Aunt Margaret's strawberry delight

A few weeks ago, before it was strawberry season, my grandma tempted me with a dessert my Aunt Margaret used to make: strawberry delight.

Aunt Margaret was one of the fancier members of the family. She was always impeccably dressed and when I was young, she would give me her perfume and make-up samples from Neiman Marcus.

Like Aunt Margaret, strawberry delight sounded swank. And when my grandma gave me the recipe, she admitted that strawberry delight was both elaborate and delicious. But she then added no dessert could compare to eating fresh, ripe berries either on their own or with cream on a flaky biscuit split in two.

Dazzled by the name, however, I insisted on making strawberry delight when I bought my first pints of the juicy red berries at the farmer’s market last week.



Strawberry delight is very similar to a fool, where the berries are mashed and then stirred into whipped cream. This dessert differs, however, by the addition of a buttery pecan crust and a meringue that’s folded into the strawberries and cream.

Now, if I had any sense, I would have heeded my grandmother’s advice and kept it simple. But I like a challenge and when I was faced with whipping a couple of egg whites into a meringue without a stand mixer, I knew I had to give it a try. How hard could it be? I make whipped cream all the time with my eggbeater so I assumed that a meringue could hardly be all that more work.

One hour later, I was still struggling to make my egg whites fluff while the strawberries sat on the counter mocking me with their easy beauty. Tired of spinning the eggbeater, I took my meringue and folded it into the whipped cream and berries. I spread the whipped concoction over the crust and then put it into the freezer to chill overnight.

In the morning, when I pulled the pan out of the freezer I was stuck by how the peaks in the dessert looked like the topography of a pretty pink world. I cut out a piece and took a bite. It was buttery, nutty, creamy and fruity. It had been a lot of work, but it was indeed good.

Desserts such as this are frilly and fun and remind me of summer garden parties or church potlucks; there is a certain nostalgia when you dip your spoon into a creamy, cold square.



That said, my grandma made an excellent point about simpler pleasures. And this time of the year when the summertime fruits are making their debuts, I do believe that nothing beats eating them as they were made, still fresh, juicy and warm from the sun.

Strawberry Delight
Ingredients for the crust:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup melted butter
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch of salt

Ingredients for the filling:
2 cups of fresh strawberries, sliced in half
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
2 egg whites
8 oz. of heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the crust ingredients and bake in a 9x13 pan for 20 minutes.

Stir the brown sugar into the sliced strawberries and let macerate at room temperature for half an hour or until juicy.

Beat the egg whites, lemon juice and sugar until light and fluffy. Then whip the cream until also light and fluffy and then stir into it the vanilla and ginger.

Add the strawberries to the whipped cream and then fold in the meringue.

Spread the fluffy strawberry filling over the crust, cover well and then freeze overnight or for at least six hours.

Before serving, let it thaw a bit and then cut into squares.

Alternatively, you could freeze the crust and filling into six or eight bowls or glasses and serve it that way.

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Dr Pepper ribs: sticky, spicy and sweet

I’ve been on a rib kick lately. I usually like my ribs simple—seasoned with nothing but a salt, cayenne and black pepper rub, smoked low and slow over post-oak wood. But when I’m trying to make outdoor fare inside, I tend to change my tune. Take my Dr Pepper ribs. These are sticky, spicy and sweet, which is the exact opposite of how I like my barbecue. And yet, I love my Dr Pepper ribs so much that I could eat a whole rack by myself.

Now if you know me well, you are aware that I’m a staunch opponent of sauce on barbecue. And yes, these ribs are wet and messy, so much in fact that if you don’t have a stack of napkins nearby you should probably wear a bib. So what changed my mind and why did I decide to make saucy ribs?

We Texans love to cook with Dr Pepper. I love to use Dr Pepper in my peanut brittle and a Dr Pepper chocolate cake is wonderful as well as it always turns out so moist. But I’d never tried using Dr Pepper with meat and I was curious if it would make that much of a difference.


I’ve tried making meat with my stove-top smoker in the style that I like it, but save for fish and vegetables, the results haven’t been great. So when it comes to oven-baked ribs, I decided to eschew outside authenticity and instead shoot for lots of flavor. Enter the Dr Pepper.

At first I tried making my ribs savory, using the Dr Pepper as only a tenderizer. This was wrong as the ribs were soggy with a strange flavor. It wasn’t, however the Dr Pepper’s fault—it was mine for pretending that the drink was something it wasn’t. So I decided that I would embrace the Dr Pepper’s inherent sweetness and try to compliment that with flavors that balanced it instead of fought it.

