This Tuesday, June 8th we'll be getting a shipment of sweet farm strawberries in from Black Dog Farms, a 35 acre organically certified farm located in the Imperial Valley. We'll also be getting various types of melons from them, and serving these fruits up in the following ways:

Fresh Strawberries marinated in an orange and vanilla bean infused rum simple syrup, served over either house-made vanilla ice cream or shortcake (or both!). The other delicious detail is that the rum we'll be using is Ballast Point Brewery's Three Sheets Barrel Aged Rum, which we've been wanting to try ever since this great local brewery started distilling. If you've ever been curious about what barrel aging entails, check out their webcam! Ha!

Anyways, back to the fruits... With the melons, we'll be making a simple Melon Bowl (my name for a mixed fruit salad) which may include any of the following types of melons: Honeydew, Canteloupe, Hami, Galia, and Yellow, Orange or Red fleshed seedless watermelons.

Summer has come, so come get your summer fruits on!

Oh, and just another quick menu FYI, we'll be serving a Pesto Wild Rice side on our seasonal market fish plate from now on along with the steamed veggies we've had. It's a nice chewy California-grown wild rice tossed in a walnut-garlic-parsley pesto.

Ingredients

*This recipe makes 6 8 oz. ramekins of fruit cobbler.

Cobbler Crust
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup firmly packed golden brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 egg
3/4 cup heavy cream

Fruit Filling
6 cups various berries, rhubarb, apples, etc.
1/2 cup raw sugar or honey substitute
2 T flour
1/2 t cinnamon

Preparation

Cobbler Crust

Ingredients

2 lbs macadamia nuts
1 cup sugar
2 eggs

Preparation

Blend nuts, sugar and eggs in blender until pasty.
Form into 2-inch cookies and place on cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Dennis and I did some recipe testing tonight, trying out our ideas for fish cakes, seafood stew and "pots de creme" (pronounced po du krem in French), or as I like to call them, chocolate pots of cream! :-) Maybe pots of chocolate cream would be more accurate... At any rate, I haven't tasted the dessert yet- they get baked in the oven for a while, then need to cool and be chilled since they're served cold, so I'm just banking on the fact that Dennis has saved me a pot or two. Cross your fingers!

Ingredients

Topping
1 cup flour
1 cup oatmeal (old-fashioned, not quick cooking)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 t of salt
8 T butter (one stick, unsalted, diced)

Filling
1 T sugar
1 T flour
5 large pears
9 ounces of bittersweet chocolate chips (Ghirardelli 60% cacao)

Preparation

• Mix ingredients (except pears) with your hands until it starts to form a dough that clumps, but still falls apart.
• Peel pears, remove cores, and dice. Mix with sugar, flour, and chocolate chips.