Last night my lovely roommate Lauren and I had our first of many sunday night dinners.  

Falafel Night Menu:

Falafel

Cucumber Salad

Edamame Hummus

Mint Roasted eggplant

Yogurt Sauce

Last night in a drunken state of mind, with the help of a couple friends we decided to make a blueberry crisp.

The past two sundays I have made crisp’s and decided they are the ultimate comfort food. The warm filling and the decadent topping is the perfect medicine; it can fix anything thats broken.

First your spoon hits the buttery slightly crisp crust then hits the juicy sweet fruit filling. It is hot and bubbly and sweet by the natural deliciousness of the fruit. When I lived in Napa Valley, during the summer we would search the town for delicious summer stone fruit and concoct pies with our findings. I hope to be doing alot of that this summer. 

Summer Crisp

For the topping:

3/4 of a stick of your favorite butter cut in small cubes

1 C flour

1/2 C of brown sugar

a pinch of salt

1/4 C of finely chopped nuts ( I like to use pecans)

For the filling:

4 C of fresh fruit

2 T flour

1-4 T of sugar (depending on the sweetness of your fruit)

In a bowl mix together flour, sugar and salt. Add in butter working it in with the flour. You want your butter to be cold so that it does not melt when you are mixing it together. Mix the butter and flour together until the butter is about the size of peas. then add in the chopped nuts.  Your topping should taste like a delicious buttery sugar cookie dough. 

In a pie pan mix together fruit with flour and sugar. Add the amount of sugar based on the flavor of the fruit you are working with. If you are using plums beware of their tart skin and add more sugar to compensate for it. Add the topping on top of fruit generously covering everything. Bake in a 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes, until the topping is crispy and the fruit starts to bubble out of the edges.

Every day at work I use endive. Endive is not a very popular vegetable as it is bitter in flavor and expensive. You see it alot in french cooking and might enjoy it tossed in a truffle dressing with creamy chunks of gorgonzola, walnuts and chives ( atleast thats how you would want to eat it.) The flavor is slightly bitter and silky smooth texture with a bit of a crunch. If I were a bug I would want to burrow into a piece of endive and lay on its slightly furry flesh. 

Every night at work when I delicately pull apart the leaves to garnish my salmon tartar I think about my mothers new years parties when I was a little girl. As an hor d’oeuvres she would fill a platter with the leaves filling it with some sort of creamy cheese dip and one with salmon. I used to scoop all of the filling out with tongue and discard the leaf. 

I find that endive is more tolerable if you slice it really thin and add it to an arugula salad. Or braise in chicken stock with onions garlic and thyme and eat with roasted chicken!

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I felt like a kid on Christmas when I walked in to the Berkeley Bowl on Monday to see a large display of Apricots. I have been anticipating this day for quite some time now. Apricots are one of my favorite things to eat and May is typically the month they debut. I have memories as a child of my neighbors apricot tree. They lived on a hill so the perfect round orange fruits would be resting at the bottom of the hill, perfectly ripe waiting for me to consume. My mom’s friend would make delicious Apricots crisps with them combing nuts, oats, brown sugar and an unhealthy dose of butter. In the oven their sweet nectar would bubble creating heaven. Their beautiful orange skin kissed with pink and red, my mouth is watering just typing about them! Their flavor is hard to describe; they are sweet and creamy with a slight zing to them. They make a great jam, are essential in galettes, and one of my favorite ways to eat them is grilled with a dollop of mascarpone cheese and a drizzle of honey. 

Pineapple tangerine Granita with fresh juicy Blackberries

How cool would that be!

breadlove:

(via unbeknownsttomost)

LOL

Today I had the pleasure of dining at the Zuni Cafe with my Uncle and his lovely girlfriend. I have always wanted to try the Zuni Cafe. I have driven and bussed by it so many times and it has always intrigued me. Today was my lucky day. 

We went for Sunday brunch which has recently become my favorite meal. As someone who never gets up very early eating eggs is a special occasion for me. We were sat upstairs in a beautifully lit room surrounded by beautiful brick walls and floor to ceiling windows. The menu was short, filled with delicious options. My eyes grazed over the strawberry scones and onto fried eggs with homemade fennel sausage, braised white beans with Cardoons. It was absolutely delicious. I have to admit I had dish envy over Nancy’s perfectly scrambled eggs with Telligo cheese, green onions, a salad of wild arugula with perfect baby beets. I will definitely brunch again at the Zuni Cafe. Hopefully soon!

If you don’t have an ice cream maker and love sorbet this recipe is a great alternative. You can use any fruit you like to make this, I happened to choose kiwis because they caught my eye. This granita is a play on my favorite alcoholic drink the Moscow Mule.

Kiwi Ginger Granita 6 ripe kiwis 1/4 c sliced Ginger (peeled) 1 1/2 c water 3/4 c sugar 2 limes 3 T of lime zest

In a small sauce pan combine Ginger, water and sugar and bring to a boil. Let simple syrup Cool leaving in the Ginger pieces in the syrup to let the flavor infuse. Peel and chop kiwis. once syrup has cooled add kiwis, the juice of 2 limes, half the amount of the Ginger and blend together with a hand blender or in a blender untill mixture is smooth. Once blended add in Lime zest. Pour mixture in a baking dish and set in the freezer. The mixture will take about 3 hours to freeze. Every 30 minutes scrape the mixture With a fork to break up ice crystals. Granita will end up with a snow like texture. Serve granita over fresh berries and enjoy!

I love Oranges. When I was little my nanny used to shave off the orange skin leaving a thick layer of white pith and sprinkle them with salt. To this day this how I still eat my oranges. When my parents were out for the evening on date night she would tell me of I could eat a whole lemon she would let me stay up and watch the simpsons( as a six year old this was a great offer). I never could finish the whole lemon. I would watch her enviously eating hers with ease sprinkled with chile powder. This is a picture of navel oranges from the farmers market in Berkeley. It makes me want to eat one right now, sprinkled with salt of course!

yesterday I discovered something magical for the first time. I had heard about it, I had seen it but never had I tried it. I have put brown sugar on my bacon when it has come out of the oven but it tastes nothing like this concoction I created yesterday 

Candied Bacon

12 oz of applewood smoked bacon

1/4 of maple syrup 

1 T of sriracha 

Lay bacon on a sheet pan and brush maple syrup mixture on bacon dispersing evenly. Cook bacon till golden brown ( this will take about 15 minutes). Keep a close eye on the bacon because it could burn easily.