Blueberry

Posts Tagged ‘Blueberry’

Blueberry Crunch Donuts-A Borrowed Treasure

Posted January 27th, 2012 in In the Kitchen, Posts

I have to admit I have been suffering from some writers block lately. I have had trouble getting inspired and then I opened my email to find Foodbuzz. Foodbuzz features 9 great photos every day and on this day last week there were BLUEBERRY DONUTS! I have never made a donut and never heard of a blueberry donut so I got intrigued. This recipe actually featured CANNED BLUEBERRIES!! So now I got really excited. I found the site where the post was featured and I really enjoyed it. Claudia from What’s Cooking Italian Style Cuisine is my kind of baker. She readily admitted to making a mistake and then coming up with a fix and the fix was delicious. This is my personal mantra with baking and cooking, THERE ARE NO MISTAKES. Actually that is my personal mantra in life as well but that topic will be another day.

Claudia gave me permission to link to her post and use her recipe for Blueberry Upside Down Donuts. My first step was to buy a donut pan which I have never owned and now I do which is always exciting. It only makes 6 donuts so I cut the recipe in half. I tried to correct Claudia’s mistake by actually putting the crumb topping the bottom so it would end up on top. It worked fine but I think Claudia got a crispier result doing it the “wrong way”. Then I didn’t have any milk or white chocolate so the Cinnamon White Chocolate Ganache glaze became a Cinnamon Almond Milk Glaze. I invite you to try my version or Claudia’s but you should really try them as they are delicious, pretty easy, pretty fast and they look like real donuts you get at a shop. I intended to give these to my neighbor to get them out of the house but, alas, there is only one left…..

A Master Sauce- a Versatile Idea

Posted November 11th, 2011 in Posts, Tips and Tricks

Professional chefs know all the short cuts. They spend the day prepping for dinner service so that everything is ready to go. I was perusing the Culinary Institute of America website where they have a special feature on blueberries and I came across something I thought was worth sharing. Master Sauces are a base from which lots of interesting things can be made. They suggested making blueberry compote as one such “master sauce” and then using your imagination to find creative ways to use it. We all know that blueberries are good for us; we all know they are delicious. Why not try making some of this up and then experimenting. Some idea starters from the site are below.

Making blueberry compote with Oregon Canned Fruit is amazingly easy:

Drain the juice of two cans into a saucepan and whisk in 2 Tablespoons cornstarch. Whisk over medium heat until the mixture is just thickened and clear. Remove from heat and stir in the reserved blueberries. Let cool.

Easy ways to use Blueberry Compote (borrowed from the CIA)

At breakfast, Blueberry Compote is perfect as a topping for waffles, pancakes, french toast or oatmeal
Create a blueberry breakfast smoothie-in-a-bowl: stir Blueberry Compote into yogurt; pour it in a bowl and sprinkle with granola or other grains, nuts and dried fruit to eat with a spoon
Layer Blueberry Compote, vanilla or fruit-flavored yogurt with crisp rice cereal or granola
Ever-useful Blueberry Compote adds flavor, color and value to desserts: as an ice cream topper; spooned over cheesecake, angel cake, lemon pie, flan or whipped cream-filled shortcake
Before baking a coffee cake, spread a layer of Blueberry Compote over the batter then top with streusel
Fill tartlet shells with Blueberry Compote and top with whipped cream
Make it savory! Play with Blueberry Compote and add mustard, vinegar, herbs, pepper, sour cream—whatever, Use the savory sauce with pork or chicken.

This will work great with any of our fruit. Please feel free to share your ideas.

Healthy Fruit from a CAN?

Posted October 28th, 2011 in Healthy Eating, Healthy Tips, Posts

Last time we talked about the new “My Plate” guidelines designed to help consumers make better food selection choices and how the Supermarket industry is trying to help as well with food ranking systems right on the shelf. I visited my local Raley’s store in Sacramento to check out the NuVal rankings of Oregon Fruit and found that our Red Tart Cherries packed in Water scored a 97! That was one of the highest scores in the section.

A recent article from Oregon State University Health Magazine talked about how the antioxidant levels and flavonoid activity (nutrients which offer protection from oxidative damage, a key association to many age related diseases) was actually HIGHER in canned blueberries than that of frozen or fresh. That study actually used Oregon Fruit when they did the research several years ago.

The key message continues to be –add more plant based foods in any form to your diet. Canned fruit is convenient as it can be kept on hand at all times. It is already clean and ready to eat, pits are removed as well. In the long run it saves you money because you never have to throw away spoiled fruit. Don’t get me wrong, I am a weekly farmer’s market girl. I like to support local farmers and eat food that is as fresh as possible. But I supplement with canned fruits and veggies for convenience and I feel good about it knowing that canning is a great form of food preservation, locking in most of the nutrients and adding a minimum of ingredients.

