Ina's Zucchini Vichyssoise: Hot or Cold for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

I made soup this week! Ina Garten's Zucchini Vichyssoise. After a couple of weeks of lazy, I finally decided that I better use up my wilting veggies and get a soup made. Since it is pretty warm and humid (although nothing like the temperatures my friends and family in the Pacific Northwest are in right now), this is a great soup as it can be enjoyed both hot or cold. 

I changed Ina Garten's recipe slightly--using non-chicken broth, adding a bit more cream, and using my high-speed blender instead of a food mill. Oh, and I added a little Tarragon, just because. 

Zucchini Vichyssoise 

Slightly Adapted by Ina Garten via FoodNetwork.com

(Yields 6 Servings)

1 Tbsp unsalted butter

1 Tbsp GOOD olive oil ;-)

5 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts (about 4-8 leeks)

4 cups chopped, unpeeled white boiling potatoes (I used Yukon potatoes)

3 cups chopped zucchini (about 2 zucchini) 

1 1/2 cups chicken broth or light vegetable broth

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

(I added 1/2 tsp dried tarragon)

2 Tbsp heavy cream

fresh chives, julienned zucchini or parsley for garnish

Heat the butter and oil in a large stockpot, add the leeks, and saute over medium-low heat for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, zucchini, chicken stock, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil; then lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Cool for a few minutes and then process through a food mill fitted with the medium disc. Add the cream and season to taste. Serve either cold or hot, garnished with chopped chives and/or zucchini.

Notes/Results: A simple and very tasty soup, the leeks are the prominent flavor here but there is nothing wrong with that. It's a silky and satisfying soup and so far, I have tasted it hot, room temp, and mostly chilled and I think I like room temp or chilled best but I'll you know tomorrow after it sits over night. I would make it again. 

I'll be linking this soup up at I Heart Cooking Clubs this coming week as it will be our June 2021 Potluck theme. 

Let see who is in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week!

Tina of Squirrel Head Manor shared a Griddled Ham & Cheese with Mustard this week, saying, "A few posts back I mentioned Doug was getting good use of the Blackstone griddle. The  breakfasts are great but so are the grilled sandwiches. The crust was toasted and delicate for this ham and cheese with mustard.  Now that we are home the griddle is set up on the porch.  Guess we will buy another one for camping and storing in the RV."

Radha of The Magical Ingredients for a Wholesome Life From the Heart of My Kitchen is here with Jowar/Sorghum Salad. She says, "This is a simple, colorful, and delicious salad made with Jowar or sorghum that satiates hunger. This salad is easy to make and I guarantee that this is going to be made often in your home. This is a perfect summer salad. Fresh veggies and peanuts give the crunch, jowar provides the carbs as well as fiber and garbanzos give a protein boost along with peanuts. The added spices give a kick to the salad."

Kim of Stirring the Pot brought Ina's Breakfast Sandwich this week, saying, "I thought this was an incredibly delicious and filling sandwich. I was trying to think about how to describe it and words like  "unctuous and top-quality and so satisfying" came to mind. It's only a few simple ingredients, but you can taste them all so well and they all play together so nicely."

Thanks everyone for hanging out with me this week! 

 

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
 

If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
• Although we are pretty wide on what defines a soup, sandwich or salad, entries that are clearly not in the same family (ie: desserts, meats, random main or side dishes that aren't salads, etc.) are meant for another round up and will be deleted. 

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a happy, healthy week!

 

A Few Favorite Giada De Laurentiis Summery Soups for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

I really intended on making a new soup this week but life sometimes gets in the way. I am waiting to see if Max, my 17-year-old diabetic cat needs to go to the emergency vet to get "unclogged" today--a fate both of us would prefer to avoid, and so starting something on the stove seemed like not a great idea.

So I am back to a recap of summer-worthy soups I have enjoyed. This week, I am grabbing five soups from Giada De Laurentiis that are great for summer. 

Giada's Corn & Tomato Soup with Basil is summer in a bowl!

Arugula and mascarpone elevate her Italian Vichyssoise.

Her Artichoke Soup with Fresh Mint is good hot or cold. 

Although I made it in the winter months, Giada's Vegetarian Chili Verde works equally well in the summer.

If you can still get good asparagus where you live, her Asparagus Soup with Herbed Goat Cheese is delicious. 

