Dunk & Crumble

mollygilbert520

Zucchini Chips & Creamy Spinach Pesto

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You guys!  I’m like, totally kind-of not-really-but-a-little-bit famous!

I’ve been lucky enough to hook up with the fabulous people over at Terrain (one of my favorite home/gardening/loveliness stores), and become a contributor to their beautiful blog, the Bulletin!  My mission, which I’ve clearly already chosen to accept, is to act as their West Coast farmer’s market envoy, which means I now have every excuse possible to spend the majority of my time at the Ferry Building surrounded by figs.  And tomatoes and fresh bread and apples and cheese and squash.  Obviously.

To celebrate, zucchini chips!  Rounds of pale green zucchini, baked to crispy brown in a hot oven and slathered with cool, creamy pesto.  I ate some as such, and then put the rest over a bowl of hot pasta with Parmesan cheese (a move that took everyone by delicious, delicious surprise).  I highly recommend it (and I’m an envoy now so, I mean, I would probably know.  Just saying).

Zucchini chips and pesto and pasta, oh my!  The perfect way to pay homage to summer’s end and usher in some crisp fall weather.  Please head over to The Bulletin at Terrain for the recipe!

Chewy Granola Bars

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September is upon us, all of a sudden.  Doesn’t it always seem to slap you in the face with a Jansport backpack?  I mean, a few days ago I was drinking pink wine and talking about my favorite bathing suit cover-up, and today I had to go to the dentist and sharpen all of my pencils.  School buses are toting kids around as we speak.

So, fine, maybe I didn’t actually sharpen all of my pencils today, but can’t you feel it?  That shift from August to September, when everything starts to get serious and real and “back on track”?  You can.

There are pros and cons to this shifting paradigm.  My inner lazy lady mourns the loss of the slow summer months, but my typical oldest-child-type-A-eager-to-please-ism secretly heralds the crisp structure of autumn.  Let’s compare:

We’ll start with September’s cons:

  1. My birthday is not in September.
  2. Peach season is almost over.
  3. It’s now no longer appropriate to wear white pants.

And the pros?

  1. We can start legitimately thinking about Halloween costumes.
  2. After school snacks!
  3. It’s now no longer appropriate to wear white pants.

I’d like to call attention to the point about after school snacks.  Let’s make granola bars from scratch!  

I’d never thought about homemade granola bars before, and was entirely pleased with myself when I pulled these out of the oven.  I ate them happily, thinking myself the picture of sensible snacking health, until Ben pointed out that these are pretty much just cookies.

To which I replied, “so?” to which he replied “just saying,” to which I replied “SO??”

And then we dropped that issue.

Homemade granola bars!  Like cookies, only not.  Perfect for September.

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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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Jumbleberry Pie

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Serious question.  Why would anyone use the name “mixed berry” when “jumbleberry” is available?

Mixed berry is an ambiguous yogurt flavor.  Possibly a suspiciously giant scone option at Starbucks.  So.  There’s that.

But jumbleberry!  Jumbleberry bumbleberry humbleberry pie.  Get on this train right now.

Is there anything not fun about jumbleberry?  Saying it?  Fun.  Making it?  Also fun.  Eating it?  SO MUCH FUN.  It’s sweet and slightly tart and full of bursting little berries, rubies of every size, staining plates, forks, and lips with deep purple juice.  A summer-scented pie bringing berry-stained smiles.

So go gather your ingredients, and jumble one together.  A jumbleberry rumbleberry humbleberry pie (I could keep this up for awhile.  …Crumbleberry.  See?  Definitely.  So you’d do well to get going).  Top with ice cream.  Eat with friends.  Yumbleberry.  Yup.

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Curried Cauliflower Soup

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Yes yes I know, you’re all hot and sweaty and unable to eat anything but watermelon and gazpacho and so, SO HOT.

Well, I’m not.  Here in San Francisco, the place where summer goes to die, apparently, it’s not hot.  It’s not even warm.  It’s cold.  Boot-stomping, fleece-wearing cold.  The fog rolls in, the fog rolls out.  In, out, in, farther-in, and all the while, we’re lucky if the temperature gets into the 60s.  So while you feast on fresh, cooling melon, I’m craving soup.

If you’re in the bay area like me, you’re welcome.  If you’re, I don’t know, anywhere else in the northern hemisphere, my apologies.  Still, I suspect this soup would be nice served cold.  If you can bring yourself to turn on a burner and throw together a chilled version, please let me know.

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Rustic Peach Cake

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It seems I can’t help myself.  As long as there is fresh summer fruit to be had, I’m going to go ahead and bake with it.  It’s just so gorgeous, you know?  So full of juice and sweetness!  You understand?  Gorgeous, tender, juicy little things.

…Did that sound dirty to you?

Get your head out of the gutter.  Jeez.

Instead of putting apricots in a galette or raspberries in a brownie, this time I decided to put some rustic into a peach cake.  On account of the recipe I saw in an old Cook’s Illustrated Magazine.  You guys read that rag?  Extremely thorough and excruciatingly meticulous.  A baker’s dream of a publication.  And they have peach cake!

This one uses lots of fresh peaches (obviously), and also gets some help from a bit of finely chopped dried fruit, which absorbs some fresh peach juice (leaving the dried fruit wonderfully plump and tender) and helps to keep the cake from getting all sogged up.  Very clever.  Good on you, Cook’s Illustrated.

I used dried apricots because they were easier to find than dried peaches, but, as the saying goes, I think a stone fruit is a stone fruit is a stone fruit.  Probably.

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