Peaches

This is what I've been eating all summer long. Grilled peaches in booze syrup with ice cream. I make big batches with the intention of having enough for a while but then I eat most of them within a day or two. It's been a good summer for peaches, but because I'm allergic to raw ones I have to cook them, and grilling them is the best. I'd even eat them with a little bit of cream poured over them, but I don't have any.

Peaches!!

Grilled peaches with syrup

a bunch of peaches (you can make two, or thirty)
some sort of liquid (I've used whiskey, wine and juice, but you can use water or whatever you want)
some sort of sweetener (sugar, brown sugar, honey)

Preheat your grill to medium high heat. Rinse off your peaches and cut them all in half and remove the pit. You can sprinkle a little sugar on the cut sides of the peaches now if you want, but you don't have it. In a little saucepan, combine two parts liquid with one part sugar (as in 1 c wine and 1/2 c sugar) and cook for a few minutes, until all the sugar is dissolved and some of the alcohol is cooked out, depending on what liquid you used. You can do this in the microwave if you want if it's too hot outside to cook. Now that the grill is nice and hot, place the peaches cut side down over the heat and cook for two minutes or so, then flip. Cook the skin side another minute or two, then remove to a bowl. Let the peaches sit for a few minutes and let their juices run out, then dump in the syrup. Serve warm with ice cream! Or eat plain, or with whipped cream. Or with avocado gelato, like in the photo below.

 

Cherry pie

Summer is full of fruit. You all know I love pie, Love pie, and I couldn't resist the cherries that were $1 a pound (!!) at the Italian market. My one regret is that I left the cherries whole, so next time I will halve them. They were a little too big, and each bite of pie was a little crust and a whole cherry, which was fine but not totally what I was looking for.

Oh, and I made this vegan so my dear friend Lizzy could eat some while she's dog-sitting this week, while Alex and I escape to New York to relax at my dad's house for a few days.

It took me quite a while to pit the cherries, but, yum.
Cherry Pie

a double recipe vegan pie crust, or your favorite gluten-free pie crust recipe

3 pounds cherries, washed and pitted (and I would suggest cutting them in half)

4 T cornstarch

3/4 c brown sugar

1 t vanilla

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/4 c water or juice (like pomegranate)

Preheat the oven to 350. Roll out half the pie crust and line a pie plate with it. Toss the cherries with the cornstarch, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, and water or other juice. Let sit for about 10 minutes, while you roll out the top crust for the pie.

Pour the berries into the crust, and weave strips of crust into a lattice. If that's too challenging, or you are feeling lazy, just cover with the top crust and cut a few slits in the top for steam. Place the assembled pie on a cookie sheet (to catch any juice that might overflow), and bake about an hour. If the crust browns too much, cover with foil until the pie is finished cooking.

Serve warm, with ice cream!

strawberry and brown sugar pudding tart

I had plans to make a no bake tart, but the crust I made turned out to need a few minutes in the oven. I'm sorry. This isn't the perfect for a hot summer day dessert to make that I had been hoping for, although it sure tastes like it! First, there is a simple crust of cookie crumbs and butter, topped with a homemade brown sugar vanilla pudding, topped with strawberries in a little honeyed syrup. It's delicious, and perfect to eat on a hot day. You just do have to use the oven for a few minutes. The pudding isn't too sweet, so the sweetness of the strawberry syrup balances it out, without making the whole dessert too sweet.

This is best made all from scratch, but if you're really feeling lazy? Just use a prepared pie crust (baked) and pudding from a mix. I won't tell.

Cookie crumb tart crust

1 1/2 c cookie crumbs

a pinch of salt

1-2 T sugar, if your cookies aren't too sweet

5 T butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350. Combine the cookie crumbs, salt, and sugar. Pour melted butter over, mix in, and press into the bottom of your tart pan. Bake 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

If you're really against using the oven on such a hot day, you can freeze the crust for half an hour, and then proceed with the recipe. The crust will still be good, but not as crunchy as if you bake it.

Vanilla brown sugar pudding

Adapted from the Joy of Cooking.

