Floral Ice Cream

August 09, 2018 by Kelsey Fast in Eat

I don't tend to like a lot of single use kitchen gadgets, but one that I will never regret buying is my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. I love ice cream! Being able to make my own and experiment with different flavours is something I really enjoy.

I wanted to share this recipe, because it is so versatile, and it is unlikely you'd ever find these kinds of flavours on the shelf in your local grocery store. You don't even really need to make it with flowers - really any herb or spice blend you wanted to infuse into the cream would be great. I don't think this would be an ideal method for making fruit flavoured ice cream, though.

My photos in this post are doing a bit of time travelling back to when lilacs were blooming. I had planned to post this recipe in the spring, but somehow it got left behind. I decided that just because lilacs in particular were done there was no reason this recipe couldn't still be shared. You can make this recipe with any edible flower you like the taste of (here's a handy list of edible flowers), and they can be used fresh or dried.

The first step for making your ice cream, is to infuse the cream with the petals. I used two cups of heavy/whipping cream and two cups of whole milk. Cram in as many flowers as will fit, and heat the mixture gently for about half an hour. After that you'll move the cream to the fridge and leave it to cold infuse for 24 hours. The next day you strain that and use it as the base for your custard.

Floral Ice Cream

Ingredients

2 Cups Heavy Cream
2 Cups Whole Milk
3 Cups (approx) Edible Flowers of Choice
1 Cup Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
1-2 drops food colouring (optional)

Takes Two Days, serves 4.

Instructions

Combine the cream, milk, and flowers in a pot on the stove and allow to infuse over medium heat for about 30 minutes. After this allow to cool, and then transfer to the fridge to continue to cold infuse overnight.
Strain the flower infusion, and return to the stove on medium heat. Add the sugar.
Crack the eggs into a separate bowl and beat with a fork until homogenous. Very slowly - stirring constantly - pour some of the hot cream mixture into the beaten eggs to temper them. Return the pot to the stove, and then add the tempered eggs and vanilla (and food colouring if desired - lilacs do not impart a lot of colour when cooked, so I added some colour to make it look more appetizing). Continue to cook on medium heat, but do not allow the mixture to boil. You’ll know the custard is done when it has thickened to the point where it coats the back of a spoon, and you can easily draw a line through it with your finger.
Transfer the finished custard to the fridge to cool and age for at least over night or up to two days.
Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions. For my machine it makes soft serve immediately, but for a more “scoopable” texture put in an airtight container in the freezer for a few hours until you like the consistency. Enjoy!

Some of these links are affiliate links for which I will receive a small commission from any sale made. Any product linked here is something I have tried and would absolutely recommend from my own experience with the company.

Meals From the Pantry: "Pop Stars"

June 27, 2018 by Kelsey Fast in Eat

It feels like it's been forever since I've written anything here, but I guess the last post was only a couple weeks ago. Our schedules in June are always overflowing, so we've been a bit preoccupied. My other job is as a private instructor for piano and singing, and my husband is the youth pastor of our local church, so our lives pretty much revolve around the school year with June bringing it all to a close. As our summer begins, so does a bit of a rest period - we're still very busy, but we can focus on tasks for ourselves, visiting family, and working on our writing projects (this blog for me, and a masters degree for him).

In all the craziness, I've actually been keeping up with the garden and foraging fairly well. I'm worried that I've missed all the elderflower again, but you can't always get everything. I've been making this little recipe quite a bit, and I thought I'd share it within that "meals from the pantry" category I was writing recipes for a while back. With the coming onslaught of berries, and summer fruit, jam making season is about to hit in full swing, so I've been thinking of recipes to use up what we still haven't eaten.

I also wanted to share a recipe that after making lots of pies has become my go-to recipe for an amazing pie crust. I feel like everyone should have a fantastic pie crust recipe in their back pocket and this one is so easy to remember you don't even need a recipe.

Lady grey tea pie crust cut into star shapes.

I think of these as tiny pop tarts. And because they are shaped like stars (this is completely optional, but usually too cute a result for me to pass up doing it any other way), I've been calling them "pop stars". I started doing these partially as a way to use up my overstock of jam, and partially because I don't like wasting the crust that gets trimmed when making a large pie. In the past I'd just roll it out, cut into rectangles, and then spoon in some jam, or applesauce, or other filling like that. A little while back, I thought my star shaped cookie cutter was probably large enough to use for this, and now I can't go back to my boring old rectangles anymore. Even though I normally make this from excess crust, it would be perfect to make up a batch of pie crust just to make these. I promise they are much easier to make than you'd think.

Pop Stars

For the Crust

2 cups Flour
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Sugar (optional: grind lady grey or other tea into the sugar using mortar and pestle)
1 cup Cold Butter
Very Cold Water

Takes 30 minutes, yield depends on amount of crust made and size of shapes cut.

