Did you hear the one about Martha Stewart…..

The internet makes this is a great time to cook.  There are more recipes available at the touch of a keyboard than I will ever have need of in my lifetime.  I own well over 100 cookbooks (a new cookbook is, and will always be, one of my favorite gifts to receive), but more and more I rely on looking up recipes online.  It is so easy to type in a few keywords and get hundreds of choices.

I tend to look at recipes based on the chefs from TV.  I love, love, love Maria Batali (one of my most memorable eating experiences was at Babbo in NYC) but I find his recipes a little complicated or use ingredients that I don’t often use.  Paula Deen is a favorite, but her way of cooking is my way of cooking - there isn’t much difference in the regional cooking of the south and of Appalachia and the Midwest – my cooking roots.

When I want to cook seriously I crack open Julia Child and when I want to frustrate myself I look to Martha Stewart.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate her skills, but she seems to assume that we all have endless time and money to achieve success.

So it was with a little apprehension that I decided to make a Martha Stewart punch recipe for a Desert Stream BBQ we were having at our house.  After all, its punch, how hard can it be?  In truth, it wasn’t very hard, everyone liked it, and the punch was empty.  In this case, it wasn’t Martha that was the problem, it was me. 

I decided that the thing this punch needed was an ice ring.  It was a very hot day in Kansas City, I knew the punch would need a lot of ice and I didn’t want to water down the punch.  Martha recommended filling ice cube trays with punch, but for once, I thought I could out do Martha.

So I made the punch, but with quite a few modifications:

Strawberry Punch a la Martha

·         4 cups water

·         3 cups sugar

·         6 cups coarsely chopped strawberries

·         2 cups coarsely chopped pineapple

·         1 cup pineapple juice

·         1 cup orange juice

·         1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

·         2 quarts seltzer water

Instructions

1. Make simple syrup: Combine the water and sugar in a large saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat, and set aside until syrup is completely cool.

2. Transfer syrup to a large container. Add strawberries, pineapple, pineapple juice, orange juice, and lemon juice; gently stir to combine. Fill two ice-cube trays with punch, and place in freezer. Place remaining punch in refrigerator to chill.

3. When ready to serve, remove punch from refrigerator; add the seltzer water and frozen-punch ice cubes. Serve in a large bowl or individual glasses.

My changes:   I used canned pineapple – I know that Martha always goes fresh and I usually do as well, but cutting up a whole pineapple for just two cups seemed a little bit too much for me.

I didn’t want all that fruit floating in my punch, it didn’t seem that pleasing to take a sip and get a piece of strawberry and pineapple.  I decided to take all the fruit and combine with the sugar and water to make strawberry/pineapple simple syrup.  I combined the strawberries and pineapple together and mashed them into a thick pulp.  I then added the sugar and water. After it had boiled the 5 minutes and cooled I then poured the whole mixture into a fruit sieve into my punch bowl.  I had thick strawberry/pineapple syrup with no fruit pieces.

After I added the pineapple, orange and lemon juices I poured enough punch to fill a 6-cup Tupperware Jell-O mold to make an ice ring.  THIS WAS MY BIG MISTAKE!  I have a great Jell-O mold but don’t have the lid.  I put the punch in the top shelf of my bottom load freezer.  Of course I cautioned Sam to be really careful if he got ice, but didn’t think to say anything to Andy since he never uses ice.  Did I mention how hot it was that day?  Well, I have a freezer to covered with frozen strawberry syrup to prove Andy does us ice on a hot day.

The worst part – you really couldn’t even see the ice ring – it was too heavy and sank to the bottom.

So score one for me – I think the punch was much better by making the simple syrup with the strawberries and pineapple.

Score one for Martha – filling the ice trays with the punch would have worked just as well and saved me a couple of hours cleaning my freezer.

The moral of this for me is not to make an ice ring until I find the lid to my Jell-O mold!  But this would be a great punch for the 4^th of July – it’s very refreshing on a hot day and goes with BBQ.