepare for interviews, and trying to keep our spirits up with plenty of food. We actually spent so much time cooking and eating together that we started referring to ourselves as the unemployment supper club.

We would regularly try to find recipes that seemed rich and filling while being relatively affordable. One of my favorite recipes we ever made was a corn chowder that was super thick and rich and decadent with tons of cream and butter and bacon. One of my favorite things about the recipe though, was the unexpected number of vegetables the recipe called for, including sweet potato and red bell pepper. Every year since, I’ve made a variation of this recipe at least once every summer, but this year I thought it might be interesting to see if it would be possible to lighten it up, lose the cream and butter and bacon, but keep it every bit as thick and creamy and decadent.

The only problem with trying to make a chowder without cream or butter is the issue of thickening it. A while back i made a soup with roasted cauliflower and tomatoes, and when I decided to puree it I was shocked at how thick it got, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to try that trick again. Its amazing what a roasted and pureed head of cauliflower can do for a soup. It thickens it up like a dream, but it also imparts a velvety smooth creaminess that you’d expect had come from a boatload of butter and flour. Roasting the cauliflower helps release some of it’s moisture ensuring maximum thickening potential, but also concentrates it’s earthiness, adds toasty brown depth, and curbs it’s cabbagey flavor in a way that changes it from utilitarian thickening agent to “secret ingredient” that no one would suspect if they weren’t told.

I will admit that the flavor of this chowder is quite different from the one I used to make years ago. While the flavors of bacon and butter are definitely not present, they don’t at all feel like they’re missing. If you’re a regular reader you know I’m not afraid of butter or bacon, but I promise you won’t miss them. This soup is bursting with fresh late summer flavors. It’s sweet and earthy and rich and hearty and unbelievably thick and creamy. This is a soup to satisfy carnivores and vegans alike.

Vegan Sweet Corn Chowder

Servings: 6-8ish
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1 large head of cauliflower, cleaned and roughly chopped
3 tbsp olive oil, divided
2 1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt, divided
1 tsp ground pepper, divided
3 or 4 ears of sweet corn, stripped *see note (or 1 lb frozen sweet corn)
1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 lb (2 medium) yellow waxy potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
1 lb (2 medium) sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
6 cups vegetable stock, divided
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 400. Toss cauliflower with 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp salt, & 1/2 tsp of pepper. Spread cauliflower evenly on a parchment lined baking sheet, and roast for 30 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a heavy bottom stockpot over high heat, and sautee corn for 5 to 8 minutes or until it’s just beginning to brown. Remove from pan and set aside.
Turn pot down to medium-high and heat last tbsp of olive oil. Add onions, celery, carrots, bell pepper, 1 1/2 tsp salt, & 1/2 tsp pepper. Sautee for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sautee 5 minutes more. Add 4 cups of stock, thyme sprigs, & browned corn kernel. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
While soup simmers, puree roasted cauliflower in a strong blender with remaining 2 cups of stock. After soup has simmered for 30 minutes, stir in pureed cauliflower. Simmer for 10 minutes more. Scoop out 2 cups of soup, cool slightly, and puree in blender with 1 tsp cider vinegar. Stir back into soup, taste, and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if necessary. (If you want soup thicker, puree another cup of finished soup.)

*cooks note: To remove corn kernels from a fresh ear, I hold the ear upright against a cutting board and shave down with a sharp knife, rotating the ear until it’s shaved clean. For this recipe I also scraped off the remaining starchy corn milk with the butt end of the knife and added it after sauteing the kernels.

peach, tomato, & thyme galette with vanilla yogurt

So, suddenly it’s the middle of August. How did that happen?

I feel like the last time I looked at a calendar it was early June and I had the whole summer in front of me, just waiting to unfold. But time marches on, days come and go, and suddenly we’re half way through the last full month of summer. I’m not ready to let go yet, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make the most of what’s left this sultry season.

Next week I’m heading upstate for a much needed vacation. I’m going to stay with family, get some R&R, and help my mom work on her new house. I’m also going to steal away for a few days to go camping with my sister and niece and nephews. I cannot wait. Fresh air, fresh water, clear skies, starry nights, & bug bites. Waking up in a hot tent and hearing the sound of birds chirping. Food cooked over an open fire. It really doesn’t get any better. Can you tell that I’m excited?

