Frozen Blackberries with Labne and Honey by Alison Roman

Frozen yogurt had its moment in the sun in the late 2000’s-early 2010’s. Everywhere I looked, a new yogurt place opened up, promising to have the best toppings and the best yogurt flavors. As a broke high school student, I confess that I would sometimes ask for a sample cup, fill it up with every flavor one by one, and then *decide* I just wasn’t interested in buying yogurt that day. (Yes, I’m ashamed.) When I did decide to shell out a few dollar bills, I would almost always get the plain flavor topped with mochi squares because they were the lightest topping by weight, and therefore the most affordable. I’m a true Dutch woman at heart. 

Just as soon as frozen yogurt started to lose popularity again, and the overly saturated yogurt shop market began to dwindle, I swiftly forgot about my love for frozen yogurt. I hadn’t given it one thought until it was time to make this recipe (my second to last dessert for the project!). By using labne or full-fat Greek yogurt (the only ingredient I could find), Alison creates a frozen yogurt much more akin to Golden Spoon than Yogurtland. My fellow Southern Californians know what I’m talking about. Golden Spoon had a creaminess and thickness much closer to ice cream. It was a true stepping stone between ice cream and frozen yogurt, and I believe it was one of the first shops to start the froyo trend. 

Alison takes it a step further in the creaminess direction by adding freshly whipped heavy cream to the yogurt, so it’s almost a yogurt-ice cream hybrid. The cream made this dessert much richer and thicker, which tasted amazing, but I would love to know what it’d be like without so much cream. Next time, I might cut the amount of cream in half and see how it goes. I also think it would have frozen much quicker with less cream. She says it takes 2 to 3 hours to set properly. I think it could have used a fourth hour, but I was honestly too impatient and dug in sooner. The edges had frozen well, but the center was still on the colder, rather than truly frozen side. Perhaps that’s what she’s aiming for, but the instructions are rather vague. 

To prepare the dessert, I started by simmering a pint of blackberries with honey until bubbling and starting to break down. This took about 12 minutes before I transferred the juicy fruit to a bowl to cool in the refrigerator. This sped up the cooling process significantly, so it only took 20 minutes for the mixture to cool. Meanwhile, I whipped the cream in my stand mixer and combined it with the yogurt and a big pinch of salt. Then, just barely, I stirred the blackberries into the creamy yogurt before pouring it in a loaf pan covered in saran wrap. Like I said, it could have used another hour to freeze, but I took it out at the 2.5 hour mark and served it up to my parents and Jordan. 

Everyone loved it and had seconds. We essentially finished off the entire loaf pan that evening with no regrets. I can’t wait to make this dessert in the summertime. It’ll be just the right thing to serve to guests on our apartment balcony. 

209 recipes cooked, 16 to go.

Salted Honey Panna Cotta with Raspberries

I feel like I’m writing a minor, yet continuous confessional. As I blog about these final 40 recipes, I feel led to confess why I waited to cook them until the end. For some, it was unintentional. Others don’t spike my appetite. And others, like this panna cotta, are just plain intimidating. Or so I thought. 

I was on my drive home from work and talking to my friend Margaret on the phone about all I planned for dinner. Slow-roasted chicken, garlic bread, arugula salad, and panna cotta for dessert. Off-handedly Margaret commented, “well at least panna cotta’s really easy.” “Right, yeah, definitely,” I replied. I still spent the rest of the drive home trying to mentally gear up for the tasks ahead. 

Thankfully, Margaret was right. Panna cotta is on the easy side, it just requires patience. Step one, hydrate the gelatin packet in water. Alison tells us to sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let it soak. No mention of stirring. Given the gloopy look of things, I had the impulse to stir, but held back. Next, I combined buttermilk, honey, and heavy cream in a small pot and dumped in the clumpy gelatin mixture. Over low heat, I tried to dissolve the gelatin completely without letting the mixture rise to a simmer. This requires very frequent stirring and time. Alison doesn’t specify how long this takes, so if it helps, it took me about 20 minutes. Maybe it could have gone a tiny bit faster, but I was very conscious about not letting things simmer to avoid curdling. I didn’t feel like starting all over again. 