1/3 c packed brown sugar

3 T cornstarch

a pinch of salt

2 c milk

1 egg, beaten

1 t vanilla

1 T butter

Whisk together the brown sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a medium saucepan. Whisk in 1/4 c milk, making sure everything is dissolved. Stir in the rest of the milk, then heat the pan over medium heat until the mixture just begins to simmer, stirring the whole time. Remove the pan from the heat, and beat 1/2 c of the hot milk into the beaten egg, verrrrrry slowly, so the egg doesn't cook. Slowly stir the eggy milk back into the pan, and while stirring, bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and cook for one minute more, then remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla and butter. Once the butter is melted and incorporated, pour the pudding over the cookie crumb crust. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing right onto the pudding so there is no air. Let cool in the fridge for an hour or two, then top with strawberries and syrup.

Strawberries and honey syrup

1 1/2 c sliced strawberries

3 T honey

1 T orange liquor (or water)

Combine the strawberries, honey, and liquor in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer, and then strain, saving both the berries and the juice. When the berries have cooled, arrange them on top of the pudding, and then drizzle the syrup over.

Serve cold.

Why it's nice to be home in Massachusetts

Every day here I sleep til right before noon, and then my mom comes home, and cooks herself lunch, and me breakfast. It's great. I love my mom.

Summer

Here I am, in Amherst at my mom's! I'm on summer vacation from my house. I rode up to NY on the train (which was really fun, especially since I haven't been out of the house in more than 6 weeks!) and hung out at my dads for a few days in New York, then rode up to Massachusetts with my sister and spent the weekend with her and my mom. We went to the farmer's market, and I've been seeing some friends I haven't seen in a while. Also, I've been doing wedding planning stuff! I am getting married up here in Amherst, and am close to securing a venue and caterer. This whole thing is tough.
I have also been getting back into the kitchen, my mom's kitchen has a table and chair in it so I can put all my ingredients on the table and can mix things up and put them in the oven. I made pavlovas and a cheesecake, and maybe soon will have a recipe or two to post here.

Jalapeno Poppers

Man, is it summer. While I am still trapped inside the house, it is still H O T. We don't have air conditioner downstairs, where I spend most of my time (circling back and forth from the kitchen, to living room to watch tv and crochet, to the dining room for the computer) sitting in front of various fans and eating as many popsicles as possible. And since I'm barely cooking, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to eat. I found this recipe in this months Gourmet. I can sit at the table and do prep work, but not stand at the stove and cook, so I did most of the work while Alex fried.
Jalapeno Poppers
8 large sized jalapenos
about 1 cup of shredded cheese (I used cheddar and mozzerella)
1 T hot sauce
2 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper
1 c gf breadcrumbs
3/4 c rice flour

Cut the jalapenos from the stem to the tip on one side, and then cut a cross right below the stem, forming a T. Hopefully you have some rubber gloves (if not make sure you don't rub your eyes or pick your nose for a while), and you can reach in and scrape everything out. I tried this with a knife and it didn't work as well and took 3 times as long. Repeat with all the peppers. Mix the cheese with the hot sauce, and a good pinch of salt and sprinkle of pepper. Stuff each pepper with the cheese mix, packing it tight. Dredge each pepper in rice flour, then egg, then crumbs. Careful, because the crumbs won't want to stick. Place aside, gently, and repeat. The Gourmet recipe said to double dip them in the egg and crumbs, but that didn't work with my crumbs, it just made everything slide off into the egg wash.
Gently fry the peppers in batches of 2 or 3 in hot oil, drain on a paper towel, and serve immediately. If your fiance refuses to eat them, they can be stored in the fridge and reheated in the toaster oven for a few minutes at 350.

smoking is cool again, and so are chocolate cookies

When we moved to the new house, Alex accidentally left part of the grill in the back yard. We had to get a new one. We've been looking around at grills and none have really been that interesting to me, except this one. A smoker. It was cheap (we got it for less than $60) and can double as a grill, which is what sold Alex. My mom has a smoker, and every time we go home she smokes food for dinner. It's SO cool. After debating long and hard at the hardware store, we settled on it. And man, am I glad we did! We got a duck from the Asian market and planned to smoke it yesterday. I fired up the smoker, Put in the duck, then realized that I was using an awful lot of charcoal for such a small thing.... so I ran to the grocery store and grabbed some cheap cuts of meat. A slab of pork ribs (which I rubbed with BBQ sauce), a chunk of country style boneless pork ribs (which I rubbed with paprika, salt, pepper and a little sugar) and a chicken (which I quartered and seasoned with some weird BBQ spice I found in the cabinet). I tossed them all in the smoker and spent the whole rest of the day trying not to open the smoker, and staying away from the yard because it smelled SO GOOD. Oh man. Finally it was time, I opened up the smoker and everything was done. The ribs were a little over cooked, because I hadn't read the directions about how long they needed right, but everything else was perfect. I pulled the boneless pork and mixed it with BBQ sauce, shredded the duck, made a gravy from the smoking liquid (all the juices that had run out of the meat when it was smoking for 6 hours), and we dug in. It was well worth it. All of Alexs friends are jealous, we have enough meat to eat for a week, so now all we have to cook is vegetables. YUM. Anyway, I've also been really into cookies. I have a great cookbook by Nigella Lawson, Nigella Express, and this recipe is adapted from there. I would recommend eating these cookies warm, with a little ice cream and caramel sauce or hot fudge.

