Berry Sauce

1 cup berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, or a mixture)
3 T sugar
2 T lemon juice

Simmer ingredients over medium heat until berries exude juices and become soft. Strain mixture through sieve and serve slightly chilled with your dessert.

Chantilly Cream

Chantilly cream by any stretch of the imagination is just fancy whipped cream with vanilla added to it. But it's fancy because you whipped it yourself and it's not from a can (or a tub, for the love).


Oh and it's flecked and flavored with beautiful vanilla seeds

Chantilly Cream

• 1½ vanilla beans
• 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Split and scrape the vanilla beans. Drop the seeds into a chilled glass bowl with the cream and sugar. Whip the cream with an electric hand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Start low and gradually increase the speed to high as the cream thickens (to avoid splatter painting your kitchen with heavy cream). Beat for about 2 minutes or until stiff peaks form. Do not overbeat.

Homemade Tzatziki

tzatziki.

oh.em.geez.

this cool and creamy sauce is one of my favorites of all time. I could probably eat it plain.  It's great with pita bread. It's great with lamb. 

those Greeks knew what they were doing.

here's a quick and easy recipe for my take on tzatziki...

Tzatziki Sauce

17.6 oz. tub of at least 2% milkfat greek plain yogurt

1 tsp. grated lemon zest

1/2 T extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced (or more if your like your sauce garlicky like moi)

1 tsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 cucumber, seeded and chopped

2 T fresh dill

salt to taste

Place the chopped and seeded cucumber in a food processor and puree.

Strain as much of the water from the cucumber puree, pressing the pulp into the mesh with the back of a spatula.

Wrap the cucumber pulp in cheese cloth and squeeze out any remaining water. 

You really want the cucumber pulp as dry as possible, otherwise it doesn't blend well with the yogurt and makes the sauce watery.

Open the yogurt tub and drain any water from it that has risen to the top.

Then it's pretty simple....

top the yogurt with the remaining ingredients and combine

I didn't have fresh dill, so I used dried... meh.

season with salt to taste

and there you have it, you're own tub of homemade tzatziki sauce, ready for your dipping pleasure!

enjoy!

Chipotle Aioli

Aioli is essentially a fancy garlicky mayonnaise used as a dipping sauce for many fried foods. Here is a favorite of mine:

1/2 C mayonnaise
1 canned chipotle chile in adobo
1 clove garlic
1/2 lemon, juiced
pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in a food processor for about 1 minute. Let sit in the fridge to allow flavors to marry. Serve as a dipping sauce for any fried seafood or fried potato wedges.