Yang soaks up the afternoon sun in anticipation of cooler fall weather.
Archive for the ‘Photographs’ Category
As Pictured Below: The lazy days of summer
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs, tagged As Pictured Below, cats, photograph, summer, sunlight, winter, Yang on August 30, 2012| 3 Comments »
No need to replace old-fashioned peach cobbler recipe
Posted in Eats, Family, Photographs, tagged cinnamon, cobbler recipe, grandparents, individual cobblers, peach cobbler, peach cobbler in ramekins, peach recipes, peaches, peaches and cinnamon, ramekin desserts, ramekins, Southern Plate, steel cup oats, steel-cut oatmeal, steel-cut oats on August 9, 2012| 1 Comment »
Nanny’s Peach Cobbler: Accept no substitutes.
Among this summer’s Lessons Learned: Do not forsake your grandmother’s recipes.
Facing a peach glut a few weeks ago, I decided that it was cobbler time. I’ve always loved peach cobbler, straight out of the oven or the refrigerator, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or eaten plain.
Peach cobbler is, quite simply, the dessert of summer.
It’s also the dessert of chaos. Done right, it’s a gooey mess, making it a less-than-friendly offering at the office, and I certainly didn’t need an entire peach cobbler haunting me every night at home.
Ramekins to the rescue.
I LOVE making things in ramekins. They can make individual servings out of almost any recipe.
The plan: Make six individual peach cobblers. Two for me, two for the husband and two for the generous co-worker who shared his peach bounty.
I’m not sure why I thought that my grandmother’s cobbler recipe wasn’t up to the task. It was probably a decision brought on by over-research, since I was originally trying to find a cobbler recipe that gave instructions for ramekins. At any rate, I finally narrowed in on Southern Plate’s recipe for peach cobbler.
It was tasty, but it wasn’t the peach cobbler I was looking for.
Southern Plate’s Peach Cobbler: It’s delicious, but it’s not the recipe for me.
Two weeks later, facing another pile of peaches, I didn’t even turn on the computer. I went to my recipe collection and flipped straight to my grandmother’s peach cobbler recipe.
The results: Six individual peach cobblers that tasted like a carefree summer afternoon on my grandparents’ farm.
Nanny’s Peach Cobbler
- 1 quart (4 cups) fresh peaches, chopped
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup plus 2 tbsp. flour
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3/4 stick butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease six ramekins with butter.
Stir together the peaches, sugar and 2 tbsp. flour. Divide the mixture evenly among ramekins (you can probably stretch it out to eight if you want slightly smaller servings). In a medium mixing bowl, cut 1 cup flour in with butter; stir in milk. Spoon mixture evenly on top of the peach mixture in each ramekin.
Bake for approximately 30 to 35 minutes until the crusts are golden brown.
Note: I like cinnamon with my peaches, so I sprinkled probably 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon in with the peaches. I also sprinkled a dash of cinnamon sugar on top of every cobbler before baking; as you can see in the top photo, this really just resulted in some darker spots on the crust. I’ll probably add an entire teaspoon of cinnamon to the fruit next time.
And the peaches that don’t get turned into cobbler? They get chopped up and stirred into a simmering pot of steel-cut oats with a generous sprinkling of cinnamon and a spoonful of brown sugar. Best oatmeal ever.
Fancy eggplants call for a new recipe
Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged baked eggplant parmesan, cooking, CSA, eggplant, eggplant Parmesan, eggplant pasta, pasta a la norma, pasta alla norma, sauteed eggplant on July 24, 2012| 4 Comments »
Don’t let the name of her blog fool you: Kristen over at Crafty Kristen has a heck of a green thumb in addition to mad knitting skills.
She gifted me with a couple of bags filled with goodies from her garden recently as she was preparing to go spend a few days at the beach with her husband. I brought home yellow pear tomatoes (sweet and delicious), cherry tomatoes and eggplants.
Totally exotic eggplants.
The only eggplant I’m familiar with is the big purple one. I remember seeing them when I was a kid, although I don’t recall whether my grandparents grew them, and I don’t remember ever eating them until I tried the ever popular eggplant Parmesan in college. I certainly never cooked an eggplant myself.
So when a CSA box arrived a couple of years ago with an eggplant inside, I faced a quandary. I made a baked version of eggplant Parmesan first — it was delicious, but not quite delicious enough to make up for the time it required and the mess it made.
I finally found an easier eggplant pasta sauce recipe with a complex, garlicky flavor. It took care of the huge purple eggplants in the CSA box, and made enough that I had leftovers for at least a couple of days.