Chocolate overload cookies

4 oz semisweet (I used dark) chocolate
1 c flour mix
1/2 t xanthan gum
1/4 c cocoa powder 

1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 stick butter, softened
3/4 c brown sugar
1 t vanilla
1 cold egg
2 c chocolate chips (I used white)

Melt the 4oz chocolate in the microwave, 20 seconds at a time. Preheat the oven to 325. Mix all the dry ingredients. Cream the butter and sugar, then add egg and vanilla. Mix with the dry ingredients, add chips, and drop by large (1/4 c) blobs onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake 16 minutes. Makes about a dozen.

the best ribs ever

Once again, it's been TOO HOT to do anything. I'm sitting here, sweating. and it's 9pm. In September! Come on, summer, let's get a move on.
I've been busy, still getting back into the swing of things from vacation, hanging out, playing in the kitchen. My newest development is that I've been making jams and jellies and preserves and I even tried pickles. Which I haven't tasted yet so I don't know if they're actually delicious. But they look beautiful. A girl I work with mentioned to me that she makes her own jams and cans them. As someone who's recently discovering she loves old cookbooks and old traditions, I of course am terribly intrigued. She tells me its really easy, which I of course don't believe for a second, so I go read through my cookbooks, new and old (the brand new edition of the Joy of Cooking brought back their canning section, while the last printing, I think 2000, removed it) as well as scouring the internet. Turns out she was right, it IS easy. I went out and bought a bunch of plums and peaches and made them into jams and preserves. Then I made some pickles. Then some lemon jelly. Today I made Elise's Spicy Fig Orange Microwave Jam which was delicious. I also made some fig-plum jam, and some orange-plum spice jam.
This coming weekend is the Fleischer Art School flea market, where my roommate Sarah and I will have a table set up where we'll be selling some of her artwork (or, stuff) and my cookies, cupcakes, and banana breads, as well as jams and jellies. I'm super excited, I took the weekend off to bake and jam and hang out. maybe I'll make some money too! If anyone lives in the Philly area, come buy some cookies from me on Sunday at the Fleischer parking lot around 7th and Catherine.
I wanted to start this post off with a picture of the dinner Alex made me on Saturday, but the picture he took was blurry so instead I'll post a picture of my bike, which he spent a bunch of money on without me asking him to, and bought me two new wheels and took a bunch of stuff off and spent a long time working on my bike to make it lighter and ride better. THEN he made me delicious dinner, garlic pork tenderloin and spinach with mushrooms. Then he probably gave me a back rub. The point is, he's a really good boyfriend and I appreciate him a ton.




Orange Maple Chili Ribs

1 c fresh-squeeze orange juice (it's ok if you use store OJ but it's best with fresh)
zest from one orange (about a Tablespoon)
1 t chili flakes
1/2 t coriander (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
3 cloves garlic, minced fine (I've been cheating and using Trader Joe's jarred minced garlic)
1/4 c maple syrup (not the imitation kind)
2-4 lbs ribs

Mix together all the ingredients except the maple syrup, coat the meat in the OJ marinade. Let sit in the fridge for 3-6 hours, turning occasionally. Preheat the oven to 250, pour off the marinade into a saucepan, and cover ribs with foil. While ribs are cooking, cook down the marinade with the maple syrup (you can substitute brown sugar if you don't have maple syrup, but you won't get the maple flavor) until its reduced by about half, and thick and syrupy. Bake meat for about 3 hours, when the meat is tender remove the foil and brush with the glaze. Broil for a minute or two or three, until ribs are browned.

