Rick Bayless Comes to Bloom Grade

Uncle Steve came through with a delicious hearty bread: Lentil Curry. The subtitles of the curry added excellent flavor accompanied well with creamy goat cheese.

We have a dutch oven, we are tired of stews, lentils, and mush. We have a big crowd to feed and I, personally, have a recent obsession with shellfish. The solution for the Bloom Grade cook-out entree: PAELLA.

Not just any Paella, but the quirky, confidently gringo Mexican Paella of our one and dear Rick Bayless! O how this man continues to bring good times to my family. Saturday night (July 17), my father took charge of the Dutch Oven to produce a wonder of a rice dish. After removing the cooked the chicken breasts with garlic and onion, he added bell peppers, celery and canned roasted tomatoes to steam the rice with saffron threads. Then added the pre-cooked chorizo, nestled around scallops, mussels and clams. After steaming all together for two hours, he served with fresh parsley. A beautifully vibrant yellow, this Paella was a decent first attempt to a Spanish classic (room for improvement, somewhat porridge paella after being steamed for too long). Undoubtedly, this dish will return for more Bloom Grade festivities.

With my encouragement and in honor of my PNW summer cook-outs, we started with grilled oysters on the camp fire. My Dad had this ridiculously hot Belize Heat hot sauce, that added a strong kick to the oysters. Chilled white wine was all the motivation my mom needed to try the oysters. She was impressed, to say the least, and my Dad is definitely converted to the oyster-grilling contingency. I expect there will be more oysters to come.

Olallieberry Harvest

The first olallieberry harvest at Bloom Grade was remarkable. The second harvest was just as prolific. At least 7 pint ziploc baggies full on Wednesday, July 14th and a full four more baggies and three boxes ready by Sunday, July 18th. The warm Californian is doing wonders, ripening these sweet berries beautifully. But, we learned quickly, that harvesting in the early morning is a must. If harvested during the heat of the day, the berries steam the inside of the ziploc baggies and are more sensitive to turning to mush in transit to the fridge. Also, for next year, we are saving up berry containers from the grocery store for perfect containers. Now Dad just needs his own Bloom Grade label.

Most of the tayberries are still red on the vine. This strain of black berry is better more firm and tart. Good for mass harvesting, the tayberry is not as likely to begin its own jam-ing process as soon as harvested (like the olallieberry).

With this bounty of berries, I set off to search for recipes to use them all up! Of course we made jam. The Ollalieberry is soo sweet-little sugar was needed. Liquid Pectin is a must, as the ollalieberry is soo juicy, it needs this component for the firming process. I used instructions here for help in the jaming endeavor. The key is keeping jars sterilized and the liquid funnel to make for a quick and efficient jarring process. I have yet to taste our jam, as I have been feasting on the fresh berries while they last.

The next form the olallieberries took was a beautiful Blackberry Ricotta Cornbread adapted from Eat. Make. Read. Using the dutch oven, this I had trouble keeping the berries intact. Instead, my final product was sort of a purple-ish tie-dye cornbread. The fresh corn added wonderful texture. I used polenta instead of cornmeal. In the future, I would stick with cornmeal as the polenta was a little too grainy, but all in all the end result was beautiful.

Eat.Make.Read had a wonderful suggestion for cooking the corn in its husk. Remove silk, keeping husk on and microwave for 1 min 30 seconds, turning half way through. Then simply cut off cooked kernels into batter. So much easier and faster than boiling in water. I'll have to remember this tip.

My brother Will had the fabulous idea to serve it with vanilla ice cream. Delicious. I do love cooking these sort of breads in the dutch oven. The result is a very evenly-cooked, crispy on the edges cornbread. Melting the butter in the heated dutch oven prior to adding the batter prevents any sticking to the pan and creates a beautiful, brown-butter exterior. The ricotta in this corn bread ensured a healthy moisture to the bread while avoiding added oil, butter, or buttermilk.

blackberry ricotta cornbread
makes 8 slices

1 cup all-purpose flour, plus 2 Tablespoons
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
4 Tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cob cooked corn, kernels removed (about 3/4 cup)
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup fresh blackberries
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

1
In a large bowl, sift together 1 cup flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.
2
In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, oil, egg, sugar and baking soda. Gently fold wet ingredients into dry ones until just combined.
3
Carefully coat the blackberries with the remaining 2 tablespoons flour and fold them into the batter along with the corn and cheese.
4
Melt butter in a 9-inch cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, making sure to coat bottom and sides completely. Cook butter 2 to 3 minutes, until it starts to color and smell nutty. Scrape batter into skillet.
5
Bake until bread is golden and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve.

In the California heat, my yearning to use our neglected ice cream maker became more pressing. I was thinking yogurt-olallieberry popsicles, or chocolate-mint ice cream, but settled for a classic Blackberry Sorbet (substituting the olallieberries, obviously ;) While straining out the seeds was pretty labor-intensive, the remaining process and simplicity of ingredients made up for it.

I adopted a recipe from The Hungry Moose, simply adding Simple Syrup to the Olallieberry concentrate with some lemon zest. I added fresh mint from the garden for a little more complex flavor. Dark chocolate shavings would be delicious as well.

Blackberry Sorbet (from the Hungry Moose)

1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup water
24 oz. fresh blackberries
2 Tbls. fresh lemon juice

Makes about 1 quart of sorbet

Before freezing the sorbet mixture in the ice cream maker, the concentrate was a delicious syrup on vanilla ice cream:) Surprise, surprise. All of my olallieberry creations seems to pair nicely with vanilla ice cream.

My final Ollalieberry creation was a simple breakfast crumble made with peaches, lemon zest, cinnamon, nutmeg with a flour, brown sugar, butter and oat crumble on top. I served it cold after sitting overnight. This gave the juices from the fruit time to set, making the inner filling more like a solidified jam rather than a messy melting liquid. Everyone loved it for morning hangover breakfast.