Before we get to the nitty gritty of pan-roasting corn, let’s just say that I was hoping to have a soup recipe for you, but “my best people” thought it was a girly soup.

You know, the kind that ladies-who-lunch sip on, cooing how delicious it is? Well, it is delicious, and if I’m honest, it is a bit frou-frou.

So while I lick my wounds and contemplate whether or not it’s worth your time, I thought I hold a class on how to pan-roast corn — which is probably a heckofva lot more useful than some sissy soup.

Why would you want to pan-roast corn? Because it’s easy to make, it’s versatile and it tastes phenomenally better than boiled corn, thanks to the caramelization of corn’s natural sugar content.

Here’s how you do it. Set a skillet over medium-high heat while you shuck the corn. You can use any skillet, but I prefer a cast-iron skillet because it really sears the corn.

Wash and pat dry the corn. Hold the ear, pointy end down inside of a large bowl, which will catch the kernels instead of sending them flying all over the counter. Use a chef’s knife (or a serrated knife if you prefer) and slice down one side of the corn.

Turn the corn a quarter turn and slice again. Repeat two more times, for a total of 4 cuts. The cob will resemble a squared-off rectangle when you’re finished.

The skillet should be nice at hot by now and you can throw the corn in — that’s right: no oil, no butter, no nothing. It’s a dry skillet (which is another reason I like to use cast iron because it can take the punishing heat without any fat.)

DON’T STIR. Sorry to shout, but this is important. You want the corn to spend some time browning, and stirring just spoils the fun. After a couple minutes, you can stir, gently, once, wait a couple minutes and then stir one last time.

It will take about 5 minutes total, to roast the corn, and it should look like the corn in the picture above.

If you cook much longer than 5 minutes, the corn will be overcooked. Remove the corn from the skillet once it’s done, and use immediately, or store in the fridge for a couple of days.

How can you use pan-roasted corn? Let me give you a few ideas to get your mind rolling on the infinite possibilities:

1. Top a girly soup (actually,you can add to any soup, girly or not)

2. Sprinkle on top of a fresh garden salad

3. Fold into an omelet

4. Serve as a side dish for barbecue chicken

5. Use as a filling for savory crepes, along with cooked shrimp or lump crab

Got any other ideas? Leave a comment and share.

Tags: cooking technique, corn, kitchen tip, pan roasting
Posted in How To..., Tips & Tutorials | 14 Comments »

Something about zucchini drives me crazy.

It has nothing to do with the fact that it seems to multiply like crazy.

Put a couple of zucchini in the crisper drawer and the next day, you’ve got twice as many as you started with. Or it seems that way.

That’s not what makes me cuckoo.

What makes me crazy is the taste. Or, more specifically, lack thereof.

The good news about zucchini is that it’s good for you — a little dietary fiber, a healthy dose of Vitamin C and minerals and it even contains Omega 3 fatty acids.

Oh, and it’s supremely low in calories and has almost no fat. Huh, I think I just figured out the taste problem.

How many recipes have you seen that claim “a good way to use up zucchini” and yet the recipe calls for only one, or a cup of grated zucchini, which might be two small ones?

I posed a challenge on twitter the other day, asking someone to come up with a recipe that serves four, but uses 20 zucchini. I got some funny responses and some really good ideas.

@ChefReinvented suggested I eat one and compost 19. She’s funny.

@flourgrrrl told me about a zucchini crumble (yes, a dessert, and she says it tastes similar to apple cobbler.)

@KAHUNA75 suggested zucchini cheesesteaks. Great idea!

@hungrygrrl pointed me to Marcella Hazan, the queen of Italian cooking, which…

made me remember that I have a recipe in my first cookbook, The Great Ranch Cookbook that uses lots of Italian flavors: basil, sun-dried tomatoes and Parmesan — and it uses 6 small zucchinis. If you’re having a big party, triple the recipe and by golly, there’s 18 zukes gone.

The recipe is zucchini rounds stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes and blue cheese.

But hold on there, partner. I’m not crazy about blue cheese, either. Oh, I’ll use it once in a while, but it’s not my favorite cheese. So I changed the recipe up a bit.