Like today-I have to bring an appetizer to my neighborhood party tomorrow, The Castro Crush. It’s a block party with a wine theme. I can’t think of a better wine partner than good, fresh baked bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a sprinkling of black pepper. So I looked in my pantry and found all the ingredients for a Cherry Focaccia. It’s fragrant with fresh sage from my garden, beautiful with the tart cherries and a little bit spicy with cracked pepper and a sprinkling of pink Himalayan salt, coarsely ground. I whipped this up in no time with things I had on hand.

The bonus is how amazing my house smells right now. The trick will be if this treat actually makes it to the party.

Happy Halloween!

Blueberry Sushi (makes 2 rolls)

Posted September 23rd, 2011 in Desserts, Recipe

1 can Oregon Fruit Blueberries, well drained reserve syrup

1 cup sushi rice

8 oz light cream cheese

Zest of one lemon

1 Tbs finely chopped mint

1 Tbs toasted sesame seeds

Add water to the reserved blueberry syrup to make 1 ¼ cup liquid. In a medium saucepan, combine blueberry syrup and sushi rice. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes until all liquid is absorbed. Let cool. Meanwhile, whip cream cheese and then add ½ cup blueberries and whip into the cream cheese. Gently fold in the remaining blueberries. Line a sushi mat with plastic wrap. Spread the sesame seeds and lemon zest evenly over the plastic covered mat. Spread 1 cup of the cooled rice over the mat patting gently to smooth. Spread ½ the blueberry cream cheese over the rice. Sprinkle with the chopped mint. Roll up carefully inside the plastic wrap using the mat to form a uniform role. Wrap the roll including the ends in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Repeat with the rest of the rice and filling.

Remove from plastic wrap and cut into pieces.

*for variety slice a tart apple very thinly and lay on the blueberry cream cheese before rolling. You can cook the rice in water with 2 TBS sugar instead of blueberry syrup and roll in black sesame seeds for another look and taste.

Best of the Southwest and Best of the Northwest in ONE WEEK!

Posted July 30th, 2011 in In the Kitchen, Posts, Serving with Style

Last week I took a much needed vacation with my family. My mother has a few items left on her bucket list and she is trying to check them off rapid fire as she turns 85 this year. She has been trying to get to the Opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico for years and she invited Kaitlin and me to join her and my dad on their vacation. Kaitlin studied music at a conservatory and actually sang opera so the idea really appealed to her. To be honest, I was motivated mostly by green chili but the opera sounded good too. We saw La Boheme with a New Mexican sunset backdrop and it was truly magical!

Since Kaitlin and I watch a lot of food TV like the Iron Chef we like to experience restaurants headed up by famous celebrity chefs. We scoped out the restaurant selections and found “The Compound” owned by Mark Kiffin, a James Beard Winner, Best Chef of the Southwest in 2005. This restaurant was a lovely white adobe and the menu was very high end. We tried things we had never had like Beef Tartar with soft egg on top and then had some perfectly grilled diver scallops with fava bean, pea and asparagus emulsion with lemon vinegar. For dessert we had an unbelievable dessert that we thought we could adapt for using Oregon Fruit. It was a blueberry polenta cake with amaretto cream topped with carmelized plum sauce. WOW! is all I can say. I only wish I had the vocabulary to describe this dessert but what I did do for you is recreate it here. I think I came pretty close.

At the end of the week, we attended the Oregon Berry Festival with two of our blogger friends- Kimberly Morales from “Poor Girl Eats Well” and Leela Cyd-Ross from “The Kitchn” and shared a table with our new friends, Tim and Dani Vincent of Vincent Family Cranberries who are cranberry growers from the Oregon Coast. In the next week or two I will be sharing with you some more experiences from this event but for now let me say that we finished the week with a meal designed by Chef Philippe Boulot, James Beard Winner, Best Chef of the Northwest 2001 at the Heathman Restaurant and Bar in Portland, OR. Every course was designed around northwest grown berries and included an array of proteins from local goat cheese, to Chinook salmon, to lamb and finally Bison. The Dessert was truly the grand finale as it was a Berry Trifle with Blueberry, Blackberry, Strawberry, Marionberry and Raspberry compote layered with biscuits and crème chibouste. (None of us knew this word before either-thank goodness for the I-phone. It is a pastry crème lightened with whipped cream. I can’t wait to use this in conversation with someone).