The Weeds: #010
Welcome to Cold Salad Plate Summer!
First off, I want to take a sec to welcome all the new subscribers who joined us this week! I’m glad to have you here! This is The Weeds, which is a semi-regular email of stuff I’ve written or read or eaten over the past week or two (or, ahem, month). You can also find original recipes, the occasional interview, book reviews, and random ruminations. Thanks for reading!
The Lede
This week, I hosted my third bebow pop-up, this time at one of my favorite places in Richmond — Celladora, a fantastic neighborhood natural wine shop/bar. It was a lovely afternoon of feeding friends old and new, and I’m so grateful to the ever gracious Megan Hopkins for letting me take over her shop for a few hours.
The meal celebrated something I dearly love (and a subject I just wrote about for Eater), Old Lady Plates, aka cold salad plates, cold salad trios, etc — those scoops of salad arranged just so on a cold plate with lots of pickles and crackers. Mine had a curried chicken (or tofu!) salad, a chickpea and artichoke salad topped with banana peppers, and a scoop of Nancy’s Cottage Cheese with black pepper and quinoa crispies, plus an assortment of pickled things and homemade Ritz-esque crackers. I also made a big pitcher of honeysuckle lemonade for my non wine-drinking friends. For dessert, I resurrected the bygone Southern classic, Frozen Fruit Salad, which is kind of like ambrosia or watergate salad. There’s cream cheese and whipped cream (Cool Whip in the original version) mixed with fruit, nuts, and mini marshmallows. I went with a strawberry-rhubarb version, with rhubarb from my yard. It’s the perfect cool, refreshing summer dessert.
If you missed this installment of bebow, mark your calendar for July 24. I’ll be back at Celladora with a HOT TOMATO SUMMER lunch pop-up with a menu full of tomato-and-Duke’s-Mayonnaise-filled dishes.
The Read
Also at Eater right now, Bettina Makalintal got me all up in my feels about Rita’s, the water ice spot from Pennsylvania that I learned to love when I lived there with my dad and stepmom from the ages of 16 to 17. Makalintal writes about how her long-standing order is a source of comfort, and that resonated bigtime with me, a lover of habitual orders. I might bop around the menu a bit more than she does, but for the most part, my standing order is strawberry ice with chocolate custard, and the combination is unassailable. Though I will note that my dad’s go-to order of lemon water ice with vanilla custard is another top-tier choice.
Icy things and/or ice cream are always going to be my favorites when it comes to sweet treats. I remember buying sno-cones from the little convenience store, The Dilly Dally (Oh my god, guys, it’s still there!) as a little kid on the way to visit my Grandma Winnie. I consistently chose that treat above all others, and I had zero regrets as it dripped a red and blue trail down my arm all the way to Grandma’s house. Currently, one of my favorite icy treats in Richmond is the shaved ice from Aloha Shave Ice at the Big Market. It’s worth battling the crowds for a cup full of frozen blue goodness (Blue Raspberry crew, where you at??).
The Feed
I was sold on the idea of frozen fruit salad the first time I ever heard it mentioned, well before I actually knew what it was. You can find it on the cold salad plate at a spot called Swan Coach House in Atlanta, that fellow cold salad enthusiast, Emily Nunn, author of The Department of Salad newsletter pointed me towards. Theirs is a vision, cut in triangles and served cozied up to a scoop of chicken salad.
For bebow, I riffed on the idea but the usual omitted canned fruit cocktail for fresh fruit and switched out the more common walnuts or pecans for pistachios, for a little pop of green. I cooked down rhubarb from my yard and mixed it with strawberries that I macerated in triple sec. I made several versions without mini marshmallows, but in the end, they were deemed to be essential to the soft, cloudlike texture that makes this dessert so very loveable.
Strawberry Rhubarb Pistachio Frozen Fruit Salad
Ingredients
For the fruit mixture
3 cups strawberries, hulled and quartered
1/2 cup triple sec
4 stalks rhubarb, chopped in 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup granulated sugar
For the frozen fruit salad
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1 (8 oz) block cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup Duke’s Mayonnaise
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup toasted, salted pistachios, roughly chopped
1 cup mini marshmallows
Directions
In a container with a lid, combine 3 cups hulled, quartered strawberries and 1/2 cup triple sec. Allow to sit for at least 2 hours or up to 24 hours.
In a medium saucepan, combine 4 stalks chopped rhubarb and 1/2 cup granulated sugar, and heat over medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the rhubarb is soft. Allow to cool.
Drain the strawberry mixture (save the liquid for making cocktails!), and gently combine the strawberries and cooked rhubarb. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, 1 cup whip heavy cream and 1 tablespoon powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Remove the heavy cream to a bowl and wipe out the mixing bowl.
To that bowl, add 8 oz softened cream cheese, and use the paddle attachment to beat until smooth. Add 1/2 cup Duke’s Mayonnaise and 1/2 cup granulated sugar, and beat until smooth. Fold in strawberry-rhubarb mixture, pistachios, and marshmallows. Gently fold in the whipped cream to combine.
At this point, you have a choice about your method of delivery. You can freeze this in a casserole pan, a bundt pan, or on a silpat-lined sheet tray. In each of those cases, you’ll freeze overnight, and then allow to thaw at room temperature for about 10 minutes before cutting into slices. My approach was to freeze the mixture in 2.25” deep circular silicone molds, so I could pop them out as needed, and I highly recommend this method, as it’s the easiest way to enjoy a little bit at a time.
xox
SG
Delightfully described in words and pictures! Thanks, Steph!