boozy (or not) mint lemonade

Summer is in full swing, it’s going at full tilt, it's turned up to 11 and it’s hot. All I want to do is lie in a hammock, at a lake, but I don’t have a hammock or a lake particularly handy. Instead I have reoriented my whole life around finding and consuming cool drinks. My main motivation, my primary reason for being is cool drinks. Life has become a just a series of obstacles between me and my next cool drink. Lemonade is the quintessential, the platonic, the ur-summertime quaff. This sweet-tart minty lemonade is even more refreshing, even more summery and cooling than the standard version. 

You can feel perfectly free to booze this up or not. Just about anything you have handy would be delightful, vodka, gin or especially tequila turn this into a very fortifying little cocktail in a hurry.

boozy (or not) mint lemonade:

• ½ cup sugar

• 3 cups water

• 1 large bunch mint, about 2 cups

• 1 cup lemon juice

Combine sugar and water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil until sugar is dissolved. Add ½ the mint and lightly crush with a wooden spoon. Set aside to cool.

Stir together lemon juice, cooled syrup and most remaining mint (leaving a few stems for garnish if you like). Serve ice cold, with mint for garnish, with or without a spirit boost. Do your best to find a hammock.

three peas dinner

I love these crispy chickpeas, and I quite often just eat them on their own. They are satisfyingly crunchy, like chickpea popcorn. When I am feeling just slightly less lazy, I turn them into a proper supper: super fresh with lots of mint and lemon, rich and satisfying from goat cheese and bacon, and that nice smug-inducing healthiness from green pea shoots. This dinner has it all and it comes together fast too.

three peas dinner:

adapted from Bon Appetit

• 6 rashers bacon

• 1 can chickpeas

• 2 tbs grapeseed oil

• 1 cup pea shoots

• ½ tsp garlic powder

• ½ tsp flaky salt

• pinch cumin & paprika

• 2 cups peas, fresh if possible but frozen is great too

• ½ cup mint leaves roughly torn

• olive oil and lemon juice for drizzling

Bake the bacon on a cookie sheet at 375 until crispy. Crumble and set aside.

Drain chickpeas and let dry as much as you can. Heat grapeseed oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat. Stirring frequently, fry chickpeas until they are crispy and golden brown, about 8-10 minutes. Toss chickpeas with salt, garlic, cumin and paprika.

While chickpeas fry, bring water to boil in a small pan. Blanch peas briefly in boiling water until just tender. Drain and set aside.

Smear a generous dollop of goat cheese cream onto each plate and top with pea shoots, chickpeas, peas, mint and bacon crumbles. Squeeze lemon and a few drops of olive oil over top of everything.

preserved lemon and goat cheese cream:

Adapted from A new way to dinner

• ⅓ cup creme fraiche

• four ounces goat cheese

• 2 tbs reserved lemon, roughly chopped

• large pinch chili flakes

• pepper

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blitz until smooth.

skillet chocolate chip cookie

It has been real hot lately. Hot for Victoria anyway, our little temperate rainforest with lovely stabilized temperatures where it never gets too hot or too cold. But for me it feels sweltery. I always have the good sense in these moments to do some cooking that requires me to turn my oven on and heat my house into a sticky, muggy nightmare. It’s like a DIY sauna, but with cookies at the end.

In this case, one huge cookie, baked up like a pie in a skillet. And it’s worth the heat to get a slice of warm cookie with slightly melty ice cream. A crispy-edged, warm and slightly gooey-centered salty-sweet slice of cookie.

skillet chocolate chip cookie:

Adapted from Chipits

• 1 cup softened butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups chocolate chips, I used half milk and half dark chocolate
• Big pinch of flaky salt

Cream together butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, around 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each egg is added. Scrape the bowl well to ensure all ingredients are incorporated. Add flour, salt and baking soda and beat until just incorporated. Add chocolate chips and fold through the dough. Spread cookie dough into an 8 inch skillet and sprinkle flaky salt over the top. Bake at 375F until golden brown on top and just set in the middle, about 30 minutes. Let cool slightly and serve with ice cream.

sorrel potato salad

Sorrel is a great, but kind of uncommon vegetable. It’s tricky to find at the grocery store, you might find it at a farmers’ market. It’s got a great, tart lemony flavour that is lovely finely sliced into a green salad or over grilled fish. It’s also a super easy green to grow and it produces a ton of pretty, lemony leaves without much trouble. It’s worth making space for growing some sorrel to keep yourself in these slightly ruffled, sour leaves all year round.

