Plum & Thyme Syrup

When you fail too many times at trying new recipes, make a cocktail instead!

I have so many ideas of foods or dishes I want to try my hand at making. I've been cooking and baking long enough that I can usually translate my simpler ideas to actual food with minimal tweaking on the first or second try. They aren't always exactly what I intended, but they are usually at least edible.  Lately though, it seems like I've attempted one too many projects that just didn't come together. A few things I knew would need more than one try, others were so simple it was confounding that I couldn't make them work. In any case, I'm tired of throwing food away, so it's the perfect opportunity to shift focus to a drink recipe.

You might say it's thyme.

In fact, it's plum thyme for a gin cocktail!

Cooked Plums.jpg

Sorry.

Sometimes I make puns.

This syrup is a great example of trying something simple that came together on the first try. I made the syrup and served it in cocktails for a book club brunch I hosted a few weeks ago. I don't think I have a future in mixology or anything but the reviews were pretty good!

The syrup is delicious mixed with just some sparkling water or club soda, and you can even add some lemon juice to that combo for a less traditional lemonade. But if you really want to up your game, add a little gin or vodka!

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Plum Thyme Gin Cocktail.jpg

It can make you forget all about those unrealized dreams attracting fruit flies in your trash.

Plum & Thyme Syrup

makes about 2 cups. Adapted from the Kitchn.

1 1/2 lbs red plums (or any kind you like)
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 sprigs of fresh thyme

  1. Cut plums into wedges and chop into large chunks. Add to a large saucepan with the water and sugar over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the fruit has begun to break down.
  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a large bowl or a glass measuring cup, then discard the fruit or reserve for another purpose (see note). Return the syrup to the pot and bring back to a boil. Add in the thyme sprigs, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the syrup begins to thicken and is slightly reduced. Take off of the heat and remove the thyme sprigs. Let cool then store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Notes

  • The leftover fruit is excellent on pancakes or waffles, or on top of ice cream or yogurt.

 

Plum, Thyme, and Gin Cocktail

2 ounces plum & thyme syrup (or adjust to preference)
2 ounces gin (or adjust to preference)
club soda
4 frozen plum wedges (optional)
2 sprigs of thyme

  1. In a glass, mix together syrup and gin, and fill glass with ice and plum wedges, if using. Stir the ice around to mix the syrup and gin together. Top with club soda and garnish with the thyme.

 

 

California Road Trip!

Last week my mom flew out to CA and we took a little road trip up the coast from LA to San Francisco.  

We flew down to LA on Friday morning, and once we settled into our super cool Moroccan-themed hotel, we went exploring. We decided to walk through downtown to a brewery we heard about, only to wander around in the heat among some of LA's more transient residents* to discover it wasn't opening for another 40 minutes. Oops. Luckily we found some amazing popsicles to help a little with the heat. We walked back in the direction of the hotel, checking out the Grand Central Market for a falafel break and then some ice cream for me, and then walked up the hill to check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It was very...metallic. Once back at the hotel we plopped down by the pool for happy hour, in an attempt to revive ourselves enough to make it to dinner. After dinner, since 7 miles obviously wasn't enough, we capped off the day with a walk through the giant neon screens at LA Live.

*I checked the map, and after all my joking that I was going to take her on a tour of Skid Row, I accidentally almost did. Whoops.

Good eats:

Artesana It's literally a tiny box of a storefront that we walked right past the first time. The only other customer was enthusiastically recommending the avocado coconut, so I went with that, while my mom tried the watermelon lemongrass.

Madcapra Square falafel! We split a sandwich and sumac chips, and it was probably some of the best falafel I've had outside of Israel.

McConnell's I think I had my first waffle cone ever. Either that, or I have a crappy memory. Sea Salt Cream & Cookies? I. Am. There.

Faith & Flower So good. My mom actually requested that I recreate their kimchi deviled eggs for the blog.

Saturday was like a bad sitcom where everything goes wrong, but minus the laugh track to let you know its supposed to be funny. Hence, the lack of photos. We walked back to Grand Central Market for breakfast at Eggslut, where I stupidly imagined we would just waltz up to the counter, get a sandwich, eat, and leave, all in about 30 minutes. Ha. The wait put us a full hour behind schedule before we finally got on Highway 1 and headed north. My plan was not to rely on my phone for directions since we only had to head north and keep the ocean on the left, right? So wrong. Now I definitely know that Highway 1 ends somewhere in the vicinity of Oxnard and doesn't pop up again until Santa Barbara (Pro tip: use the damn GPS). Once I realized that I shouldn't be seeing mountains to my left, we headed back west towards the coast and joined the parking lot that was 101. 

