Dunk & Crumble

Archives for August 2012

Balsamic French Prune Crisp

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Raise your hand if today is your birthday.

You, too?!  Happy birthday, birthday friend!

Today means 28 for me.  28 on the dot, dot com.

I feel like this year is going to be a good one.  It started out with breakfast: a healthy sprouted almond drink and a not-so-healthy bowl of balsamic French prune crisp.  See how balanced 28 is already?  I am on it this year.

Okay, 28.  Here’s to a year filled with love, friends, food, sisters, cousins, writing, being outside, learning to be less afraid of sharks, shamelessly still listening to N*SYNC, and wearing heels with confidence.  And putting some balsamic in a fruit crisp.

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Roasted Padron & Fresh Tomato Salad

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Today, a salad.  Because in exactly one week I will be 28 years old and, on a day like that, salad is not going to cut it.  On that particular and quickly approaching day, some sort of chocolate/peanut butter/more chocolate monstrosity will likely be in order, but today? Today we will stick with this simple and lovely, bright and mischievous salad.  We’re only 27, after all.

Padron peppers are full of mischief.  Buggery.  Small and unassuming, they look out brightly from the stalls of the Bay Area farmer’s markets, their green skins smooth and shiny. Look at the cute and tiny peppers!  You’ll probably buy some, because you will buy pretty much anything in miniature form (I can’t be the only one who does this. …No?  Right?  Anybody?!?).  You’ll try one.  It will be crisp, mild, herby.  Another one!  It’ll go down snappy and smooth.  Then, a third…

Straight buggery.

Your eyes will widen and your jaw, it’ll slack.  That third pepper will be SPICY.  It will slap you in the face with spice, firstly because it’s just plain spicy, but secondly because you hadn’t expected it to be so.  Mischief!  Wonderment!  Pepper roulette!

It’s sort of fun, really.  This time of year, late summer, Padron peppers contain more capsaicin than in June or July (now, about 1 in 5 is spicy, says my farmer’s market vendor) a phenomenon which makes for one interesting salad, no?

So let’s roast some Padrons with olive oil and salt, and then pair them with fresh, cooling tomatoes and a squeeze of lemon.  We’ll get a good balance of sweet and spice, salt and citrus and, most importantly, it will be a salad that’s fun to eat.  Exciting, even.  I mean, we’re 27 years old.  Next week we’ll be 28.  Let’s get our kicks while we still can, eh?

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Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes with Quick Coconut Frosting

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Cupcakes!  Because we’re celebrating.

What, may you ask, is there to celebrate?  Well, a number of things, really.  With these cupcakes we are celebrating life, love, new socks, sunny Mondays, and freshly scrubbed bathroom surfaces.  But, most importantly, today we are celebrating the most deliciously wonderful parents — mine, as it were — and their 31st wedding anniversary.

Happy anniversary, parents!  Personally, I’m glad you got married.  I’m glad you’re glad you got married.  If you hadn’t, I might not exist, and then who’d bug you with phone calls at all hours and only sometimes grammatically correct emails?  Dad, who would roll their eyes at your jokes and call you Dadman and pretend not to hear you when you ask if anyone wants to go throw the ball around?  And mom, who would follow you around the house and teach you about leggings and slowly turn into you as she gets older?

Not me, that’s who.

Thank goodness you guys went through with it.

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Scarlet Queen Red Turnip Salad

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I’m not usually one to buy turnips at the farmer’s market, especially during the summer when my eyes are easily taken by all of the other beauties of the season — fuzzy peaches, ruby raspberries, fat tomatoes, squash blossoms.  Show me a turnip amidst this gold mine of summer produce and I’ll probably look at it and say something like “oh.  A turnip.”

But!  Show me a deep pink bulb attached to bright green, stalky leaves, and I’ll probably say something like “oh!  A radish.”  Which would be an honest mistake.  Luckily, you’d correct me by saying something like “actually, it’s a turnip!  A Scarlet Queen Red turnip!” Then you’d give me a sample (I think it’s pretty clear that you are now the owner of a vegetable stall at the Ferry building farmer’s market) and I’d look at you, wide eyed, my jaw neatly crunching the raw, surprisingly sweet and very faintly bitter root.  I’d swallow and smile, and then make that guy Ben come over to taste it, too.  He’d say “yum,” and then you’d say “right?” and then we’d say “sold!”

And then we’d have a bunch of radish-looking turnips lying around.

Since you (you veggie-stall-owning-genius you) had informed us that we could, indeed, eat them raw (and I’d be feeling too lazy to turn on the stove for roasting or quick pickles) we’d use them in a salad. A supremely crunchy, bitter, sweet and salty, bright and verdant salad.  With a hunk of crusty bread and some cheese, it’d be lunchtime perfection, without a berry or peach in sight.

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Squash Blossom Frittata

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Flowers in my eggs?!

It’s true.

Squash blossoms have been all over the Bay Area farmer’s markets lately, so when I saw some beauties by the Ferry building this weekend, what else could I do but scoop some up and bake them in a frittata with ricotta and goat’s cheese?  Any logical person would have done the same, I think.

Now, I realize that there are those of you who are perfectly logical, thank-you-very-much, but who perhaps haven’t yet come across a squash blossom at the market or in the kitchen, and maybe wouldn’t even know what to do with one if you saw it, and so to you, Miss or Mister logical-but-squash-blossom-less, I say: that’s okay.  Here’s the deal: squash blossoms are the dainty and edible flowers of young summer squashes (usually zucchini).  They are bright orange, tinged with green, and sold at farmer’s markets alongside (and sometimes attached to) fresh, tender little squishes.  Squashes.  Squash.

Squash blossoms are usually stuffed with cheese and fried, which is a perfectly amazing way to enjoy them, but they can also be steamed or baked and thrown into soup, salad or pasta.  Or you could bake some in a fabulously herby frittata with ricotta and goat’s cheese.  Entirely up to you.

(I’d go with the frittata).  (But really, it’s up to you).

(Frittata).

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