The original recipe also calls for roasted red pepper which I happened to have a jar of in the fridge. Unfortunately, it also happened to be a Petri dish — growing several kinds of mold (don’t remember how long it’s been in there, but it apparently got lost behind all the jams and salsas I’ve been reviewing lately for Phoenix Magazine).

No problem. I had just picked up a pint of teensy weensy tomatoes called sweet pea currant tomatoes. They’re no bigger than my fingernail and sweet as candy. You might find them at a farmers market, but if not, just use small grape tomatoes or even cherry tomatoes.

Good friends had brought us a Petaluma cheddar-style goat cheese from Spring Hill Cheese from California (hey, better than a T-shirt) so I swapped that for the blue cheese.

Now, instead of zucchini making me crazy, I’m crazy for zucchini — if it’s holding a wallop of flavor like these little appetizer bites.

What’s your favorite way to use up summer zucchini? Leave a comment and share. I think I still have a few zucchini in the crisper drawer.

Sun-Dried Tomato & Goat Cheese Stuffed Zucchini

Serves 8

Ingredients
6 small (straight) zucchini (about 2 pounds)
1/2 cup marinated sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, drained
1/2 cup small tomatoes (grape or cherry)*
8 medium basil leaves, torn
1/4 cup grated aged goat cheese (or white cheddar)
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Method
1. Heat the oven to 400°F. Slice the zucchini into 3/4-inch rounds and scoop most of the pulp out with a melon baller (be careful not to go all the way through — you’re making a “bowl” for the stuffing.)

2. Squeeze the drained sun-dried tomatoes in several layers of paper towels to remove most of the oil.

3. Place the sun-dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, basil leaves, cheeses and pepper flakes into a food processor. Pulse several times until the mixture is still chunky but the ingredients are mostly blended.

4. Grease (or spray with non-stick spray) a baking sheet. Place the hollowed zucchini rounds on the sheet and fill with about a teaspoon of filling, mounding it up slightly.

5. Bake about 10 to 12 minutes, until the mixture is bubbly and the zucchini is cooked al dente. Remove from the oven and transfer to a platter. Garnish with tiny basil leaves if desired.

* If you use cherry tomatoes, remove the seeds. Cut them in half, and scoop out the seeds, leaving just the shell.

Tags: basil, goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato goat cheese stuffed zucchini, zucchini
Posted in Appetizers, Recipes | 7 Comments »

Nothing says summer quite like a vine-ripened, juicy tomato.

Maybe that’s why Away to Garden’s Margaret Roach selected the tomato as the final theme in the four-week Summer Fest 2009.

illustration by Matt Armendariz of Mattbites.com

Ms. Roach created Summer Fest 2009 as a way to “cross-pollinate” blogs. Along with her co-creators, she wrote weekly posts around themes, and invited the whole community to join in. She asked others to leave comments and/or links to other posts about the themes.

I did just that: week one: herbs, week two: fruits from trees, week three: greens & beans, and now, tomatoes.

I also left comments on the co-creators’ blogs and on the other great blogs I found by reading through the comments.

Before I jump into my final Summer Fest post let’s see what the co-creators and special guests of Summer Fest 2009 have dreamed up for you this week.

• Away To Garden: Tomato Junk and other tales of tomato harvest
• Matt Bites: Ten things you can do with tomatoes (including a roasted tomato Bloody Mary)
• Paige Orloff of The Sister Project: Tomato carrot soup with curry
• Simmer Till Done: Upside down tomato basil bread
• Steamy Kitchen: Caprese with basil vinaigrette
• White On Rice Couple: Three tomato jam recipes (sweet and spicy, ginger kissed and balsamic/thyme)

That’s a bountiful basket full of ideas to honor the Grand Dame of summer — the glorious tomato.

Since I did a rather involved recipe for last week’s greens & beans theme, I’ve whipped up something really simple for this week:

Heirloom Tomato & Goat Cheese Napoleon

Although I couldn’t resist giving it a fancy name, it’s nothing more than a fancy tomato sandwich. I’m using heirloom tomatoes, because they taste better than hybrid versions, and they are everywhere right now from farmers markets to local grocery stores.