That episode put us another hour behind schedule, which was kind of a problem since our plan was to go wine tasting once we got to San Luis Obispo. Since wineries tend to close at 5pm, we were in a little bit of a hurry at this point. We decided to head to a winery south of SLO, but after 15 minutes of winding roads taking us ever farther from the highway, we finally arrived....to a sign with the unwelcome info that they were CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE EVENT. After an extended bout of "we're laughing so hard to keep from crying" we turned around and got back on the highway. We finally arrived at a winery after 4pm, leaving us enough time to rush through a tasting, buy some wine, and then immediately head to the next winery down the road. In the end we only went to two wineries, but one of them was pretty good, and my mom seemed to enjoy it, so it all worked out, I guess. 

After that, we checked into our motel and discovered that it was literally right next door to the Madonna Inn. If you don't know what that is, definitely look it up. We immediately agreed that it was a must for breakfast, but we were starving so we headed downtown to solve the more immediate problem of dinner.

Good Eats:

Eggslut This place is popular and I would recommend getting there early. We did not, and the line was out of control. But we waited with all the hipsters and our sandwiches were awesome. Turns out, they not only satisfy in the moment but will also sustain you straight through a day of driving in circles up the coast.

Granada Bistro This was a yelp find, and it turned out to be fantastic. Bonus: they had the most attractive wait staff I've ever seen.

batch Potato.Chips.On.My.Ice.Cream.Sandwich. 

Our final day began in the kitschiest fashion possible, with breakfast at the Madonna Inn. Then we drove north to Hearst Castle for the rich people version of kitsch (and zebras!). That place is so over the top and I couldn't stop imagining all my art history professors cringing at the haphazard mix of gothic, renaissance and other styles. Also, I would be in the best shape if I had to climb all of those stairs every day. After Hearst Castle, we drove north along the winding highway to Big Sur, 17 Mile Drive and then Monterey. I think that stretch of the coast is really the most stunning part, even if you can't really enjoy the view while you are trying to safely drive it. All of California seemed to be doing the same drive we were, so we skipped most of the scenic stopping points. I didn't get to see any sea otters, but we did spot a few seals sunning themselves.

Good Eats:

Copper Cafe It's definitely like walking into a giant copper kettle filled with Barbie's kitchen decor. Even the sugar was pink, and the steakhouse next door had bright pink leather booths. The food was pretty much like Denny's, with better ambiance.

Big Sur Bakery This rustic place is so cute, and we ate a salsa verde pizza I'm dying to recreate at home.

 

I definitely want to do this drive again! My mom had such a good time she's suggesting another road trip from Seattle to SF. I'll just have to remember to use the GPS for that one. 

Strawberry Macaron & Matcha Ice Cream Sandwiches

Sometimes you want your ice cream sandwiches so thick, you can barely eat them. Other times, you really want an ice cream sandwich, but a magical one that will allow your skinny jeans to fit. And once in a while, you want the former but get the latter because you ate too much of your ice cream two days ago.

Guess which kind these are?

Sometimes, my work will order ice cream sandwiches to the office from this place. And while I do have a soft spot* for your basic run of the mill ice cream sandwiches of a vaguely chocolate, cakey wafer sandwiching what is supposed to be ice cream but is more like a suggestion of dairy, they can't hold a candle to these ice cream sandwiches. Three inches of creamy ice cream is held between two giant, soft cookies. If you get them in the shop the cookies are warm, but when we get them in the office they are frozen solid. It's a brick half the size of my face and impossible to eat delicately. They are always awesome, but they also always trigger a food coma around 2 pm that makes me want to bring back naptime in the worst way. 

*and a very vivid, horrifying memory of how far I would go to eat one as a child, a memory I just cannot share but trust me it's all kinds of mortifying/hilarious/disturbing to me now.

In an attempt to get my ice cream sandwich fix in a closer proximity to various napping apparatus, I decided to make some at home. I still had about a pint of matcha ice cream in the depths of my freezer leftover from these, which I thought would go very well with strawberry. I briefly flirted with the idea of whoopie pies but decided on meringue instead, since I was pretty sure it wouldn't freeze as hard as cookies and I wanted to give myself a culinary challenge and attempt macarons.  

Ha. I will continue to say "attempt" because I didn't quite end up with macarons, but I did get some pretty delicious, chewy, almond-meringue cookies flecked with strawberries. They went spectacularly with what was left of the matcha ice cream, which apparently, I had only not been eating because I forgot about it. Once I remembered it was there, I almost finished it before I got around to making these (and after making the meringue cookies, I was definitely not making ice cream). Because of that, these aren't showstoppers, but I actually really liked the ratio of ice cream to cookie. It was just enough to satisfy but not enough to trigger any digestion-related narcolepsy.