For now though, I’m content to eat the best of what summer has to offer. Camping trip or no camping trip, I need to make sure I get my fix of fresh produce before it’s too late. Some of the best, freshest, juiciest, most quintessentially summery things to eat are peaches and tomatoes. Especially in the late summer, these are the foods that I crave more than anything.

While I’m sure that a lot of people also love peaches and tomatoes this time of year, I would venture to guess that they think those two things should be eaten separately. Peaches are to be eaten as a sweet snack or as dessert, and tomatoes are for salads and savory dishes. Well, guess what… Those people would be dead wrong. It is possible to put a peach in a salad. It is. Try it. I dare you.

Similarly, tomatoes can be used in sweet dishes. Think about it. Tomatoes are, technically, a fruit. They’re sweet. While they are biting and acidic, and lend themselves perfectly to savory dishes and sauces, they can be so much more than marinara. At their peak in the late summer, tomatoes are sweet and bright and fruity, with a lemony acidity that works really well for desserts.

So, guess what happened…

I got the sweetest brightest little yellow cherry tomatoes the farmers market had to offer, and picked up a couple pounds of juicy ripe peaches while I was there. Then I did something totally crazy. Totally off the wall. Totally unbelievable.

I went ahead and tossed the tomatoes and the peaches together, added some sugar and lemon juice, and baked them into one big rustic galette.

I’m a madman. I know.

This dessert is crazy summery. The baked fruit is juicy and soft and thick, and the galette crust is tender and crisp, and super flaky. The filling is bursting with bright, sunny, crisp, sweet & acidic fruitiness. There’s enough sweetness to prevent the tomatoes from reading as savory, but it’s not overly sweet or cloying at all. While the tomatoes and thyme add a certain earthiness, the acidity from the lemon ties everything together and I can’t even begin to describe how well they marry with the peaches. I’m surprised that this isn’t something more people do already. Tomatoes and peaches just work so well together. I’m sure I’m not the first person to pair these flavors together, so it seems strange that it hasn’t caught on.

I could go on, but there’s a plate of this in front of me and it’s rude to type with your mouth full. Unless you hate summer, you have to make this.

Peach, Tomato, & Thyme Galette with Vanilla Yogurt

Servings: 12-ish
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Crust:
2 1/2 cups AP flour, plus more for rolling
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1/3 cup ice cold water

Whisk together flour and salt in a medium bowl, and add butter. Cut butter into flour with a pastry blender until the butter is in pea or pebble sized pieces. This can also be done by pulsing in a food processor.

In a small bowl, whisk together the yogurt, lemon juice, and water, and pour this over the butter-flour mixture. Stir with a spoon or a rubber spatula until a dough forms, kneading it once or twice on the counter if needed to bring it together. Pat the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic, and chill it in the refrigerator for 1 hour or up to 2 days.

Filling:
2 lbs peaches, skinned and sliced about 1/2 inch thick
3/4 lb sweet cherry tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, stripped from stems
3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons demerara (or any coarse raw) sugar

Preheat oven to 375. Combine peaches, tomatoes, thyme, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, & salt in a large bowl. Gently stir until well combined.

On a floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 16–inch round. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Spread the filling over the dough, leaving a 2-inch border. Fold the border over the filling, pleating it as necessary, leaving the center open. Brush the outside of the crust with the egg wash, and sprinkle coarse sugar over the whole thing, crust and center.

Bake until golden brown and bubbling in center, about an hour and 10 minutes. Let cool on baking sheet 10 minutes, then slide galette on parchment onto a wire rack. Let cool completely (or almost completely) before serving. Top with vanilla yogurt.

Vanilla Yogurt:
1 cup greek yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon honey

Whisk ingredients together in a small bowl until well combined. Spoon a hearty dollop over each slice of galette.

the C. D. Rocktail

A customer at work recently asked me what my favorite gin was.

I was struck at first by the thought that this was a sort of strange question. People who like gin tend to really like gin, and usually already know what brands they like, and people who don’t like gin usually avoid it like the plague and couldn’t give half a crap what someone else’s favorite brand might be.

Once I answered her though, and explained why I liked that brand, I was struck by another thought. I haven’t had gin in a good long time.