If you are interested in learning more about heirloom tomatoes, and perhaps even growing some, I recommend The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Tableby Amy Goldman, and Seed Savers, a non-profit organization that sells all kinds of heirloom seeds, including some beautiful tomato varieties.

(You can download a PDF of the Holiday Gift Book Round Up article I wrote for Edible Phoenix last year on several garden cookbooks, including The Heirloom Tomato book.)

The Napoleon is traditionally a stacked dessert of puff pastry, pastry cream and strawberries. Even though my version is more of a savory dish, I did work in a hint of sweetness as you’ll see a little later.

Tomatoes are, after all, technically a fruit. You could serve this Napoleon for brunch, but it could easily work at breakfast or dinner, too.

Even though this is a vegetarian Napoleon, you could add crisped bacon or prosciutto slices, or even lump crab or cooked shrimp to make it more substantial.

The only “cooking” involved in this version is baking the puff pastry.

A more ambitious cook than I might tackle making the puff pastry dough from scratch. Made-from-scratch puff pastry dough is far superior to store-bought dough, although that’s what I’ve used here because, like I said, I’m not feeling ambitious. In fact, I’m feeling kind of lazy this summer.

If you want to make fresh puff pastry dough, I highly recommend you visit Ashley Rodriguez’s lovely blog, Not Without Salt.

Here are her two posts on how to make puff pastry. The first post contains the recipe (which was written by a couple chefs I know, Sarah Labensky and Skip Hause. Their book, On Cooking, now in it’s 4th edition, is a professional text book, hence the expensive price tag.)

Ashley’s second post is a pictorial display of the puff pastry technique. With these two posts, you can become a puff pastry king or queen in no time. Well, maybe a little time.

About the sweetness in this Napoleon I referred to earlier: I slathered a bit of Cotton Country Jams spiced tomato jam onto the puff pastry. Cotton Country Jams is a local Phoenix company, and they make the most incredible jams and pickled vegetables. I’m crazy about their candy-sweet pickled beets, too. (Phone number is (602) 268-3181.)

This Napoleon is really nothing more than puff pastry, tomatoes, herbed goat cheese and jam. That’s it. Pretty simple, right?

OK, you’re turn. Leave a comment and tell me about your favorite summer tomato recipe.

Heirloom Tomato & Goat Cheese Napoleon

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
4 ounces soft, fresh goat cheese
2 tablespoons cream (or half and half)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon leaves
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaves
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons tomato jam (or apricot or other light colored jam)
1-1/2 pounds heirloom or vine-ripened tomatoes, cored and sliced 1/3-inch thick

Method
1. Heat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat or parchment paper.

2. Unfold puff pastry on a lightly floured surface. Cut along the fold lines into three strips. Place on baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool slightly. Cut in half with a serrated knife, creating a top and bottom.

3. Stir the cream, herbs and pepper into the goat cheese.

4. Spread the goat cheese on the top and bottom of two of the puff pastries. (The third top and bottom will become the middle layer of the other two.)

5. Spread the middle layer with the jam (just 1 side of each, it doesn’t matter if you do the inside or the outside.)

6. Layer 1/4 of the sliced tomatoes on each of the two bottom halves with the goat cheese. Top each with the jam smeared layer. Layer with the remaining tomatoes and place the tops on. Cut into thirds, crosswise, to create six pieces and serve.

Tags: goat cheese, heirloom tomatoes, puff pastry, Summer Fest 2009, tomato jam, tomato napoleon, tomato sandwich, tomatoes
Posted in Appetizers, Recipes | 20 Comments »

On a sunny, summer Sunday morning, there is no line in front of Portland’s Byways Cafe. Apparently, Portland likes to sleep in on Sunday because just the day before, the line snaked around the corner.

As we wait for the door to open, a couple of ladies arrive, pushing their mother in a wheelchair.

“It’s Mom’s day out,” one says. “We always take Mom, who is 102 by the way, out for breakfast on Sunday.”

I never would have guessed. We hold the door open and “Mom” stands up. Gracefully, gingerly, she walks into the cafe and all the way back to their regular booth.

Over the course of the next hour, 10′s of customers stroll in, most of them regulars. I know this because the customers and staff acknowledge each other on a first name basis.