I am linking these 5 soups up at I Heart Cooking Clubs where it is Put It In a Bowl week. 

Let see who is in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week!

Tina of Squirrel Head Manor is a woman after my own heart, making a Chicken Stew for a One-Pot Meal {Because of course you eat a hot meal with a 102 degree heat index!} She says, "This is a stew of chunks of chicken, black and red beans, sauteed onion and yellow peppers, half a can of tomatoes and chicken broth.  It's very thick and I imagine it would be great over rice but we just ate a bowl as it is for dinner. We had leftovers too :-)"

Judee of Gluten Free A-Z Blog shared her Easy Pasta Salad - Healthy, Vegan and Gluten Free, saying, "Mixed with any kind of vegetable, the new high protein pastas, which are on all the supermarket shelves, are a great base for a quick and easy healthy meal, and you can be as creative as you like with the variety of vegetables that you add to the salad."

Kim of Stirring the Pot brought this tasty-looking (but multi-step and dish) Broccoli & Kale Salad from Ina Garten (part of her Summer Slim Down series of posts). Kim says, "One plus about this salad is that it would make a lovely lunch or dinner for entertaining. You could prep all the ingredients beforehand and toss it altogether when the guests arrived. You could also prep all these ingredients and then meal prep this salad for lunches throughout the week. In fact, that's what I will likely do. This salad is hearty, healthy, beautiful, and delicious, but it will yield an entire sink of dirty dishes and a rather messy kitchen so be forewarned!"

Finally, earlier in the week at Kahakai Kitchen, I made a Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing that was just the thing for a hot summer evening's meal. I added some leftover red beans and rice to make it a heartier salad, and wanted to smother everything with the dressing! So good!

Thanks everyone for hanging out with me this week! 

 

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
 

If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
• Although we are pretty wide on what defines a soup, sandwich or salad, entries that are clearly not in the same family (ie: desserts, meats, random main or side dishes that aren't salads, etc.) are meant for another round up and will be deleted. 

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a happy, healthy week!

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "The North Face of the Heart" by Dolores Redondo, Served with a Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing

Friday's are great days to talk about books and so I am very happy to be today's stop on the TLC Book Tour for The North Face of the Heart by Dolores Redondo. Accompanying my book review is a recipe for a Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing, inspired by the book's New Orleans setting. 

Publisher's Blurb:

Amaia Salazar, a young detective from the north of Spain, has joined a group of trainees at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Haunted by her past and having already tracked down a predator on her own, Amaia is no typical rookie. And this is no ordinary student lecture at Quantico. FBI agent Aloisius Dupree is already well acquainted with Amaia’s skills, her intuition, and her ability to understand evil. He now needs her help in hunting an elusive serial killer dubbed “the Composer,” and in solving another case that’s been following him his whole life.

From New Jersey to Oklahoma to Texas, the Composer’s victims are entire families annihilated in the chaos of natural disasters, their bodies posed with chilling purpose amid the ruins. Dupree and Amaia follow his trail to New Orleans. The clock is ticking. It’s the eve of the worst hurricane in the city’s history. But a troubling call from Amaia’s aunt back home awakens in Amaia the ghosts from her childhood and sends her down a path as dark as that of the coming storm.

Hardcover: 496 Pages

Publisher: Amazon Crossing (June 1, 2021)

My Review:

True crime and thrillers and crime fiction are among my favorite genres. I love a good dark thriller and when you add a serial killer and FBI profilers, it hits all my sweet spots. Still, I was worried when The North Face of the Heart arrived because of the size of the book--at almost 500 pages is a big commitment for me with an insane work schedule and many other books for review, book clubs and buddy reads competing for my attention. Also translated books (this one from Spanish) can sometimes get bogged down in the translation. But this one got under my skin pretty quickly, and I found myself compelled to read it and find out what was going to happen next. 

