Homemade Cheer: Nocino & Apricot Wine

Another busy month: my 40th birthday in New York with 10 terrific friends, the after school program started up for the year, my friend Natalie’s baby shower, trying out some yoga classes (I can almost touch my knees), working like mad, and writing tons. But yesterday—a beautiful warm Saturday with just a touch of autumn in the air—I finally managed to get into the kitchen and do something about the muck of Everclear and green walnuts I’ve had on my counter for the past two months.

It doesn't take long for the walnuts to start turning black

Following is my adaptation/merger of the Mount Lassen nocino recipe and the recipe for Vin de Noix II in the Style of Mme Marcelle Fine of Sisteron in Haute-Provence from Aperitif, by Georgeanne Brennan.

Nocino:

Ingredients:
- 1 750 ml 151 proof Everclear + 1 cup
- 30 green walnuts Mount Lassen Farms
- 4 cinnamon sticks
- 1 tsp vanilla (use a vanilla bean if you have one)
- 2 nutmegs, crushed
- 1 bottle Bordeaux
- 2 ½ cup sugar

Directions:

Day 1:

- Pour the Everclear into a jar.

- Quarter the walnuts and add to the Everclear. Be careful! The walnuts stain everything they touch. I wrapped my cutting board in saran wrap and wore plastic gloves.

- Put the lid on and leave the mixture for 1 months

- During this time, the clear liquid containing gem-like green walnuts will turn to motor oil black.

Day 30:

- After 1 month, add the cinnamon sticks, vanilla and nutmeg.

- Put the lid back on and leave for another month.

Day 60:

- After the second month has passed, strain the walnuts and spices out of the liquid.

- Add 1 more cup Everclear to the walnut-infused Everclear.

- Boil the wine and sugar, until the sugar has completely dissolved.

- Wait until the wine/sugar mixture has cooled, and then add to the walnut-infused Everclear.

- Bottle.

- Serve during the holidays.

The liquid will look like motor oil for most of time.

Apricot Wine:

While in the kitchen, I also bottled my Apricot Wine. I made it exactly the same way I made my Strawberry Wine, although straining this time was more difficult. The sediment in the apricot liquid wasn’t as heavy as that in the strawberry liquid, so it shifted around when I was trying to strain it. Also, some of it made it through the coffee filters. Still, it’s pretty yummy. I recommend this recipe with any favorite fruit.

So beautiful during the first days ...

Then oxidization sets in

The joys of straining ...

After the first strain, I let the sediment settle to the bottom,
then strain it out through a coffee filter.

Straining is definitely the most complicated part.

Blasts from the Past: PB Cookies & Rum Ice Cream Pie

I’m a bad blogger.

I thought that committing myself to twice a month (I know, I know, good bloggers blog every chance they get) wouldn’t be too ambitious. Turns out: I was wrong. But I have a good excuse. I write for a living. This past month, along with setting up 8 new volumes for the To Asia With Love guidebook series, I (finally!) finished my novel, wrote a feature article on Little Saigon, and worked diligently on Communion. At the end of the days, I was out of words. I was also distracted, because I was immersed in a project for my mom’s 60th birthday—what started out as making a simple memory book became hours spent poring over old photographs, reading old letters, and sorting through memorabilia. It also resulted in countless nostalgic reveries, so many having to do with food. Not the pancakes and pies that my family is famous for, but those quintessentially ‘70s dishes that my mom taught my sis and me to make in our kitchens in Wenatchee, Spokane, Moses Lake, and Vancouver.

Just 20 years old when she had me, my mom was still young when she and I started cooking together. She was an avid horsewoman raised by a sailor, my gramps who adored the efficient concept of TV dinners. We made Chef Boyardee pizza out of box kits on Friday nights, and ate metallic Kraft macaroni and cheese as a treat. Needless to say, gourmet cooking came to my family later in life. But when it did, it had a strong foundation, not necessarily in actual ingredients and dishes, but in the love of being in the kitchen. In those early days, we may have cooked casseroles topped with corn flakes sautéed in butter, but we cooked, with the emphasis on we. We—my mom and me, and often my mom, dad, sister, and me—had a lot of fun in the kitchen, and the following two recipes remind me of those times.

