5 Delicious Things to Do with Your Homemade Crème Fraîche

Am trying to find some time to bury my toes in the sand. So please bear with a few reposts for the next couple of weeks. There will be some new material, but ...Happy Summer.

I know, I know. I've been banging the drum about making your own crème fraîche for months now, but honestly it's worth the 10 seconds (minus the sitting-on-the-counter-time) of actual work it takes you to make the glorious stuff. If you somehow missed the super-easy instructions I've posted before, you can find them here. But once you make it, you end up with a jar full, rather than the measly,  expensive little cupful you find in the market. A few of you have asked what you can do with such a bounty.

As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much crème fraîche, just like you can never have too much chocolate. It's the sophisticated cousin of sour cream, and instead of a  sour tang, it has a nutty, full, more rounded flavor. And unlike one of it's parents, heavy cream, it keeps a long time. Mine will keep well up to a month in the coldest part of my fridge. If it lasts that long without having to start a fresh batch. I always start a fresh batch when I get down to my last half-cup or so.  Remember to keep a quarter cup or so to use as a starter with a bout 2 cups of single pasteurized heavy cream. Every day I can find a reason to dip into the jar of creamy goodness at least once.  God forbid I run out. Here's how I use mine (other than eating it right off a spoon):

Homemade crème fraîche.
For the record I did not eat the whole spoonful.

1.
As a topping for fruit, lightly sweetened or not.  I like it unsweetened, but taste it, and add a bit of sugar , honey, erythritol or stevia to your liking. Nothing is nicer than a bowl of sweet berries or peaches with a big ole spoonful of crème fraîche atop. All those ads showing strawberries with that fake-tasting frozen glop in a tub can't hold a candle to creamy crème fraîche. Or unsweetened as a topping for a baked potato, or better yet, a baked sweet potato. Nothing wrong with adding a sprinkle of blue cheese and some black pepper...

2.
Replace heavy cream with an equal amount of crème fraîche in baked goods. If your baking recipe calls for heavy cream, use your crème fraîche instead. It adds a depth of flavor you can't get from heavy cream. Cream pies, cakes, and ice creams are all seriously improved with crème fraîche.

3.
Whip it. You can whip it, and use it in either savory or sweet dishes. Mine usually whips more easily than regular cream, and if you stir a bit of curry paste into it before whipping it to dab on your crab cakes or spoon into your tomato soup, you won't be disappointed. Surprise your dining mates with savory whipped cream. They'll think you are a genius.

4.
Turn into a sauce or dressing. Just add your favorite seasonings,--- mine are currently Dijon mustard and anchovy paste, whisk in and the resulting sauce is perfect over grilled chicken, or over steamed vegetables like beets or green beans. To make into a dressing, you can do this, or simply mix with lemon juice, salt, pepper and a little minced fresh garlic. Need it lighter, use equal parts crème fraîche and plain fat-free Greek yogurt. A crème fraîche-yogurt salad dressing makes salad days seem a lot less penitential.

5.
Make cultured butter. If you have ever tasted cultured butter, you know why it costs so much over at Whole Paycheck. It's hard to go back to regular butter once you've had it or cooked with it. If you put a couple of cups of crème fraîche into a food processor or beat it with a hand mixer, just turn on the power, and keep going until it curdles up. Just takes a few minutes. Carefully, with a spatula, press out as much whey as you can, drain it off, and then add some cold water with an equal amount of ice to the curds and whirl again. Press out the water again with your spatula, and drain --keep going until it's all butter, and with the spatula, stir in a pinch or to of finely ground salt if you want salted butter. Go get some bread and eat. Don't share, it's that good.

5 Delicious Things to Do with Your Homemade Crème Fraîche

I know, I know. I've been banging the drum about making your own crème fraîche for months now, but honestly it's worth the 10 seconds (minus the sitting-on-the-counter-time) of actual work it takes you to make the glorious stuff. If you somehow missed the super-easy instructions I've posted before, you can find them here. But once you make it, you end up with a jar full, rather than the measly,  expensive little cupful you find in the market. A few of you have asked what you can do with such a bounty.

As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much crème fraîche, just like you can never have too much chocolate. It's the sophisticated cousin of sour cream, and instead of a  sour tang, it has a nutty, full, more rounded flavor. And unlike one of it's parents, heavy cream, it keeps a long time. Mine will keep well up to a month in the coldest part of my fridge. If it lasts that long without having to start a fresh batch. I always start a fresh batch when I get down to my last half-cup or so.  Remember to keep a quarter cup or so to use as a starter with a bout 2 cups of single pasteurized heavy cream. Every day I can find a reason to dip into the jar of creamy goodness at least once.  God forbid I run out. Here's how I use mine (other than eating it right off a spoon):

Homemade crème fraîche.
For the record I did not eat the whole spoonful.

