Essence of Raspberry

We went fruit picking again. Remember this pie? All those beautiful berries are from Weaver's Orchard, a bit of a drive from Philadelphia, but well worth the trip. And one of the primary reasons for picking this particular farm was a NYT recipe for raspberry vinegar, discovered by a fellow fruit-picking Philadelphia foodie (say it ten times fast). Turns out it's less of a vinegar and more of a syrup, which only increases its potential uses. Which is good, because this recipe makes a LOT.

(Not that I wanted to share it with any of the free-loading fruit flies that have recently invaded our kitchen)





The pile of raspberries is supposed to macerate in a bit of red wine vinegar for three days. I kept getting distracted (pie! ice cream! internet!) and let it sit for about five. I pretended that this was intentional and improves the intense raspberryness. Maybe it did.

The mixture is then strained through cheesecloth. SUPER MESSY. There was juicy red sweetness on my hands, on the counter, on the floor, and maybe on one of the cats. Luckily some also made it into the bowl.

The reason this is more of a syrup than a vinegar is because the next step involves adding the liquid to a slightly-larger-than-equivalent pile of sugar and simmering it. This stuff is SWEET.



The final step works really well if your housemate has a cool looking empty wine bottle available.

This recipe complimented complemented our raspberries so well. We arrived at the height of the season, meaning the raspberries were extremely sweet and, while flavorful, the individual raspberry taste was not particularly strong. The concentrated syrup, however, is intensely raspberry-y. It's a marvelous accompaniment to pancakes, seltzer, or a little rum. And I'm looking forward to finding more uses for it. It's going to be a lovely reminder of summer once the hot, muggy berry season is past.

Photo credit goes to a lovely lady.

Why I am poor.

Most of what I eat (minus the bread and cheese) comes from the Headhouse Farmer's Market:

Isn't it beautiful?

Ratatouille

I've been cooking a lot lately, but even so I found some tomatoes, zucchinis, and eggplants threatening to get mushy at the bottom of my vegetable drawer. Luckily there's a way to use up all those things in one go, and at the same time pay homage to my favorite movie.

For real. My favorite movie EVER. So much Pixar love!

Now that I've told everyone that my favorite movie involves a little blue animated rat, maybe we should move beyond my classy, intelligent, and highly refined movie tastes and get back to the food.

Ratatouille is always a colorful dish, but when you're using heirloom eggplants and tomatoes and green and yellow squashes, all from the farmer's market (although not entirely fresh, due to the aforementioned time at the bottom of the vegetable drawer) it's particularly beautiful. 

So there's a lot of photographs in this post. 

Everything should be in approximately bite-sized pieces. You can make ratatouille on the grill or in the oven as well, but I usually sauté everything, mostly because I'm lazy.

Always start with onions. Then add the eggplant. When it's looking pretty well cooked, throw in the squash.

It's good to add some fresh herbs somewhere in there - I was feeling REALLY lazy, and just tossed in some garlic. But thyme or basil or marjoram or any number of things always makes a good addition, particularly if your ingredients aren't at their peak. This is a good recipe to use for slightly inferior produce, although luckily I didn't have that problem.

The tomatoes go in last. I just stirred them in and made sure they were incorporated, then turned off the heat. They don't need to get overly mushy or disappear into the mixture - they hold more flavor (and color!) if they're just barely cooked. 

My real stroke of genius was plating the ratatouille onto some goat cheese covered toast (Purple Haze and pain au levain, both from the Metropolitan Bakery). The sharp goat cheese was the perfect compliment to the sweet, tomato-y ratatouille (although, is there anything NOT made better by goat cheese?) and the toast added a lovely crunchy texture. Delicious.

peach-berry pie and vanilla ice cream: a love story

The best reason to go peach picking.

 Ever since coming across this recipe for peaches and white wine, me and my equally hot, sticky, Philadelphia-dwelling friends have been making it for every occasion- housewarming parties, pool parties, painting parties, and sit-around-the-house-and-drink-white-wine-and-peaches parties. 

 It's not as much a recipe as it is a really fantastic idea. 

We've shared it with each other, with people at the wine stores, with fellow peach-pickers, and with facebook-at-large. 

So you've probably heard. 

It's delicious.

PMS dinner

Sometimes a girl gets a little grumpy, life seems a little difficult to navigate, and strange back pains start cramping her style. Sometimes she just really, really wants some bacon. Which is what sent me out of the house at 7pm to the little local/sustainable/organic/healthy/green grocery store to get some of their marvelously smoky bacon, prepped by a local chef (from Cafe Estelle, the same bacon I used for ice cream). I went straight past the girl giving out nut butter samples to the meat freezer, which was full of steaks and shanks and other large meat packages, but devoid of bacon. The clouds covered the sun, the flowers began to wilt, the boxes of fresh fruit started to bruise, suddenly the world seemed gray and dark. I gave the grocer a mournful look. Upon hearing what I was looking for, he suddenly morphed into a porky knight in armor shined with bacon grease riding a hairy, frothing boar. Extolling the virtues of the bacon, he bounced over to a cooler, and pulled out a huge pack of bacon that had just been delivered. And, like the bacon, I was suddenly delivered from my misery. Praise the Lord of the Flies.

So this is less of a recipe and more of a vice. I really like bacon, and I really like cooking with the leftover bacon fat. I don't have any tricks for it, and there's probably oodles of amazing things that I could do instead, but usually I just throw a bunch of potatoes into the fat until they smell and taste like bacon. Potato-y bacon.

These are Rose Gold potatoes, from Savoie Organic Farm that have a little bit of sage and marjoram thrown in, courtesy of my housemate's garden. I let them fry in the bacon fat for awhile, and then threw a little water in, covered the pan, and let them steam for a bit.

The cucumber and tomato, my concessions to non-bacon food groups, are also from Savoie. The tomato is an heirloom beefsteak tomato, definitely the best beefsteak I've ever had. The cucumbers are also heirloom, also fantastic, and have a beautiful yellow skin to boot. I've been eating them all week, raw and unadorned, because they're just that delicious. And also because the weather is still hot, muggy, and terrible.

On another note, I went fruit picking up at Weaver's Orchard on Tuesday, with a whole host of lovely people, and we picked a whole lot of fruit. There's pie dough and vanilla ice cream mix in my fridge, so there's some more legit blog posts and photos in the works, but for now I'll just leave you with a little preview of things to come.