Peanut Butter Cookies
This was the first thing my mom let me make on my own, when I was in the third grade. But when it came time to form the cookies, my batter was unusually runny. After examining the recipe, she said, “Sweetheart, it’s one tablespoon of water, not one cup.” And then, smiling, without missing a beat, she added, “Oh well, we’ll make it a cake instead.” In that single instant taught me that mistakes are not fatal, and that flexibility is the hallmark of any good cook. As for these cookies, they are awesome.

Ingredients:

- 1 package yellow cake mix (extra moist)
- 1 cup peanut butter (Skippy is best—honestly, don’t use a good, fresh variety)
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 1 Tbsp water
- 2 eggs

Directions:

Combine ingredients. Drop round tablespoon sized balls of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. Press cookies flat, making a criss-cross pattern with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

Mom’s Infamous Ginger-Rum Ice Cream Pie
I made this for aforementioned 60th birthday, and when my mom tasted it, she asked if I used a quarter cup of light rum. I told her that the recipe my sister gave me didn’t call for real rum, but artificial rum flavoring. She laughed and said that must have been the recipe she gave Julie before Julie was 21. Apparently, when we were kids, Julie took a serious liking to this pie, and so my mom modified the recipe to keep from turning her daughter into an alcoholic. While the version with artificial flavoring is good, she insists the one with real rum is best. Either way, this is a great dessert, especially during these relentlessly hot summer months.

Ingredients:

- 1 ½ cup crushed chocolate wafers (about 25); I couldn’t find these, so used chocolate graham cracker sticks
- ¼ cup butter, melted
- 1 tsp. rum flavoring OR ¼ cup light rum
- 1/3 tsp. ginger, ground
- 2 tsp. instant coffee
- 1 quart vanilla ice cream, slightly softened

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix crumbs and butter. Reserve 2 Tbl. crumb mixture for topping. Press remaining mixture firmly on bottom and sides of 9” pie plate. Bake 8-10 minutes, until set. Cool.

Stir rum, ginger and instant coffee into softened ice cream. Pour into pie shell. Sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture. Freeze uncovered until firm, about 4 hours. Wrap and keep frozen until 15 minutes before serving.

If You Can’t Stand the Heat Wave …

Julie’s 29th (again!) Birthday Party: The Menu
- Anni’s Crostini with Gorgonzola, Caramelized Onions & Fig Jam
- Chocolate & Zucchini’s Zucchini Carpaccio
- Passionate Nonchalance’s Artichoke & Manchego Crostini
- Peach Bruschetta with Blue Cheese, from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook
- Figs Wrapped in Blue Cheese & Turkey Bacon
- My Famous Prosciutto Involtini
- Plum Tart, adapted from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook, and served with Crème Fraiche
- The “Can’t Have a Fay Sisters’ Birthday Without It” Brown Sugar Frosting Spice Cake

Waiting for praise ...
Friday:

One of those divine days. My new job doesn’t start for another week, the little bit of work I have can be pushed aside until Monday, and for some reason the Third & Fairfax Farmer’s Market isn’t a zoo, even though it’s the middle of July and the height of tourist season. The bins are full: zucchini, plums, figs, and peaches … all to be incorporated into appetizers for my sister’s birthday party tomorrow night. I pick up apricots for myself, to start a batch of liqueur tonight.

I make a trip to Ralph’s for the essential turkey bacon, since my sister does not eat food from piggies, and to Trader Joe’s for blue cheese, crème fraiche, and assorted party essentials. It’s searing hot out, and the house is miserable, but I haven’t had consecutive free days just to plan and prepare for a party in I can’t remember how long, and 95 degree weather isn’t going to get me down. It’s the kind of day that begs for the Amalie soundtrack, a bit of reading on the couch, a nap with the dog.

Then, once it begins to cool down, while Julie is out on a date, since tonight is her actual birthday, I bake the cake. My mother made this cake for us nearly every year of our childhoods. A Betty Crocker Spice Cake, which has been discontinued, so now I have to make it with a yellow cake mix and quatre epices (cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and ground pepper) that we picked up in Paris in the little spice shop next door to our hotel in the St-Germain-des-Pres.

While the cake bakes and cools, I finish The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, one of the most admirable books I have in years, not only because McCullers was 23 when she wrote it, but because it gives dignity to even the least dignified of the characters. Then I watch—confession—The Truth About Cats & Dogs on one of those cheesy cable channels on the 200 level. It’s after 11 when I finally frost the cake with the ultimate sugar rush of brown sugar and butter melted over a double boiler, then combined with powdered sugar and milk. It’s lumpy as all hell, but lumpy frosting has long been “my thing.”

