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Field to Feast: Strawberries & Rhubarb, Part II

Strawberry Portrait at Minimally Invasive

As much as I love strawberries, I’ll admit that bringing home four pints at one time might have been overkill. Strawberries have such a short shelf life that you have to do something with them pretty quickly or you’ll find your very own science experiment growing in the refrigerator within days. Which is to say we were swimming in desserts last week. In addition to the galette I posted yesterday, I made a crisp (this time with rhubarb!) to use up a good portion of my bounty. We really tore through these desserts, not from fear of spoilage, but just because we couldn’t help ourselves.

And really, who doesn’t love a crisp? I’ve been trying to perfect a gluten-free version for the past few months, but the all-purpose flour blends weren’t working for me at all. Even after cutting back on the butter, they still oozed into a big sugary mass over the fruit instead of, well, crisping nicely on top. Since I’ve had such

By |June 19, 2013|Baking, dessert, Farmers' Market, Field to Feast, Fruit, Gluten-free, Rhubarb, Strawberries, Vegetarian|1 Comment
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Field to Feast: Strawberries & Rhubarb, Part I

Strawberries at Minimally Invasive

To be perfectly honest, rhubarb won’t make an appearance until the second post, but I hope you’ll forgive me, because today’s strawberry galette is a doozy on its own. And that was a surprise to me, because I usually find cooked strawberries a bit underwhelming on their own.

Galettes are one of my favorite desserts to make when spring rolls around because they’re incredibly easy and are supposed to look like crap RUSTIC, imperfection being a key selling point of this dessert! And honestly, I need no particular encouragement to make my baked goods look RUSTIC and HOMEY!

Gluten-Free Strawberry Galette at Minimally Invasive

See? RUSTIC! 

I’ve always been happy enough with the crust I use for galettes; it’s shot through with cornmeal, which gives it some heft and a really pleasing crunch that goes so, so well with whatever filling I’m using. This time around, I did swap out AP flour for Cup4Cup because I bake gluten-free now, but […]

By |June 18, 2013|Baking, Cup4Cup, dessert, Farmers' Market, Field to Feast, Fruit, Gluten-free, Strawberries|0 Comments
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This Is Just To Say

Click images for larger views.

By |September 4, 2012|Fruit, Pictures|7 Comments
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Cup4Cup Week: The Cake

After the biscuit victory, I was hooked — is there anything this flour can’t do? The next test was a little unfair, simply because the cake recipe I chose uses a lot of butter and juicy nectarines and it’d be tough for any gluten-free flour not to shine under those conditions. Still, summer’s ending and I hadn’t made my favorite cake of the season yet — the Nectarine Golden Cake.

Gluten-free cake with Cup4Cup flour

The cake didn’t rise quite as high as cakes made with regular AP flour, but the flavor and texture were indistinguishable. Big win!

recipe after the jump

(more…)

By |September 3, 2012|Baking, Cake, Cup4Cup, Desserts, Fruit, Gluten-free, Pictures|1 Comment
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Cup4Cup Week: The Pie

Gluten-Free Pie with Cup4Cup flour

You can blame/thank Joy the Baker for this entire week of posts. If not for her gorgeous strawberry-ginger pie and enthusiastic championing of Cup4Cup Flour, I never even would’ve attempted this pie, much less five posts on the topic of… flour. My frustration with the intersection of pie crusts and small countertops is well-documented on this site, but I miss having a good slice of pie, especially after going gluten-free. See, I LOVE pie. I’m a pie girl. If you give me a choice of cake or pie, I’ll choose pie every day and twice on Sunday. I’m not too picky on the filling as long as it’s freshly-made and not dumped in from a can, but a bland or god-forbid bad crust really offends my delicate sensibilities. As Joy’s detailed instructions gave me hope of making my own pie with an amazing crust, I dove in after receiving my flour order from Gilt Taste (where I had credit, so it wasn’t a painful investment).

By |August 28, 2012|Baking, Blueberries, Cup4Cup, Fruit, Gluten-free, peaches, Pictures, pie|4 Comments
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From the Market: Stone Fruit Edition

Stone Fruit Edition

“You’re gonna get the shits.”

