pineapple chili margaritas

I get nervous around those big stemmed margarita glasses. They are awkward and top heavy. I can barely drink a cup of tea, stone cold sober, without spilling a generous amount all over myself. I don't own much white clothing. Add tequila and (ideally) some drowsy, sunny catnapping and a heavy, tippy glass into this equation and I am invariably going to make a mess. It's not a super dignified look. Obviously, you should serve these margaritas however you like, but I think they are best in a sturdy and unprecious tumbler. No unnecessary stemware stress. 

This pineapple margarita is summer in a glass. Tart and sweet sunny yellow pineapple, acid lime juice with just enough sugar to take the edge off the pucker, with tequila and chili for bite. 

Tajin is a delicious Mexican spice blend with chili, salt and lime. It's really good sprinkled on sliced cucumbers, pineapples, mangoes...pretty much any kind of fruit. It's quite sour so if you do use it for the rims, so be judicious at first.

pineapple chili margaritas:

serves 4

• 2 cups frozen pineapple 
• 1 cup ice 
• 4 ounces tequila 
• 2 ounces triple sec
• juice from 2 limes 
• 1/4 cup sugar 
• pinch of chili flakes
• tajin spice, or salt for the rim 

Run a wedge of lime around the rims of four glasses and then dip them into a shallow dish of tajin spice or salt. 

In a blender, combine pineapple, ice tequila, triple sec, lime juice, chili and sugar and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust sugar, lime juice and tequila to your desired levels of sweetness/tartness/booziness. 

Drink in a hammock, if you are particularly confident about your ability to not spill. 

haloumi & zucchini fritters

It's coming up on the abundant zucchini time of year, the summertime overflow of showy blossoms and bulbous squashes. If you are growing it in your garden, it's easy to turn from delight at the zucchini bounty to panic at the onslaught of seemingly endless squashes. 

There are many ways to avoid courgette burnout, but I think one of the very best is shredding up a whole mess of zucchini with some haloumi and a beaten egg and frying up some tasty fritters. An enormous volume of zucchini can be dispatched into crispy, squeeky-cheese filled snacks. Add a spicy dip and it's a perfect appetizer or entire dinner, if you want to wolf down the whole plate like I did. 

If you want to turn these into a proper dinner, serve the fritters over a big herby green salad with a couple handfuls of basil, mint, parsley and dill. The amounts here are flexible, but you are aiming for a mixture that is moist and clumping but not soggy and runny. Add extra egg for more liquid and more breadcrumbs/chickpea flour to sop up extra liquid. 

haloumi & zucchini fritters: 

• 2-3 large zucchini, or more, this recipe is flexible!

• 1-2 eggs, lightly beaten

• 1 package of haloumi shredded, about 2/3 cup

• 2-3 tbs panko breadcrumbs or chickpea flour for a GF version

• 1/2 cup chopped parsley

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• pinch chili flakes

• salt and pepper

• oil for frying

Shred zucchini and place in a colander. Salt the zucchini and let sit for 10 minutes to drain. Press with paper towels until zucchini gives off no more liquid. Combine other ingredients except oil together in a large bowl and mix until evenly combined. 

Heat oil over medium high heat in a large pan. Fry 1/3 cupfuls of mixture well spaced apart in the pan for a couple minutes per side. They should unstick easily from the pan and slide around when they are ready to flip. When both sides are deep gold and crispy, set on paper towels while you finish frying the others.

spicy dip: 

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise

• 1 tsp garlic powder

• 1/4 tsp cayenne

• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika

• squeeze of lemon juice

• salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Dip those fritters!

hazelnut & blond chocolate crispies

Oh my god, do you guys know about dishwashers? They are pretty great. I just moved into a new apartment with many lovely features, including a backyard & garden in which I have some little sprouts growing and some really nice stained glass windows and a big lovely kitchen with a dishwasher! This thing just washes your dishes for you. I can sit and have a cup of tea, and the dishes are being washed by a robot. It's the best thing ever. I can't recommend it enough. I feel like I have won the lottery, but more so. I shall endeavour to never live dishwasherless again. I just put the bowls and spatulas from this recipe right in there, and the elves that live in my dishwasher cleaned 'em right up. 