Byways Cafe is a diner in the tony Pearl District of Portland and serves hearty portions of homey, simple breakfast and lunch fare at reasonable prices.

The small space, decorated with tourist tchotchkes from all over the U.S, doesn’t feel cheesy. It feels comfortable — like visiting your wacky Aunt, who collects (and displays) gaudy trinkets from every place she’s ever been.

Byways Cafe was featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. No matter what you think of host Guy Fieri, he picks some pretty rocking places — like Phoenix’s Matt’s Big Breakfast, and New Orleans’s barbecue haunt, The Joint.

At the time, I didn’t know Byways was featured on Fieri’s show. I found Byways because I spotted the Saturday morning line as we were wandering around the Pearl District.

Any restaurant that has a line half-a-block long piques my interest. I bet it does yours, too.

By the time we leave Byways, the line is precariously creeping towards the corner again, and by 10 a.m, it wraps around 12th Avenue.

It’s easy to understand why. The food, although simple, is everything you’d expect from a diner.

Caloric, filling, and plentiful — a real value for the money. The service is snappy, genuine and if you don’t personally know your waitress by the time you leave, you’re probably a curmudgeon.

As far as I can tell, Portland has a thing about hash.

Every breakfast joint — from Mother’s Bistro (smoked salmon) to Bijou Cafe (fried oyster) to Beast (duck confit) — slings some kind of hash.

(OK. Beast isn’t a breakfast joint and the gourmet hash was flung at brunch. Still, as one of the top new restaurants in town, hash was on the brunch menu — so I still say this town has an obsession with hash.)

Byways Cafe’s hash is “traditional,” meaning it’s made with corned beef and a jumble of  potatoes, onions and green peppers. Surprisingly, the corned beef tastes head-tiltingly sweet — like it was brined in a vat of sugar water.

I can’t honestly say that it is my favorite hash experience in Portland, but it’s  not a bad hash, and gets bonus points melted cheese.

Filling? I have enough leftover for another meal, which I hand to a grateful man sitting on a stoop around the corner, past the line, politely asking for spare change.

A much better choice if you really want something sweet?  Blue corn pancakes with honey pecan butter. Oh, and real maple syrup.

The three, thin, plate-size pancakes are tender, yet richly textured from stone-ground blue corn meal. (This is Portland after all,  a food-centric city crazy about whole grains, organic produce and independent restaurants.)

The pancakes aren’t sweet on their own, so the maple syrup adds just the right amount of sweetness and the whole dish doesn’t feel like one big spoonful of sugar, like some pancakes do.

Here is what I love about Byways Cafe: it isn’t trying to be something that it’s not, and as a result, it ends up being just what the neighborhood wants:

A cafe that serves up hefty, home-style plates with a smile (our waitress even showed us her brand new ankle tattoo), with local ingredients dispersed here and there. And,  a bottomless coffee cup.

That — not Guy Fieri — is why there is a line out the door.

Byways Cafe
1212NW Glisan Street
Portland, OR
(503) 221-0011

Tags: byways cafe, diner in Portland, Guy Fieri, Matt's Big Breakfast, Portland, The Joint, where to eat in Portland's Pearl District
Posted in Travel Eats | No Comments »

I better just say this straight out: my recipe for week three of Summer Fest 2009 isn’t a 5 minute, less-than-3 ingredients recipe. But if you’ve been coming here a while, you know that’s generally not my style.

You’re going to have to use your knife skills. And dirty up a couple pots.

But if you love to cook and love incredibly explosive flavors, this might be the recipe for you.

illustration by Matt Armendariz of Mattbites.com

The Summer Fest cross-pollination blogging project’s third week, created by gardening maven Margaret Roach of Away To Garden, is officially underway with a greens and beans theme.

Earlier this summer I wrote about how to cook Swiss chard and collard greens. Now I’m tackling beans — green beans.

But before I get to my post, here’s what the co-creators of Summer Fest have cooked up:

• Away To Garden: Beans on a Pedestal
• Matt Bites: Sauteed Beet Greens with Pancetta & Sun-dried Tomatoes
• Steamy Kitchen: Broccoli Beef Stir-Fry
• White On Rice Couple: Edible Salad of Green Tops (beets, carrots and radishes)
• The Gluten Free Girl: Homegrown Salad

I borrowed a soy glaze from a recipe in my book The Cool Mountain Cookbook: A Gourmet Guide to Winter Retreats. It really belongs to a sea bass, but I’m sure the bass won’t mind sharing it with the beans.

