A Line Cook's 65th Newsletter Spectacular
And a return to pineapple weed
Hello to you all and thank you for subscribing.
This is a bit of an impromptu newsletter inspired by something I saw on the ground while walking my kids to daycare this morning.
It seems like yesterday the snow still lined the streets where I live here in Turku, Finland. But now the blue of the sky is interrupted only by the occasional swallow darting through the air. The earth itself is green again.
And it was one such piece of greenery, nestled in among the grass and nettles and dandelions, that caught my eye today. It was a pineapple weed. Though only early June, I was surprised to see it has arrived already.
I’m pretty sure pineapple weed is my favourite thing to forage. It is related to chamomile and is an intensely fragrant weed plant that grows in summer months, normally in poor soil. I particularly love using it in desserts because, as the name suggests, it has a truly lovely pineapple flavour.
Seeing the weed growing this morning, however, struck me for two reasons.
It is growing a full month earlier than it did last year
It means I published my pineapple weed meringue pie post almost a full year ago now
Much as I do enjoy using a foraged plant in such a fun recipe, I admit it’s not the most summery use of it. Next week it is Midsummer. This is a big deal in Finland. We celebrate it with a public holiday and a great deal of eating and drinking. Since the pineapple weed is here earlier this year, I definitely want to use it for something on our Midsummer table, but, instead of the pie, I think I’ll be doing so in the form of a fresh and tangy sorbet.
A recipe for pineapple weed sorbet
If I’m making a sorbet that showcases a herb or plant as I am here with pineapple weed (which doesn’t itself have any body like fruit does) then I pretty much always use pear as the base. Pear has a mild flavour after all that lends itself to showcasing other interesting flavours, but it also has a great texture once cooked down that helps create a sorbet with a smooth and satisfying consistency.
Ingredients
4 ripe pears
2 lemons
160g sugar
1 tablespoon dried pineapple weed
Pinch of salt
1 egg white (optional)
Start by picking and cleaning your pineapple weed. I do this by snipping the tops off with scissors and letting them sit in water for ten minutes. You can discard the green stems. Once clean, pat dry with kitchen paper and lay them out on baking paper. Leave to dry over night in a warm place.
Now to make your sorbet. Peel and core your pears. I tend to chop them into quarters. Then half fill a saucepan (big enough to fit your pears) with water. Add the sugar and your tablespoon of dry pineapple weed. Heat on low until the sugar has dissolved. Then add your pears and poach them until soft. This takes about 15 minutes.
Remove the cooked pears (it doesn’t matter if a little pineapple weed comes with them but try to keep most of the weed in the sugar syrup). Then we need to heat this syrup so we remove enough water that the proportions of water and sugar are correct. The magic ratio for great sorbet is 1 part sugar to 2 parts other ingredient (that could be juice or puree or, like here a mix of pear puree and water flavoured with pineapple weed). The easy way of getting this is to simmer your poaching syrup until it hits 108 degrees C/225 degrees F, also known as the “short thread” syrup stage. It’s called this because if one was to take a small amount of the syrup between two fingers and draw said fingers apart, the syrup would create a “short thread” of about 5mm. If you test using this approach, do so carefully by taking the syrup off the heat, taking some in a teaspoon, and only testing once it has cooled enough to handle.
But once you have this short thread syrup stage, then we can move on.
Blitz the pears in a food processor, sieve out the pineapple weed from the syrup, then add to the pears and process them together with the salt. Put this in the freezer until firm.
Since we didn’t churn this sorbet in a fancy machine, the ice crystals that make up the sorbet will be too large, giving it a grainy texture, if we served it now. To get the smooth and silky texture you really want we need to use a food processor. The trick is to blitz it quickly so it doesn’t start to melt. To do this, take your sorbet from the freezer and, as quickly as you can, cut it into cubes. If you want to use the egg white (which promotes an even smoother consistency) add it at this stage and blitz these sorbet cubes in your processor just until they have broken down into a slush. Then quickly get this back into your container and the freezer once again.
The frozen crystals will be much smaller now and, once it has firmed up again, the sorbet will be smooth and ready to eat.
Another thing…
I mentioned it struck me that it has been a full year since I sent out my last pineapple weed recipe. That was one of the first recipes I ever shared on this newsletter after a few months of writing The Recovering Line Cook.
As a working restaurant cook, it is a thrill to write this newsletter for supportive readers such as yourselves. But, without sounding like a bit of a d*ck, there are a lot more of you reading this than when I first shared my love of pineapple weed. So I wanted to take the rest of this newsletter to share some of my favourite essays I’ve written since January 2023 that I think sum up what this newsletter is all about.
If you’re new here I hope you click through and take a look. And if you’ve been here a while, maybe there’s something you missed.
My memoir essays
The Recovering Line Cook was never meant to be a “recipe of the week” kind of newsletter. Memoir essays are what I started this newsletter with and alongside my recipe and food writing they mean a lot to me. This is the first entry in the story of how I started as a restaurant cook.
And in this one I draw a line between my journey to become a cook and my role as a father. This one means a lot to me.
The Opinions of a Line Cook
I started sharing opinion pieces after a few months of writing this newsletter. I expected, of course, a barrage of people telling me how how much of an idiot I was. But to my surprise it turned out to be a mix of people telling me what an idiot I was and some agreeing. These are two of the most popular such pieces I’ve published so far.
And the recipes
I don’t do it every week, but I do love sharing recipes and techniques I’ve learned as a restaurant cook. This might be one of the most popular ones I’ve shared.
Thanks for joining me for this return to pineapple weed and look back on 65 newsletters of The Recovering Line Cook.
Remember, if you can afford to support the next 65 newsletters and my work as a very independent part time writer/ full time line cook it costs just $30 a year. It makes all the difference if you can.
Love pineapple weed , use it to infuse rum and also to distill into gin !
I love that you found a use for Pineapple Weed! I always enjoyed the smell, and miss it since it doesn't grow where I live now.