Inspired by early summer, beautiful weather and enabled by my wonderful Mother-in-Law who visited and played with Sophia, I took on the challenge of making Pirozhki for the first time ever. Since Late Spring/Early Summer is in the air and strawberries are sweet, the rhubarb is tart they together will comprise my Saturday pirozhki filling. The dough was a yeast-based dough with butter (what could be better than puffy, buttery dough?) and the filling was just diced strawberries, rhubarb and a bit of sugar. I am still practicing my crimping skills… maybe a few hundred more batches and my parties will be uniform…
As Sophia is still too little to really enable us to travel to far and exotic destinations, but a vacation was an absolute must, we decided to have a stay-cation. That is, we planned not to go anywhere (far) and enjoyed just being out and about locally. My parents offered for us to come up so that they could babysit in the evenings and we could go out and catch up with friends. We accepted without hesitation. The Friday before we left, I got an email that my local farm opened with pick-your-own strawberries and tart cherries. I happily ran over to pick some for the road and as a hostess gift for my parents. Ten pounds of strawberries later (with obvious signs of heat exhaustion not to mention sunburn, I opted for the pre-picked tart cherries).
Tart cherries hold a special place in my heart. My mother’s mother had a beautiful fruit and vegetable garden. Aside from apples, pears, apricots, peaches, strawberries, red and black currants, rhubarb, gooseberries, and rasberries, she also grew tart cherries. Tart cherry season meant one thing when I was little: Tart Cherry Vareniki. Hot out of the water, tart, sweet, oozing with syrup — there are very few dishes that are better in the early summer. We used to pick them ourselves, gallons of cherries, their red juice squirting everywhere in our little hands. They were probably a little worse for the wear and fewer in numbers by the time they got to the house when we picked them as kids, but that made them perfect for varenniki.
Anyway, apparently tart cherries aren’t as available here. In fact, I’ve only seen them at farmer’s markets in Philadelphia and at the local farm. We’ve begged my mom to make the varenniki with them for years and even used hubby as a ploy. My sister, her husband, my dad and I would say “Come on mom, E. hasn’t had these, EVER…. don’t you want to show off your culinary prowess with dumplings?” She would always say “Get me real tart cherries, come help and I will do it”. Well, the day had finally come. Too hot, tired and dirty from a very wet strawberry field, I picked up two quarts of cherries and ran quickly to my car as if the cashier at the farm was going to demand her cherries back. To excited, I called my mom and told her of my acquisition. She was in disbelief and probably slightly disgruntled but very much up to the challenge. So, in true multi-cultural fashion, we decided to make them for Memorial Day to supplement the remainder of our pretty typical BBQ menu. Since I acquired the cherries and essentially was the cause of this, I volunteered to pit the cherries. Two hours later (my mother was so sure she would NEVER make these here in the States that she does not own a cherry pitter), I was done albeit already ready to be done with cooking. I helped make the dough and learned how to form them. You’ll see in the pictures that mine are the much uglier and misshapen and my mom’s are beautiful and uniform. Nonetheless, they were D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S and hubby declared that they were amazing and worth waiting for. All in all, not too difficult to make, but they disappear into hungry bellies much faster than it takes to make them. I’ll make them again, and again and always remember my childhood summer memories as I cook them. When she is older, I’ll tell Sophia the stories of my childhood over a plate of varenniki.
There I was, looking at the extra large batch of baked sweet potato I had made for Sophia. I quickly realized that freezing it seemed like a hassle. Besides, who knows how well the sweet potato will fare the freezer. I decided that since we are making our own baby food and it is really just a slightly more pureed version of what we eat anyways, there is nothing wrong with making our meal out of Sophia’s. I decided to also use up some goat cheese we’d had in the refrigerator and the idea of making fried balls of goodness (like Arancini) was born. I took the mashed sweet potato, added an egg, salt, pepper and about a half a cup of flour. The dough that it became, was still very wet and sticky. I used two spoons to shape canelle-like balls inserting rolled up goat cheese inside. Once shaped, each one was rolled in Panko. The faux arancini were ready for a quick bath in the hot oil.They were divine served hot! But then again, what fried food isn’t?
My birthday was this past Saturday. I always look far, far in advance on what day of the week my birthday falls. I secretly hope that it magically falls on a Saturday every year and this year my wishes and dreams came true — except it also fell over Passover. This is a serious impediment to proper celebration as no birthday is complete without a luxurious cake with layers, frosting and the likes.
Before I tell you how I celebrated this year’s big day, I will share how I would spend the birthdays BS (Before Sophia). I would take the day off from work, get up early, walk from Olde City (where we lived in Philadelphia) all the way to Rittenhouse Square (one of my favorite places to go, see and be seen) and start my day right at La Colombe coffee with a latte and an almond croissant. I would sit facing the windows, and watch people come and go, rushing to go to work or to various appointments. I would then visit a few stores, galleries, walk around the city and return home to get ready to go out to celebrate. Sometimes, the hubby would take off from work and we’d get a little more adventurous like the one time we went to the Italian Market and visited an old-school cafe and picked up some [real] cannoli.
Now that we’re in the PS (Post Sophia) period of our lives, I’ve had to augment my celebration plan. Since we were also planning to visit our family for the holiday, we decided to leverage our little bundle of joy to get some free time to ourselves while the grandparents got some time to play with their bubbly granddaughter. We finally fed and put Sophia in the stroller for her long walk followed by a long (hopefully) nap in the afternoon. We looked at our watches and made a quick dash for the car. The time was 12:25 PM on Saturday. We made it to Philadelphia in 30 minutes, parked and joined the throngs of crowds around Rittenhouse Square. Our first stop was the Oyster House, an establishment I have not been able to visit for well over 18 months as raw foods present a significant risk to pregnant women. Overjoyed to finally try some sweet, briny oysters, the hubby and I chatted away in our own world like old times. Not to waste too much time, we stopped by a few stores, picked up a bauble for me on my parents’ behalf and moved on to Tria, our old favorite. We know our beer and wine and find that an establishment such as Tria provides a great opportunity to try something without having to committ to a full bottle. I also like Tria because they have a huge array of pinchos and I can get great flavor combination ideas there. They for example have a pistachio, lavender ricotta with honey on a baguette slice drizzled with honey or stewed figs stuffed with gorgonzola picante served with prosciutto and potato chips with truffled mayo. There are all things that I can now (and sometimes do) make at home. A dash into Capogiro comepleted our all-too brief visit to Philadelphia, perfect one-on-one date, and a spectacular birthday celebration sans-baby.