I turned my sorrel into a fresh, non mayo-gloopy dressing for a summery new potato salad. Perfect to take to a barbecue or picnic. Also, if you are bringing this to share, it’s gluten-free and vegan, so it should be an easy crowd pleaser.

Sorrel potato salad:

• 3 pounds new potatoes
• 2 cups sorrel leaves
• 1 ½   cups parsley
• ⅓ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup red wine vinegar
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• 3 tbs almonds
• 1 tbs capers
• ½ cup almonds

Place potatoes in a large pot. Cover with water. Cook on high until the potatoes are very tender, but falling apart. Drain water.

While the potatoes cook, toast the almonds in a dry frying pan over medium heat, stirring constantly until golden brown. Let cool and roughly chop.

Blitz all remaining ingredients in a food processor until they form a paste. Toss the dressing with the hot potatoes. Serve warm or cold, sprinkled with almonds.

masa harina pancakes

This is a little blast from the past. I first published this recipe in 2012 (!!), when the verdigris was a pretty cheesy little blogger blog, and my photography relied, sadly, on some really unfortunate instagram filters. But I really like this recipe and I didn’t want to banish it down the memory hole of terrible photography, so I thought I would do an updated shoot and share it again.

These pancakes use masa harina, the same corn flour that gives corn tortillas their delightfully doughy-corny flavour. They are fragrant, sweetly corny and savoury at the same time. And super fluffy. This recipe makes a pretty thick batter, that puffs up into fairly thick and puffy, fluffy pancakes. They are perfect for lazy Sundays with some milky coffee and maybe a little bacon.

You can find masa in well stocked grocery stores or Mexican groceries, look for Maseca brand, it’s the most common.

Masa harina pancakes:

adapted from Bon Appetit

• 3/4 cup masa harina flour

• 3/4 cup all purpose flour

• 2 tbs cornmeal

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 2 tbs sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 1/4 cup buttermilk

• 3 tbs butter melted, plus a little for the pan

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add egg and buttermilk and slowly add melted butter while stirring; mix until just combined with no big lumps. Drop half cups of batter into a buttered skillet over medium high heat. Cook until golden brown, 1-2 minutes per side. Serve immediately with butter and maple syrup.

lemon cheesecake tart

I love cheesecake, but I sometimes get overwhelmed by the huge volumes of cream cheese required to execute the typical towering cheesecake monolith - 3, 5 even more bricks of cream cheese go into these giants. This is a thinner, low key layer of cheesecake, just one 8 ounce brick of cream cheese needed. It also has an excellent ratio of crumb base to cheese cake filling, because the graham crumbs are one of the top two reasons for eating cheesecake in the first place.  

You can get all that rich, tangy cheesecake flavour, in a petite little tart package. A puddle of lemon curd on the top takes it to the next level.

lemon cheesecake tart:

adapted from Martha Stewart

• 1 ⅓ cup graham crumbs

• ¼ cup melted butter

• 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

• ¼ cup + 2 tbs sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

• ½ cup lemon curd, store bought or homemade

Combine graham crumbs and butter, and press into the bottom and sides of a 13” rectangular fluted tart pan. Bake at 325 for about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Combine cream cheese, sugar, egg, vanilla and lemon zest and juice; whisk until very smooth. Pour into graham crust and bake until just set with a slightly wobbly centre, 15-20 minutes.

Cool completely and spread lemon curd over the cheesecake. Cut into thin slices to serve.