I coated the ribs in a smoky, sweet dry rub made with chipotle powder and brown sugar and let them rest for a few hours. I then made a glaze with my chipotle ketchup, Dr Pepper, mustard, vinegar, molasses and allspice. I baked the ribs in a low oven for a little over an hour and then started applying my Dr Pepper glaze. After another hour and a stint under the broiler, the meat was tender and each bite was coated in a sticky glaze both fiery and sweet.

Now because these ribs are messy, you may be tempted to eat these with a knife and a fork. Don’t. A year ago, the family was gathered for Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s farm and her neighbor brought over some ribs. Because we were having a sit-down dinner, I started to eat my ribs with a knife and a fork. “What are you doing?” said my uncle. “You don’t eat ribs with silverware! Use your hands like a Texan.”


You won’t find wet, sticky ribs at a Hill Country barbecue joint, so you could argue ribs such as these aren’t authentically Texan. But that’s just silly. Why? Because there’s nothing more Texan than Dr Pepper, chipotle peppers and eating meat with your hands!

What do you like to make with Dr Pepper?

Dr Pepper ribs
Ingredients:

For the rub:
1/4 cup of salt
1/4 cup of black pepper
1/4 cup of brown sugar
4 teaspoons of mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon of cayenne
2 teaspoons of chipotle powder
1/2 teaspoon of allspice

For the glaze:
2 cups of Dr Pepper
1 cup of ketchup
1/2 cup of mustard
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons of molasses
2-4 teaspoons of chipotle powder

Two racks of St Louis ribs
1/4 cup of Dr Pepper

Coat the ribs with the rub, wrap in plastic and place in the refrigerator for at least four hours.

Heat the oven to 300 degrees and bring the ribs to room temperature.

In a foil-lined large baking or roasting pan, arrange the ribs with the meat side up, pour in 1/4 cup of Dr Pepper, cover pan tightly with foil and place in the oven.

Meanwhile, place all the glaze ingredients in a pan, bring to a boil and then simmer for 20 minutes until thick and syrupy.

After an hour and a half, take the ribs out of the oven and spread some of the glaze on each side of the racks. Place back in the oven, meat side up and cook uncovered for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take out the ribs and spread more glaze over them and cook for 30 more minutes or until ribs are desired tenderness.

At this point, take the ribs out of the oven, spread more glaze on them and then cook each side under the broiler for four minutes.

Divide and serve!
Notes: You can use my chipotle ketchup instead of regular ketchup for the glaze and I used Dublin Dr Pepper, but you can use regular Dr Pepper, just don't use diet!

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How to make a cemita

Have you ever had a cemita? It’s a sandwich found in the Mexican state of Puebla. At first glance, you may think it looks like a hamburger as it’s housed on a round, sesame-seed bun. But after you take a bite you’ll realize this isn’t a hamburger at all—instead it’s a festival of flavors and textures nestled between a pillow-soft bun.

The bun, which is also called a cemita, is where the sandwich gets its name. It’s an egg-rich bread topped with sesame seeds that is sort of a cross between challah and brioche. (And it’s not to be confused with the cemita or semita found in Northern Mexico, which is a Mexican sweet bread spiced with star anise).

The other distinguishing characteristic of a cemita is the liberal use of the minty herb papalo. When I had my first cemita, it was that bright note cutting through all the other flavors that made this sandwich sing.


Papalo isn’t always in season, however, so you may sometimes have a cemita made without it. But without the sesame-seed roll, you no longer have a cemita, you just have a sandwich.

Recently I was at a Jackson Heights taco truck that I’d never been to before, but the line was long and the condiments were fresh and plentiful—two signs the food should be delicious. To work on my Spanish I struck up a conversation with one of the other customers and asked him what to order. He said everything was good as the food tasted like what you would make at home.

We don’t often think about street food as home food, but ever since that conversation I’d been obsessed with making a cemita at home. And since the cemita is nothing without the roll I knew that I’d have to figure out how to bake that particular bread in my own kitchen.

I speak just enough Spanish to get into trouble when I visit forums on Mexican food sites, so until I learned that there were two cemitas, I was wondering why there were no sesame seeds and so much sugar in the recipes I found. And yet I still couldn’t find a proper recipe for the bread that I wanted.

After much delicious research out in the field, however, I decided to combine several recipes to create the tender roll. Eggs and buttermilk make the crumb soft and dense, oil and sugar make it sweet and moist and the sesame seeds add crunch and contrast. Sure it’s a bit decadent, but lean times sometimes call for affordable pleasures.

