SALADS & SIDES

Ricotta spread with honeycomb and toasts. Photo courtesy Davanti | Chicago.

DESSERTS

While you may not have leftover whey begging to be made into ricotta, you can make your own version from milk and cream. Sure, it’s easier to buy it ready-made; but if you like to cook, you’ll enjoy the experience. This recipe is adapted by one from Chef Anne Burrell, who makes it to serve as an appetizer spread with toast.

And it’s easy! Prep time is 5 minutes, cook time is 10 minutes, draining time is 15 minutes.

Ingredients For 4-6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the milk, cream, vinegar and salt in a medium saucepan. Place over medium heat and slowly bring to a simmer. Simmer for 1 to 2 minutes, until curds begin to form.

2. LINE a mesh strainer with several layers of damp cheesecloth. Gently pour the curds and whey through into the strainer and let drain for 15 minutes. Gather the cheesecloth together and gently squeeze some of the excess liquid from the ricotta. Transfer the ricotta to a serving dish and drizzle with big fat finishing oil.

3. PREHEAT a grill or broiler. While the ricotta is draining, slice the bread into 1/2-inch thick slices. Toast the bread on the grill or in the broiler on both sides. Swipe the garlic 2 times on each piece of toast and drizzle each piece with finishing oil. Serve the ricotta, slightly warmed, with the grilled bread.

[2] Powdered sugar, also known as confectioner’s sugar and 10X sugar (photo © The Nibble).

[3] Meringue powder is available from King Arthur Flour.

Want to bake cookies for July 4th?

1. MIX up and roll out your favorite sugar cookie dough (or other rolled cookie dough).

2. USE a star cookie cutter to cut shapes. If you have small and large star cutters, make large and small sizes.

Here’s a set of 6 nested star cookie cutters, that you can also use for Christmas cookies.

3. BAKE, cool and ice the cookie tops white royal icing (recipe below); then decorate with red and blue stripes. Voilà: the Stars and Stripes.

Check out the different types of cookies in our delicious Cookie Glossary.
 
 
RECIPE: ROYAL ICING

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. MAKE the icing. Mix the first three ingredients together for 7 to 10 minutes, until the icing stiffens.

If the icing appears too stiff, add more water, one teaspoon at a time. You want the icing to be thin enough that you can pipe it easily.

Tint 1/4 of the icing red, and 1/4 blue (see instructions below).

2. DECORATE the cookies when they are cool. Use an offset spatula to ice the cookie tops white. Then place the tinted icing into separate piping bags fitted with a very small round tip.

3. CREATE the red and blue stripes. If you don’t have a steady hand, wavy lines are fine.

Keep the tip about 1/2 inch above the cookie as you ice. This helps to achieve a straighter line.

Variation: Instead of piping stripes, you can sprinkle red, white and blue star decorations on the white royal icing base while it’s still wet.

Here are large stars and small stars.

4. DRY the cookies completely, usually 1 to 2 hours.

Then, pour in sparkling or still wine or white spirits (gin, tequila, vodka) and serve with a spoon. As the sorbet melts into the wine or spirit, it creates a special cocktail.
 
 
MAKE IT A PARTY ACTIVITY

For a fun dessert, make pairing dessert cocktails a dinner party activity, with each guest mixing and matching to find his/her favorites.

There are no wrong pairings; it’s what your palate likes. Here are some matching ideas for starters:
 
 
WITH CITRUS, MOST FRUIT & LIGHT FLAVOR SORBETS

[1] Lemon sorbet with citron vodka and Limoncello (photo © Auremar | Fotolia).

WITH BERRY, CHOCOLATE & STRONGER SORBET FLAVORS

 
 
MORE ON SORBET COCKTAILS

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

While we just said that our favorite pie topping is streusel (crumb topping), here’s something special for July 4th.

You can buy or bake an open face pie (no top crust) or a tart, and decorate it as the American Flag.

All you need to decorate are:

 
Older children can do the decorating, and everyone can enjoy a piece of “grand old pie.”

If you’ve purchased the pie, the dessert can be ready in 10 minutes!

For those who don’t know the lyrics/tune to George M. Cohan’s classic, “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” practice on You Tube.

If you use an aerosol whipped cream like Reddi-Wip, the air will deflate much sooner than if you whip your own stabilized whipped cream.

Even if you don’t stabilize the whipped cream, your own beater-whipped cream will stay fluffy longer. You don’t need to create whipped cream stars, which the Reddi-Wip nozzle enables. Instead, just emulate the real white bars of the flag, and use one long line of whipped cream in-between the rows of strawberries.
  

Personally, we’d rather have a cobbler, crisp or grunt (the difference).

If it has to be a conventional pie, give us a crumb topping instead of a top crust. For thus, that means streusel—the same topping that goes on top of crumb cake.

WHAT IS STREUSEL?

Streusel is a crumb topping made from butter, flour and sugar. It can also contain chopped nuts or rolled oats. We think it’s easier than a conventional dough crust.

Pronounced SHTROY-zul, the word derives from the German “streuen,” meaning to sprinkle or scatter.

Streusel is used as a topping for a variety of pies, fruit crisps, cakes and pastries, most notably coffee cakes.

A pie with a streusel topping is sometimes referred to as a “crumble pie.”

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. With a pastry blender or fork, cut in the butter until fine crumbs form.

2. USE your fingers to squeeze the fine crumbs into large clumps (size as desired—we like large crumbs). Sprinkle over the top of the pie and bake per recipe instructions. That’s it!