Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Barbecue with the New Roomies

For those of you who don't know, I moved recently. Like a whole six blocks. Somehow still a lot of work. Anyhow, my new roommates decided we should have a party, and I'm really never going to say no. As luck would have it (and as I mentioned in my previous entry),  I got a pretty sweet haul from a show I was working the other night, including several heirloom tomatoes, 2 fennel bulbs, 1/3 of a box of olive oil, a couple lemons, a big ol' clamshell of micro greens, a bunch of organic kale, a pint of grape tomatoes, a pint of raspberries, a quart of blueberries, several dozen beautiful macarons handmade by the lovely Christine Manke, and enough stone fruit to sate an army of the most voracious fruit bats.



My contributions to the party were as follows: sliced heirloom tomatoes with thyme; kale salad with citrus, fennel, grape tomatoes, avocado, and cilantro pepita dressing; Manke macarons; and mint juleps (which have nothing to do with the aforementioned awesomeness. Items I actually purchased for all this? Thyme, 2 oranges, mint, and bourbon. Some stuff I just had in the house already. Like homemade cilantro pesto.

Really wish I had a close-up of the kale salad. Alas. I thinned out some cilantro pepita pesto I made recently with lemon juice and olive oil, and tossed the kale with that. Then I added shaved fennel, grape tomatoes, orange slices, and avocado. It was delish. And so pretty. You can see it at about 10 o'clock in this photo.



Here's a nice porn-y pic of my 'maters.



Somehow I forgot that I also made little single serving fruit pies. Not sure how that slipped my mind. They were kind of a pain in the ass. Oh, I know why. I didn't take any pictures. I'm so old and senile now that I only remember things if I photograph them. Or maybe I'm like the guy in Memento.

I made a couple dozen: raspberry; blueberry; mixed peach, plum, apricot, nectarine. I had a hell of a time with the crust though. I'm not sure what the problem was, but I suspect it was the butter. I followed a recipe. A recipe I had just used the other night, no less! The only thing wrong when I used it before was that it was perhaps too tough, too strong. My first batch this time just wouldn't hold together at all. Now I would blame the almond flour (I subbed in a little for the GF all-purpose), but my second batch, where I followed the recipe to the letter, was not much better. Anybody know anything about making pie crust with Plugra butter? Thank goodness it's "when all the berries and stone fruit are ripe and cheap" season, so the fruit was sweet and delicious enough to make up for the shortcomings of the crust. Because really, all I did was put fruit in the pie shells and bake 'em. No sugar, no lemon juice, no nothin'.

And now for something completely different:

Here's a series of my attempts to take a selfie with a baby eating crackers.






This lil' guy is Greyson. He's my buddy. He belongs to these nice people:



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