We are having quite a berry season. It was easy to gather premium wild blueberries and wild salmonberries for this tart. Look at the size of those golden berries! There’s a lot of things you could do with freshly picked berries…but nothing says “fresh berries” like fresh berries.
#wildblueberries #wildsalmonberries #dessert #wildberrytart #tartrecipe #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination
The deal is “you pick me 5 cups of berries and I’ll make you a pie.” We stumbled onto a blueberry bush Loaded with berries. In no time at all, we had 5 cups in the bag. Seems like all agreed, it turned out pretty fantastic.
#wildblueberries #Alaskablueberries #homemadepie #blueberrypie #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination
The flower petals have dropped. Tiny, hard berries are taunting me with their promise. It will be quite some time before they will be ripe and ready for picking. Normally, when I can’t stand the wait for this summer’s fruit, I usually have last year’s berries stashed in my freezer to bake with while I oh-so-patiently wait for this year’s fruit to mature. With the move this year, we gifted our stash to friends at the Lake. So, I wait.
We all know I’m not really going to wait to play in the kitchen. 😉 Now that I have not one, but two grocery stores nearby, I don’t have to keep a stocked pantry like we did at the Lake. But pantry items do drive inspiration. We mailed quite a bit of dry goods that we hadn’t used up. Boxes of pasta, pounds of rice and cans of pumpkin puree didn’t trigger any ideas. There was this bag of mini-marshmallows tucked away. I had purchased them for hot cocoa. What about hot cocoa cookies? Rocky road bars? Marshmallow thumbprints? None of these ideas appealed to me. Then I thought s’mores! I am a s’mores fan, but only in small quantities. I enjoy the summertime fireside treat in ones or twos. What if the essence of chocolate, graham crackers, and toasted marshmallows were featured in cookies instead of their original over-sweet form? The result? A chewy cookie with bursts of chocolate, crunches of graham cracker, and bites of gooey marshmallow.
The recipe was a successful distraction until the real show starts. (C’mon berries!) Between now and then, I will keep myself occupied with processing spruce tip syrup. And maybe figuring out a way to bake with pasta, rice, and pumpkin? Or not.
Double Chocolate S’more Cookies – small batch
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Directions
Light and creamy vanilla cheesecake drizzled flooded with wineberry syrup. Just building the anticipation for berry-picking season.
For most, I imagine spring flowers sow hope for warmer weather and start dreams of sunny summer adventures. The flowers of this particular spring were different for me.
For the last two summers, Jack and I have spent countless hours studying and identifying all the flowers we could find in the surrounding areas of Chignik Lake. It was a beautiful education. The flowering season began with chocolate lilies and ended with tiny white yarrow with lilac-colored geranium sustaining throughout. Along the growing months from May through October, a rainbow of blossoming gems ebbed and flowed. Although I loved seeing and identifying all the blooms, the flowers that gave me the most joy were the ones that I knew would transform into fruit. As we hiked through the months, I would monitor the progress of my miniature crops as they turned from tiny bud to flower to hard little fruit, and then to the final stage of delectable berry treasures that were ready to harvest.
Whenever Jack and I visit different places, we regularly look for flowers. It is interesting to us to see which flowers we have learned about at the Lake which also grow in other places. As it turns out, we are now in a new place. Yes, a surprising plot twist.
We would not have guessed we were going to make a move…even as late as this recent February. A principal job was opening at my school and I was just about finished with my credentialing coursework. We loved our community and our home. We have close friends and a deep connection to Chignik Lake. But life happens. Way leads to way. Turned out the way that opened was a door we had been keeping an eye on for a long time.
If you’ve been following our story for a long while (like thirteen years long), you’ll remember that our whole Alaska adventure began with a summer-long trip. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips that people do. A hobby at that time had been running destination half marathons. Jack found an interesting destination that would align this hobby with a blend of other interests like road-tripping, camping, boating, and of course visiting Alaska. With just six days to make it up the Al-Can, launching our trusty C-Dory in Valdez, and boating over to the destination Salmon Jam Half Marathon in Cordova Alaska, we would start a journey that we had no idea would change our life. On the way home from that Epic Alaska Summer Adventure, we decided that Alaska would become home. In the way life sometimes circles and spirals, we find ourselves back in Cordova. This time, it is not a travel destination, but a new home.