Before I started drinking whiskey, gin was usually my liquor of choice. Even after I became a whiskey boy I still tended to drink gin in warmer summer months. Gin gimlets used to be my favorite easy summer cocktail, but that all changed when I developed a taste for tequila and discovered the Paloma.

This is making me sound like a terrible lush. I’m not. Moderation. It’s all about moderation… Also, variety is the spice of life, so there.

The answer to the favorite gin question, for those of you who might be wondering, is Hendrick’s. While it’s not the only gin I like, if I have to choose a favorite this would be it. Hendrick’s is a small batch gin made from a variety of herbs and botanicals, and along with the traditional juniper that gives gin its distinctive piney flavor, this gin is infused with rose petals and cucumber. The resulting gin is smooth and mild with a subtle juniper flavor, pleasant aromatics notes, and hints of cool cucumber and floral rose.

The use of high quality ingredients also prevents you from feeling like you’ve pickled your insides if you drink one (or two) too many cocktails.

With Hendrick’s on my mind I started thinking about the best gin cocktail I’ve ever had.

Right after college I moved to Ithaca, New York, and took a job waiting tables at a hip & modern restaurant called Olivia. Olivia’s sister restaurant, Stella’s, was a trendy late-night cocktail lounge in Ithaca’s “college town” neighborhood. My coworkers and I would frequently head to Stella’s for a drink after Olivia had closed for the night. Sometimes there’s nothing like a good drink with other waiters to help you wind down after a busy night.

One of my favorite and most frequently consumed cocktails was called the C.D. Rocktail, which was named after the bartender who created it. (Her initials are C.D.) I was no stranger to gin even then, but I was not familiar with Hendrick’s and had never tasted such a wonderfully refreshing gin cocktail before. Back then the craft cocktail trend was still in it’s formative years, and most of upstate New York hadn’t yet caught on. The mixologists at Stella’s knew what was up though and came up with more than a handful of recipes for some seriously tasty tipple.

The C.D. Rocktail was made by muddling cucumber & basil with lime juice and simple syrup, and topping it all off with gin and soda water. This potent potable is unbelievably fresh, summery, & refreshing; with a subtle sweetness and just a hint of effervescence. The cucumber helps to mellow out the gin’s bite, the basil imparts a pleasant herbal freshness, and lime sweetens and brightens everything up and ties the whole thing together.

I mean, this was almost ten years ago and I’m still thinking about this cocktail. It’s a Stellar (har har har) drink, and I’m sure you’re going to love it just as much as I do. Even if you’re not a huge gin lover, you should give this a try. The juniper piney flavor of gin is extremely subtle in this drink and only adds to it’s bright green summeriness.

When that customer asked about the gin and jolted my memory, I knew I had to try to recreate this cocktail. It’s been a looooong time since I’ve had one and I’d almost forgotten how much I loved them. The problem though, was that I couldn’t remember exactly what went into it. I knew it was Hendrick’s and I knew there were cucumbers and lime, but my memory failed me and I thought it was mint instead of basil, and forgot about the soda water. I also wasn’t sure how it all came together as, at the time, I was paying more attention to how they went down than how they were made. Although Olivia has since gone out of business, Stella’s is still open, but unfortunately, the C.D. Rocktail is no longer on the menu.

I’m still good friends with a lot of my former coworkers though, so I started asking around. No one had the recipe, but one of them is still in touch with the bartender who dreamed up this dreamy drink. So, she asked and a few days later the recipe was in my inbox. Or, at least, a list of ingredients was. Quantities and directions weren’t provided, so it took me a few tries to get it right, but if memory serves me this is pretty damn close to the way the original recipe tasted.

So, you should totally make this. I went to sooo much trouble to find and recreate the recipe for you. I had to drink multiple cocktails to get it right. This is the cross I bear in the name of blogging, so the least you can do it try it for yourself. And besides, the C.D. Rocktail is an unbelievably summery and refreshing drink and you’d be crazy not to make it.

the C.D. Rocktail

Servings: makes one 8oz cocktail
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3 slices cucumber, halved (about 1/4″ thick)
1/2 oz lime juice
4 – 5 fresh basil leaves
1/2 oz simple syrup *see note
2 oz good quality gin, preferably Hendrick’s
2 oz soda water

Muddle cucumber & basil in a cocktail shaker with lime juice & simple syrup. Take your time and get them real good and mashed up. Top with gin, add ice, and shake well. Strain into an 8- 10 oz glass filled with ice, and top with 2oz soda water.
Garnish with a slice of cucumber, if desired.