These crispy squares are a teeny, tiny bit more work than the standard version, but not too much. And it's totally worth the wee bit of extra effort for the nutty, toasty, toffee flavours. Toasting the cereal and roasting the white chocolate is quick and easy, but they add depth and toffee-nuttiness. Puffed rice cereal is classic, but you can use any puffed grains. I used a combo of rice and millet. Blond chocolate is overly-sweet white chocolate's grown up sister - toasty, nutty and toffee flavoured. White chocolate skeptics will be convinced. If you roast two bars of chocolate you can save half for snacking, melting over ice cream or folding into cookies. Some super fancy chocolate brands even sell blond chocolate - if you can find some you won't even have to turn on your oven. 

More with blond chocolate: caramelized white chocolate and raspberry financiers

blond chocolate:

1- 2 bars of white chocolate

On a cookie sheet, roast white chocolate at 265°F. Every 5 minutes, take the sheet out and smoosh the chocolate around with a spatula or bench scraper. It will seize and go all grainy and weird, don't worry! That's fine. 

Roast until chocolate is a deep toffee colour, a bit like peanut butter. Cool until hardened. 

 hazelnut & blond chocolate crispies

adapted from the kitchn 

• 6 cups puffed cereal, any kind

• 6 tablespoons butter

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 4 cups mini marshmallows

• 3 tbs praline paste

• 1/3 cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped

• 1/3 cup blond chocolate, chopped into chunks

• big pinch flaky salt

Butter a 9"x 13" pan, or line with parchment, if you are too lazy to wash a pan (I am!). 

In a large skillet, toast the cereal on medium heat until it smells fragrant and turns slightly darker in colour. Let cool in a large bowl.

Melt butter in a large pot and on low heat, add marshmallows, stirring constantly until melted. Add praline paste and vanilla and stir until evenly incorporated. Pour marshmallow mixture over toasted cereal and add hazelnuts and chocolate chunks. Stir until cereal is evenly coated in marshmallow goo and press into prepared tin. Sprinkle with flaky salt if you like. 

Let set for about an hour and cut into squares. 

super lemony cake with cream cheese frosting

I think cake is almost always way too sweet. Super sweet frosting without any obvious flavour other than slick, fatty, sweetness with the faintest whiff of a mirage of vanilla. I never liked super sweet cakes and I think  that's why I like to make cake. I want cake to be its best self. Floofy and light and flavourful and intense and not quite so damn sweet all at once. It is possible! This cake combats over sweetness in two ways: super tart and thick lemon curd, combined with extra strength lemon syrup soaked cake layers; and a fluffy, tangy whipped cream cheese frosting. 

Layering the lemon in syrup and curd gets this cake intensely lemony: zingy and tart and puckering and bright. It's a summer time, sunshiney cake. This frosting is a little different that other cream cheese frostings, it's whipped up with whipping cream. It makes a really fluffy and light frosting that is pipeable and holds it's shape beautifully. 

Note about amounts: This cake recipe makes at least twice as much as you will need for the petite cake I made here. Either extra freeze raw batter in mason jars (make sure to leave 1" of space at the top of the jar and freeze without lid, put the lid on after batter is frozen) for using later, or just double the frosting, syrup and curd amounts and make a mega cake! The frozen cake batter will work great thawed, more on this coming soon. Frozen cake batter will change your life. 

yellow cake: 

adapted from smitten kitchen

• 4 cups plus 2 tablespoons cake flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 cup butter, softened

• 2 cups sugar

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

• 2 cups buttermilk (or two cups milk soured with a splash of lemon juice)

Heat oven to 350°F. Line the bottoms of two 6" cake pans with parchment paper. 

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Cream butter and sugar together until light in colour. Add vanilla and eggs and beat to combine. Scrape the sides of the bowl and eat again until well incorporated. 

On the lowest speed, beat in buttermilk. Add flour mixture in three additions. Hand mix with a spatula a little to avoid flour explosions. Scrape down bowl to make sure there are no unmixed spots. 

Reserve half the batter for another use. Divide remaining batter between two prepared 6" pans. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until cakes are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool cakes and run a knife around the edge so they come out of the pan cleanly. 

lemon curd:

adapted from Martha Stewart

• 6 egg yolks

• 1/2 cup lemon juice

• zest from one lemon

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1/2 cub cold butter, cubed

Combine yolks, lemon juice and rind, and sugar in a small saucepan. Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Remove from heat and stir in cubed butter, mixing until well combined. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, transfer to a glass jar and chill in the fridge until cool and very thick. The curd can be made several days in advance.

lemon syrup:

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup lemon juice

Combine sugar and lemon juice in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Chill.

whipped cream cheese frosting:

adapted from Just a Taste

• 8 ounces cream cheese

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

• 1/2 cup + 2 tbs whipping cream, chilled

• 1/2 vanilla bean innards, or 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the cream cheese until soft. Add sugar and vanilla; beat until well incorporated. Whisking at a medium-high speed, pour whipping cream into mixer bowl in a slow stream. Frosting should become very fluffy. 

assembly:

Trim cakes as required to flatten the tops, I like to cut the side crusts off too to get nothing but the super fluffy middle cake. Drizzle lemon syrup generously over the cake layers and let soak in for a couple minutes. 

