blue_dolphin

Wonderful wedding banquet and a beautiful story and location, too. Thank you for sharing all of it with us!

Nigel Slater's Cake for Midsummer with peaches and blueberries Very similar to the Marian Burros Original Plum Torte from the dreaded NYT. Differences are golden caster sugar instead of white and the addition of ground almonds, a bit of orange zest and vanilla extract. Chopped peaches and blueberries are stirred in instead of being placed on top in larger slices. I used white peaches because the ones I had were really ripe. Sadly, they're about the same color as the cake so they don't stand out. Should have sliced them and put them on top. I sliced this up, removed a very small sliver for quality control , smooshed it all back into a circle and packed it up in a pizza box to take down to my peach peeps at the farmers market. Edited to add that the peach peeps liked the cake and gifted me with ~ 6 lbs of very ripe peaches I can play with.

I know the topic here is rice cookers, not other appliances, but I'd like to mention that I have had good success cooking small amounts of rice (white and brown) and other grains in the Instant Pot, using the pot-in-pot method. I've cooked as little as a single serving (40 ml rice + 40 ml water) and it came out fine. With pot-in-pot, you can't use the "rice" setting but have to set a manual time. Depending on the rice and the sort of bowl you choose (a thick glass bowl will require a couple more minutes than a thin metal bowl) you may need to play around a little to find the right setting but once you do, I've found it to be reproducible. I usually cook a full cup, portion and freeze but some days I don't want to add more things to my freezer and I've found this method to be quite handy.

Zucchini Omelet - Sfogato me kolokithia from "Greece: The Cookbook" More of a frittata than an omelet to me. The book says the name refers to its sponge-like appearance and I think I've got that part right!

Polenta topped with chèvre whipped with yogurt, figs poached in honey, sweet red wine and spices and a sprinkle of walnuts.

I was going to use the bäco breads I made yesterday for some sort of fun breakfast sandwich with bacon & eggs but for some reason, I wanted a tuna salad sandwich. Hit the spot!

Israeli-Spiced Tomatoes, Yogurt Sauce and Chickpeas from Six Seasons p 266. Excellent flavor combination. There are 3 components to this dish: Sliced tomatoes, marinated with a mix of ground cumin, coriander, sumac, garlic and salt Yogurt sauce with cucumber, basil, mint, parsley and a few dashes of hot sauce A chickpea, red onion and parsley salad dressed with red wine vinegar and olive oil. The Slightly Tangy Flatbreads from the book are the recommended accompaniment and they would have been fine. They're an un-yeasted flatbread so you can put them together in the time it takes the tomatoes to marinate - but I decided to modify the recipe for the yeasted Bäco flatbreads by making them with half whole wheat flour (Sonora Red Fife) and they were just the ticket.

I was amused by the nuevo items featured in this snip from the current weekly ad from my local Vallarta Supermarket - a chain that caters to the Latino population.

My ovals were a little larger than the specified 8" x 4", but not much. I tried an 8" round and it was too thin to puff up very much so I believe the specified size is good. I started rolling them on a lightly floured surface but found they rolled out just fine without added flour. I used a 10" cast iron skillet with avocado oil and found that the right temp to give a cook time of 1 min/side was just below the smoke point. I started with a little less than 1T of oil but didn't need to add any more. Since it was a well seasoned pan and there's lots of ghee in the dough, I may not have needed any oil at all. I cooked all 10 breads. I put the extra breads in the freezer and am assuming they'll reheat well in the CSO. Since I didn't follow the recipe, @Anna N may have more relevant suggestions.

Bäco breads, modified from Josef Centeno's cookbook, Bäco I used half bread flour and half Sonora Red Fife whole wheat and kneaded the dough in my Kitchen Aid mixer. Not as fluffy as the lovely breads that @Anna N shared in this post last year, but they're still nice.

I bought it to toss into pasta but it's also handy for something like this where you want a couple of kinds of seafood. I also added to the celery soup from this book for the "seafood stew" variation.

This is the Quick Cioppino variation of the Six Seasons Tomato Soup p 270. Made very quickly by simmering some of Trader Joe's seafood blend (shrimp, scallops & squid) in the soup, just until cooked. Best cioppino ever? No, but a rather pleasant way of turning leftover soup into a meal.

Thanks! I've been wanting this one. I noticed the $2.99 price is good at both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.

Boiled egg, mashed with a knob of butter, on toasted ciabatta Taking advantage of a cool morning, I cooked some bacon for future BLTs and it's possible that a slice or two may have made their way on to my plate

I thought of you when I read this article in the WSJ: Strawberry Jam: Urban-Farming Startups Tackle a Problem Crop Not sure if that article is behind a paywall or not but the gist is a concern over potential costs for pollinating strawberry plants by hand or other systems when grown in urban farms - shipping containers and the like. I would think that sales of perfect, ripe mid-winter berries to restaurants, etc. could command a premium price but I guess it's all about the numbers!

Yes!