*note- simple syrup is crazy easy to make. Heat an equal amount of sugar and water, until sugar is completely dissolved. Cool. You’re done.

roasted peach and creamy vanilla pudding ice pops

I love homemade ice pops.

I mean, let’s be honest here, I also love homemade ice cream and all things sweet and frozen, especially in the summer. Hot weather basically ushers in the season of icy frozen sweet treats for me. There’s something about a homemade ice pop though that just really hits the spot on a hot day. They also happen to hit the spot on a cool day, or a rough day, a stressful day, or a great day, a lonely day, or a day spent with friends.

Making ice pops at home tends to be much easier than making ice cream and doesn’t require such an investment in special equipment. They’re also the perfect single-serving-size. Where eating ice cream requires a certain level of self control, you know you’re done with an ice pop when all that’s left is a clean wooden stick. Ice pops generally tend to be a little bit healthier too, featuring milk, yogurt, or fruit juice rather than heavy cream. So if you go back in for a second one, it’s okay, I won’t tell.

Since milk, on it’s own, isn’t as creamy as the custardy base of ice cream, I think that transforming the milk into a pudding before freezing really improves the texture. I recently did this with chocolate ice pops with great results, so when I was trying to think of what to pair with peaches this time around I thought I’d give it a shot. Worked like a charm!

I infused the creamy pudding with a healthy dose of vanilla bean and thickened it slightly with egg yolk to give it a rich French vanilla custard flavor. It makes the whole thing taste just as rich and decadent as homemade ice cream, and it’s a perfect compliment to the deep summery roasted peaches.

Roasting the peaches heightens and concentrates their flavor and gives them a toasty caramelized depth. It also helps to soften them and make them easier to peel and puree, which is especially great if your peaches aren’t exactly 100% ripe. Pouring the different flavors in alternating layers ensures that each slurp of these pops is a totally fun and refreshing experience.

What more can I say about these? They’re creamy, rich, decadent, & custardy. Their amazing vanilla cream flavor is the star of the show, and it pairs perfectly with the sweet roasted peaches. Just right for summer!

roasted peach and creamy vanilla pudding ice pops

Servings: ten 3oz ice pops
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1 lb fresh peaches (about 2 to 3 large or 3 to 4 small)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons of sugar, divided
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch, divided
pinch salt
2 cups milk
1/2 vanilla bean, cut lengthwise
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 450. Wash peaches and cut them into quarters, discarding the pit. Toss in a bowl with lemon juice and 3 tablespoons sugar. Arrange, cut side down, on a parchment lined baking sheet. Pour any leftover liquid over the peach pieces. Roast for about 20 minutes or until peaches release their syrupy juices and begin to brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Once cool, remove the skin from each slice, which should peel off easily. Set aside.

In a small saucepan, whisk remaining 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and salt. Add milk and whisk smooth. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean and whisk into milk along with scraped bean. Heat slowly over a medium flame, whisking regularly. Once slightly thickened and bubbling, cook for one to two minutes more before removing from heat. Place egg yolks in a small bowl, and ladle in about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of pudding. Whisk together, and return to pan. Whisk smooth, return to heat, and bring back to a simmer. Simmer for one or two minutes more and whisk in vanilla extract.

Pour a little more than half of the mixture (probably about 1 1/2 cups) off into a measuring cup or heatproof bowl. Add peaches and remaining teaspoon of cornstarch to remaining pudding mixture. Puree in the pan with an immersion blender or in the pitcher of a blender. Return pan to heat, bring to a simmer, and cook for one or two minutes more. Cool slightly before proceeding.

Layer vanilla pudding and peach pudding mixtures in ice pop molds. I use a mold with ten 3 oz pops, and alternated two layers of each flavor. Try to be slightly more stingy with vanilla pudding, and more generous with peach as you’ll have just a bit more of that.

Cover molds, add sticks about half way into pops, and freeze for a minimum of 4 hours, or until completely frozen through. Remove pops by running each mold under warm water for about 10 or 15 seconds.