In the meantime, I combined the rest of the ingredients - a dash of salt, more buttermilk, more heavy cream, and sour cream. Alison instructs us to lightly whisk them together so there are no clumps, but also no air bubbles. That’s a tall order, in my opinion. Especially as the sour cream wanted nothing more than to sink to the bottom and remain its clumpy self. I found myself with a fork, digging for bits of sour cream and trying to separate them against the side of the bowl. I think I got most of the clumps out? 

Once the gelatin totally dissolved, I poured that mixture slowly into the bowl of many dairies and stirred to combine. I portioned them out in seven glasses and stuck them in the fridge. Alison says they need at least 1 hour in the cold. But I can say from experience that the longer they sat in the fridge, the firmer, and more panna-cotta like, they became. If you’re looking for an authentically firm panna cotta, without a more liquidy bottom, let them spend at least 4 hours in the fridge. I covered the ones we didn’t eat that night with saran wrap and enjoyed one even more the next day. 

Finally, the raspberries. A truly great add. I would not skip them. Crushed raspberries mixed with a bit of honey and apple cider vinegar. That tiny bit of acid and sweetness were just what the gelatin needed to really pop. I love that the panna cotta has a subtle sweetness - recipes calls for only a half cup of honey. So the raspberries really bring the sweetness home. 
189 recipes cooked, 36 to go.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Butter and Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts

“A Working Woman Makes Sides”

This is the story of a working woman who also has a slowly budding social life in a new city. Said woman has been invited with her husband to dinner at a friend's house. She was asked to bring one side dish, so naturally she opted to bring two of them. She chose Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Butter and Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts by Alison Roman. 

Of course, this presents complications. With the dinner on a Friday in the city and her work out in the suburbs, she knew she’d have but 20 minutes to assemble the sides when she got home before travelling to dinner. The commute would take its toll once again. So she had to get creative. 

She chose to roast her beets in vinegar the night before. She let the little guys ooze their juices and soften while spending an hour in the oven. This, she thought, would put her in a good position for the next evening. 

The next evening arrived in the blink of an eye. Earlier that day, she asked her husband to put the sweet potatoes in the oven so they would be piping hot when she got home. He did this, kind man, but just as the working woman suspected, the oven turned into a big hot mess. This is no fault of the husband. He followed instructions to a tee. The issue stems from the woman not trusting her instincts. You see, the woman read a recipe that told her to put the sweet potatoes, poked by a fork all over, directly on the oven rack to roast. But in her heart she knew that the sugars from the potatoes would ooze out and burn, sticking to the oven with gusto. And she was right, and the oven became one hot mess, and it created many smoky problems for her the next day… but that’s another story for another time. 

The clock was now ticking to get things ready and whisked off to her friend's house. In a matter of minutes, she frantically completed the following tasks (though she’d like you to think she did this calmly and coolly with an heir of sophistication): 

• Toast walnuts on a baking sheet for ten minutes 

• Peel and slice the beets

• Measure buttermilk, yogurt and lemon juice in a bowl, stir and add salt and pepper

• Thinly slice a red onion and lightly pickle the slices in lemon juice and sumac 

• Melt butter and spices, adding vinegar and honey too

• Scrape out the meats of very hot sweet potatoes into a bowl, practically burning her fingertips in the process

• Place the beets in the bowl with buttermilk and sprinkle the onions over them

• Chop the toasted walnuts and sprinkle them over the beets too 

• Drizzle the butter mixture over the sweet potatoes and give them a good stir

• Add cumin seeds to the top of the bowl of beets and cover with saran wrap

• Cover the bowl of potatoes with foil and pack a half a lemon in a bag, along with flaky salt

• Decide she’ll worry about cleaning the oven later 

• Tell husband it’s time to go 

All these things she did in mere minutes. She feels some loss at the fact that these tasks bring her real joy and life, but she couldn’t find that joy because of the need to rush. She needed to rush because she works far away. And she wonders how to balance that work and that joy. Can the two meet, coexist? All this, she knew, would be figured out over time. For now, she chose to focus on the six friends in front of her and enjoy those slightly spicy, salty, sweet potatoes. She savored the night she had left. 

168 and 169 recipes cooked, 56 to go.

Double-Crusted Peach Pie with Honey, Ginger, and Lime by Alison Roman

It’s been a minute! I just took a full two weeks off of this project to relax, reconnect with my husband, and spend time in nature. We spent a few days up in Northern Minnesota in the Boundary Waters, which is a collection of over 1,000 lakes and many islands between the Minnesota and Canadian borders. To get to our campsite, it took eight miles of canoeing and six different portage sites where we had to move all our gear, including the canoes, from one side of an island to another. It was hard work, but very rewarding. 