The salad next to the ribs was a quick buckwheat pilaf thing I threw together, that was really good. I cooked the buckwheat in a tomatoey soup from the night before, scraped the kernels from an ear of fresh corn, threw in a jalapeño, and cooked it together really quick.

Please, if you're somewhere cooler than 90 degrees, send some of your cold weather towards here. I'm melting.

back from vacation! blueberries, coffecake, corn fritters

I am back from vacation, and, fittingly with my mood on returning, it's raining. We had a fantastic time, Alex ate a ton of lobsters, and we bought as many blueberry products as we could. We visited my mom in Massachusetts and she smoked some pork butt and chicken that was awesome, we saw (and Alex met) my family in Connecticut, we drove to Portland and saw two friends from my summer camp that I hadn't seen in a long time. In Portland we played on the dog beach (I wished the whole trip that we had brought Puff), marveled over how big and nice their Wholefoods is, and then said our goodbyes and headed up the coast, towards Acadia. We stopped for delicious BBQ just south of Freeport at a place called Bucks Naked BBQ (they don't have a website but the link has a good review and great pictures), pulled in by the name. I love BBQ, and there aren't a lot of places that serve BBQ I can eat (you know, the whole gluten-free thing and the wide use of vinegars and other suspect things in BBQ sauces) so I was hoping, and correctly so, that "naked" meant without sauce. The meat at Bucks is smoked with a delicious spicy rub, and the BBQ sauce is served on the side. It was great. I had been hoping to go to Holy Smokes in Massachusetts but they burned down a little while before our trip. They had great gluten-free BBQ. We continued on and up to Camden Hills State Park, where we camped, it being too late to reach Acadia. Alex ate some lobster, we camped, then in the morning headed up to Acadia. We stopped right before the bridge to Mount Desert Island (where most of Acadia is) and Alex got some lobster, I ate leftover BBQ and some corn on the cob. We checked in, set up camp, and went to Bar Harbor to explore. We played on the rocks at Seawall, I taught Alex about ocean life (a recurring theme on this trip as I spent my childhood in tide pools and he is relatively new to the ocean) and had a good time. Alex ate lobster ice cream, we picked up supplies, and we cooked dinner at the campsite. In the morning we drove up Cadillac Mountain, ate a great breakfast of rice cakes and honey roasted peanut butter from Portland's Wholefoods, then started the long journey back towards home. We spent a few hours at the Big Chicken Barn, an antique and bookstore along Route 1 on the way back, picking up a set of silverware and a $6 copy of Larousse Gastronomique that both Alex and I had been wanting for a long time. We stopped for ice cream and a lobster roll for Alex and later, at Bucks BBQ again for me. We drove and drove and drove until we got to my dad's house in New York, where we slept, and then headed down to the NJ shore to see Alex's friends. We got there in time for a quick swim, walk on the beach, and then dinner, which, to my surprise and delight, was almost all gluten-free. The only thing I couldn't have was the green salad, because it had croutons. There was roast garlic pork loin, grilled chicken, mango salsa, rice and beans, black bean and corn salad, and a fantastic caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes. In the morning there was a blueberry coffeecake (made with some of the Maine blueberries we had brought as a gift) which looked fantastic. The recipe came from epicurious.com, so I looked it up, and made it for breakfast today.

Blueberry Coffeecake
Made with Maine blueberries, which are small and so delicious, totally unlike the regular large blueberries you can buy anywhere. They grow everywhere in Maine. Recipe from epicurious.com but adapted gluten-free.

For cake
1/4 cup oil
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup milk (I used 1/4 c half & half and 1/4 c soymilk because we had no milk)
1 1/2 cups sifted gf flour mix
1/2 t xantham gum
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

For topping
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon gf glour mix
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup ground almonds
1 tablespoon melted butter
3/4 cup fresh Maine blueberries

Combine oil, egg, and milk. Sift together dry ingredients and add them to the milk mixture. Mix well. In another bowl, combine all ingredients for topping.

Pour cake batter into a greased 9 x 9 x 2-inch pan (I used a 9" round springform pan, and had to increase the baking time by about 10 minutes). Spread blueberries evenly over batter. Top that with the cinnamon nut mixture. Bake in 375°F oven 25 to 30 minutes.

