Strawberry and blueberry clafoutis
A summery dessert to make up for my delinquent food newslettering...
Hello friends — I failed to send a new edition of Rad Dishes at the end of the last two months, and a part of me felt ready to say it was time to simply call it quits. But for now, I’m just going to say I’m on what I call a “whenever I feel like it” schedule. I’ve been adjusting to “resetting” a little this summer (even though this pandemic is nowhere near over) and I don’t think I should make any rash decisions about my hobbies and activities just yet. All I know is, I haven’t really felt like cooking a ton or doing anything particularly creative in the kitchen, but my recent interest in browsing and bookmarking recipes indicates that it may have just been a phase. Plus, I did make this clafoutis somewhat recently, and with summer not quite over yet, I thought I should share:
RECIPE: Strawberry and blueberry clafoutis
I had my first clafoutis courtesy of my mother-in-law earlier this summer and was quite delighted. Somewhat cakey and custardy and chockfull of blueberries, it was the perfect baked treat for a summer evening. So when I found myself with an abundance of blueberries and strawberries a few weeks ago, I thought a clafoutis would be a perfect way to use the surplus up. I took this NYT Cooking recipe, a Julia Moskin adaptation of a Julia Child recipe, that I altered just a little further. This recipe called for blueberries or blackberries, but I just worked with what I had and the results were pretty solid. (There is some infighting in the comments for the recipe, which state that a true clafoutis can only have cherries in it, but if my French mother-in-law was willing to call her blueberry concoction a clafoutis, I am perfectly fine referring to this dish as a clafoutis as well.) If you’re looking for a way to use up some end-of-summer fruits, this may be the recipe for you.
Ingredients
Butter for baking dish
1 and 1/4 cups milk (I’d avoid skim milk, but my 1% did the job)
1/3 cup granulated sugar for an early step, plus 1/4 cup granulated sugar to use later
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
1 heaping cup of blueberries, rinsed and drained
1 and 1/4 cups strawberries (halved or quartered according to preference)
Optional: powdered sugar (I skipped it)
Instructions
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a baking dish that’s at least 1 1/2 inches deep with butter. (My regular 9-inch round cake pan worked out fine.)
Blend the milk, 1/3 cup granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt and flour together until the mixture is smooth and also frothy. (You can use a regular blender, or an immersion blender like I did.)
Pour an approximately 1/4-inch thick layer of batter on the bottom of your baking dish. Place in the oven for about 3 minutes until a film of batter has settled at the bottom of the dish — remove from the oven.
Spread the berries throughout the bottom of the baking dish, on top of the batter, then sprinkle 1/4 cup of granulated sugar on top. Pour the rest of the batter into the pan and smooth it out.
Place the baking dish in the center of the oven and bake at about 50 minutes until the top has puffed up and browned lightly. A tester poked in the middle of the clafoutis should come out clean.
You could sprinkle powdered sugar on top before serving (I skipped it and didn’t miss it). The clafoutis tastes best served at least slightly warm — we reheated our leftover slices and had them with coffee later in the week.
Notes
Adapted from Julia Moskin in NYT Cooking.
Food for Thought
From Grub Street, whole milk is supposedly back. As someone who didn’t really give up drinking cow’s milk (though fine, I tend to buy 1%), how about we all… just drink what we want, while also considering ways to improve our food production practices overall?
Padma Lakshmi weighed in on that juvenile Washington Post “humor” column that claimed Indian food is all about “one spice.” (via the Wapo’s Voraciously)
I successfully made these Dan Dan Noodles via Woks of Life earlier this summer and really enjoyed the flavor. Meanwhile, I haven’t made this yet, but I’m planning to attempt this Summer Squash Pasta Bake from Smitten Kitchen this weekend. Maybe you’ll want to give it a try.
Bites of Culture
We just knocked out the entirety of Netflix’s The Chair (I enjoyed the homage to a classic Agent Mulder moment) and have finished watching (rewatching for me) the first season of Succession. The White Lotus was also reasonably entertaining.
And here’s a book I recently enjoyed (I am slowly getting my reading groove back too): The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton. It’s a fictional rock oral history with characters whose voices really come to life, while also touching upon contemporarily relevant themes concerning race.
Thanks for reading this edition of Rad Dishes! You can follow me on my occasionally updated Instagram account (the even less updated Twitter account is no longer active). A streamlined version of Rad Dishes (the original food blog) is here.
Earlier Newsletters
Indian-ish Nachos, an adaptation