Pre-eggplant season, Kristen had recommended a recipe for Pasta alla Norma, which I tucked away on Pinterest in anticipation of this year’s first CSA box.
When she handed me a small plastic bag filled with the fanciest eggplants I had ever seen, I knew I couldn’t simply smash them into the gray (yet tasty) pulp resulting from my go-to eggplant pasta sauce recipe.
So I broke out the pasta alla Norma recipe, only to discover three problems:
- It called for ricotta salata cheese, which I wasn’t entirely sure I could find at Publix.
- It called for deep-frying the eggplant, while I’m really more of a “lightly sauté” kind of girl.
- It called for sautéed onions WITHOUT sautéed garlic. Say what now?
I made a few simple changes to the recipe and was psyched about the results. The sauce is very light, but the eggplant makes it filling. I found it made enough for two servings (I only cooked 2.5 ounces of penne rigate), with enough left over for lunch (no pasta, just the chunky sauce).
You have to judge how much basil, eggplant and Parmesan cheese to use. If you want a heartier sauce, use more eggplant. Need more basil flavor? Tear up a few more basil leaves. It’s a forgiving recipe.
Pasta alla Norma
Makes about 3 servings
(Adapted from David Rocco’s recipe)
- 2.5 oz. penne rigate pasta
- olive oil
- 1/2 white onion, chopped
- 14 oz. diced tomatoes
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 medium-sized eggplant (or a few small eggplants), cubed
- fresh basil leaves, torn
- Parmesan cheese
Cook the penne in a pot of boiling salted water, stirring to prevent it from sticking together. While the pasta is cooking, make the sauce.
In a saucepan, heat up a tablespoons of olive oil. Gently sauté onions until tender, then add undrained tomatoes. With the back of a wooden spoon, break up the tomatoes into small chunks.
Add salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes until the sauce has thickened.
In another pan, sauté the eggplant in olive oil until golden. Add the sautéed eggplant and basil leaves to the sauce, and stir in a few sprinkles of Parmesan.
Plate the servings of pasta and spoon sauce on top. Sprinkle with more Parmesan, if desired, and serve immediately.
Second CSA box yields a colorful harvest
Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged cooking, CSA, lemon cucumbers, photograph, red noodle beans, vegetables on July 9, 2012| 2 Comments »
Cucumbers, squash, lemon cucumbers, green tomatoes, more squash (sigh) and red noodle beans.
This week’s CSA box was heavy with a little bit of everything.
I faced two unfamiliar items: lemon cucumbers and red noodle beans. The lemon cucumbers are round and a little sweeter than other varieties, and the red noodle beans were tasty but weird.
I riffed on this recipe for Red Noodle Beans with Cracked Black Pepper, only I didn’t have any soy sauce, and I forgot that I just received a couple of bell peppers, so I pretty much just sautéed them in olive oil with diced onion and garlic for about 10 minutes. They tasted like string beans, more or less, except they were squeaky, like cheese curds.
Like I said, tasty but weird.
The box also contained one lone cherry tomato, only I thought I saw two cherry tomatoes, so I ate it expecting to dig the other one out for the husband in a few minutes. Alas, no. I scarfed down the only one. Lucky for me, he’s the forgiving type, and he doesn’t have the same extreme craving for homegrown tomatoes that I do.
Sweet onion, bell peppers, basil, the biggest eggplant I’ve ever had and various hot peppers.
Sautéed peas end tradition of salty, mushy vegetables
Posted in Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged cats, cooking, CSA, English peas, farm, food, grandmother, grandparents, microwave corn, mississippi, peas with garlic, photograph, saute peas, sauteed English peas, sauteed peas, steamed beans, steamed corn, Williams-Sonoma recipes, Yang on July 2, 2012| 1 Comment »
I was excited and a little leery when I found a bagful of fresh English peas in my latest CSA box.
As confirmed by my CSA representative, English peas are extremely sensitive to hot weather, so they would have never had a chance on my grandparents’ farm in South Mississippi. Therefore, the only English peas I’ve ever eaten have come straight out of the can, slightly mushy and pretty bland. Meh.
Since the record-breaking heat in North Alabama/South Tennessee was making it clear that this would be the only fresh English peas I would get this year, I knew I had to make the most of them.