The result is Sesame Soy Glazed Green Beans.

The first step involves parcooking the beans — an easy step that’s useful for many green bean recipes, not just this one.

Just drop the beans in a pot of boiling water and cook for 2 to 4 minutes, depending upon how crunchy (less time) or tender (more time) you want your final beans to be. After the brief boil, shock the beans by dropping them into a bowl of ice water. 

Now, you may be asking yourself. Why didn’t Chef Gwen say “blanch the beans?”

True, blanching also means dropping food into a pot of boiling water but unlike parcooking,  blanching is a quick in-and-out step.

The point of blanching is to keep the bright color (especially for green vegetables), or loosen the skin for easy peeling (tomatoes, peaches) or soften the food, like a cabbage leaf destined for stuffing, for example.

With parcooking, we want to move the cooking a little further along than a quick blanch. With either technique — blanching or parcooking — shocking the food with ice water is key to stop the cooking.

After parcooking and shocking the beans for this recipe, the next step is slicing the beans at an angle to create bite size pieces with attractive points. In the picture above, you can see the knife is positioned on a whole bean at a severe angle. The more angled your knife, the pointier the ends will be. (Is pointier a word?) You get the point.

The next step is to make the soy glaze. It doesn’t take long so having all the ingredients measured beforehand is key. Get a small saucepan very hot and pour in the soy sauce. Boy, will it ever sizzle! Then quickly stir in some honey and rice wine vinegar, followed by a slurry.

A slurry is a fancy name for a starch (in this case cornstarch but it could also be arrowroot) and cold water. The slurry, when added to boiling liquid, will thicken the liquid quicker than you can pour a glass of wine.

Once the glaze is made (it takes less than 5 minutes) the next step is to briefly saute the beans with some flavor enhancers. I use peanut oil for Asian inspired sautes because I like the flavor. It also has a high smoking point, compared to say, olive oil, so it’s a good oil for serious frying, although we’re not using extreme heat in this dish.

Garlic, fresh grated ginger and red chile pepper flakes are the flavoring ingredients for this recipe. The brief saute only takes a couple minutes, and then the glaze is added and cooked just until it’s heated through.

Toss in some sliced red bell pepper for color just before the glaze is added. While the beans are sauteing, put a small skillet on another burner and toast some sesame seeds. You can buy sesame seeds already toasted, but it’s really easy and only takes a few minutes to toast them yourself.

Just put a dry skillet over medium-high heat and give the pan a shake every once in a while. You can tell they’re done when they turn a shade darker and start to smell nutty. Seriously, that’s it. Takes maybe 5 minutes.

It probably takes 30 minutes from start (parcooking) to finish (glazing), so that’s not too bad, is it?

And the flavor? Well, it’s a party for your mouth — a little spicy, a little salty, a little sweet and tangy, and richly flavored with soy. Fantastic.

I’d love to hear what you think about this recipe, and if you’ve got a greens or beans recipe, leave a link. So drop a comment, and then head over to the other Summer Fest blogs and do the same. You’ll be amazed, reading through the comments, at what other greens and beans treasures await you.

Soy Sesame Green Beans

Serves 6

Ingredients
For the beans
1 pound green beans
2 teaspoons peanut (or vegetable oil)
1/2  to 1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1/4 teaspoon red chile pepper flakes
1 cup sliced red bell pepper (about 1/2 of a large pepper)
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds*

For the glaze
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon cornstarch whisked together with 1 tablespoon cold water (slurry)

Method
Make the beans
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and set up a large bowl of ice water. Drop the beans into the boiling water. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 to 4 minutes. Remove beans with tongs or a slotted spoon and plunge into the ice water.

2. Remove the beans from the ice water after a few minutes, when the beans are cool. Pat dry. Slice the beans, at an angle, into 2-inch, bite-size pieces.

