Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times (44 page)

3.
Refrigerate for about an hour, or until the liquid in the bowls gels. Serve, garnished with additional mint.

MAKES AT LEAST 4 SERVINGS

TIME: 6 TO 48 HOURS, LARGELY UNATTENDED

THIS RECIPE,
adapted from a classic by cookbook author Claudia Roden, is a longtime personal favorite. It becomes heavenly if you add a little rose and/or orange flower water.

1.
Combine everything but the sour cream in a bowl and add water to cover. Stir and let sit, at room temperature, for at least 6 hours. The fruit is ready when it is soft and the liquid is syrupy.

2.
To serve, put some fruit in a bowl and garnish with sour cream.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: ABOUT 30 MINUTES

SOUR CHERRIES ARE
too acidic to eat raw but are the best for cooking. This simple preparation amounts to cherry pie without the crust.

1.
Pit the cherries and combine them with ½ cup of water in a medium saucepan; turn the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cherries are very tender, about 20 minutes.

2.
Stir in the sugar and the cinnamon if you are using it; taste and add more sugar or lemon juice if you like. Cool, then chill and serve the cherries cold, with their juice.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: 45 MINUTES

NOTHING CAN MATCH
dried fruit for convenience and intensity of flavor. And when you poach an assortment with port and a few spices, the results belie the ease of preparation. This is not a summer dessert—no one would mistake this for fresh fruit—but it is delicious, low-fat, and a welcome change from heavy winter desserts. One tip: Use a port you’ll enjoy drinking (or buy a half bottle), because you’re going to use less than a third of a full-size bottle in this recipe.

1.
Combine all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to very low and cover. Cook for about 30 minutes, at which point most of the port will have been absorbed.

2.
If the fruit is tender, it’s done. If not, add ½ cup water, bring to a boil again, cover, and cook for another 15 minutes. Repeat once more if necessary.

3.
Remove the fruit with a slotted spoon, then strain the liquid to remove the spices. Serve a portion of the fruit warm, cold, or at room temperature with a spoonful or two of its juice.

VARIATIONS

• Substitute almost any sweet or neutral liquid for the port: water, oloroso sherry, red wine (add a tablespoon of sugar), sweet white wine, orange juice, and so on.

• If you prefer less-than-sweet results, add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice at the end of cooking.

• Vary the spices. Try a tiny grating of nutmeg in place of the allspice, peppercorns, and star anise, for example. Some coriander seeds are also nice.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: 45 MINUTES

LOOK FOR LARGE PEARS,
just about ripe; their “shoulders” should yield to gentle pressure, but they should not be mushy. Serve these, if you like, with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream, or ice cream, or sour cream.

1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the pears, cavities up, in a baking pan filmed with a little water.

2.
Fill the cavities with a dot each of butter and sugar. Cover the pan and bake until very soft, about 30 minutes; after about 15 minutes of cooking, brush the surface of the pears with the butter-sugar mixture, which will have softened. Serve warm or at room temperature.

MAKES 4 SMALL SERVINGS

TIME: 15 MINUTES

THE DEAL BANANAS
for cooking are just ripe, yellow with barely any brown spots. Double this recipe if you want a more substantial dessert or serve with vanilla ice cream.

1.
Peel the bananas, cut them in half crosswise, then lengthwise, so that each banana has been made into 4 pieces. Put the butter in a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat.

2.
Dredge the banana pieces lightly in the flour, shaking them to remove the excess. When the butter foam subsides, add the pieces to the skillet. Cook, turning frequently, until they are golden and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with the sugar and cook 1 minute more.

3.
Serve, passing additional sugar and lemon juice at the table.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: 15 MINUTES

IF YOU TAKE
soft, ripe fruit, top it with a fancy sauce like crème Anglaise, and run the whole thing under the broiler, you have a four-star dessert. But if you top the fruit with something like sweetened heavy cream, whipped just enough so that it holds some body when broiled, or sweetened sour cream—which hardly needs to be whisked—you can produce a similarly glorious dessert in less than half the time.

Although this preparation is lightning-quick, it has to be constantly watched while cooking. Get the broiler hot, put the dish right under the
heating element, and keep your eyes open. You want the topping to burn a little bit—it will smell like toasting marshmallows—but obviously not too much. When the topping is nearly uniformly brown, with a few black spots, it’s done. The fruit will not have cooked at all.