Instructions

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Cut butter into 1 inch (but don't be so precise here - the measurement is just to give you a workable size) chunks, and place it all into the dry ingredients.
Work the butter into your dry ingredients using your fingertips. I've used a pastry cutter before, or two knives, but I haven't found anything that gives a better result than just getting your hands in there and being able to control the texture by feel. You want to smoosh the butter chunks into the flour so that they make flakes. Don't incorporate it all too much. The butter melting and creating steam as the pastry bakes is what gives you the flaky texture, so if you have some larger flakes in there that is actually a good thing. Don't spend so long trying to make this perfect that your butter gets soft either - working quickly is the name of the game.
Sprinkle your water tablespoon by tablespoon over the mixture, stirring lightly with a fork between each tablespoon. Watch as it slowly incorporates into a cohesive dough, but stop adding water when you can tell that it will be sticky enough to come together to make a ball. Don't worry if you don't get this quite right the first time. Keep trying and eventually you'll know what to look and feel for.
If you are not rolling your pie crust out right away wrap it well and store it in the fridge.

To Make the Pop Stars

Jam (a thicker consistency will make these much easier to work with. In the ones above I used roasted rhubarb that I canned last year)
Pie crust from above recipe or leftover from making another pie
1 egg
Splash of Milk

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 415 degrees Fahrenheit.
Beat egg with a splash of milk until homogenous
Roll out your dough and cut into desired shapes. Since these are small cookies-type-things, I don't find the texture is impacted too much by re-rolling the scraps to get more yield out of the dough recipe, so feel free to do so if you don't want to waste anything. You'll want to make sure you cut an even amount of shapes so each has both a bottom and a top.
Count how many pieces you ended up with, and brush half of them with the egg mixture.
Spoon some jam into the middle of each egg washed piece. Go really easy here. For mine which are only about 3 inches from tip to tip I only put about a teaspoon in the middle of each. If you add too much it will all spill out and you'll get a sticky, caramelized mess.
Cover them all with your top pieces, and press the edges down carefully. You may need to stretch them slightly to make sure all your jam is covered.
Crimp the edges with a fork - you want a really good seal here otherwise you'll have the sticky caramelized/burnt mess I mentioned earlier.
Stab the tops of each a couple times with your fork to give some vents for the steam from the filling to escape while they are baking.
Brush some more of the egg wash over the tops after they are all ready, and sprinkle liberally with sugar.
Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment (another safeguard against the potential for leaked filling - I know from too much experience that it is VERY hard to clean burnt jam off) and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the crust is golden, and the edges are crispy.

How to Make Naturally Flavoured Sugars

June 11, 2018 by Kelsey Fast in Eat

Recently I've found that one of my favourite ways of working with new or interesting ingredients is to make flavoured sugar out of them. I love having unique salts and sugars on hand to add something a little different to whatever I am cooking. I'm imagining that both of these sugars would make beautiful additions to baked goods, or sprinkled on top of pancakes, or anything like that. Since I've found this to be so enjoyable, I thought I'd put the tutorial here on the blog. I should also mention that if you are local I do have some of these for sale at the Dallas Barnhartvale Farmers' Market if you want to try them and not worry about making them yourself.

The first step in making these is finding the ingredient you want to use as the flavour. This year I've used a lot of lilac, and also some immature Douglas fir cones. I have an idea to go source some spruce tips, rose petals, and other things to give this a try with as well.

Once you have your ingredient, combine it along with about a cup of sugar in a food processor, or high powered blender (such as a Vitamix). The amount you use can vary a lot. With something like the Douglas fir cones a little goes a long way. You'll have the opportunity to adjust and add more sugar later if you feel the mixture is too strong. Usually I have done about a cup or less of whatever flavouring ingredient I am using. Blend until everything is broken down and fully mixed together. You can have a look at the photos below to see what I mean by that more clearly. After this, dump the mixture into a bowl, and add a few more cups of sugar. Taste it and smell it along the way to make sure you like the strength of the flavour and aroma. When you're happy with it spread it out on a cookie sheet, tray, or really large plate to air dry. It will take a few days, so put it somewhere you can keep an eye on it, but that is out of the way. Give the mix a stir a few times a day - I usually just do a little every time I walk past - so that it dries out evenly. Try to break up any clumps, but know that the consistency will be a little more rustic than regular granulated sugar.

The sky is basically the limit with how you use these once they are dry. They make fabulous items to use as gifts, or wedding favours, since they are so unique and it is easy to do large batches. Feel free to combine ingredients, and come up with your own unique blends to use. Maybe you'll develop something that becomes your go-to secret ingredient!

As always, if you try this tutorial I'd love to hear about it in the comments, or if you post on social media use #aforagershome so I can see it!

To support my blogging endeavours, this post contains affiliate links from which I receive a small commission if you make a purchase. Every product linked here is one I have used personally and would recommend based on my experience

Wild Spinach Dip

June 07, 2018 by Kelsey Fast in Find, Eat

I have always been in love with spinach dip. It was one of my mom's go-to party or potluck recipes, and often served in a huge sourdough bread bowl. Delicious. I was a little bit disappointed when I went to look for a recipe to make my own and they all called for prepackaged ingredients. Frozen spinach. Packet of onion soup. It didn't change how tasty the dip was, but I figured there had to be a way to make it with fresh ingredients, and that it might be even better that way.

