Blog has moved!

Hello All! Just wanted to let you know, the blog has moved to a new home, which you can find here.

If you are subscribed to the blog via email, I have automatically transferred your subscription over to the new site – meaning you will continue to receive email notifications of any new posts that I post there.

However, if you are a WordPress subscriber, you will have to resubscribe to the blog yourself, either via RSS (just copy and paste that link into your RSS feeder) or via email which you can do in the appropriate spot in the side bar over at the new blog (you’ll see it!). I’m sorry for the inconvenience, I wish there was a way I could just whisk you all to the new site with me without making you resubscribe, but alas there is not!

All my new posts will be over on the new site from here on out, so do be sure to head over there.

Looking forward to welcoming you all at Teacupchronicles.com!

Elderflower Pots de Crème with Rhubarb Compote

As June dissolves away into the first humid and hot days of July, the elder flowers start to bloom. They are everywhere. Along every roadside, looking up from every moist ditch, surrounding the borders of every pond and every lake. Everywhere. Cloud like sprays of cream-colored blossoms ablaze in the strong summer sunshine, filling the still sticky air with the breath of their sweet honeyed perfume. A smell that is of summertime. A smell that is magical.

The elder flowers are a sign to me, one of those subtle markers that signify a certain time of year, that mark out the sensations that belong only to one small stretch of time in the calendar. Now the elders are blooming I think to myself, it is that time of year. It seems more revealing, more elucidating, somehow, than saying it is the first week of July. 

Up close, they are like sprays of tiny, delicate stars woven together as fine as any lace. They make one think of moonlight. There are stories, legends, that if you were to fall asleep in the shade of an elder, you would dream of fairies and elves and magical things – and if you happened to sit under the elder on the eve of midsummer’s night, you might see the fairy king march by himself.

It is easy to believe these stories, when you are filling your basket with those lacy blooms on a hot summers day, your fingers dusted with golden pollen, breathing in their sweetness. You really feel you might get whisked away to another world.

We picked for sometime, this past weekend, my friend Shari and I. We picked until our baskets were full and our legs and arms scratched up by the brambles that surround the elders. Then we walked out into the little lake that they grow by, splashing ourselves with water and watching the sunlight glinting off the lake’s rippled surface. It was such a lovely day.

I brought my harvest home and set about thinking what I might do with it. Some I set aside to dry for tea, which I like to put in cold and flu blends for the winter time. Some I mixed into a little jar with sugar, for making elder scented cakes. Some I packed into a tall jar full of water, to gently infuse overnight in the fridge, for drinking cold on these hot days (an idea I got from Lucinda).

And some I used to make these delicately flavored Pots de Crème – little jars of baked custard that I topped with rhubarb compote. The result was just what I was hoping for – light, creamy, delicately perfumed with the scent of the flowers and just sweet enough to oppose the tart rhubarb. A perfect desert for this very time of year. The elderflower time.

Elderflower pots de crème with rhubarb compote

Feel free to sub in other fruits as well – gooseberry would be a good traditional pairing but strawberry or raspberry would also be divine as well. Custard recipe adapted from La Tartine Gourmande by Beatrice Peltre. Serves 4.

For the compote:

• 1 lbs rhubarb, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
• 3/4 cup unrefined cane sugar
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 2 tablespoons of elderflower cordial or liqueur (optional)

For the custard:

•  2 1/3 cups whole milk
• 4 medium-sized heads of fresh elder-flower blossoms
• 1 vanilla bean, split open and seeds scraped out
• 1 egg plus 4 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup unrefined cane sugar

To make the compote, combine the sugar with a tablespoonful or two of water along with the elderflower cordial or liqueur (if using) and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add the rhubarb, letting the mixture come back to a full boil before reducing to a gentle simmer. Continue to cook until the rhubarb has just begun to break down, but still has some texture (about 20 minutes) and remove from heat before stirring in the lemon juice. Place in the fridge and chill completely.

To make the custard, preheat the oven to 320 degrees F. Place the milk into a saucepan and heat until just beginning to bubble, the remove from heat. Add the elder-flowers and vanilla and cover the pot, leaving to infuse for at least 30 minutes.