Amaia Salazar is twenty-five and already an Assistant Inspector in Paloma, Spain who has gained some notoriety for solving a cold case when she is sent to the Quantico with a group of European police officers for training. Her profiling abilities and confidence get her noticed by the senior agent working on a case where a serial killer is targeting and murdering families during storms and natural disasters and has been getting away with it for almost two decades. Soon she is placed on the profiling team and headed for New Orleans and one of the biggest disasters in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina. The book alternates between 2005 and flashbacks to Amaia's childhood where she suffered some serious trauma that still impacts her as an adult. Although primarily told through Amaia's eyes, we get the POV of other characters, past and present. The pacing was good--you could feel the tension build along with the gale-force winds of Katrina and that made it hard to put the book down. Amaia is a great character and the most fully flushed out in the book--it was easy to root for her. This book is apparently a prequel of sorts to the author's bestselling Spanish Baztán trilogy. (I was happy to find that Netflix made this into a trio of films that I am going to start streaming this weekend). I liked the darkness of the story, the crushing and horrific reality of the people who suffered through Hurricane Katrina (difficult to read but so compelling) and the bits of Spanish and Creole folklore that is woven into it all. It's not a perfect book, the dialogue gets a bit clunky, possibly due to the translation, and some of the characters seem to fall into crime fiction tropes, but overall, I really enjoyed it, it was well-worth my time, and I plan to seek out the author's other books.  

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Author Notes: Dolores Redondo studied law and the culinary arts before writing The Baztán Trilogy, a successful crime series set in the Basque Pyrenees that has sold over 1.5 million copies in Spanish, has been translated into more than thirty-five languages, and was adapted into a popular film series. Twice nominated for the CWA International Dagger Award and a finalist for the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, Redondo was the recipient of the 2016 Premio Planeta—one of Spain’s most distinguished literary awards—for her stand-alone thriller All This I Will Give to You, which has also been optioned for feature film and television development and will be translated into eighteen languages.

Connect with Delores on her website, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

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Food Inspiration:

Serial killers and hurricanes don't leave a lot of time for eating but there was food to be found in The north Face of the Heart. Mentions included: chocolate bars and bottled water, oysters Bienville and crawfish, beer, outstanding fig ice cream from a cafe, scrambled eggs and coffee,toast, sandwiches (lots of sandwiches), candy and granola bars, ham and shrimp, jambalaya, cookies and crackers.

I was going to go with a shrimp po' boy-style sandwich for my bookish dish for the sandwiches the characters ate as fuel while working the case and as a nod to New Orleans. Then I decided I was more in the mood for a salad--given the humid weather this week. So, I. decided to take some of the elements of a shrimp po' boy--the spicy shrimp, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and a homemade remoulade and deconstruct them into a salad. Then some leftover red beans and rice found their way into the bowl and a leftover roll got halved and dipped into the shrimps spices and toasted. It's pretty freeform and open to putting in more veggies and what you like and have on hand so I am just giving you the remoulade recipe and how I prepped the shrimp and bread and assembled the salad below. 

Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy with Remoulade Dressing

By Deb, Kahakain Kitchen

(Makes 2 Large Salad Bowls)

 

Remoulade Dressing

By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen

(Makes about 1 1/2 Cups)

 

3/4 cup mayonnaise of choice

3/4 cup sour cream

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp mustard (Creole mustard if possible or grainy mustard)

2 Tbsp capers + about 1 tsp juice

2 Tbsp green onions, finely chopped

1 Tbsp dried parsley

1/2 Tbsp dried tarragon

1 tsp Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning or Cajun/Creole seasoning mix of choice

1 Tbsp lemon juice, or more to thin out as needed

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

 

Place all ingredients into a pint jar and place lid on tightly. Shake jar until dressing is well-blended. And additional liquid as needed for thinning (lemon juice, water or milk) to desired consistency. I like it thick and creamy but still pour-able. Place jar in fridge for 1 to 2 hours before using.

 

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Spicy Creole Shrimp:

1lb (16-20 count) shrimp, peeled and deveined

3 Tbsp butter, melted 

2 Tbsp Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning or Cajun/Creole seasoning mix of choice

Melt butter and pour into a large Ziploc bag. Add seasoning mix and shrimp, seal bag securely and shake/move shrimp around until completely coated with spices.

In a large skillet, pour in the shrimp and cook over medium heat for a few minutes on both sides until pink and cooked through. Gently lift out shrimp and set aside, keeping warm until ready to add to salad. If making bread/toast, don't clean the pan and see recipe below.

 

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To Make Creole Toast

Take bread or (split) roll of choice and place slices face-down in the pan, moving them around to ensure they are coated with the butter/spice mixture. If desired, flip bread over and continue moving slices to coat the other side.