We spent our second week of vacation mostly in Door County, WI. We biked, hiked, sailed, and ate some surprisingly fantastic meals. I even discovered what Jordan calls “my spirit restaurant.” A magical, thoughtful, incredibly delicious place called Trixie’s. It was so good that we ate there on two different nights. I plan to write about it at some point because it really was that special. 

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Alright, now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Because what you’re really here for is pie. A peach pie. A double-crusted peach pie. A double-crusted peach pie with honey, ginger, and lime. A pie for the summer, for standing apart from other regular fruit pies, for making a statement. 

As per usual, I made both pie crust discs from King Arthur’s Gluten-Free Pie Crust recipe. It’s become a reliable staple for me as I venture further on this gluten-less journey, and I recommend it to all others who find themselves on the same gluten-less road. Once I prepared the dough and let it chill for about two hours, I followed Alison’s suggestion to roll both discs out to roughly 14-inch rounds and then stuck both of them back in the fridge to cool. It was a really hot day, so the butter seemed glad to spend maximum time in the cold. 

Meanwhile, I prepared the filling, which consists of 4 lbs. of ripe peaches, sugar, honey, lime zest and juice, cornstarch, and a good bit of freshly grated ginger. Unlike some of Alison’s other fruit desserts, I actually followed the suggested amount of peaches. In the past, I’ve found that for whatever reason, her quantities of fruit far surpass the capacity of my baking dishes. So I’ve ended up with anywhere from 1-2 lbs. of extra sliced fruit. Not the worst problem to have, but not ideal either. But this time around, I had a feeling that the pie could handle a piled-high mound of slices. And so it could. 

The rest of the process was rather straightforward as far as pie construction goes. One crust on the bottom, filling added, another crust on top with three slices into the dough to allow steam to escape. The whole thing is covered in egg wash and a third cup of Demerara sugar. The tough part is the time! The pie spends roughly an hour and forty-five minutes in the oven, and then it needs three hours to cool! Talk about an opportunity for character development. The pie most certainly tested my patience. 

But boy, the reward was worth it. As I said in the beginning, this is no ordinary fruit pie. The lime zest and ginger, though simple, add complexity and elevate the peaches to a tangy, snappy sweetness. The ginger mellowed out a bit by day two of leftover pie, but it was still the strongest flavor. If you don’t love ginger, don’t cut it out completely, just cut it in half, or reduce it by a third. In my opinion, ginger is the key to a non-boring peach pie. And you don’t want to be boring, right? 

125 recipes cooked, 100 to go!!!!!

Caramelized Honey with Figs and Ice Cream by Alison Roman

Caramelized figs kind of happened to me. I wasn’t planning on this dish this week, but a box of fresh figs showed up in the front-of-store display at Trader Joe’s and I knew there was no looking back. 

Here is my personal opinion about fresh figs: I want them to have more flavor than they do. They’re just sort of mildly sweet and nothing else. I want them to be tangy, part sweet and part sour. Instead, they’re just sort of... there. Which, now that I think about it, makes sense. I’ve always felt this way about fig newtons too. 

Anywho, this recipe is super simple and takes few ingredients. It does help to have a functioning dominant hand, though, which I sadly could not supply. (I recently injured my wrist at a golfing range and I don’t want to talk about it.) Good thing we made this at our friends’ home because Madeline is a phenomenal fig-slicer, as pictured. 

First step is to caramelize the honey, aka heat it over medium heat for several minutes until bubbling and a dark amber color. Then add butter, vinegar, and a pinch of salt, like you would to a normal caramel. The figs get added, cut-side down for a moment or two before removing from heat and tossing them to coat in the caramel. Scoop onto some vanilla ice cream, and you’re good to go! I chose the soy vanilla ice cream from TJ’s, and hardly noticed a difference from regular ice cream.

For the small amount of effort it took, it was quite good. However, I wanted the figs and honey to have more complex flavors. More white wine vinegar (or lemon juice) would have helped. Maybe more salt. Maybe figs will never fully do it for me, and that’s okay. If you’re a fig newton lover, then this recipe is absolutely for you. 

101 recipes cooked, 124 to go.