cucumber mint sorbet with lime shortbread

Oh, ho! It's time for a party! I'm a little bit excited that I got invited and because I'm that sort of guest, I'm bringing all my friends along too! Are you ready for Summer fest 2010?

I do agree that it's good to know all the details before you actually commit to a party, and I'll tell you what I know. You never know when you will just say yes for the hell of it, and before you know it you're in the back of someone's jeep, squeezed in between two people you barely know, and the driver who may or may not be entirely competent is speeding through the dark to some undisclosed location. This is not that kind of party, I promise you. You will not be stranded, and wishing that you never went out. (You can tell I had some traumatic experiences in high school that I haven't quite gotten over) You will actually be safe at home in your kitchen, and you will be cooking fabulous things with friends.
I know! Let's get started!
So here's how it works. For the next few weeks, we'll be cooking with a few others around here. There will of course be a theme, because who doesn't love a theme, and those themes will revolve around the ingredients that most of us gleefully have coming out of our ears these days. I'll tell you what I'm making, and I'll tell you about what other people are making too, and then, if you're feeling bold, you tell me what you're making!
I know! Can you even wait? I can't!

This week, this very first week of Summer fest 2010, we are paying homage to both of those tenacious and all-powerful garden presences: cukes and zukes.

Having been raised on far too much zucchini frittata, I just don't do the zukes. Cukes however, are an entirely different story.

I might like cucumbers even more than I like radishes. I might be able to live on cucumbers for a very long time, as long they have just a bit of salt on them. Peeled or not, cut into spears or slices, I'll eat them with glee until the vines are empty.

As I tried to figure out what to bring to this first exciting week of Summer fest 2010, I thought I'd bring something for the kids, you know, the "mac and cheese at the potluck" if you will, because I do that sort of thing. But then I had such a day with girls, and there was one too many tantrums, and I changed my mind.

I am done trying to make food that the girls will eat. I am done! Stomping my foot done!
Those girls are wild and wonderful and unpredictable. They are exploring the world with imagination and abandon. They are growing at an astounding rate, and everything is changing from one day to the next. One moment they are speaking their secret language as they set off for an adventure, and the next, I am shocked and appalled to find a a perfect imprint of Sadie's teeth on Rosie's chest. There is a shadow of a bruise as well, and Sadie explains to me that she bit her sister because she was taking too long to brush her teeth.
I am done. I just can't predict what will make them clean their plates or make them cry at the dinner table. They can forage. There are plenty of potatoes in the garden.
Today, this one is for the grownups.

It turns out that I made dessert. And although you would think that anything sweet and cold would please the littles, not so over here. They gave it a try, and they were actually quite gracious about it. There was a pucker, and a "hmm" and a "can I just have the shortbread?"

More for me.

The truth is, I loved this. It was cold, and herby, and just sweet enough, and the texture was wild and unexpected. My friend Sarah was in the kitchen with me today, and her offer to whip up the lime shortbread as I stirred the frozen cucumber ice was too good to pass up. For the grownups, this was just the right dessert, and although Joey's pickle making obsession has gotten so out of control this year that I have had a hard time getting my hands on the cucumbers in this house (20 jars of pickles!), I was very thankful for the few that I had today.

Cucumber Mint Sorbet with Lime Shortbread
(with thanks to Joey for leaving me a few cukes, and to Sarah for the shortbread)

For the Sorbet:

4 pounds cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 5-inch mint sprigs
1 5-inch tarragon sprig

For the Shortbread:

2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon rum
1/2 cup toasted roughly chopped cashews
zest of one lime

Make the sorbet-- In a small saucepan, combine the water and the sugar. Bring to a simmer over low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When the sugar is dissolved, bring the mixture to a boil, and let it boil for two minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and submerge the mint and tarragon sprigs in the liquid. Cover and let sit for 20 minutes. Strain and discard herbs.
Puree the cucumbers in a food processor until entirely smooth. Combine the cucumber puree with the sweet herb syrup in a freezer safe dish. Place in the freezer and freeze for 3 hours, stirring every 30 minutes.

Make the shortbread--Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Butter an 8 or 10-inch springform pan. Cream the butter and brown sugar in a stand mixer until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the flour, salt, cashews and rum, and mix just until the flour is combined. Press into the prepared pan, and sprinkle the lime zest over the top. Bake until shortbread is just dry and starting to turn golden, 50-60 minutes.

So what else is everyone making this week? It's quite a spread, so far as I can see.

Margaret Roach of A Way to Garden is talking about why size matters (smaller! not bigger!), and she's sharing pickling and freezing tips.

Michelle Buffardi over at The Cooking Channel's Devour/The Blog enlightens us on zucchini's unexpected diversity, and at Food Dish/ Food Network, she's making Paula Deen's zucchini bread.

Alison Sickelka of Food2 blog starts off the meal with a few zucchini appetizers.
On zucchini appetizers:
http://www.food2.com/blog

Elizabeth Gray at healthy eats is offering a cucumber salad and a few other ideas for our favorite cukes and zukes.

Cate O’Malley at Sweetnicks is bringing Indian Cucumber Wraps.

And my friend Paige over at the sister project is hating zucchini, and telling us all about it.

Diane and Todd, the White on Rice Couple are stuffing cucumbers with prosciutto and feta (I hope they made enough- everyone's going to want one of those!)

Kelly Senyei at Just a Taste is bringing a cucumber and sesame salad, and she's giving us a special lesson in slicing cucumbers on a mandoline.