1.
As a topping for fruit, lightly sweetened or not.  I like it unsweetened, but taste it, and add a bit of sugar , honey, erythritol or stevia to your liking. Nothing is nicer than a bowl of sweet berries or peaches with a big ole spoonful of crème fraîche atop. All those ads showing strawberries with that fake-tasting frozen glop in a tub can't hold a candle to creamy crème fraîche. Or unsweetened as a topping for a baked potato, or better yet, a baked sweet potato. Nothing wrong with adding a sprinkle of blue cheese and some black pepper...

2.
Replace heavy cream with an equal amount of crème fraîche in baked goods. If your baking recipe calls for heavy cream, use your crème fraîche instead. It adds a depth of flavor you can't get from heavy cream. Cream pies, cakes, and ice creams are all seriously improved with crème fraîche.

3.
Whip it. You can whip it, and use it in either savory or sweet dishes. Mine usually whips more easily than regular cream, and if you stir a bit of curry paste into it before whipping it to dab on your crab cakes or spoon into your tomato soup, you won't be disappointed. Surprise your dining mates with savory whipped cream. They'll think you are a genius.

4.
Turn into a sauce or dressing. Just add your favorite seasonings,--- mine are currently Dijon mustard and anchovy paste, whisk in and the resulting sauce is perfect over grilled chicken, or over steamed vegetables like beets or green beans. To make into a dressing, you can do this, or simply mix with lemon juice, salt, pepper and a little minced fresh garlic. Need it lighter, use equal parts crème fraîche and plain fat-free Greek yogurt. A crème fraîche-yogurt salad dressing makes salad days seem a lot less penitential.

5.
Make cultured butter. If you have ever tasted cultured butter, you know why it costs so much over at Whole Paycheck. It's hard to go back to regular butter once you've had it or cooked with it. If you put a couple of cups of crème fraîche into a food processor or beat it with a hand mixer, just turn on the power, and keep going until it curdles up. Just takes a few minutes. Carefully, with a spatula, press out as much whey as you can, drain it off, and then add some cold water with an equal amount of ice to the curds and whirl again. Press out the water again with your spatula, and drain --keep going until it's all butter, and with the spatula, stir in a pinch or to of finely ground salt if you want salted butter. Go get some bread and eat. Don't share, it's that good.

Crème Fraîche Dressing

Did you ever have something you make or cook so regularly that you've forgotten that there was ever a recipe for it? I admittedly have more than a few of those, but today as I was making my "house" salad dressing to doll up some cooked golden beets and baby spinach when I realized that some of you might find this a handy trick.

My family seemed to have an unusual fondness for salads that had both raw and cooked vegetables in them. We called them composed salads, just to fancify the whole thing. I think it really was my mother's way of recycling leftover vegetables so they didn't get tossed. Especially if there wasn't enough left to actually be reheated and served again. My frugal Depression-Era parent strikes again. I do the same thing. I had a cooked beet, some roasted cauliflower left from two nights ago, plus some baby spinach, red onion and olives lurking at the back of the fridge. As I went for the oil and vinegar,  I remembered I had just seen a jar of my famous homemade crème fraîche next to those lurking olives.  And I decided to make my favorite dressing.

About a million years ago, there used to be a  restaurant near school that specialized in crepes. As a genuine Francophile, and a poor college student, my weekly treat was often their $5 lunch which was generally a crepe filled with whatever filling that wasn't selling that week and a salad. I adored the salad dressing; it was creamy without being gloppy like the Russian, French and Ranch dressings in the cafeteria at school. After about my 6th visit I was finally brave enough to ask the waitress what the dressing was, and when she told me it was a cream dressing, it meant absolutely nothing to me. When I asked what that was, she brought the hostess, the chef's wife, who kindly explained how they made it. I've been making variations on it ever since. It's still fabulous. Not diety, fabulous. Delicious. Got it?

Cream dressing, often called a cream vinaigrette, is nothing more than heavy cream and an acid, like lemon juice or vinegar. Real sour cream works in place of the cream, or my favorite, crème fraîche. Salt and pepper are the only other constants and everything else is up to the cook. My current version uses homemade crème fraîche, and homemade herb vinegar. A tiny dab of Dijon mustard isn't out of place with a sweet vegetable in the salad like beets  or cooked carrots, but not essential.

Here's the basic recipe, feel free to extrapolate as you wish. I am going to just give you proportions, but if you want it sweeter, or sharper, add more or less cream, crème fraîche or vinegar. Wonderful on potatoes, eggs, beets, haricots or green beans, asparagus...anything, really.

Sorry, I was so hungry, I started to eat
before snapping a shot. My bad.

Crème Fraîche Dressing

3/4 cup homemade crème fraîche or heavy single pasteurized cream
1/4 cup herb vinegar, rice vinegar or sherry vinegar...or lemon juice
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
freshly ground pepper to taste

Optional: dab of Dijon, pinch of sugar, fresh herbs, pinch of minced garlic, chopped olives or pimentos, dab of anchovy paste...