It was the late 70s and I was maybe 10 years old — 10 being my default age for somewhat indistinct childhood memories — and the wind was whipping my hair into a rat’s nest. It was summer and I was riding in the back of a pickup truck with a group of kids, heading back to our meeting place after an afternoon of picking peaches. Oh, there was an adult riding with us who was there in a supervisory capacity, because there has to be ONE responsible grown-up around when you’re transporting a bunch of kids IN THE BACK OF A PICKUP TRUCK. No, we weren’t day laborers or or migrant peach-pickers, but a group of Mennonites gathered for a weekend pig roast in Mississippi to celebrate the dedication of a new church building. I suppose the adults wanted to get us out of the way and thought we’d burn off some energy gathering fruit.

I don’t remember the activity of picking itself, but the trip home is firmly planted […]

By |August 9, 2012|Daily, Desserts, Farmers' Market, Farmers' Market Feast, Fruit, Grilling, peaches, Pictures, Salad|7 Comments
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That’s a Wrap

Summer’s over and so is the photography portion of the cookbook project I spent my weekends on. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate 1) completing the work, 2) the unofficial start of fall and 3) football season than with a big pot of beef & lamb chili and an over-the-top dessert. It’s a retread of the Vanilla Roasted Pears with Amaretto Mascarpone I made earlier in the year, but made this time with the courage of my convictions. And let me tell you, espresso cream is in no way a bad (or overpowering) thing.

Seckel and Bartlett Pears

I had no real plans to go with such a fall feast, but the pears at the farmers’ market called to me Saturday.

I was powerless against them.

Fall dessert

Wicked, wicked […]

By |September 12, 2011|dessert, Farmers' Market, Fruit, Gluten-free, Pears|15 Comments
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From the Market — Week 5

Because it's cherry season!

Gather ye cherries while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying…

Unlike the apple, which you can’t miss because it won’t leave, the cherry is ephemeral, making its arrival much more eagerly anticipated. I’ve been seeing them piled up on fruit carts around the city for the past month or so, but I can’t bear the thought of random street germs wafting over my fruit, so I managed (just barely) to hold off until I could be sure to get local, juicy, pesticide- and city stank-free versions at the market.

Though cherry season is fleeting, we’re blessed with an abundance during that time, which means I couldn’t decide between varieties, so they all came home with me — Queen Anne, sour cherries, and sweet. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the sour cherries other use them for cherry soup, so I googled and got a great idea from Chowhound: I’m now the proud owner of a jar of bourbon-soaked sour cherries, which will be just […]

By |June 30, 2011|Almond, Cherries, Farmers' Market, Fruit, jam, Pictures, Strawberries|4 Comments
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From the Market — Week 3

Caramelized Scallops with Strawberry Salsa

I haven’t come close to using everything I picked up at the market this weekend, but here’s a good sampling of what we’ve had.

Strawberries. Oh, yes. Divine, luscious, sweet, knock-your-socks-off strawberries, the memory of which will drive me away from the display at the grocery store that tries to tempt me, so redly and smugly. “Hey Amy, it’s still summer. Doesn’t a large, mealy strawberry sound delicious right about now?” Erm, no. Even more so (possibly) than tomatoes, they’re just so much better from the local growers.

They deserved a more special treatment than sliced over homemade yogurt (though they popped up there, too), so I worked up a strawberry salsa to top caramelized scallops. I tempered the fruity salsa with red wine vinegar so it would balance the naturally sweet scallops.

And we both loved it — if only I’d made […]

By |June 15, 2011|Appetizers, Avocado, Dairy-free, Farmers' Market Feast, Fruit, Gluten-free, Pictures, Radishes, Scallops, Seafood, Seasonal Cooking, Strawberries, Vegetables|8 Comments
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Recipe doctoring

I’m a big mark for Patton Oswalt. Of course he’s funny, sometimes scathingly so, but what I like most about him is the degree of reflection he puts into any interview he gives. He’s been making the rounds to promote his new book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, so I caught him on a couple of podcasts recently — The BS Report with Bill Simmons and WTF with Marc Maron (which you must subscribe to, if you don’t already). Aaaaanyway, Oswalt made a great observation on The BS Report while discussing his work as a script doctor. He said he learned early on that movie remakes can be done well, provided they aren’t too faithful to the original. That if you explore the story from a tangent — and remake rather than retell — the new project isn’t so burdened and can become its own thing, possibly more interesting than the source material.

I agree fully with this approach, having experienced it repeatedly while struggling to make old favorites gluten-free. Some recipes handle the noodling better than others, but the simple fact is GF baked goods NEVER will […]

By |January 29, 2011|Desserts, Fruit, Gluten-free, Pears, Pictures|1 Comment
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