A common thread in all of our our Alaskan homes has been the opportunity to forage for interesting edible plants. How fortunate are we to live in a big beautiful state that offers so many wild foods…among my all-time favorites – berries! We discovered many flowers on our initial hikes on the trails in the Chugach National Forest. I’m happy to report blueberry, low bush and high bush cranberry, salmonberry, currant, nagoonberry and lots of strawberry flowers. Now, in this new place, I get to follow my familiar summertime tradition of monitoring all of these flowers’ progress from bud to fruit. With any luck, we’ll find lots to harvest later this summer.
Jack suggested I share my process for making wineberry (aka nagoonberry) syrup. Most people find the process to be tedious. It’s pretty simple, actually. After picking the precious gems from your secret spot, take them home and xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx. For each cup of processed berries add 1/4 cup of water. Simmer the berries until soft. Smash the mixture with a potato masher. Separate the juice from the pulp by suspending a cheesecloth over a . Every time I try to publish this, it gets redacted. I guess the FBI doesn’t want it shared – (Fruit and Berry Interagency). 😉
For this creation, I used a no-bake cheesecake recipe adapted from a blog I follow, Sally’s Baking Addiction. I modified it to make a 4-inch version, which is perfect for two hungry writers, or can be served to four for a nice little sweet bite at the end of a meal. I like the no-bake version to complement fruit syrups because it is light and airy but still retains the tanginess of the flavor you’d expect from a cheesecake.
4-inch No Bake Cheesecake
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Crust
Cheesecake
Directions
Delightfully crispy and packed with flavor: cheese-like tang, garlic, onion, with a hit of salt. You’ll never discard your discard starter again.
One day, I noticed a friend had posted on a community webpage that she had extra sourdough starter if anyone wanted it. It made me wonder about extra starter – a problem I don’t seem to encounter. Due to a combination of where we live and our predisposition to avoid waste, we generally don’t have “extra.” Of course, shortly after coming to the conclusion that we’d never have extra starter, I had a week where I skipped making sourdough loaves and wound up with “extra starter.” One of my recipe books recommended discarding the extra. What?! I decided to taste it, to see if the flavor would inspire a recipe. Tasting raw starter was a bad idea. Yuck!
After a bit of research, I decided to tinker with a cracker recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour website. My first batch came out wonderfully flavored, but too soft. The problem was the thickness. My rolling pin and I could not get the dough thin enough. The solution came to me after rolling lasagna noodles – the pasta machine! If you’ve only ever thought of your pasta machine as a noodle machine, think again. Besides wonderfully flavored and textured linguini and spaghetti, I’ve also cranked out perfect bowties, ravioli and even wonton wrappers. This seemingly single-purposed machine helps perfectly roll sourdough to make satisfyingly crunchy crackers.
If you don’t have a pasta machine, I highly recommend the Atlas model we have. It is a heavy beast, but it is a kitchen tool that’s made the cut every time we’ve had to pack up and move. If you don’t want to add another item to your cupboards, a rolling pin will still work with this recipe. Be patient and aim to roll a thickness of about 1/16”.
The finished crackers have a tangy cheese-like flavor from the sourdough starter. This in combination with a mixture of onion and garlic and a hit of grey sea salt make these crackers very addicting. Serve with the complementary topping of your choice. Or enjoy their flavor unadorned, as I usually do.
Don’t Discard the Discard Sourdough Crackers
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Directions
We’re at that clean-out-our-pantry time of year when we begin working through stores in earnest, cleaning out freezers and cupboards while we anticipate our annual summertime BST – Big Shopping Trip. This year? Plot Twists. First off, there’s the CoronaVirus. Here in Newhalen, if we’ve needed an additional ingredient, we’ve been able to drive over to our local general store – a small place that happens to have just about everything a person could ever need. We’re fond of saying, “If it’s not at the Iliamna Trading Company, you don’t need it.” Anchovies? They’ve got ‘em. Smoked oysters? They’ve got ‘em. Sanma, those delicious little tinned fish from Japan? No. Of course they don’t have those! I said it was a small store.
The other plot twist is an impending move. Wait. Did she just say “move?” Again? Didn’t she just move? And, like, for about the 80th time in the last 10 years?
