July 4 Celebration

Each year, we celebrate the Fourth of July and the country where we live. I am not a political person, but this year, I am decidedly not feeling at all patriotic, nor am proud of certain things that are happening in our country. Still, we persevered with our celebration in the hopes that this country will right itself. Right is a poor choice of verbs in this instance. Perhaps I should have chosen the verb center.

We invited Rob, Dyce, Dyce's parents who are in town from Italy, and new friend Brad to throw down with us.

Lyn, Brad, Neal, Dyce, Ann, and Rob

The menu ended up as a pseudo-Greek affair. I like burgers for the 4th, but had a hankering for my lamb burgers which blow beef burgers out of the water. From there, it was not a stretch to want to pair the burgers with tzatziki and horiatiki. But then, Ann wanted orzo too, so I combined the orzo and horiatiki to create a cold pasta salad. Then I wanted an appetizer I could make in advance, so after a bit of head scratching, decided on tiropitakia, cheese-filled phyllo pastries. Ann volunteered to make her delicious berry and brioche summer pudding and asked me to make a sorbet. We settled on lemon-thyme and the menu was complete. The recipe for the sorbet is in a separate post.

Some wine was drunk; some food was eaten; some fun was had!

Lamb Burger with Feta and Pine Nuts

I love my lamb burgers and this year, for a change, I recorded a rough recipe because I have had requests for it in the past.

Lamb Burger Recipe

This recipe scales well so I have expressed it in terms of seasonings for a single pound of lamb. In reality, I made a 4-pound batch and I eyeballed everything. It is always a good idea when mixing a batch of forcemeat like this, to cook a tiny bit and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Also, this mix gains flavor in the refrigerator so plan on mixing everything a day or even two in advance. I scaled out six-ounce burgers, my preferred size.

Per pound of ground lamb:

1/4 c dry white wine (substitute red wine or water or stock)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon Pimentón de la Vera agridulce (smoked paprika)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced (I used way more than this!)

small handful of toasted pine nuts

2 ounces sheep’s milk feta, crumbled

optional, if you have spice grinder:

pinch dried rosemary, finely ground

pinch dried thyme, finely ground 

Procedure:

Mix liquids and solids well to distribute salt and spices.

Add lamb and gently mix. Using hands is best.

Refrigerate overnight or two nights.

Patty into burgers or shape into kefta (oval meatballs)

Cook to desired temperature. I like medium rare.

Tiropitakia and Tzatziki

Tiropitakia Ready for Oven

Our appetizer was the tiropitakia (little cheese pies) that you see in photos above. I just went with my gut which said to mix chopped kalamata olives, chopped marinated sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, lemon zest, and grated pecorino cheese with a tub of ricotta cheese. For savory pastries like this, I brush the phyllo layers with olive oil (and for sweet pastries, I use butter). I brushed the tops of the little triangles with olive oil and sprinkled them with oregano and coarse salt before baking until browned in a moderate oven. A recipe for tzatiki is in this post.

Orzo Salad

The pasta salad was simple. I mixed a bunch of olive oil, lemon juice, kalamata brine, and oregano (my usual horiatiki dressing) in a large bowl. Then I cut the horiatiki vegetables and cheese smaller than usual, because otherwise, they would dwarf the small orzo pasta. The usual suspects are: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and feta. I omitted peppers because I didn't feel like I wanted them. So there.

I put all the salad ingredients into the dressing for about an hour to marinate. The red onions, I sliced very thin and soaked in several changes of cold water to mellow them out. In the morning, I par-cooked the orzo a couple minutes shy of being done, knowing that it would finish softening in the refrigerator. This is a useful technique for all pasta salads. After cooling the pasta under running water, it went into the vegetables and I tasted for salt. Salt this salad carefully because the kalamata brine, olives, and feta are already salty.

Into the fridge to mellow for a few hours the salad went. Just before serving the appetizers, I put the salad in a serving bowl and garnished with the onions. Just before serving dinner, I mixed everything well to distribute the onions and redistribute the dressing.

Ann's Beautiful Summer Berry and Brioche Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet

I have problems digesting lactose, so ice cream is verboten in my diet. I hate this because I love ice cream as much as the next person. Unfortunately, that love is unrequited. And so, for decades now, I have concentrated on making delicious sorbets. I made a different flavor each night at the restaurant as an intermezzo in our tasting menu.

It requires little imagination to understand that I became bored and weary of certain flavors, especially single-flavor sorbets with my chef palate running to multi-layered flavors. Thus, I experimented with unusual flavors and herbs in creating something that at first bite tasted of fruit, but yet delivered something else entirely as the sorbet melted onto the tongue. Think: zucchini-dill, apricot-rosemary, raspberry-chipotle, and so forth. In that vein, for our recent Fourth of July celebration, Ann and I chose lemon-thyme as a mouth-puckering acidic punch-in-the-face counterpoint to her delightful summer berry pudding.

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet with Summer Berry Pudding

I am not a pastry chef, so I really do not worry terribly about the kinds of sorbet things that pastry chefs do, such as creating the perfect 28 brix syrup. Yawn, right? At home, I keep it simple, measuring both the sugar and the liquid by volume, a no-no for certain in pastryland. But, easy? Darned straight.

Lemon-Thyme Sorbet

This recipe is really easy as long as you commit to squeezing all that lemon juice. A liter of juice represents the juice of probably 24 lemons and with a hand squeezer like mine, it is a work out. If you cannot commit to squeezing lemons, find some other flavor to make, because any substitute for fresh lemon juice will taste off.

This recipe makes two liters of sorbet, the size of my machine; quarts are fine substitutes. This recipe scales up or down just fine. Although a machine gives the best results (I have a professional machine that is muy cara), you can freeze this sorbet in a flat container in the freezer, raking the ice crystals apart periodically with a fork. Adding a shot of vodka will help prevent big ice crystals from forming.

1 liter granulated sugar

3/4 liter water

1 bunch fresh thyme

zest of 6 lemons

1 liter freshly squeezed lemon juice

In a 2-quart sauce pan, heat the sugar, water, and thyme and let it bubble gently for about five minutes to start infusing the thyme flavor.

Turn off the heat, and add the lemon zest to the cooling mixture. Stir well and let stand for a couple of hours to infuse.

Strain the syrup and the lemon juice into a bowl or container and mix well. Refrigerate until cold.

Freeze the sorbet once the base is cold.