Toast bread in pan over medium heat until crispy and golden brown. Flip and repeat on other side if desired. Set aside to serve with salad bowl.

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To Assemble Deconstructed Shrimp Po' Boy:

 

 I used:

 

1 small head iceberg lettuce, coarsely shredded

1  pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

1/3 cup chopped green onions

leftover Cajun red beans and rice if desired

Spicy Creole Shrimp

Remoulade Dressing 

Creole Toast to serve

 

Divide ingredients between two large plates or bowls. (Note: I like two add a layer of the dressing on top of my lettuce, then drizzle more on top after I have placed the shrimp.) Enjoy!

Notes/Results:  This salad made me happy--so much good flavor and wonderful textures from the crisp iceberg lettuce to the sweet juicy shrimp and tomatoes and creamy dressing. I'd be happy to eat the remoulade off of a stick--the capers and tarragon, along with the cajun/creole spices make it zippy and devious. I will happily make it again. 

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to this week's post. 

And of course a delicious salad based on a sandwich has to get linked up here at Kahakai Kitchen for this week's Souper Sundays post, my weekly feature where anyone can share their soup, salad or sandwich recipes. Here's the link to this weeks post. 

Note: A review copy of The North Face of the Heart was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.   
 
You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and what other reviewers thought about the book here. 

 

Five Nigel Slater Summer Soups for Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

I am going through a little bit of a cooking funk lately, meaning I have not had a lot of interest in spending time in the kitchen and that includes making soup on Sundays. Once again, I just didn't have it in me today to make and photograph soup, and it isn't anything to do with the season or weather. 

That means that I'll be reposting some past soup favorites. This week I am going with five Nigel Slater soup recipes that are good for the summer months.

First up is his Summer Miso Broth with Greens--it's light, healthy and delicious:

Nigel's A Soup the Color of Marigolds is a sunshiny blend of carrot and yellow tomato. It can be enjoyed either hot or cold and the color is so vibrant, it screams summer to me. 

Chowder is my soup choice of summer and Nigel's Quick Fish & Corn Chowder is an easy favorite. 

Who says you can't have stew in summer? Nigel's Chickpea, Summer Squash & Pepper Stew with Pesto is perfect use for end of summer produce. 

Finally, his Summer Vegetable Laksa is zingy and exotic and another great way to use summer veggies. 

The Souper Sundays kitchen is quiet this week but do join me sometime if you ever want to share a soup, salad, or sandwich creation! 

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
 

If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
• Although we are pretty wide on what defines a soup, sandwich or salad, entries that are clearly not in the same family (ie: desserts, meats, random main or side dishes that aren't salads, etc.) are meant for another round up and will be deleted. 

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a happy healthy week!

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "The Essence of Nathan Biddle" by J. William Lewis, Served with a Recipe for a Fresh Blackberry Milkshake

Aloha. I am happy to be a stop on the TLC Book Tour for The Essence of Nathan Biddle by J William Lewis. Accompanying my review is a Fresh Blackberry Milkshake inspired by my reading.  

Publisher's Blurb:

A subtly wicked, almost Southern Gothic tale of existential angst told by 18-year-old Kit Biddle, an anti-Gumpian southern boy struggling with the complexities of life. The story unfolds against a backdrop of painful chaos: Kit’s revered uncle, Nathaniel Tyler Biddle, Jr., has sacrificed his only son on direct and specific orders, according to Rev. Biddle, from God himself. As Kierkegaard has suggested, the comic and the tragic converge on Kit’s desperate search for meaning in a willy-nilly world of opaque walls and filtered light.

The enigmatic Anna appears with all the attributes of Kit’s yearning and imagination and then, just like that, she disappears like a phantom in a fog, only to be replaced by the enigmatic Sarah who reverses the roles and projects onto Kit all her desires and imaginings. Standing on one leg in the darkness, Death beckons to Kit with a promise of light and comfort but instead leaves him lying in his own blood on hot pavement with neither clarity nor relief. Who is Kit Biddle? He may actually be Nathan Biddle but who in the world is that?

When the fog dissipates—if the clarity he seeks finally appears—does Kit really want the answers he finds? 

