Roasted Plums Dessert

These are busy days and with the beginning of the school year we understand and appreciate the value of "easy" cooking even more than we usually do. This simple dessert that I came up with the other day perfectly fits into this category. It is also a nice seasonal dessert made of plums, which are now their tastiest peak, and ice cream.

I roasted the plums in an oven until they got soft and juicy. Then I prepared an ice cream-cookie topping for them. It melted on warm plums into a wonderful vanilla cream. Simple and delicious.



Roasted Plums Dessert
(Makes 6 portions)

Ingredients:
2 lb round black plums,
2 tbsp brown sugar,
1 pint Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream,
1/2 cup digestive or graham cookies, crushed,
2 tbsp pistachios or slivered almonds to decorate.

Preparation:
1. Melt ice cream until soft. Add crushed cookies and mix gently. Freeze again.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Cut plums in halves, remove stones, and slice them into thick wages. Sprinkle with sugar and mix.



4. Put a sheet of wax paper on a cookie sheet. Spread the plums on top and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Let them cool until just warm.
5. Divide plums into serving bowls or plates, scoop ice cream on top, decorate with nuts and serve.

Frozen Meringues and Berries Dessert

It is hard to let go this recipe as it belongs among my top three desserts--easy, impossibly indulging, and elegant. Probably, it is a dessert that I make most often, particularly as a finale to summer dinner parties. Also, it is a recipe for which my guests most often ask. I love it myself not only because I like meringues and can it them just dry, but also because it is a beautifully looking dessert and, even more importantly, because it can be made a long time ahead and stored for a month or so.

Although it is so simple, it is not easy to guess what is made from, and no one has ever got it one hundred percent right.

The idea for a meringue dessert came to me accidentally one summer, when after a dinner party I was left with some Pavlova reminds. Everyone knows that is not so good on the second day when meringues become soft, and even less attractive in presentation. So I decided to freeze it. The result was not bad but it gave me an idea how to improve it.

I started to experiment with it until one day I decided "that is it". It was perfect. To describe it, I would say that it is a fusion of Pavlova and Vacherin, but frozen. And if you like either, you will be loving this one too. This dessert is sweet but also refreshing because of the fresh fruits and the fruit sauce. Meringues are not overwhelmingly sweet as I add yogurt to cream, and I add no sugar at all, to the cream, just honey which when frozen turns into a delicate caramel-like brittle.

Sometimes to make it even more fancy I add a spoon of liqueur, like Grand Marnier, to it. If I am too lazy to make home-made meringues I buy them at a store; those from Trader Joe's are my favorite. As I mentioned, this dessert can be stored frozen for several weeks, but it needs to be placed in a tightly closed container, as it may catch some freezer aromas. I am having friends over for a grill dinner this weekend and guess what dessert I am going to serve? Of course, frozen meringues, which have been waiting in my freezer since last week.

Frozen Meringues and Berries Dessert
(Serves six)

Ingredients:
2 cups vanilla meringues,
1 cup Greek yogurt,
1 cup heavy whipping cream,
1/2 cup running honey,
1 tbsp Grand Marnier,
1 cup raspberries,
1/2 cup fresh blackberries,
1 tbsp sugar.

Preparation:
1. Crush meringues into smaller pieces.

2. Whip the heavy whipping cream until stiff.
3. Put yogurt into a large bowl, add the whipped cream and liqueur, if used, and mix gently.
4. Fold gently the meringues into the yogurt-cream mixture.
5. Drizzle everything with honey and fold it gently in--honey should be mixed cream but still visible, so do not mix it too hard.

6. Transfer everything to a medium-sized plastic container, preferably a big round one or six small ones and freeze for a minimum of 4 hours.
7. To make raspberry coulis, mix half a cup of raspberries with a tbsp of sugar and purée them with a hand blender.

Take the dessert from a freezer 15 minutes before serving. Take it out of the container on a serving plate (if it does not come out easily, dunk the bottom of the container in a hot water for a few seconds), pour the coulis all over it, and decorate with blackberries and raspberries. Cut like a cake and serve.

Rose Water Kulfi--Kulfi Again

I have a very special relation with kulfi.

Years ago in Oxford I was invited by an Australian friend (who today is one of the best Australian lawyers) to an Indian restaurant. I do not remember much from that dinner, except the wonderful company and a dessert that I ate that evening. The list of desserts was not very long and I was recommended to try kulfi--an Indian ice cream. That was my first and the only kulfi I have ever had.

A very frozen conical dessert was put before us, but the waiter did not leave. He was standing at our table with amusement on his face waiting to see our attempts to eat our kulfis with the spoons. It was an impossible task. Kulfis were extremely hard and the cones were jumping from the plates on the table each time we tried to take a scoop. The waiter enjoyed watching our fight for a long moment before he offered to bring forks. The whole incident frustrated me so much that, when I finally managed to taste my kulfi, I was not able enjoy it.