Make the glaze
1. Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat for several minutes. Pour in soy sauce (it will sizzle furiously). Stir in honey and vinegar. Stir in slurry. The mixture should quickly thicken, probably in less than a minute. Remove from heat and set aside.

2. Heat the peanut oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green beans and stir to coat with the oil. Stir in the garlic, ginger and pepper flakes. Saute for another minute or two. Stir in the glaze, tossing to coat and cook just until heated through. Remove from heat.

3. Place the beans on a serving platter and sprinkle with the toasted sesame seeds.

* To toast sesame seeds, heat a small, dry skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in the sesame seeds. Shake the pan occasionally to prevent burning the seeds. The seeds are toasted when they turn a shade darker and smell nutty. It should take about 5 minutes, give or take.

Tags: blanch, ginger, green beans, parcook, recipe, sesame seeds, soy sauce, Summer Fest 2009
Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes | 18 Comments »

illustration by Matt Armendariz of Mattbites.com

Summer Fest 2009 is a multi-week, “cross-pollination” of blogs, created by Margaret Roach from Away To Garden. She enlisted the help of several top food bloggers with the goal of sharing recipes and tips.

The best part is that everyone can participate in the fun, just by leaving comments, and if you’ve written about the topic, leave a link, too. But even if you don’t have a blog, you can still leave a comment. It’s all about sharing — I know I’d love to hear from you.

The first week was all about herbs, this week is fruit-from-trees. Next week is greens and beans, with a grand finale of tomato week.

I’ve chosen nectarines for my Summer Fest fruit-from-trees post. I’ve got nothing against fuzzy peaches, but I just love the smooth-skinned yellow nectarines.

Before I dive into my post about wrapping nectarines and blueberries in a free form pie dough for a very rustic crostata, here’s a look at what some of the other Summer Fest participants are doing:

• Away To Garden: Peach Clafloutis

• Matt Bites: Apricot Ice Cream

• Paige Orloff: Plum Tarte Tatin

• Simmer Till Done: Ginger Peach Pandowdy

• Steamy Kitchen: Warm Plum and Chanterelle Salad

• White On Rice Couple: Peach Coolers

You’ll find even more links to other great Summer Fest posts by reading the comments on these co-creator blogs. Why, I think you could spend a whole day reveling the wonders of fruits from trees.

Let’s talk about pie, shall we? Crostata is an Italian term for a rustic, free-form, open-faced pie.

This recipe is adapted from a pear and dried sour cherry recipe in my cookbook, The Great Ranch Cookbook. But since it’s Summer Fest, and pears are definitely not in season, I’ve replaced the winter fruit with what’s in season now.

Nectarines, like peaches, give off lots of juice during baking. I don’t want the juice oozing out of my open-faced pie, so I sprinkle the peaches with sugar and let them sit for a while. It’s really a little bonus for the cook, too. You can drink the juice (maybe mix it with a little rum and a splash of soda? Just sayin’.)

The reason I love crostatas is because they’re fast and easy and you don’t have to be a champion pie crimper. Didn’t roll out your dough into a perfect circle? Who cares! Of course, I do like my silicone pastry sheet with measured circles that lets me know when I’ve reached roughly the right size.

You don’t have to expertly arrange the fruit either. You can just mound it in the center of your not-so-perfect pie dough, letting the fruit fall where it may. Then just pick up an edge and pull it toward the center. Pull up another section a couple inches away, and pleat that over the first piece, working your way all around the pie.

Brush the pie edges with a little milk or cream and sprinkle with sugar. Granulated sugar works just fine, but raw sugar adds a little more character.

That’s my take on fruit-from-trees for Summer Fest 2009. What do you think?

Nectarine Blueberry Crostata

My Dad would not like this rustic pie for two reasons. 1.) He really hates blueberries. Says they make your breath smell bad. 2.) This pie isn’t very sweet. It’s what I call barely-sweet. That’s why you can add whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream and it doesn’t make the whole dessert just one big tooth-jarring sugar bomb.

The recipe calls for 1-1/2 pounds of nectarines, which is about four large ones. I usually buy one more than I need because there is always one nectarine that’s either not ripe enough, or has a bad pit, or bruised. It’s always something.