Greenleaf Book Group Press (June 1, 2021)

440 Pages  

My Review:

I have mixed feelings about The Essence of Nathan Biddle. On one hand I enjoyed the atmospheric setting of the book in Alabama in the late 1950s and I was empathetic to the main character, Kit Biddle, a very smart and very angsty young man on the cusp of adulthood. On the other hand, I think this book is much more intelligent and intellectual than I ever claim to be and that meant the dialogue between Kit and his friends (and really most everyone in the book as he worked through his existential crisis), felt forced and many times I was wondering what happened and what I missed. The book is told in four sections and I had trouble with some of the jumps and back-tracking to what had taken place as Kit relates it, primarily to his therapist, in the second half of the book. Kit's story is certainly intriguing, especially some of the secrets and mystery surrounding his family, but at the end I was still scratching my head about what was real and what wasn't and feeling like I wanted more answers and closure. 

The writing is beautiful and there were some quotes that I loved and highlighted: "It really is a lot easier to see up when you're lying on your back." (About a calamity making you see the upside of life.) and "Maybe the really beautiful things are like that: little glowing sparks in the mundane darkness of everyday existence." I do think there are those who will love this book, especially fans of coming of age stories like The Catcher in the Rye fans and lovers of Southern Gothic fiction and stories set in the South. For me, I am glad I read it and I'm still thinking about it, but it won't go down as a favorite. 

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Author Notes: Alabama native J. William Lewis is a former lawyer who lives in Shoal Creek, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Born in Chickasaw, Alabama, Lewis grew up in Mobile. He graduated from Spring Hill College (A.B., magna cum laude, English and Philosophy) where he was a member of Alpha Sigma Nu and recipient of the Merihl Award. While in college, Lewis served as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine The Motley. Lewis received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and served on the Editorial Board of the Virginia Law Review. After a clerkship for the Honorable Walter P. Gewin on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Lewis practiced law in Birmingham for over three and a half decades.Presently, Lewis serves as executive officer of his family’s investment company, Seaman Capital, LLC, and related companies. He has been married to Lorraine Seaman Lewis for more than half a century. The Essence of Nathan Biddle is his debut novel.

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Food Inspiration:

There's not a lot of great, inspiring food in the book but mentions included: orange juice, sandwiches, Coke, beer, pickled boiled eggs in a jar, saltine crackers and beef jerky, Snickers and Milk Duds, Krispy Kreme donut, hotdogs, daiquiris, cookies, cereal, French fries, blackberry vines, cornfields, scrambled eggs, vanilla ice cream, a barbecue restaurant, a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk, donuts and coffee. 

For my bookish dish, I decided to combine a few mentions of blackberry vines in the countryside with some vanilla ice cream that Kit eats while in the hospital. One of my favorite things in life is a Fresh Blackberry Milkshake. If you are ever in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest during blackberry season, I highly recommend local chain Burgerville's fresh blackberry ice cream shakes as a gold standard. But, if you can't make it there while they feature them, you can easily get some fresh (or frozen) blackberries and make it yourself. 

Instead of plain vanilla ice cream, I bought one of my all-time favorites, Tillamook's Marionberry Pie Ice Cream. It is a rich, creamy vanilla base with berries and little chunks of pie crust in it. So good!

Fresh Blackberry Milkshake
By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen
(Makes 1 large Milkshake)

1 cup fresh blackberries
sugar, honey or other sweetener of choice as needed depending on blackberry sweetness
2 cups good vanilla ice cream, or berry-flavored ice cream as mentioned above
1/4 cup heavy cream or half-and-half + more as needed

Place the blackberries and sweetener if using into a high-speed blender and puree. Add ice cream and cream or half-and-half and blend until smooth. Add more cream/half-and-half as needed to thin out to desired consistency. Serve and enjoy!

Notes/Results: Sweet, a little tangy, there's few milkshakes I find more delicious that a fresh blackberry milkshake. My berries were sweeter than I expected and so I didn't add any additional sweetener, but definitely taste as you go and add as necessary. Also, if you don't like seeds, you can cook the berries down and strain out the juice and discard the seeds. I don't mind them--along with the bites of crust in the Marionberry Pie ice cream I used, they give it a little texture. I will happily make it again. 

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to this week's post. 

Note: A review copy of The Essence of Nathan Biddle was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.   
 
You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and what other reviewers thought about the book here.