When thermometers hit 100 F last week and the only dessert I could think of was ice cream, I decided to face the challenge again and make kulfi by myself. Another reason for trying them was a big bottle of rose water that I bought once for a dessert and a year later it was still in my kitchen cabinet, probably already evaporating. My recipe, which I found in some British magazine soon after I had kulfi at that Indian restaurant, calls for rose water.

When I was preparing them I finally understood why kulfi is so hard when frozen. This is because it is made just from milk rather than cream and eggs, and therefore it has much lower fat content than regular ice cream. The whole process involves two steps--boiling milk slowly until it is reduced by half and later freezing it.

I was very impatient to try the final product again so, as some recipes advise, instead of reducing milk for hours I used evaporated milk. Evaporated milk is richer in fat than regular milk so my kulfi was not as hard and melted faster than that made the traditional way. I also did not have kulfi forms and used disposable 3 oz cups for that purpose. It worked well.

Rose Water Kulfi
Makes twelve 3 oz portions

Ingredients:
1 12 oz cups evaporated milk,
1 cup whole milk,
6 cardamon pods,
3/4 cup granulated sugar,
1/4 cup ground almonds,
2 tbsp pistachios plus extra for decoration,
1 tsp rose water,
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Preparation:
1. Pour evaporated and whole milk in a saucepan. Add cardamon and bring to boil. Boil for a minute and set aside. Remove cardamon pods.
2. Stir in sugar and mix until dissolved, add almonds, and let it cool.
3. Cover pistachios with hot water and leave for about 2 minutes. Strain pistachios, remove all the loose skins and chop. Add to the milk.
4. Lightly whip the cream and fold into the milk and nuts mixture. Add rose water.
5. Transfer the mixture into a shallow freeze prof dish and put it in a freezer for about 4 hours. Take out beat with a fork to break ice and freeze again for an hour. Take out and transfer to individual small containers or 3 oz plastic cups.

6. Cover with plastic foil each container and freeze until firm, preferably overnight.

Serve decorated with shredded pistachios.

Peach and Ice Cream Dessert--Never Criticize Your Friends

In Switzerland I had an American friend. She was one of the most uninitiated people when it comes to cooking. Luckily, she had a Swiss boyfriend who was quite a good cook.

Although absolutely untalented in the kitchen my friend was always claiming that desserts were her domain. This was also supposed to absolve her from the aversion she felt for ordinary cooking. I had always been anxious to try her famous desserts, imagining what an extraordinary creation my palate would be honored to try.

Finally, the moment came. I got invited over to their place for dinner. The whole event was very memorable. I ate for the first time in my life spaghetti with pesto made of fresh basil. It was excellent and it has instantly become a permanent fixture in my cooking repertoire. It is now also one of my kids' favourite pasta dishes.

It was after midnight and several glasses of wine later, when my friend disappeared in the kitchen to crown that simple but a very nice dinner with a dessert of her production. She came back shortly afterwards carrying a box of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and a box of fresh raspberries. With all due ceremony she put two scoops of ice creams in each bowl, topped them with a few raspberries and served with pride and joy on her face. All her creativity went into deciding which ice cream flavor and what fruits to chose.

It is absolutely fine to serve something so simple and easy, especially if we prepare the whole dinner, but I hope you agree with me that ice cream with fruits is not really something that an aspiring master of desserts would be particularly proud of. Having said that, I will now offer something that includes ice cream and fruits, but is disctinctly more sophisticated in apperance and taste. It is perfect for a July barbecue, especially that peaches are right now at their peak.



Peach and Ice Cream Dessert with Red Pepper

Ingredients:
6 peaches, or one per person, ripe but not too soft,
2 tbsps butter,
2 tbsp sugar,
2 tbsps of rose water, which can be replaced with sweet wine, port, or any liqueur.
12 scoops of vanilla ice creams,
10 grains of red pepper, roughly ground,
fresh mint to decorate.

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Cut peaches in halves and remove stones.
3. Place them in a baking pan "face down".
4. Add butter, sugar, and rose water.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.
6. Take the peaches from the oven, let them cool down somewhat.
7. Arrange peaches on dessert plates "face up" with their own sauce.
8. Put a scoop of ice cream on top of each half peach.
9. Finish with a pinch of red pepper on top of ice cream, decorate with mint and serve immediately. Add biscuits if you wish so.

The same peaches can be made on a grill. I would then marinate them in all the ingredients and serve following the same recipe with ice cream, pepper, and mint. This dessert is delicious in taste and mouth wetting in its look.