Yep. Impeding move. We are heading back to the village where we left our hearts, back to Chignik Lake. Thankfully for everyone, enrollment appears to have stabilized at a number comfortably above the state-mandated minimum of 10. Of course, due to Shelter-in-Place orders and the wise decision among Alaska’s bush villages to prohibit people from flying in, we don’t know when the actual move will occur. It’s a good time to be staying close to home, cooking and baking through the larder.
The other day, I noticed that we still had a couple bags of dried chickpeas in our cupboard. I recalled that these bags had come with us last summer when we moved to Newhalen. “No way do these get on another plane,” I thought to myself. Fortunately, we had all the ingredients I needed to make a giant batch of hummus. Even lemons – which we hardly ever had at The Lake. Proof enough that Newhalen truly is the “Cush Bush.” (I’m smiling. It has been an easy and enjoyable year.) As soon as it the hummus was ready, we got out the last of our rice crackers and dug in.
But…
…thin, crispy, salty cracker by delectably thin, crispy, crunchy cracker…
Before I knew it, we were confronted with a problem. A big problem. I mean a Really Big Problem. All this fresh, delicious hummus and we had finished off the crackers! I sliced carrots thin and tried to substitute those. It was… well, if one must. We wanted crackers. Iliamna Trading would have them, but we’ve really been trying to honor the shelter-in-place edict.
Our dilemma got me to thinking about homemade crackers. This wouldn’t be my first rodeo in the world of crispy and crunchy. I’d made graham crackers, wheat thins, cheese-its, and more. But I’d never made rice crackers.
I found a base recipe and gave it a go. I’ll be honest, I worked and reworked this recipe before I met with success. I thought the last batch came out great. This was confirmed by Jack, “Forget about making dinner. Let’s just have crackers and hummus and watch old Suits episodes tonight!” he said as he reached for another cracker. Winner winner, hummus dinner!
They key turned out to be making the crackers really thin. After trying a rolling pin and then a pasta roller, I found the best way to make the dough thin enough was to flatten it using a tortilla press. By rolling the dough into marble-sized balls, I was able to press four crackers at a time. I know, that sounds like a lot of work for crackers. But, hey, I’m sheltering in. There’s time! And, man are they good!
Homemade Onion Rice Crackers
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Directions
A brûlée crust does take this dish out of the sugar-free category. It tastes wonderful without the crust. It just doesn’t look very beautiful.
We are the consummate rescuers of nearly wasted bananas. Over this past year, we’ve collected aged very brown bananas from various places and have been enjoying them in a variety of recipes. Our favorite, as of late, is a custard made out of the overripe bananas. It’s fantastically easy. It tastes wonderful. We’ve been regularly stocking our fridge with a batch and have guilt-free snacks for dessert on demand.
Since it’s made from overripe bananas, it has the not so lovely color of said fruit. The first batch we made, we served it with vanilla ice cream to mask the custard. On the next batch, I drizzled a chocolate ganache to pretty it up. Then I tried a brûlée top. If you are having a fancy dinner party, any of these options beautify the custard. But honestly, none of that is necessary. It tastes great just as it is. And, of course, it’s healthier au natural.
Banana Custard Au Natural
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Directions
Spiked with a warm hit of ginger, rhubarb jam muffins quickly turn the feeling in our home from a dreary shelter in place to cozy and safely tucked-in.
A friend asked to trade some freshly laid eggs for some baked goods. With no dietary restrictions and no allergies I had a blank slate in front of me. I flipped through my mental recipe book of favorites. What a fun task! I visualized braided bread, focaccia, soft pretzels. Then I switched to sweets – mocha bars, monster cookies, blueberry pie. Last summer’s many warm and sunny harvesting days yielded gallons of berries and stalks upon stalks of rhubarb. I had made rhubarb sauce that went so well dolloped on warm brie cheese. I still have a few jars left of this concoction. With the snow falling outside, I thought the ideal baked good should conjure summer days. It was decided – rhubarb muffins. I thought a crumble crown would jazz up a potentially plain looking muffin. A bit of ginger and cinnamon added to the crumble finished out the flavor ensemble. The finished product came out moist and flavorful. A fresh cup of french roast, a rhubarb muffin and a fried egg – now that’s a warm and cozy breakfast!
Ginger Crumbled Rhubarb Muffins
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For the crumble
For the muffins
Directions
Bite-sized foods are irresistible. These mini beauties are packed with flavor and powered with protein. Enjoy one (a couple) (a few) today!