1.
Preheat the broiler; set the rack as close to the heat source as possible (even 2 inches is not too close).

2.
Wash, pit, stem, and peel the fruit as necessary. Cut stone fruit in halves or slices as you prefer. Cut strawberries in thick slices; leave smaller berries whole. Put the fruit—there should be at least 2 cups—in a baking or gratin dish just large enough to hold it.

3.
Whip the cream with 2 tablespoons of the sugar and the vanilla until it is thick and just barely holding soft peaks. Pour it over and around the fruit. Sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.

4.
Broil carefully, allowing the cream to brown all over and even burn in a couple of spots; rotate the baking dish during broiling if necessary. Remove and serve.

VARIATION

Using sour cream in place of cream will produce a strikingly different result. Sour cream is thick, rich, flavorful, and (obviously) sour; sweet cream becomes thinner and saucier in texture: Combine 1 cup sour cream with just enough milk—about ¼ cup—to allow you to whisk it smooth. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and proceed as directed, using 1 tablespoon brown sugar for the topping.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: 30 MINUTES

I MAKE THESE SKEWERS,
the creation of my friend Johnny Earles, several times each summer. The bananas, especially, drive everyone wild.

1.
Start a grill; the fire should be quite hot and the rack positioned 4 to 6 inches from the heat source. Combine the sugar, ginger, and ½ cup of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and let sit while you prepare the fruit.

2.
Do not peel the bananas; cut them into 2-inch-long chunks and make a shallow vertical slit in the skin to facilitate peeling at the table. Peel and core the pineapple, then cut it into 2-inch chunks. Pit the peaches and cut them into large chunks.

3.
Skewer the fruit. Strain the syrup and brush the fruit lightly with it. Grill the fruit until the pineapple is nicely browned, 2 to 4 minutes per side. As it is grilling, brush occasionally with the syrup.

4.
When the fruit is done, brush once more with syrup; serve hot or warm.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: AT LEAST 2 HOURS, LARGELY UNATTENDED

UNLIKE ALMOST EVERY
other frozen dessert, granitas take no special equipment. They do take some time, however, and do not keep well, so timing is important. Figure two to three hours for this, start to finish.

1.
Mix the sugar with ⅔ cup of boiling water and stir to dissolve. Add another cup of water and combine with the citrus juice and zest. Taste and add more sugar if necessary.

2.
Pour the prepared mixture into a shallow metal or glass pan or bowl. Freeze for about 30 minutes, or until ice crystals begin to form at the edges. Gently stir the crystals back into the liquid, not breaking them up entirely; a large fork is a good tool for this task.

3.
Continue to stir and break up clumps of crystals every half hour or so. When the entire mixture has the texture of soft crushed ice, it’s ready to serve. Serve immediately or continue to stir every half hour or so until ready to serve.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

TIME: 10 MINUTES, PLUS TIME TO FREEZE

A SPECIAL COMBINATION,
decidedly Asian. Use fresh ginger if at all possible.

Whisk the sugar and ginger into the puree and freeze in an ice cream machine, according to the manufacturer’s directions. This is best served straight from the machine or after no more than an hour or two in the freezer.

MAKES 1 QUART

TIME: 5 MINUTES, PLUS TIME TO FREEZE

IF YOU HAVE
an ice cream machine, this is one of the fastest, easiest, most satisfying desserts you can make.

1.
Combine the coconut milk with the sugar and taste; add more sugar if you like. Add the vanilla and stir.

2.
Freeze in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Serve as soon as possible after making or freeze and let “warm” in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving. Best the day it is made.

MAKES ABOUT 4 DOZEN

TIME: 30 MINUTES

COOKIES ARE ALWAYS
easy to make, but even they can use streamlining. One solution is to whip up a single dough in a food processor and finish it in different ways. This basic dough is great plain (with white sugar or brown or even molasses), but it can be varied with ginger or a mix of spices, chocolate chips, or orange. Or with one batch of dough you can make four different types of cookies—add lemon juice and zest to one-fourth of it, for example, chopped walnuts to the second, raisins to the third, and coconut to the fourth. Finally, it can produce rolled-out, cut, and decorated cookies; just chill it first to make it easier to handle. You might call this “the mother of all butter cookies.”