The past month’s deluge has been my basil plant’s mortal enemy, but a true friend to my rosemary, thyme and sage plants — they’ve gone into overdrive, growing lush and flavorful from the extended soak. With the herbs spilling from the pot, I’ve been working them into as many dishes as possible. They’ve been a great addition to marinades and add a lot to grilled dishes and salad dressings, but I also revisited an old favorite last weekend and ended up with a delicious jar of rosemary-thyme syrup.

It’s been wonderful spooned over fresh blueberries (or as an old reliable topping for couche-couche), but I wanted to do a little more with it this time around. Drinks seemed like a natural pairing with the syrup, so I muddled some fresh cherries with it, added a lemon slice, and topped off the glass with cold club soda. (It was too early in the day for Prosecco, but I’ll give it a try for brunch sometime.)

Inspired by this success, my thoughts turned toward dessert. We had a few bordering-on-overripe peaches in the fridge that, when cooked down with about 1/2 cup of the syrup and frozen in my ice cream machine, became my new go-to sorbet.

If the sun we’ve had for the past few days holds (fingers crossed!), I may not need to experiment quite so much with my herbs next weekend, but I’m glad I was able to use the dreary weather to my advantage.

Rufus and recipes after the jump

(more…)

When I saw these babies at the farmers’ market yesterday, I scooped up a bunch for the clafoutis I’ve been craving since Spring first came to town. Clafoutis is just about the simplest dessert you can make, which is a real godsend for someone with my limited baking skills; it’s just a pancake-like batter poured over some type of fruit and baked until the top is brown and puffed and the inside is moist and firmly custardy. The traditional Limousin way of making a cherry clafoutis (it’s such a fun word to say, I’m going to repeat it over and over in this post for the sheer pleasure of saying it in my head — clafoutis, clafoutis) is to leave in the pits; now, I may not be the most traditional cook, but I am a pretty lazy one, so let’s just say my arm didn’t take too much twisting to leave them in. And honestly, spitting the pits is good summertime fun, like doing the same with watermelon seeds.

So I washed and stemmed the cherries and put them in a round baking dish roughly the size of a pie plate…

Do you know how difficult it was not to eat these straight? Gah.

And then I mostly followed Julia Child’s recipe for Clafoutis à la Bourdalone (cherry clafoutis with almonds) because hey, who doesn’t like almonds? Not me, that’s who. But if you don’t like them, I promise not to invite you over when I make this again, ok?

But I have a feeling you’d love this anyway.

See? CLAFOUTIS!

recipe after the jump

(more…)