Place one cake layer on a 6" cake board if you have it, or a flat plate or cake stand. Cover cake with a very generous layer of curd, it should be quite thickly set so you can really pile it on without oozing over the edge. Leave a thin boarder of uncovered cake around the edge to make space for squishing when you add the next cake layer. Sandwich next cake layer on top and cool in the fridge around 15 minutes to set up, to help the curd not ooze out into your frosting. This is a good time to make the frosting. 

Frost the chilled cake quickly all over with an offset spatula, making sure to cover all exposed cake. Adding more frosting as you go, use an offset spatula, or bench scraper to tidy up and give the cake some nice clean angles. I used a cake comb to make the ridges along the side on the cake.  

Optional: decorate your cake with some sprinkles. You really should do it though, look how cute they are.

green sauce for everything

So I realize that I just told you about a great green sauce that goes with everything: chimichurri, in the chimichurri potato salad recipe. But there is another easy, versatile and extremely morish green sauce I have been eating a lot lately. You really should have both of these sauces in your life. To smear over everything and make it all better.

This green sauce is excellent on chicken, fish and roasted vegetables. Also great on leftover cold fried chicken, as I tested the other day. It makes a really nice dip for raw vegetables and tortilla chips. Whatever you are eating for dinner tonight, put this on it. 

green sauce for everything:

• 1/4 cup mayonnaise

• 1/4 cup sour cream

• 2/3 cup cilantro leaves

• juice from one lime

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 1 fresh jalapeno, or 8-10 sliced pickled jalapeno

• salt and lots of black pepper

Blend all ingredients in a food processor. Drizzle over all your food. Rejoice

basil and lime gimlet

Sometimes in my head, I imagine a great thing that I'm sure I can do in the real world and it's definitely going to work out, no problem! And sometimes these imaginings do work out pretty well, and sometimes they are huge disasters. I did this last week. I had been turning around the idea of a preserved lemon cocktail in my head for a while and it sounded great. I was a bit worried about saltiness, but I figured I would soak the lemons and reduce the salt. Then I would turn them into a syrup that was sweet and just faintly salty and with that great, perfumed lemon-but-also-not-quite-lemon preserved lemon flavour. My dream cocktail was amazing. I would add basil and make an excellent, uniquely sweet and savoury, fragrant, sophisticated summer lemonade cocktail delight. 

This was hubris my friends. I sliced the preserved lemon into thin wedges, rinsed and soaked it to reduce the salt, and made a simple syrup, totally certain of my true cocktail genius. And then I tasted the revoltingly salty (Duh, right?) yet somehow too sweet syrup. I added lemon juice and more sugar, to try to balance out or at least distract from the off-putting qualities of my concoction. I continued to throw good sugar after bad for quite a while, never really improving things. I wound up with a super thick, still gross, lemon sludge. I put it in the fridge, thinking I could find a way to save it. Then I stared at it every time I opened the fridge for 3 days until I had to face reality and throw it away. 

I had already bought basil though, and I wasn't going to let this gross lemon-tastrophy ruin my basil cocktail dreams. For the next round, I went with a surefire flavour combo, with no daring acrobatics involved: basil, lime and gin. Sweet, tart, summery. All the childish, summer-time fun of limeade combined with all the fun of gin! For the grown-up kiddo in you. 

For now I will keep my preserved lemons for rubbing on chickens and turning into salad dressings. Until another wave of hubris hits me and I turn them into some kind of horrifying meringue. 

basil syrup:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar 
• 1/2 cup basil leaves, chopped

Combine ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil until sugar is dissolved.. Reduce heat, and simmer on low about 5 minutes. 

basil and lime gimlet: 

• juice of one lime
• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce basil syrup 
• ice cubes 
• a couple sprigs basil leaves 

Crush basil leaves in a cocktail shaker with a muddler or the end of a wooden spoon. Add all other ingredients and shake vigorously until the shaker frosts over and gets very cold. Strain into a glass and garnish with a stem of basil. Makes one, multiply ingredients by the number of gimlet drinkers.