Mix everything and let stand a few minutes to thicken. Add whatever optional ingredients that are appropriate for your salad.


  

Un-Decorating Day Dinner: Dijon, Soy & Molasses Roast Pork Tenderloin

Today I am cooking challenged. I don't feel like it as I've been dragging loads of Christmas decorations to our basement storage area. Except for the tree and mantel, and a few outdoor items, it's all put away. I've put away as many decorations as I can without dredging up the ire of my Italian ancestors who swore you had to leave the tree up until the Wise Men arrived at the Manger. Or you'd have bad luck for the rest of the year. While I don't believe, I'm also not taking any chances. I kind of like the tree up for a bit, too, since my retail hours don't give me much time to admire it during the brunt of the season. 

It's so much fun to put the stuff up, and such a pain to put it all away.  Un-decorating wears me out. I'm tired, and I want a good, quick meal, with enough leftovers for another lunch or dinner later in the week. Wasn't even thinking about dinner. Hmmm.

I found some nice, locally raised pork tenderloins at the market on Friday, and was planning to freeze them all, but I think a couple of them will fit the bill for tonight's dinner. A coating of mustard, molasses and soy sauce will do the trick and add a ton of flavor without having to plan ahead with a marinade or a brine. Cause I didn't really plan ahead. Some sautéed spinach, and whatever starchy thing is living in the freezer will round out the meal in a good way. A satisfying, quick meal. So I can still vacuum up little bits of artificial pine needles that trail from the living room to the basement stairs, the remnants of my un-decorating adventure.

Dijon, Soy & Molasses Roast Pork Tenderloin

Dijon, Soy & Molasses Roast Pork Tenderloin

Blackstrap molasses is the big, strong grandaddy of regular unsulphered molasses. If you can't find it or don't have it, use the regular stuff you have, but it adds a huge flavor without being too sweet, or adding too much sugar. Minced ginger and garlic in jars have the right texture to make a really smooth paste to smear over the tenderloins and are fast to use when you really want to eat something good without too much work.

Ingredients:

2 Pork tenderloins, each about 1-1/4 pounds

For the "schmear":
2 T Dijon mustard
1 T Tamari soy sauce
1 T Blackstrap molasses
1 T minced ginger from a jar
1 T minced garlic from a jar
2T granular erythritol, xylitol or sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Place a shallow rack in a 9" x 13" pan.

2. Mix all the schmear ingredients in a largish mixing bowl. Dry the pork tenderloins with paper towels, and roll them in the soy mixture.

3. Place side by side on the rack, in the pan, not touching, and place in the preheated oven and cook until the temperature in the thickest part is 145ºF for juicy, slightly pink meat, or cook to 150ºF for just a bit of pink in the center after resting. 25 to 35 minutes.  Remove from the oven and cover loosely for 5-8 minutes with foil to rest. Slice in 1/2" pieces to serve.

Serves 6.

Disordered Dressing and other ex-diet refugees.

I admit it. Along with the hundreds of cook books, I have a shelf of diet books. Partially because I have a background in nutrition, but mostly because I am perennially 10 pounds over where I’d like to be.  Weight Watchers, Atkins, Paleo, Hungry Girl, Sugar Busters, all the biggies are there, and truthfully while all the books have recipes in them; I’ve cooked very few things from them. So many of them are so full of disgusting substitutions, like half the stuff from Hungry Girl, that once you try making one or two of the recipes you’ll never want to try them again. Please strike me dead if I ever even CONSIDER making onion rings encrusted with Fiber One. Those diet books are are huddled together on a bottom bookshelf like refugees in the hold of a ship.

I do have a “diet” recipe that I use quite often, for a salad dressing that actually didn’t come from a diet book. I’m sure it’s in one somewhere, though. It’s simply equal parts good quality balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard. The recipe was actually explained to me by the mother of a young woman being treated for an eating disorder, as the only dressing the girl would eat. I was doing a clinical rotation at the time in a residential facility, and I was taking down notes from the mother who was talking about her daughter’s fear of fat in her food.

Later in the week, I was out of time one morning, and wanting a salad for lunch, I mixed the two ingredients in the bottom of my lunch container and took it with me. It’s delicious. Since then, I’ve messed with it, added some oil, a bit of garlic and a dab of sweetener, and it’s a good, quick go-to dressing. It’s good even in its original form, without any of my changes. You can however mess with it infinitely with different vinegars, mustards, seasonings, sweeteners etc. Hence, the name I’ve given it: Disordered Dressing.

So while I rarely have anything in my repertoire that came from a diet book, this little refugee is delicious.

Disordered Dressing

1T good Balsamic Vinegar

1T Dijon Mustard

1 teas. sugar or sweetener

2 teas. Olive Oil

Dash of garlic powder

Stir it all together until the sugar dissolves. Makes enough for 1 good sized serving.