I don’t mean this as an insult to my Southern ancestry, but at some point cooks in the South started boiling vegetables into a salty mush. I remember the first time I ever had a string bean that had been briefly steamed, and thus still held a bit of natural sweetness and a light crunch. (Truly, it would have been considered underdone at my grandmother’s house.) Corn on the cob became a whole new experience for me when I discovered that I could simply wrap individual ears in waxed paper and microwave them for a few minutes, leaving sweet and crunchy kernels that needed neither salt nor butter.
I was determined not to turn these peas into mush.
I found inspiration at Williams-Sonoma’s website: Sautéed English Peas with Garlic and Sesame. Unfortunately, I didn’t have sesame seeds or sesame oil in my pantry, so I had to wing it. I also don’t know how many pounds of peas I started with; Williams-Sonoma recommended two garlic cloves for 3 pounds of unshelled English peas. Do the math for the amount of peas you have, or just use a couple of cloves of garlic.
There are few vegetable recipes that wouldn’t be made better with a couple of cloves of garlic.
The husband was at first stunned by the color of the peas when I removed the lid from the pan; the short cooking time had left the peas a brilliant green. The texture was magnificent; they weren’t crunchy or chewy, but they weren’t mushy either. The garlic flavor burst through with every bite, but not in an overwhelming way.
Sautéed English Peas with Garlic
- Fresh English peas, shelled
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp. olive oil
- Pinch of sea salt
- Pinch of freshly ground pepper
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl 2/3 full with ice water. Add the peas to the boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain the peas and immediately plunge them into the ice water. Let stand for two minutes and drain.
In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic and sauté, stirring constantly, until it is fragrant but not brown, about 30 seconds.
Add the peas, salt and pepper, and sauté, tossing and stirring occasionally, until the peas are just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve immediately.
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Yang hasn’t given up his photobombing duties; here, he inspects the bowl of English peas mid-shoot.
Unscheduled summers provide the best memories
Posted in CSA, Family, Photographs, tagged childhood, gardening, grandfather, grandparents, plastic pool, pool, summer, summer memories, summer plans on June 24, 2012| 4 Comments »
My brother and I take a dip, circa 1975.
Nearly everyone I know who has kids spends tons of money and time striving to plan the perfect summer. A host of activities, from vacations to camp to traveling sports leagues, quickly pile up on this short stretch of calendar, seeming more like duties than recreation.
My childhood summers were pretty unstructured. Maybe we’d take a dip in a tiny plastic pool, or maybe just run through sprinklers. Maybe I’d get to go with my grandfather early in the morning to pick tomatoes or beans, or — if I was REALLY lucky — I’d get to dig up potatoes.
As I was shelling a small bagful of English peas from my CSA box yesterday, it occurred to me that some of my best summer afternoons weren’t spent waiting in line at Disney World, running to the next slide at a water park or shaking the sand off my towel at the beach. My most enjoyable summer moments were spent in my grandparents’ den, shelling peas or snapping beans, enjoying an episode of Woody Woodpecker or Tom and Jerry or, better yet, the carefree, Not Very Serious conversations that adults indulge in when they’re pleasantly engaged in a repetitive task with no real deadline.
If I could choose one childhood moment to relive now, it would be one of these afternoons.
I don’t think you can make memories like this on purpose; really, I think my grandparents probably thought I’d rather be off doing something else. But I do wish that more families would slow down a little this summer and spend a few afternoons doing a little of nothing together.
It’s important, and it may be more memorable than anything you could possibly plan.
As Pictured Below: Veggie cat
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged cat photobomb, cats, CSA, food, vegetables, Yang, Yin on June 22, 2012| 4 Comments »
Yang, simply exhausted from all the sniffing.
My first CSA delivery of the summer yielded quite a spread, including cucumbers, jalapenos, onions, leeks, basil, squash, greens, strawberries, English peas and Roma beans.
As I unloaded the goods, I recalled how Yin used to closely inspect every CSA haul — it was nearly impossible to set up a picture of vegetables without a cat in the frame.
Yin, very serious about his vegetable inspection duties.
Not 30 seconds later, Yang strolled over and resumed Yin’s inspection and photobombing duties. He spent nearly five minutes sniffing every square inch of plant material, nipped at the Chinese cabbage and finally plopped down right on top of the Yukina savoy.
He was in every photograph, just like his brother.
Cats. They know comedy.
As Pictured Below: Birthday indulgence
Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Photographs, Travel, tagged 40th birthday, As Pictured Below, birthday breakfast, Creme Brulee doughnut, donuts, Doughnut Plant, doughnuts, Manhattan, Manhattan doughnuts, New York City, New York doughnuts, tres leches doughnut, turning 40, Valrhona chocolate, Valrhona doughnut on June 21, 2012| 4 Comments »
Clockwise, from top left: Valrhona Chocolate, Strawberry, Tres Leches and Carrot Cake.
