What happened to the Blueberries

And now, here's what happened to those 5lbs of blueberries.
Let's get out of the way the classic stuff:



a handful of blueberries, a banana and 3/4 cup of milk became a much appreciated and colorful fresh smoothie.

A couple of breakfasts were cheered up by blueberry pancakes, "with the happy face!" as a long time favourite of my kids, "Curious George makes pancakes" teaches to do:



Besides, I had still some buttermilk that I had bought in Germany (can't find it here), so those pancakes were really a hit!



We didn't go without some blueberry muffins and minimuffins (with the recipe from Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" ):



Which were also well liked.





In the "Oh Berry Day" post, I mentioned the blueberry cjarsons, a kind of savoury wraps/ravioli with a blueberry filling. That day at the fair there was a kiosk serving them, but by the time we wanted to have lunch, they were momentarily unavailable, and we didn't want to wait too much, with two hungry kids under a hot hot hot sun. So we went for something less typical, and I came home with no idea of how blueberry cjarsons were made.

Did it stop me? Nope.

Knowing a little of the local cuisine, I knew that they couldn't be ALL that exotic, so I decided to improvise and make my own filling with ingredients that made sense:

3oz/100gr blueberries
12oz/350gr mashed potatoes
7oz/200gr ricotta
1 or 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
nutmeg



I first whisked blueberries alone, than mix them with the potatoes and breadcrumbs, then whisked the ricotta in the unwashed blender, so that I could take the most of blueberries, that's why you see different tones of purple.

As for the wrap, I decided for a touch of fusion, and went back to a tecnique learned through a Daring Cooks Challenge, making potstickers...



... which were served with butter and poppyseeds.



Despite of all the salt that I had put in the filling, these potstickers were really too sweet to be a savoury dish.
Beside that, I still had a lot of leftover filling, having used barely 1/6 of it, so I had to think of a way to use it.
I decided to convert it in gnocchetti (small gnocchi).

I took what was left of the filling, added two eggs, 3 tbsp of flour, put all in a pastry bag, and as they were showing in that video I had linked, cut the gnocchetti into a pot of boiling (and SALTED, that made the difference!) water, waited for them to come to the surface, and served with butter and some parmigiano.



This time the savoury-sweet balance was alright, though the color may not be.
Nobody's perfect!


And after all this, came the round of jams.

Again, I didn't want to stop at "only blueberries", so I picked these combinings:



pineapple, redcurrant and yellow kiwi.
Plus one, not portrayed, with pure frozen maracuja pulp.

Again, as with the raspberries, I made a big batch of blueberry jam and at the same time small batches of fruit jam, always keeping a sugar/fruit ratio of 0.6/0.7.




Just two handfuls of berries were saved for freezing.
Frozen blueberries is another thing you don't find easily here, so I hoped to save a little more for the hard winter, but I guess we will have to do with our jams.


And now you know what happened to the berries.

Daring Cooks Challenge May 2009 - Gnocchi di Ricotta

This is the first ever Daring Cooks Challenge, and it feels good to have joined the Daring Kitchen community just in time to participate!

The recipe of Gnocchi di Ricotta was brought by Ivonne of Creampuffs in Venice and Lisa of La Mia Cucina, the two founders of the Daring Bakers Challenge.

They picked it in The Zuni Cafè Cookbook .

The recipe itself is very simple: take 1lb/450gr of ricotta, mix it with 2 large cold eggs, 1tbsp/15gr of butter and 1/2oz/about 15gr of grated Parmigiano. Spices, herbs and/or lemon zest are optional.

Form the gnocchi on a bed of flour (they're very delicate and need to be handled very lightly), boil them for a few minutes and then you can use them straight away or sautè them in a sauce of your choice.

We were incouraged to make our own ricotta, but spoiled as I am, I have a lot of cheese factories nearby, so ricotta is great tasting, available and cheap. By the way, ricotta isn't technically a cheese, because it doesn't come from milk directly, but from whey, the residue of production of some other, non acidic, cheese.

Ready as it is, it still has to be dried, or you will fail miserably and find yourself with the mess of the Big Frittata Of Ricotta (been there, done that). So it's better to leave the ricotta on a cheesecloth or on a strainer in the fridge, overnight.





After mixing, I preferred to form the gnocchi not by hand, but using a decorating bag to lay down those "worms" and then cut them with a serrated knife. It helps if you leave the ready and filled bag in the fridge for awhile.


After boiling them I left them apart while preparing the Parmigiano&Saffran coupelles in which I meant to serve them.





I had always read about how easy it is to make them, how you're just supposed to sprinkle two tablespoons of grated cheese in a pan and Voilà!, the coupelle is ready to be formed!


Mine were not made by themselves: if I used a spatula or some palette knife to take them up, they would just curl up like a vampire under the sun. If I took them with my fingers (I take the *Daring* part very literally!) I would feel a lot of pain (who guessed?).


Until it just dawned on me that parchment paper is such a good thing that if you just put a piece of it on the pan, and the cheese on that, you are done in a matter of seconds.


Gnocchi were sautèd in some butter with asparagus and ham, placed in the Parmigiano coupelles and that was the end of it.





As I did this early in the month, I kept thinking of some other version, and I came up with two variations using spinach and saffran, that would have to be matched with saffran and spinach butter, respectively.

I had the idea of styling it as a positive/negative photography, I've had the image on my mind for weeks.
Thing is, butter turns out to get a very different texture if you mix it with saffran rather than with spinach, so my idea didn't see the light.

Not too bad for a blooper, though.