Corn Fritters

These are adapted from Elise's. They were great, however, I didn't have any onions or cilantro so I used carrots. Not quite the flavor adder, but they added soem color. The substitutions in this recipe and the one above are because I just got home from vacation, and haven't been to the grocery store yet. These were so good, and the sauce was deliciously sweet and spicy.

Dipping Sauce
3/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons red chili pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 large clove garlic, minced

Fritters
1 cup gf flour mix
1/2 t xantham gum
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup water
2 cups of corn kernels, (see steps for cutting corn from a cob) cut from 3 large cobs (or frozen corn, defrost and drain first)
2 carrots, peeled and diced fine
canola oil for frying

Make the sauce by combining all the sauce ingredients in a small pot, cooking until sugar is dissolved, then bringing to a boil for 5-10 minutes until slightly syrupy.
Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, stir until smooth, then add corn and carrots.
Fry in small batches, a few minutes on each side, and serve with dipping sauce.

Edit: These can be made vegan if you leave out the egg and use beer instead of water, although I bet any liquid will do!

perfect, perfect blintzes and cherries.

It has been a while, and I apologize. I have been busy, like always, and it is simply too hot to be in the study where the computer room is. On days when its not too hot, I always have other things to do. I've been reading the last 3 installments of Harry Potter. My sister came back from her long vacation to the west coast, visited for a few days, and I am currently planning a vacation for myself. In August there is a family get-together for my mom's side, Alex and I planned to take a long weekend but, since he is starting school and thus we won't be making it to Europe to see (meet) his family, we're taking a week off instead. We're going to Maine, to go camping and see a very good friend of mine from summer camp when I was little. I can't wait. I love camping, I have hardly been out of the city in months, and I haven't seen the ocean yet thos year. My heart hearts. Blintzes
The beautiful picture at the top was taken by my sister and her fancy camera. We went to see Harry Potter (again) but everyone was slow in getting ready/waking up so I made blintzes. I haven't ever made blintzes before, but I love them. I just finished reading a fantastic old cookbook called Love and Knishes (my copy is from 1957 and looks nothing like this copy, however, its the same book). I dogeared the page for blintzes, which needed 1/2 cup potato starch and 1/2 cup matzo cake meal, figuring I'd give it a shot. I even went out and bought cottage cheese, not something I eat ever, in hopes that it would give me the push to make the blintzes. It did. And my God, were they fantastic. I served them with an avocado, with salt and olive oil, which obviously didn't go but needed to be eaten and was delicious.

Recipe adapted from Love and Knishes. I halved the recipe, which says it makes 22 to 24 blintzes, as I was only feeding 3 people. Half the recipe was enough for the three of us.

1/2 cup potato starch
1/2 cup rice flour mix
1/2 tsp salt
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups water
Maybe 2 Tbs sugar
1/2 tsp xantham gum

Sift together dry ingredients, beat eggs until light and fluffy, and add 1/2 cup of water, then beat again. Add remaining water to dry mix, stirring until smooth, then gradually beat in egg-water mixture. Grease a small skillet lightly, heat over medium-high heat, and pour in just enough batter to coat the bottom of the pan. For the pan I was using, I needed about 1/3 cup batter. Cook the batter on only one side, until dry and bubbled, sliding the finished blintz onto a plate or cutting board. Start cooking another blintz. Place 2-3 Tbs filling in the center of the finished blintz, fold down the top edge, then fold the sides in, and fold over. Repeat with remaining blintzes. When all the blintzes are formed, add a little more butter or oil to the pan and fry the folded blintzes on the bottom to seal in the filling. Serve as is or with blueberry sauce.

Blintz filling
One 16 oz container of cottage cheese, drained for an hour
2 eggs
sugar to taste
1 Tbs lemon juice

Combine all ingredients.

Blueberry Sauce
About 1 pint of blueberries, frozen
2 or 3 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs water
1 Tbs lemon (or lime, or orange) juice

Put most of the blueberries in a small pan, add remaining ingredients. Cook over medium-low heat until thickened, then add the rest of the frozen blueberries.


I had some other stuff to talk about, like how I made cherry pie from that pretty bowl of cherries, how I made pork and tomatillo stew in my slow cooker from a book my mom got me for my birthday, how I discovered a pizza dough recipe thats as good as regular dough and how I've been making it almost every night. And how I'm corning beef to make corned beef, which will be ready on Monday. Next time! Maybe. Now it's back to Harry Potter.

Edit- I made the banana bread recipe a post of its own for BBD #2!