This roll is intended for a cemita sandwich, though I find that it’s also darn good as a bun for hamburgers, as a home for barbecue or simply on its own, warm from the oven and slathered with cool butter.

Cemita roll
Ingredients:
2 cups (9 oz.) flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of yeast
2 eggs at room temperature
½ cup of buttermilk
¼ cup of canola oil
1 tablespoon of milk
1 tablespoon of water
¼ cup of sesame seeds

Method:
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Whisk the eggs together with the oil.Heat the buttermilk on low until it’s warm (110 degrees if you want to use a thermometer). Do not let it come to a boil!

Stir into the dry ingredients the warm buttermilk, eggs and oil. Mix until the liquid is incorporated and then let it rest for 15 minutes.

After it’s rested, knead the dough on a floured-surface until it’s smooth, though note that it will still be a bit sticky. That’s OK.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover it and let it rise until it’s doubled in size, about an hour and a half.

Depending on how large you want your rolls to be, divide the dough into eight or four balls and let them rest, covered for 15 minutes.

To shape the rolls, take each ball and then flatten it so it looks like a disc.

Place each roll a few inches apart on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet. Cover the baking sheet and let the rolls rise for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

When rolls have risen, mix the milk and water and brush the top of each roll with the wash. then sprinkle with the sesame seeds. Bake the rolls for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
Note: Bread only lasts a day, but freezes well.

And now that you have the rolls, you can make a cemita sandwich!

Cemita sandwich
Ingredients:
A few papalo leaves (can be found at most Mexican markets)
Chipotles in adobo
A ripe avocado cut in slices
Savory Mexican meat such as carnitas or tinga
Mexican Oaxacan cheese (can substitute mozzarella if you can’t find it), shredded

Method:
Take a roll and slice it in half.
Lay the avocado quarters on each half of bread.
Pile high the meat, cheese, chipotles and papalo on one half of bread, place the other half on top and enjoy!

Other people's thoughts on cemitas:
Anita shares more background, while Matt professes true love.

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Dewberry cobbler is your reward

Picking dewberries is a wonderful warm-day pastime. When I was young, my friends and I would march out to the wilder parts of my suburban Houston neighborhood—such as the bayou, vacant lots or the rough patch next to the golf course—and brave water moccasins, thorns and poison ivy to score some of these black orbs, warm from the sun and ready to pop in your mouth.

Usually, we’d eat them straight from the bush, smearing our t-shirts and shorts with the dark, sticky juice. But sometimes we’d be more organized and bring a container so we could pick them and then take them home to our parents so they could make dewberry cobbler for dessert.


Spending plenty of time on a farm, I know that when you venture into a bramble you need to wear strong boots filled with sulfur to keep those chiggers at bay. But what was cool at the farm was not cool in Houston, and so we’d usually be wearing at best tennis shoes and at worst flip flops as we made our way through the berry patch. Needless to say, you can get scuffed up something ugly after a bout of picking dewberries if you’re not properly clothed. But no matter—the joy of finding food in the wild mitigated any cosmetic damage done to our legs.

Between my mom’s organic garden in the backyard and my family’s farms, I had plenty of experience with food coming out of the ground. But there was something special about dewberries. Perhaps it was because we suffered greatly to get to them. Or perhaps it was because there were never any grown-ups involved in our foraging adventures. Or perhaps it was just because this wild food tasted so darn good.

Some argue that blackberries and dewberries are one and the same. I don’t know the answer to this. And sadly, I haven’t seen dewberries growing in any New York City vacant lots or in Central Park (though if there are dewberries here, please let me know!) so I can’t do an immediate taste comparison. But we do have blackberries and they are a decent substitute for dewberries.



I like to make a cobbler with my berries, though they could also be made into jam, juice or tarts. What do you make with yours?

And don’t get me wrong—a blackberry cobbler is nothing to sniff at. But I know that it would taste even better if I had made it with berries I had picked myself, berries still glistening with the morning’s mist that gives the berry its proper name—dewberry.

Dewberry Cobbler
Crust ingredients:
1/2 stick of butter (2 oz.)
1 cup of flour (6 oz.)
1/2 cup sugar (3 oz.)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup of buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling ingredients
4 cups dewberries or blackberries
1/2 cup sugar (3 oz.)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Place the rinsed berries in a large cast-iron skillet or nine-inch round cake pan, and toss the berries with the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and lemon juice. Let them macerate for 20 minutes.
To make the crust, melt the butter on low in a pan, and then add the other ingredients. Dough will be slightly sticky, moist yet pliable.
Pat out the dough and place it over the berries.
Bake 40 minutes or until light brown and bubbling.
Serves six

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