Still have more cukes and zukes?

Shauna at Gluten Free Girl made soup and soupcicles.

Tigress in a Pickle made so many pickles.

And Judy the Tuscan Diva has fried squash blossoms!

And there's more coming! I'll keep you up to date as the day goes on. How about you? No need to come to the party empty handed...

apple rhubarb pandowdy

I like a thing that can reinvent itself with confidence.
Sometimes, it just doesn't work out to be what you set out to create. The day gets messy, and dinner gets abandoned for something altogether different. Or a career seems all laid out, and then a little person decides that your career will actually be mother. I think it's a good thing to be able to adjust without apologies, to say okay, you thought I was this, but now I'm this! Really! This all gives me a lot of hope.

This could have been a pie, but it's really a pandowdy.

I don't know who made the first pandowdy, but I'm guessing that it was not their original intention. Like the woman who made the first tarte tatin out of a failed apple cake, I'm thinking it must have been a happy accident. Maybe they only had enough butter for one crust, and they came to terms with the fact that the top crust was what mattered. Or maybe they were giving pie-making directions to a friend, and as they scribbled out the directions, they wrote "put the filling under the crust" instead of "over." We may just never know.

So what is a pandowdy?
Basically, we're talking about a pie without the bottom crust. Without the bottom layer, there is no risk of crust sog, and the whole thing comes together almost as easy as a crumble. It can be made in a pie pan, but it can also go into a square baking dish or a cast iron skillet, or whatever have you. It is a dessert that will forgive you for your limited baking supplies or your solitary pie crust. It is not meant to be pretty, just delicious. It is a dessert with an adaptable nature.

Yesterday was Joey's birthday. He was 31, and he requested pie.
I'd like to tell you how I started out making a pie and ended up with a pandowdy, how this mess or that mess got in my way, and then I had this fabulous dessert. That would be such a good story.
But really, the truth is that I have this book. Do you remember the Menu for Hope back in December? Well, in addition to offering a prize, I put in a bid for a few. Who could resist? If you didn't participate last year, don't worry, I'll remind you about again next year.
Because the right star seemed to be over my kitchen at the time, I won. I won 8 baking books from Ten Speed Press- really good baking books that I had been reading while loitering at the bookstore. It was pretty dreamy, to put it mildly. The day that box arrived might have been an all time high point for the mail around here.
One of these books is called Rustic Fruit Desserts. It is a beautiful little book that makes me feel even more excited for the 30 cherries that my tree might produce this summer, for peaches from the farmers market, and for apple picking in September. The use of the word "rustic" is my favorite part, because in most cases, by "rustic", I think that Cory Schrieber and Julie Richardson mean, "don't stress how it looks, it will taste great anyway," which basically sums up my whole cooking philosophy. Hell, that might actually sum up the way I feel about life, come to think of it.

As much as I love this little book, Joey loves it even more. Fruit desserts are a form of worship for him- and it is in the oozy strawberry and the flaky pastry that Joey experiences the magic and wonder of the world. In the first couple of months that we were together, Joey and I went on a road trip from Santa Fe to Vancouver. We stopped at every diner in the Pacific Northwest famous for their pies, which turned out to be one every couple of hours. Over huckleberries and sour cherries, we shared the random details that come out over the first few months of a relationship, and I owe a lot of our happiness today to the magic that occurred over those many slices of pie.
So, on Joey's birthday, I set out to make a pandowdy and I made a pandowdy. The book listed it as an ideal dessert from early Spring, an opportunity to combine the last apples of the late fall that are still in storage with the new rhubarb just poking through. Although it is early spring, I have no root cellar and it is far too frigid for my rhubarb to show its first shoots. Luckily, I had piles of rhubarb in my freezer which I combined with apples shipped in from some far off place. Not ideal, but like I said this a dessert of adaptability.

The specific recipe for this filling is brilliant. The balance of sweet and sour, peppered by cinnamon and lemon zest, is better than I've ever had it, and I've done a whole lot of time experimenting with my rhubarb. With vanilla ice cream rustically scooped over the rustic piece-like portion of pandowdy, this was just about the best fruit dessert that has sat on our table in a long time. I hope you're all up for it- as soon as the fruit starts coming around here, I'm going to be baking my way through this whole book. If I hold to it, it should be a pretty good 32nd year for Joey.

Apple Rhubarb Pandowdy
from Rustic Fruit Desserts by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson

1 single crust recipe of all butter pie crust- if you have a go-to recipe for this, go ahead and use it. My favorite right now is here, and I add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to the ice water.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature, for the pan
4 tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced
5 cups of rhubarb, sliced 1/2 inch thick (this can be used frozen)
zest and juice of one lemon
3/4 cup packed (5 3/4 ounces) light brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fines sea salt
Vanilla Ice Cream, for serving

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Butter a 9-inch deep dish pie dish, square baking pan, or cast iron skillet.
Toss the apples, rhubarb, lemon zest, and lemon juice together in a large bowl. Separately, rub together the brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and salt, then add to the fruit mixture and stir to combine. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan.
Roll out the pie pastry to roughly the size of the pan. You want it to be a little thicker than you would typically do for pie. Lay it out over the filling, and tuck the excess crust into the sides of the pan. Cut a few steam vents into the crust, and place the whole thing on top of a baking sheet to collect the drips.
Bake for 20 minutes, and then turn the heat down to 350 degrees. Bake for another 30-35 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the fruit is bubbling around the edges.
Cool for at least an hour, and serve with vanilla ice cream.