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A Few Thoughts Regarding Seeding a Grape

focaccia1
September 10, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

The problem was this: When I decided to whip up* two of these compact, portable-looking focaccia breads to take along on a road trip as a gift to our hostess, I thought that the grapes I had in the fridge were seedless.

So there I was, reading about how good these are with a nice wine, contemplating how much our friends enjoy wine and hoping the bread would keep all fresh and pretty until tomorrow when we arrived. After setting the dough out to rise on the counter, I read through the comments on the recipe page and felt a little sad for all the people who actually did not buy seedless grapes and had to stand at the kitchen counter for who knows how long** and pick them out with a pairing knife. And then I sliced my first grape…

…and I most definitely spied a seed. Two, actually!

Alas, it seems to have been worth it in the end. I’ve got two lovely looking focaccia drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt and sugar and grapes and rosemary. The house smells of Italy.*** Now my only issue is how not to devour them both before tomorrow.

~~~~

*I have never, ever, in my entire kitchen history, been able to just “whip up” anything. Why I thought this would be my lucky day, I cannot explain.

**Now, I do know: about 20 minutes to leisurely slice and de-seed 1.5 cups.

***Or at least the Italy of my imagination.

You Can Fry What?: Maryland State Fair 2010

funnelcake
September 5, 2010 By In the rabbit hole, three points kitchen

Didn’t it seem like this year the weird and wild arena of things you can fry but probably shouldn’t caught major headlines? Since it was such a lovely Sunday, I grabbed my camera, braved the Bieber fans, and did a little recreational reconnaissance re:  what was cooking at the Maryland State Fair.

Plannedovers, anyone?

leftovers
September 3, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

Dinner was so unexpectedly good I wanted to share, but now that I’m typing I realize a significant issue with this: no sane person would go through the individual processes that I think are what makes this dish rock–the mix of pre-marinated leftovers, i.e. green beans and walnuts in basil dressing, crowder peas in whatever I made those in, tossed with red quinoa and topped with broiled tofu, and left over parsley/scallions. A little white wine vinegar and tomatillo salsa (for him) and cilantro chutney (for me) pulled it all together. Awesomeness without the dishes in 30 minutes or less.

In makes me wonder: has anyone ever written a cookbook where you use yesterday’s dinner in tonight’s masterpiece?

Summertime, and the cooking is easy

simplemeals1
September 3, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

Though I can get a little, um, over-anxious about food when entertaining, my mental energy level last night required a strategy shift for the sake of sanity, so this time I went with a  “let the food do the work” theme. I didn’t even run to the grocery. If I didn’t have it, it wasn’t going in. With 60 minutes to work, what might our fridge produce?

First course was corn soup (blend some corn kernels with a bit of milk and add salt and pepper and fresh chives on top–thank you, garden supply!), the last three carrots in the drawer cut into sticks with the left over basil dressing “artfully” drizzled over top (skip complex preparation and hide beneath the mask of presentation!), and orange tomatoes sliced with oil, vinegar, basil, scallions, and a dash of Hawaiian black salt (knew that would come in handy for something). For the main, I grabbed the left over roasted eggplant and onions (yay, already roasted! oven remains off, house temp remains reasonable), a bunch of swiss chard, and a cup of chick peas and cooked them with some garden garlic (my normal stash was empty and there they were, hanging all nice and dry in the basement!) and some tomato paste and curry powder. Tossed over pasta with a few toasted pine nuts (a little burnt–ooops!), some parsley, and a sprinkle of cheese. Bam!

M brought the wine. We didn’t even get to the leftover birthday cake from Rebecca’s party. Damn.

I have to say that the little backyard garden really helps when it comes to summer cooking, even though it doesn’t seem like much when you look at it. I’m finally figuring out how not to waste the food I get at the market every week, which has been a huge learning curve for me for some reason.  Also, doing dumb things like adding a blue tortilla chip on the side of the soup bowl with a spoon full of that tomatillo salsa gave things a kind of fanciness without much investment.

I’m not working today, so I’m thinking about bottling the wine. Stay dry everyone!

BONUS tip: How to defrost (and probably cook!)  your frozen farmers’ market corn for unexpected dinner guests on a 90 degree day:*

*This method is probably not USDA approved. I’m also pretty sure my mother would faint.

Let Us Eat Cake

Birthday Cake
August 29, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

We raised a glass and feted Rebecca, the birthday girl, here in Charm City this past weekend.

I am slightly ashamed to say that the birthday girl basically baked her own celebratory cake, but after a quick comparison of culinary track records and  kitchen disasters of recent memory, it was pretty obvious that the only way it was going to be awesome was if one of us (ahem) stayed out of the way, so we rolled with it. I did minimal damage by annoying the pastry chef with my camera and adding a few festive sprinkles to the finished product.

Now here is RW with the inside scoop on the baking process and how it ended up so tasty. . .

Well, Molly’s finishing touches did make the difference. . .  After pondering more elaborate recipes–various coconut cakes, multi-layer extravaganzas–couldn’t resist the Best Birthday Cake. (Guess I’m swayed by “Best” recipes lately.) And how. This recipe is a beauty, turning out a lovely textured, buttery-tasting cake with a simple and not overly sweet frosting that spreads like silk.  This calls for cake flour and it’s worth making the effort to pick up some; it helps create moist layers that cut into perfect slices without lots of crumbs. Many thanks to Smitten Kitchen for the great recipe, and to my superb Three Points Baltimore prep cook.

P.S. The cake also travels well, surviving a long-slog, traffic-jammed bus ride back to NYC without a dent. My seatmate did look on a bit longingly as I dug into one slice en route, but sorry, too precious to share.

Crunchy: Hippie Granola

granola1
August 22, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I have had this beauty stashed in the kitchen pantry since Christmas. (Thanks, mom-in-law!!) Not being a household of regular pancake eaters, no occasion for maple syrup ever seemed “special” enough or large enough in required quantity to warrant cracking the seal on 32 ounces of sugary liquid gold. And then it was as if the bar for opening our little keg just kept getting higher and higher with each passing month.

This morning, however, I went looking for a granola recipe big on interesting nuts and grains and low on sugars and dried fruit (gummy bear-chewy is not my palate’s preferred texture). It took a little Googling before I found one that suited me (in the end, it was a tongue-in-cheek search for “hippie granola” that actually reeled in what I was after)* and what pushed it well over the edge was 1) the peanut butter addition (it was a familiar technique: I use this trick in salad dressings a lot) and 2) the indication that the addition of maple syrup, should one have access to this resource, would make a heavenly swap for some of the other sweeteners in the recipe. Bonus: we had toasted wheat germ in the fridge and (what’s better than peanut butter?) almond butter on the shelf. So, stir, stir, stir, toast, toast, toast, and…

I was not disappointed. Take that, Bare Naked.

*A medical professional once pointed out to me that I was “a little crunchy, right?” before he suggested some slightly alternative therapy. It took me a minute to catch his granola hippie drift. To be fair, I was in his office getting shots for a three-month stint in Nepal.