When the milk has finished infusing, pour the mixture through a sieve or finely meshed strainer to separate out the flowers and vanilla pod. Check the temperature and be sure it is still warm the touch – if not, reheat gently.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs and egg yolks with the sugar in a medium-sized bowl. When the milk is ready, slowly pour it into the eggs, stirring all the time. Once it is well incorporated, pour the mixture into 4 cup-sized mason jars, filling them about 2/3 of the way full.

Place the jars into a casserole dish or cake tin large enough to hold them without touching, and fill the pan with boiling water so that it comes about 1/2 way up the sides of the jars. Place the pan into the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes, until the custards are set and the middle only jiggles slightly when you move them.

Let cool to room temperature and then place a small piece of plastic wrap or parchment paper on the top of each custard to prevent a film forming and chill them in the fridge for several hours.

When ready to serve, top each custard with a spoonful of the rhubarb compote and a scattering of fresh individual elder flowers.

PS For more elder love, you can read this post or head over to Whispering Earth for this lovely post

Strawberry days

If the first heady days of summertime had a flavor, they most certainly would taste of strawberry. Not just any strawberry mind you, but the perfect strawberry – a ripe little gem picked straight from the plant with the sunshine pouring down on your shoulders and your fingers stained crimson, the far away humming of bees and the heat and the boozy sweet perfume of squashed berries weaving an intoxicating spell around you. When you bite into a strawberry like that – you know that summertime has begun, beyond a doubt. You can feel it.  You have crossed that strange boundary where spring’s sweetness begins to totter into something altogether more complex and provocative and interesting, like the maturing of a fine wine. Summertime.

There is no comparison between that sort of strawberry and the ones you find at the store. True strawberries are not made for supermarkets shelves – they are made to eat quickly and greedily and fervidly before they melt into a boozy mush. A good strawberry won’t last more than a few days. I always forget this in the spring, when the first cartons of California and Florida berries begin appearing and I bring them home, tantalized by the prospect of them. But they always disappoint. They are strawberries made for utility and resilience, not for flavor. They taste like nothing.

So when strawberry season begins, I take full advantage. I pick until my husband has to drag me away. I freeze them. I make jam. I eat more strawberries in a day than anyone rightfully should. I put them in muffins, slice them over my cereal, macerate them in sugar, blend them into smoothies. I had to make this and this of course, and strawberry shortcake, and this. And who could resist that? I eat them until I begin to almost sicken of them – almost – which is about when the season is whittling down anyways. Because I know deep down that this is my one chance in the year to really experience the sensation of summer melting into my tongue. The chance to eat a strawberry that tastes like a strawberry, and to make the world stop and fill my head with sunshine and blue skies and days that never seem to end.

Here is a recipe that I felt brought out the strawberry’s full potential in a simple, elegant way. It combines two of my favorite fruits – strawberries and peaches – with a warm, sophisticated drizzle of balsamic and a beautiful scattering of fresh rose petals that just combines everything good about this time of year. I hope you enjoy it – strawberry season is beginning to wind down, so do be sure to properly gorge yourself this next week, and enjoy the sweet taste of summer before it all to soon begins to slip away.

A salad of strawberries, peaches and rose petals with warm vanilla-rose balsamic syrup

A simple and elegant desert to enjoy as is, or spoon over something delicious like ice-cream. You can use wild or cultivated roses from your garden for this – I happen to have the most beautiful little rugosa rose bush that I discovered hiding in the weeds last summer, so I used the bright fuschia petals of that, which are lightly fragranced and beautifully stunning scattered over the fruit. You might wish to double the syrup amount to have on hand for other things – sweet and fragrant with a touch of warmth from the pepper – it makes a wonderful topping for ice-cream, even pancakes. If you don’t have a vanilla bean handy just add a tablespoon of vanilla extract to the dressing

Serves 2.

• 2 perfectly ripe peaches, sliced into thin segments
• 1.5 cups strawberries, sliced into thin segments
• the petals of one rose

For the dressing:

• 1/2 cup aged balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon unrefined cane sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 teaspoon rose water
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Place the balsamic vinegar and sugar into a saucepan. Slice the vanilla bean in half, scrape the seeds from the pod and add them to the pan, and then add the pod itself. Turn on the heat and bring to a boil, letting the syrup concentrate and reduce, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced by half. Remove from heat and let cool slightly before removing the vanilla pod and adding the teaspoon of rose water.

While the syrup is cooling, arrange the sliced fruit onto two plates however you like.

Drizzle the syrup generously over the fruit, and then finish with a sprinkling of rose petals.