It’s finally cooling down, I’m high from eating the leftover frosting, and so I start The Good Life and read until almost 3 a.m.

Getting started: apricot liqueur

Saturday:

Although I spend the morning working on my novel, I am actually thinking about tonight’s menu, which originated when I decided I wanted to use recipes from some of the blogs I have been enjoying. I had to try Anni’s crostini, because she sent me the fig jam that goes with it, and I really wanted something from Chocolate & Zucchini. I also decided to play roulette, and go with the first appetizer on the first blog listed on Food Porn Watch at the time I was searching. The winner: a crostini from Passionate Nonchalance. Of course I had to include my involtini, which was a hit two weeks before at our big Italian party. And then I decided to round things out with a recipe from one of my cookbooks I have yet to use. Since The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook is arranged by season, it seemed like a perfect choice. Right there in the section for summer months were recipes for Peach Bruschetta with Blue Cheese, a Plum Galette, and figs wrapped in blue cheese and prosciutto, which I modify greatly for my sister.

I prep in the morning: the involtini filling, caramelized onions, artichoke filling, and the tarts. Heat fills every corner of the house, and drapes over me like a second skin. Our friend Andrea arrives and immediately head for my sister’s bed to take a nap in front of the fan. The three of us go for pedis, simply to sit somewhere cool for a bit, then return to finish up the food. My sister’s boyfriend calls to tell her it’s the hottest day on record in L.A. As the afternoon wanes, the sky turns a pearly, apocalyptic color, and more than one person will say—at some point in the night, which is filled with lots of laughter and some dramatic heat lightning—that it feels as if something terrible is going to happen. As if the war in Iraq and the crisis in Lebanon isn’t enough! Julie’s O.C. college friends, Robin & Trae, arrive and are put to work, spreading blue cheese, cutting peaches, and tasting my limoncello.

As 7:30 nears, the table is nearly ready, and I wander around it, pretending to be nonchalant, but I’m not. It has been ages since I have done more than provide one or two appetizers for a party, and I’m feeling quite proud of myself. And so, I fuss around the table as the guests begin to arrive and work on a modest demeanor for the “oohs” and “ahs” to come …

Sunday:

The house is a huge mess. This heat is likely to render us unconscious before noon. But everyone LOVED the food. And this makes me very happy.

Simple plum tart

Recipes & Modifications:

Anni’s Crostini with Gorgonzola, Caramelized Onions & Fig Jam: I made this recipe per her instructions, although I sautéed the onions longer to soften them up a bit.

Chocolate & Zucchini’s Zucchini Carpaccio: I could not find poppy vinegar, so I used a very light tarragon vinegar, which was nice and refreshing.

Passionate Nonchalance’s Artichoke & Manchego Crostini: When I made this, I thought, “This is too simple.” Little did I know, that would be its appeal.

Figs Wrapped in Blue Cheese & Turkey Bacon: Just like it sounds.

My Famous Prosciutto Involtini

Plum Tart, served with Crème Fraiche: I cheated and used a Pillsbury piecrust to make this. I’d give excuses, but I don’t have any. I come from an extended family of superb pie makers, and if I ever learned how to make a crust, my mom and aunts would have stopped making pies for me. Also, I couldn’t get my hands on a vanilla bean, so I used a little pure vanilla extract. And in one of the tarts, I chopped up some mint, which turned out to be delish!

The “Can’t Have a Fay Sisters’ Birthday Without It” Brown Sugar Frosting Spice Cake: If you really want this recipe, email me!

Peach Bruschetta with Blue Cheese, from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market Cookbook

This is an exceptional summer appetizer. I adapted it with smaller slices of bread, so that I would get more appetizers out of it. The original recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

4 slices country bread
2 peaches
extra-virgin olive oil for brushing
½ pound Point Reyes Blue, gorgonzola, or Blue Castello cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat the broiler.

2. Arrange the bread sliced on a rimmed baking sheet, slip under the broiler, and toast, turning once, until golden brown on both sides. This should take only a few minutes.

3. While the bread is toasting, halve the peaches lengthwise, pit them, and then peel each half. Cut each half lengthwise into ¼-inch-thick slices, keeping the shape of each intact. (I didn’t peel them, and just sliced them up to fit two per crostini).

4. When the bread is ready, remove from the broiler and brush each slice on both sides with olive oil. Spread one-fourth of the cheese on each slice of warm bread, place a sliced peach half on top, and serve.