Grilled Green Tomatoes with Avocado, Feta & Watermelon from Six Seasons p 271. I thoroughly enjoyed this salad. The tartness of the grilled green tomatoes is a perfect partner for the sweet watermelon and the char on the tomatoes and scallions adds depth to the flavors. I don't usually encounter green tomatoes but wouldn't hesitate to make this again when I do. I used a stovetop grill pan and most of the char on the tomatoes stayed stuck to the pan 😢, maybe oiling the pan would have helped but there was no problem with the scallions sticking so I'm not sure. The recipe says to slice the scallions on a sharp angle before grilling. I cut them in half (longitudinally) before grilling, and then into shorter segments after. The recipe also called for purslane, which was absent at yesterday's market but I'll pick some up one of these days. Fun fact - for the avocados, I used one of the Western Hole avocados that I picked up at the farmers market from Rancho Santa Cecilia in Carpinteria, CA. They are small, with a thin, dark, purple-green skin and don't need to be peeled. Not a lot of guacamole to them with that fairly large seed but @ 3/$1, they're fine to put in salads like this.

Penzey's is offering free shipping with a $20 order this weekend. Beginning Monday, their shipping rates will increase with the free shipping option kicking in at $40 vs the current $30. Free 1/2 cup jar of granulated shallots with a minimum $5 order with code 49155C. For some reason, I always unearth some decrepit old spice that should be replaced immediately AFTER I've placed an order with them. Last time it was white pepper. Now that I've placed another order, I'm sure it will be something else .

Peach Cheesecake pops v 1.1 I was going for something like the pop on the left, with the ricotta "cheesecake" mixture swirled into roasted peach purée with fresh peach chunks. Clearly, I need to work on my pop to pop variability so more work is needed. The first version was more cheesecake-like. These are OK but not that different from a peaches & cream pop. I used up the rest of the sweetened condensed milk from that cheesecake mix in a batch of David Lebovitz's Vietnamese Coffee pops. I forgot that I wanted to try swirling in some cream. You can't swirl in the sweetened condensed milk as it won't freeze on its own but I could have added a little cream at the end. Next time. I bought yellow peaches (Zee Lady were this week's variety), nectarines and white peaches at the farmers market, along with some pluots but I'm out of popsicle sticks. Oh the horror!

I'd say that looks like industrial strength bacon, too ! I had a Vietnamese Coffee popsicle, made from David Lebovitz's recipe, which calls for coffee that's "chest hair-raisingly strong" - not sure how that compares with industrial strength but I can attest that they are seriously caffeinated.

A long-cooked soup made with roasted tomatoes would be more flavorful but this one was so quick - less than 20 minutes from slicing onions to eating lunch - that I figured I'd give it a try. I was thinking that maybe I should have made gazpacho instead. This one warmed me up more than I needed - good thing I have plenty of popsicles for the cool down !

If you're going to make soup with mid-summer tomatoes, this Tomato Soup with Arugula, Torn Croutons and Pecorino from Six Seasons p 270 is probably the one you should make. There's a bit of onion, a little garlic, a dash of hot sauce but it's all about beautiful tomatoes, cooked for just 5 minutes and then puréed. The garnishes add texture and depth so don't skip them. I added a teaspoon of honey to balance the acid in the tomatoes but otherwise made it as written. I've reserved some to try the variation with white beans and sausage but that will have to wait for a cooler day.

I haven't tried nectarine pops! Maybe I will pick some up from the farmers market today. My guess is that there's probably as much difference between some of the different peach varieties and roasted vs unroasted as between peaches and nectarines but I should try them before drawing that conclusion. The cucumber, lime & ginger, watermelon & cucumber, blueberry & corn and spicy corn pops all went to my local farm stand yesterday. I wasn't sure how the spicy corn would go over but they were a hit with at least 2 of the workers and I got lots of positive feedback on last week's offerings. I used the recipe for the Fig and Ricotta Cheesecake pops that I made last year to make these Peach Cheesecake pops: Even though I upped the ricotta and decreased the sweetened condensed milk, based on last year's experience, the "cheesecake" mix was still very liquid. It worked well to flow around the large slices of figs in the molds in the original recipe but I wanted to swirl a peach purée into these. The thick fruit and thin cheesecake mixtures were difficult to swirl in the molds, especially since I'd put thin slices of peach on both sides that I didn't want to dislodge. I think these are too melty for me to take to the peach guys at the farmers market unless I go buy dry ice to pack them in so I have another batch in the freezer with mostly peach purée, blended with a smaller amount of cheesecake mix and chunks of fresh peach.

Roasted plum & pluot: The deep color layer is from Santa Rosa plums and the lighter pink is made from Flavor Jewel pluots. I asked the peach guys at the farmers market what kind of pops they wanted for this week and Peaches & Cream was requested These were made from Elegant Lady peaches which didn't have as deep a blush on the skin or the amount of red flesh as last week's July Flame.

That pine nut vinaigrette is really good! I think it would work with most any nut you like.