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 recipe Easy, Buttery Pie Dough
1-1/2 pounds just-ripe nectarines
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon milk or cream or in between
1 tablespoon sugar (I like raw sugar, or big crystal white sugar)
1 tablespoon peach or apricot jam (for glazing, so any light colored jam will do, even strawberry)

Method
1. Make the pie dough and let it chill while you prepare the filling.

2. Cut the nectarines into 1/2-inch wedges. Place in a large bowl and toss with lemon juice and sugar. Set aside for 20 minutes. The nectarines will give off about 1/3 a cup or so of juice.

3. Drain the nectarines and return to the bowl. Add the blueberries, cinnamon and nutmeg and toss gently.

4. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Roll the pie crust out on a lightly floured surface to a 12-inch circle. And by circle, I mean something similar to round, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Fold the dough over the rolling pin and transfer it to a lined baking sheet and unfold.

5. Mound the filling onto the center of the dough, leaving a 2-1/2 to 3-inch border all the way around. Fold the border over the filling, pleating as you go. A good portion of the filling will be uncovered.

6. Brush the dough with the milk or cream, and sprinkle with the sugar.

7. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the dough is browned and cooked through.

8. Warm the jam in the microwave for 10 seconds or so and brush the jam on the fruit, to give it a little sheen. Rest the pie 5 to 10 minutes before cutting. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream if you like.

Tags: blueberry, crostada, nectarines, pie, recipe, Summer Fest 2009
Posted in Desserts, Recipes | 15 Comments »

You know I’m not a baker. I think I’ve mentioned that before. Well, pie dough used to be one of those “baker” things that freaked me out. It doesn’t anymore because I figured out that using my food processor removes my biggest fear — overworking the dough. Now, there are gazillions of pie dough recipes on the internet and in cookbooks (including one of my own).

This recipe, adapted from my own The Great Ranch Cookbook, is the easiest, butteriest one I’ve tried. I say “adapted” because in the book, I write how to make it by hand. Here, I use the real workhorse in my kitchen, my Cuisinart food processor. And it takes all of 15 minutes — less if don’t have to dig your machine out from underneath a cabinet.

It’s really quite simple, with only four ingredients: flour, salt, butter, milk.

Put the flour in the bowl of your food processor, sprinkle with a little salt, and top with ice-cold butter cubes.

Here’s a trick I learned from a real pastry chef:

Cover the bowl of the food processor with a piece of plastic wrap before you secure the lid. Why? To keep the flour from wheezing out through the gap between the lid and the bowl.

Now, pulse several times, in long bursts, just until…

…the mixture looks like coarse meal, with some pea-size chunks of butter.

Remove the plastic, and the pour spout stopper and put the lid back on. With the motor running, pour in the milk.

Turn off the machine as soon as the dough starts to gather in a ball. If you wait until it’s all gathered together, you’ve gone too far, and your dough will be tough, and forget about any flakiness.

Trust me, the dough will come together. Scrape all the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, and pat it together into a flat disk. Wrap it tightly and refrigerate until it’s chilled. You can even freeze it at this point for a couple months, but place it in freezer bag for even more protection.

Easy, Buttery Pie Dough

Makes a single crust for a 9-inch pie

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (1/4 teaspoon if using table salt)
1/2 cup cold butter (1 stick), cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 to 1/3 cup cold milk (any kind…except chocolate, of course)

Method

1. Place the flour in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade.

2. Sprinkle salt over flour. Place a piece of plastic wrap over the bowl and secure the lid. Pulse once or twice to blend.

3. Remove the lid and the plastic and place butter cubes on top of flour. Cover the bowl with the plastic again and secure the lid.

4. Pulse several times, in long (4 second) bursts to cut the butter into the flour. Stop when the mixture resembles coarse meal, with a few pea-size pieces of butter still visible.

5. Remove the lid and the plastic. Secure the lid back on the bowl and remove the pour spout. Turn the motor on and pour in the milk in a steady stream. Turn the motor off as soon as the dough begins to gather into a ball. It won’t take long. Seconds, really.

6. Scrape the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and pat into a thick, circular disk. Wrap tightly with the plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes.

Tags: butter, food processor, pie dough, recipe
Posted in Desserts, How To..., Recipes, Tips & Tutorials | 7 Comments »

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