Honey-Cheddar Corn Muffins

A picture is worth a thousand words...? Or, hopefully, at least worth my limited grad school hours. Here's the picture-book of these muffins:

Sweet Heirloom Sauce

Summer's hanging on by a thread.

I wore a skirt today and walked home from class but never took of my jacket. You can almost feel the anticipation brewing for wool sweaters and crisp leaves. I've also been fighting off my first cold of the season (new Seattle germs...) and leaning towards warm comfort foods. Grilled cheese is always a good one, but a batch of cheap cheap heirloom tomatoes a the Queen Anne farmers' market got me excited about sauce.



Warm and deliciously fresh sauce. Sweet sauce. I've added a small dash of sugar to the past few tomato sauces I've stewed up, to appease Steve's sweet tooth, and they always taste amazing. But this time I wanted to see if I could achieve the same effect in a different way: ripe heirlooms (sweet), fresh basil from my new housewarming herb-garden (sweet-ish), and removing the seeds (bitter-ish when cooked).



Ingredients:

- 3 to 4 large heirloom tomatoes
- 5 to 6 fresh basil leaves
- 2 tbsp. olive oil
- salt and pepper
- dash or sweet paprika (optional)

Slice the tomatoes and remove the seeds. For really ripe heirlooms, the flesh is so dense that there will be very few seeds to remove, as compared with roma or hothouse.


Dice roughly, cover and simmer with olive oil, salt and pepper for about 5 minutes. Remove lid and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes, or until sauce starts to thicken. At this point, you can blend or food-process, or let the chunks live.


Chop the basil and stir in with paprika.



Assemble with optional accouterments (sauteed broccoli and feta!)





The results? Perfectly yummy and comforting, but no comparison to the spoonful of sugar for sweet-tooth satisfaction.

Stone Fruit Summer Pie

As the weather turns dreary up north, I'm reflecting back on this past summer and thinking: "Man, I made a lot of pies!"

Well, sure, I actually only made two. And, yeah, it was really only because I got the fruit for free (Closing time at the farmers market, in the ugly section). But still, two pies feels like a lot when I'm generally not a big fan of either making or eating them-- I'll pick a crisp or crumble over a pie any day.

It's not that I have a problem with fruit (or pumpkin or pecan, if you prefer); it's just the crust that bugs me. It's finicky to make and work with, and then when all is said and done, I've never found it to do much flavor-wise. It's either dry or soggy (mostly dry and bland), and it gets in the way of my un-adulterated enjoyment of the filling.

But that's all changed, now that I have Dori in my life! I used her sweet tart dough with nuts in Ali's birthday tart, and it worked so well that I'm never going to try anything else ever again. It tastes unbelievably yummy, and it's so buttery-soft and easy to work with that you can turn a crust disaster into perfection in less than 30 seconds:

I used fresh cherries, pitted by hand (yeah, that sucked), and an assortment of white and yellow peaches and nectarines. The white ones are incredibly sweet, but I think yellows give more flavor when baked.

To prevent sogginess, I mixed up a small bowl with 1 part flour, 2 parts oats, and 2 parts brown sugar and scattered a thin layer on the unbaked crust before adding the fruit.

Drain the juices from the fruit (set aside in a small bowl), and assemble pie. No sugar or sweetener necessary when you have such ripe produce... just toss together and dump into the crust.

For finishing touches, I added some butter to the oat/sugar mix and sprinkled on top of the fruit (sneaking in some crisp and crumble bits), and I brushed some of the reserved fruit juice around the remaining exposed crust. Bake on 375 for about 40-50 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

And say yes to leftovers!

Eggplant Parm Pizza

I'll be honest: I'm not crazy about eggplant.

I don't like how it (and mushrooms) try to replace sliced meats in vegetarian sandwiches. They always absorb all of the oil out of my stir-fry and Thai dishes, ending up too greasy without leaving any saucy-flavor for the rest of the veggies to enjoy. Nope, don't like eggplant at all.... EXCEPT in Italian restaurants where it is smothered with tomatoes and cheese, in which case I still don't like it- I love it.


Now I'm not sure about the Seattle markets (yet), but at the farmer's market in SF Civic Center the perfect time to shop is 3:45pm. At 3:30, vendors begin to throw bushels of produce into plastic bags and sell them for a dollar, and at 4:00 they begin to pack up and leave. And voila': $2 pizza toppings!


I salted the eggplant slices and pre-cooked them on a grill-pan over the stove for some nice char marks. (I've found that it's helpful to stove cook fresh produce like bell peppers, zucchini and eggplant prior to putting them on pizza because they take a little longer to soften up.) The tomatoes become a sauce without too much effort: wash; dice; simmer with olive oil, bay leaf, salt and pepper.


And then the easy part: toppings. Spread some mozzarella (I used to try freezing and grating it, but what's the point? Thin slices melt just as well). Spread some freshly-grated Parmesan. Arrange eggplant slices.


Bake! (On 450 until crust is golden brown or slightly charred)


Serve! (Preferably with a nice glass of red wine... maybe a side salad... but wine is key).

Sweet 'n Spicy Summer Saute

So you think I haven't cooked or baked anything for a month, do you?

Or you think I've been too busy enjoying lazy summer days to blog? Or perhaps you think I've been cooking and baking a moderate amount (hey, we all need to eat, right?), but that I've been too busy packing and driving and moving to Seattle to update in here. If you chose option 3, you're right! The cooking has gone on; it's just the text that is backlogged, which means that you're in for a minor slew (minor slew?) of updates about Summer produce... Just in time for Autumn.

So let's get to it.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love honey, and I've been looking for fun new ways to incorporate it into pretty much anything I eat. Hence, my honey-spiced corn succotash:


Ingredients:

- Corn (duh): About 1 ear per person, if served as a side.
- Cherry tomatoes, quartered: About 1/4 cup per person (1 cup for 4 servings).
- Onion: As much as you want
- Green beans (or wax beans) chopped.
- Butter.
- Honey.
- Cayenne Pepper.
- Salt and pepper.



Just to pretend I actually measure my ingredients out when I cook, let's say that I made 4 servings, which would be: 4 ears of corn, 1 cup cherry tomatoes, half an onion, about 20-25 wax beans (how do you measure these?), 1 tbsp. butter, 2-3 tbsp. honey, 1/2 tsp. Cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste.

As per usual, this is an easy one-pan dish; however, it takes two rounds of sauteing. The beans go first, in their own round: You can cook them with butter or a little olive oil over medium heat for about 7 or 8 minutes with a little salt and pepper, and then remove and set aside. Warning, as with bell peppers, pretty purple wax beans begin to turn green as you cook them; don't buy for their drama unless you plan to serve them raw.



The second round begins with some onions sauteed in butter over medium heat (2-5 minutes). Then add the corn and tomatoes and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.



Add the honey. Or, to be fancy, drizzle it.

Add (or sprinkle) the Cayenne.



Stir in the green/wax beans. Continue to cook over medium for another 5-10 minutes to allow flavors to blend. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve it up: Sweet with a kick!