I sort of forgot about my spinach dip ambitions for a while, and just kept eating the prepackaged version from the store. In that time I learned about atriplex hortensis, (also known as wild orach, or mountain spinach), and how it has naturalized in the wilderness nearby. Much to my surprise there were massive patches of it growing in my own backyard (see the next photo for just part of one of the patches)! We ate some of the leaves last year in soup, but didn't do much else with them. This year I remembered my dream of figuring out a fresher spinach dip, and I wondered if the wild orach might work.

Wild orach is in a group of plants often generally known as simply "goosefoot" due to the shape of its leaves. This doesn't give you much to go on in terms of plant identification, because there are may other "goosefoots" out there, and some of them - such as Lamb's Quarters - are in a completely different plant family. Don't use this blog post as your main source for plant identification - find a good field guide (here are a couple: Food Plants of the Interior First Peoples, Edible and Medicinal Plants of Canada) and use some other online foraging resources to supplement the very limited information I am giving you here.

I was reading around for various recipes, and I came across one that suggested you could use fresh spinach in your dip, but to steam it first because that will give you the right texture. I thought this sounded great, so I went out and gathered a bunch of wild orach to steam and try in my dip. I wanted a bit of crunch, but had no water chestnuts, so I finely chopped some Jerusalem artichoke to add in there since it has a similar texture. I think next time I would add slightly more, but because I didn't know if we would like it I started small.

Wild Spinach Dip

Ingredients

100 g Wild Orach (can substitute normal spinach, but use a lot more because the orach breaks down less during the steaming process
2 - 4 Jerusalem artichoke tubers
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp soup base paste or builion (if using soup paste omit salt)
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp salt

Takes 30 min, serves 4.

Instructions

Steam the orach using your preferred method for a few minutes until just softened. Remove from steamer promptly and place on a plate in the freezer to chill, but not for so long that it starts to freeze.
While the orach steams, blend sour cream, mayonnaise, onion powder, soup paste/bullion, garlic, paprika, and salt in a high powered blender or food processor until there are no large garlic chunks. Taste and adjust spices as you like them. Transfer to a bowl.
Finely chop the Jerusalem artichoke tubers, and stir them in with the blended mixture.
Remove the spinach from the freezer before it starts to freeze, and roughly chop it into smaller pieces. Stir the orach into the rest of the mixture until all the leaves have been coated in the dip and there are no large chunks of leaves.
Serve with a really delicious loaf of bread and enjoy

Scale this recipe up or down to suit your needs. I just made a small amount here to try it out, and because there are only a couple people in our house eating it. If you have the patience or are good at planning ahead this dip is even better after spending a night in the fridge. The flavours mellow and blend that way, but it is delicious eaten immediately as well!

Dandelion Leaf Kimchi

May 27, 2018 by Kelsey Fast in Eat, Find

In high school I had several good friends from Korean families, and I always looked forward to being invited over for meals in their homes because that usually meant I was going to be served kimchi. Later on I found out where the Korean grocery store was so I could make sure I always had some in my fridge. A couple years ago I realized that there were several recipes online for making small batches so I've now been making my own. I've been collecting a lot of dandelions this spring, and in thinking of ways to use them I realized that they might make a pretty good kimchi, and I was right!

I don't want to call this post a recipe per se, as I don't feel versed enough in Korean food to write one, and I relied heavily on various other online sources which I will be linking here. From how I understand it kimchi is fairly flexible, so feel free to adjust things to your preferences.

Your first step is to salt the dandelion greens. This is to start releasing the water content in the leaves. Sprinkle them liberally in salt and massage them a bit to start the process. If you've made sauerkraut before this will be familiar to you. Let them sit for about an hour and a half, and while this is happening prep the rest of the ingredients.

Chop up the veggies you are going to be adding to the dandelion greens (I used carrots, radish microgreens, leeks, and green garlic). For anything bulky make sure you julienne it finely to help the overall texture. Several of the recipes for the kimchi paste include making a porridge of rice flour to help everything stick together. I wanted to keep the steps as simple as possible, and knowing that you can make hot soup in a Vitamix blender I threw all the ingredients for the paste in there and blended it smooth. It seems to have worked really well and saved a lot of time!

If the dandelion greens are too salty you can rinse them off. When you like them toss in the chopped veggies, and massage the kimchi paste to cover everything. After that pack it in a jar so that the veggies are completely submerged. Leave it on the counter for three days, and then put it in the fridge. You can eat it right away, or you can wait for it to get more sour.

Here are some resources that are more complete recipes if you are looking for ideas on salt ratios and flavours for the kimchi paste:

Food in Jars

Maangchi

Edible Landscaper