In short order, our COVID-19 status in the small village of Newhalen went from “mindfully wash your hands” and “don’t touch your face” to a full-on “shelter in place.” We could take this mandate like pouty kids who are grounded. Or we can view it as a golden opportunity. Outside, it’s slick, icy, and chilly: -10° F (-23° C) this morning. So going out for runs or hikes isn’t very appealing. Lately, our preferred together activity has been spending time cuddling up with a bowl of popcorn and watching favorite movies and new documentaries. Moving on to independent activities, Jack has been mastering more tunes on his guitar, while my solo fun, as you might have guessed, has been getting creative in my personal home bakery.
Most recently, several containers of puréed pumpkin and a cute mini donut pan was my “shut in” entertainment. There is something appealing about making diminutive treats. It reminds me of tea parties and Easy Bake ovens in an imagined perfect childhood. Really, the ingredients are pretty healthy. If you’re like me, it’s hard to stop at one, so, eating four of these is not a terrible thing. So go ahead and eat a few – they are a great protein-packed snack to power up for a long run, to refuel after a hard run, or just to get up from the sofa and start a new movie.
How are you keeping yourself occupied these day? What are you baking? Stay healthy everyone!
Mini Maple Pumpkin Donuts
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Glaze
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Chewy, chocolatey, small and delicious. What’s not to love?
This lifestyle of picking up shallow roots and moving every few years is not for everyone. It normally suits us. We love digging deep into an interesting place, enjoying what it has to offer, and then heading off to experience a new place. This particular move is the strangest one Jack and I have experienced in our life together. Previous moves have been predicated on well thought-out decisions backed by lots of research. A move toward a new adventure – Alaska – Mongolia – is always exciting to us. A move to a place with a new culture or new food, new fishing and new photography opportunities has always been welcome. Newhalen, where we soon will be living, has a lot to offer, but the cloud of having to leave Chignik Lake has put a giant damper on our excitement. We keep reminding ourselves that Newhalen is a terrific place, complete with salmon runs, hiking in nearly pristine landscapes and the many things we love about living in the Alaska Bush. In our new home, we will get to have our lovely little fishing boat, Gillie, with us. We’ve never lived somewhere where we can launch her and have miles and miles of rivers and lakes to explore right outside our door. That in and of itself should be very appealing, right?
Gillie is one salmon-catching boat. She sleeps the two of us comfortably in her cuddy cabin. There’s even a little dining table in the cabin. Equipped with a Coleman stove, she’ll be the perfect vessel for exploring the lakes and rivers of our new home.
But this time, there’s this whole leaving business that is really a drag. We’ve both loved living in Chignik Lake. It’s been a wonderful place to settle in to. We’ve loved only having to share the scenery, the wildlife and the fishing with the few people who call The Lake home. And I’ve enjoyed working in a building that’s well kept and working with a group of students that are second to none. The students and their families here made this the most fun and the easiest teaching job I’ve ever had. We hadn’t intended on leaving yet. So, the excitement of the move and the new destination has a bit of a pall over it.
Well, nonetheless, onward and upward.
One aspect of moving I get a strange pleasure from is the challenge of using up of all of our pantry items by the move date. This batch of cookies was especially satisfying as the recipe, to the tablespoon, helped me finish off several ingredients that I had just a bit of. The purpose of this recipe was to create cookies that could be used to make ice cream sandwiches with the bag of frozen bananas I still have in the freezer. They are perfect! They are small and have just the right texture for this frozen confection. We’ve found that dolloping the banana ice cream atop the open-faced cookies seems to work best. I also think these cookies taste fantastic straight out of the freezer. The idea to keep them in the freezer so they are out of sight didn’t quite work to keep them out of mind. They turned out too good! A taste of a few of these, and the “moving cloud” dissipates a little. 🙂
To keep them “lite” on calories, the ingredients were thought out, but so were the size. I made the cookies small – about two teaspoonfuls of dough. This way two cookies, with the banana ice cream, is a satisfying dessert. (According to an online calorie calculator, these weighed in at just 45 calories per cookie.) Feel free to adjust the size to your liking. I also thought adding a splash of peppermint extract would be delicious – a la “Thin Mint” Girl Scout cookies. (I loved those straight out of the freezer!) Alas, my pantry no longer has this ingredient.
Lite Double Chocolate Brownie Cookies
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Directions
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