Cafe Fernando

Apricot Cherry Galette

With summer fruit at its best, there has never been a better time to bake all kinds of stone fruit encased in a buttery flaky dough. Although you can prepare a galette with any fruit you’d like, I highly recommend one of my favorite combinations: Apricot and cherry. Aside from the great color combination, they let out just the right amount of water, which means they need less cornstarch (or flour) to thicken. So, their natural, intense flavors shine through even more.

Even though they are naturally supersweet at this time of the year, a liberal sprinkle of sugar on top of both the dough and the fruit introduces a lovely crunch.

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Two Summer Salads

Come summer, I find a box full of organic produce on my desk every Monday morning. Big, bright red tomatoes that do smell and taste like tomatoes, tiny crunchy seedless cucumbers, crisp & sweet green peppers and a bunch of tender purslane. And how can I forget the dark purple eggplants that will perfume my kitchen all week long while they bake in the oven with a drizzle of olive oil and a generous sprinkle of cinnamon?

The delivery guy behind this marvelous produce is my father.

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Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream

Recently, I have been reading Dianne Jacob‘s “Will Write for Food”. No, wait. Not reading it – I am studying the book. As in taking notes, underlining important sentences and making a list of buzz words to avoid, etc. One of the chapters in the book talks about getting the passion across, which is to me one of the core elements of good food writing. Jacob quotes Colman Andrews, co-founder of Saveur, now with Gourmet: “When you turn a camera on people to get to their passion, they freeze up, use big words, and become stilted, especially when they’re very emotional about a subject. You can’t just open a vein and let it flow out. If you’re very passionate about some wonderful dish, you have to tame your passion to write about it, or it will probably come across sounding stupid.”

So, at the risk of sounding stupid, I want to say: The Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream from David’s book is one of the greatest ice cream flavors in the world.

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