Where does one kick off an Entirely Adequate 40th birthday?
The Doughnut Plant on the Lower East Side, of course.
The Valrhona Chocolate doughnut is part of my standard Doughnut Plant order now, and the carrot cake doughnut merits repeat business, even though it’s almost too rich for breakfast (alas, I persevere). The husband and I split the strawberry and chocolate treats (it’s always a good idea to order the store’s seasonal doughnut variety), and I left the Tres Leches, also a richer-than-rich indulgence, all for him.
Bonus: Doughnut Plant founder Mark Isreal sang “Happy Birthday” to me and delivered a Creme Brulee doughnut fresh from the kitchen after my husband spotted him and revealed my secret. This doughnut was better than the best creme brulee I’ve ever eaten; it was light, filled with the perfect amount of filling and mercifully small.
Forget breakfast in bed. I’d like all my future birthdays to feature a walk through Chinatown and a couple of choice Doughnut Plant treats. Owner singing optional.
Grownup task leads to childhood delicacy
Posted in Eats, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged alabama, Butterfinger, Chick-O-Stick, chickastick, childhood, Harrison Brothers Hardware, Huntsville, Madison County Alabama, MoonPies, Necco Wafers, Neccos, old-fashioned candy on June 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Photo courtesy of Atkinson Candy Company
The best part about serving two days of jury duty in Madison County, Alabama? I found a source of Chick-O-Sticks.
Chick-O-Sticks, for the terribly undersnacked, are orange sticks mostly made of peanut butter, granulated sugar and corn syrup. Dusted with ground coconut, they taste like the orange insides of a Butterfinger, for lack of a better comparison.
They’re crunchy and delicious, and they used to be much more widely available. Lately, they seem to only pop up in small, locally owned grocery stories and Mississippi gas stations.
You’ll find the large, cigar-shaped variety of Chick-O-Sticks in downtown Huntsville across from the courthouse at Harrison Brothers Hardware, which is part museum, part store. They’re displayed with a bunch of other old-fashioned snacks, including MoonPies and Necco Wafers.
I’m excited to see that the Atkinson Candy Company is still making Chick-O-Sticks in a variety of sizes and packaging options; hopefully that means they’ll be around for a while. Because there’s nothing like a taste of childhood on a hot summer day.
As Pictured Below: Elvis would be proud
Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Photographs, Travel, tagged As Pictured Below, banana ice cream sandwich, Broadway, Elvis ice cream sandwich, Hester Street Fair, husband, ice cream sandwiches, Manhattan, Melt Bakery, Mighty Balls, New York City, New York foods, New Yorker, Serious Eats New York, Time Out New York, travel on June 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »
When I tell people that I’m traveling to New York City, they inevitably ask if I’m going to see a show. Apparently I’m supposed to hit up Broadway every time.
Instead of a list of must-see shows, however, I have a list of must-eat foods. Thanks to a reading habit that includes a lot of New York-centric publications (Serious Eats New York, the New Yorker, Time Out New York and the New York Times, among other random finds), I never get to check everything off the ever-expanding list. Also, there’s only so much food that the husband and I can eat in three to four days no matter how many subway stairs we climb.
On our latest trip, my great find was Melt Bakery, which makes some fabulous ice cream sandwiches. I stumbled on the Melt stand at the Hester Street Fair, an event that I suggested we attend because it was just a few blocks from our hotel and I knew that it featured at least one culinary treasure that I simply had to try. I just couldn’t remember which one.
After we each enjoyed a meatball slider from Mighty Balls, we split an Elvis from Melt — banana ice cream on peanut butter cookies. It was the freezer attendant’s favorite flavor, and the husband has a thing for peanut butter, so it was the obvious choice.
Delicious. The folks at Melt have somehow produced a cookie that doesn’t harden into a rocky, crumbly mess in the freezer, and their homemade ice cream isn’t the frozen-solid puck that it resembles.
Each bite — firm but not tough, creamy but not prone to quick melting — was a delicate combination of peanut butter and banana. Neither flavor overwhelmed the other, and it was just big enough for two people post-lunch. I think Elvis would approve of this treat, despite its blatant lack of bacon.
So, don’t weep for my lack of Broadway attendance. Instead, celebrate one more delicious delicacy checked off my list.
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