By far the most fun part of these was the strawberry. Turns out, pretty much all macaron recipes are exactly the same, with the flavor variations coming from the fillings, not the cookie itself. Which means all color variations come from food dye. Sometimes I worry that I'm still ridding my body of all the blue and red food dye I put in my flag cake last 4th of July, so I really wasn't jazzed about the idea of busting out red food coloring for these. Instead, I went with a more natural route.

I mean, look how brilliantly pink that stuff is! When I mixed it with the other cookie ingredients it faded to more of a blushy pink, but it was still so pretty, no food coloring needed. And it infused the cookies with a wonderful strawberry flavor without using any kind of extract or flavoring, which was exactly what I wanted.

OKAY FINE. You know what I did? One time I saw a half-eaten ice cream sandwich on the ground, miraculously still partially wrapped and only partially melted. I have no idea where it came from. All I remember is furtively looking around to see if anyone was watching and realizing I was completely alone on the sidewalk. So I grabbed my prize off the ground and ate it in two bites, tossed the wrapper on the ground and skipped home to eat dinner, knowing on some level that what I had just done was completely uncivilized but also thrilled at what I had gotten away with. 

I'm pretty sure that's going way too far for an ice cream sandwich, but maybe (hopefully?) this was just typical behavior of any 5 year-old presented with forbidden pre-dinner dessert and opportunity, but who knows? My mother always said that dessert is a privilege, not a right, so I'd like to think I was just exercising my privilege to eat the beautiful gift the universe had quite literally dropped in my path.

Strawberry Macaron & Matcha Ice Cream Sandwiches

Makes 6 (or more), adapted from Molly Yeh

1 1/2 cups almond meal
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup powdered strawberry (see note)
4 egg whites
pinch salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
matcha ice cream (at least 6 good-sized scoops but a pint is better)

  1. Prepare your ice cream. Spread at least 6 scoops of softened ice cream on a cookie sheet with a silpat or wax paper and freeze.
  2. Sift, sift, and keep sifting together almond meal, powdered sugar and powdered strawberry into a large bowl. Discard any pieces of almond or strawberry that won't fit through the sifter (up to two tablespoons). Your brilliant strawberry powder should have mixed with almond and powdered sugar at this point to a faded, pale pink powder.
  3. Using a stand mixed with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites and salt on medium speed until the whites are foamy, then gradually add the granulated sugar. When all of the sugar is mixed in, increase the speed to medium high and beat the whites to stiff peaks. This should take about 5 minutes, and your egg whites should look stiff and shiny (see note). 
  4. Gradually fold the almond-strawberry mixture into the egg whites with a rubber spatula and keep folding until the mixture is completely combined into a thick batter that flows off the spatula.
  5. Spoon the batter into a pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip (#12). Pipe the batter onto parchment lined baking sheets into 3 inch circles, starting at the outside edge and spiraling into the centers. It's helpful to trace circles with a flour-dipped cookie cutter or on the underside of the parchment with a pencil and then use them as a guide. 
  6. Once you have piped the circles, pick up the baking sheets about an inch or so off the counter and drop them a few times to get the air bubbles out. Let sit at room temperature for about 45 minutes until films form on the tops and circles are dry to the touch. Let oven preheat to 300 degrees while you are waiting for the cookies to dry.
  7. Bake cookies for about 30-45 minutes, or until they come easily off the parchment. Let cool completely.
  8. To assemble cookies. Take your cookie sheet of frozen ice cream out of the freezer and cut out 3-inch circles using a round cookie or biscuit cutter. Working quickly, place a disk of ice cream between two meringue cookies, until all ice cream and cookie halves are used up. Transfer ice cream sandwiches back to the freezer to harden or enjoy immediately! Sandwiches can be stored for at least a couple of weeks in the freezer. The longer they keep, the softer the cookies will become. Delicious!

Notes:

  • I have actually seen powdered strawberry on Amazon, because they have everything, but the easiest thing to do is just grind up some freeze dried strawberries in the food processor. I used one bag (1.2 oz) of Trader Joe's freeze dried strawberries to get 1/2 cup of powder.
  • When beating the egg whites, try really hard not to worry so much about over-beating them that you under-beat them like someone else did (definitely not me). But you know, also try really hard not to over-beat them. They should take about 5 minutes and be really shiny. If you under-beat them you will still have delicious meringue-like cookies but the tops probably won't dry out before baking and baking time could be about an hour and you will be driven crazy trying to peel the cookies off the parchment paper (not that I know this from experience or anything. Just explaining for a friend.) You got this.
  • You will have way more batter than 6 cookies worth (12 halves). Just pipe smaller cookies and eat them sans ice cream or use more ice cream and make more sandwiches.