Dunk & Crumble

Recipes

Bourbon Whiskey Pomegranate Sparkler

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Thought you might like a cocktail.  A sparkler.  Don’t you like that word?  Sparkler.

It’s bubbly and pinkish and Valentiney!  Cute.  But don’t be fooled — it’s also full of bourbon.  It will punch you in the face if you’re not careful.

I don’t mix up cocktails on the regs (hi, wine), so this took some experimenting, but the combination of smokey bourbon, sweet, tart pomegranate and bright lime is a good one.  Give it a try!  Make it for your Valentine!  Punch someone in the face with it!  The possibilities are endless.

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Turkey Meatballs

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What’s this I hear about some fantastic bowl thing happening this weekend?  I don’t know much about it, but I guess it’s supposed to be super?  Some sort of super cup, or maybe it’s a bowl, during which people yell loudly and drink beer and dunk chips and chomp various meat products?  Or something?

Well.  I think it sounds fun.  I mean I’m not really one to watch gigantic humans battling U.S patriots for the skin of pigs, but if this whole thing is really supposed to be so super and inclusive of bowls of meat, then I think I’d like to participate.  I will make meatballs.

No, I kid.  I like, totally know everything about football.  Zone defense.  Extra points.  First and ten.  See?  Totally.  And as it turns out, I’m not really a fan of either Tom Brady (cleft-chinned cad) or Eli Manning (sad-faced man-boy).  Still, I think I’ll take Peyton’s man-boy brother to beat the spread over weirdly cartoonish Brady.  Does anyone else think he looks like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, just with tighter pants and less cool shoes?

I mean, I’ll leave that stuff to the experts.  The point spread and the tight pants.  I’ll stick with the meatballs.

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Chocolate French Macarons

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Look at this fanciness! Sometimes it’s fun to be French and fancy.  And then add sprinkles.

I first made macarons in pastry school, and I remember being surprised and actually a little bit disappointed at just how simple they are to make.  I mean, these are macarons.  French ones! These dainty little pretties line the windows of the best French bakeries, taunting us Americans, we with our thick crusted pies and face-sized cookies, looking all sloppy and oafish in comparison.  Stupide, they say, look at how delicate we are!  Look how elegant, how sophisticated!  Out of your league, girl.

Well, nope.

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Pink Grapefruit with Honey & Salt

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Eating grapefruit reminds me of my sister, Emily.  Hi, Em.

Emily likes to eat grapefruit with sugar.  Or rather, she likes to eat sugar with a bit of grapefruit underneath.  At least, she did as a six-year-old.  When Casey and I sprinkled sugar on top of our grapefruit halves, Emily unabashedly dumped spoonful upon spoonful on top of hers.  But Emily’s always been bold like that.

Ever the middle child, Emily’s always been the bravest and brashest of us three Gilbert girls.  Definitely the loudest.  The most generous.  A little bit of a spark plug.  A tough cookie.  When we were little, Casey and I, like most other kids in the neighborhood, mostly chose to wear a standard uniform of shorts, t-shirts and sneakers, but Emily insisted on wearing patterned tights, layers of jewelry, and dresses with skirts on top.  Skirts over dresses.  (She now works for the apparel company Anthropologie, so there you go).

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Yellow Split Pea Soup

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It’s Sunday and the weather channel tells us that, here in New York City, it feels like eleven degrees outside.  Eleven degrees.  Farenheit.

Soup?  Soup.

Days like today make your eyes water, your breath puff, your curled fingers brittle and numb.  Outside, I mean.  It seems eleven degrees is not very many degrees.  Hoods blow backwards, heads dip, eyes squint, and coats are hugged in tightly against the searing wind.  It’s jarring and painful and, frankly, entirely antisocial.  You just cannot look up from the dull pavement at the city’s marvelous bustle when you’re using every ounce of concentration you have trying to wedge your exposed chin into the too-short collar of your all-the-way-zipped-up coat.  You know?

This weather.  It’s unideal for anything, other than soup.  Warm soup, toasted bread, red wine.  Repeat.  January’s not so bad, I guess.

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Apple Cinnamon Breakfast Rolls

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Ooey gooey.  Sticky icky.  roley poley doughey ohey puffy uffy BREAKFAST ROLLS!

How obvious would you say it is that I work with three-year-olds?

These buns.  Rolls.  Cinnamon-glazed to sticky icky.  They’re soft and appley and homemade.  We make the dough ourselves.  We use yeast.  Sounds a little scary, but it’s totally not.  You can do it.  You want to do it.  For the ooey gooey, puffy uffy.  Breakfast needs more of that, you know?

You know.

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Warm Truffled Mushroom Salad

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This is a salad.  That is correct.  Sure, it gets drizzled with truffle oil, sprinkled with strong cheese and topped with fried shallots… but!  Technically, salad.  I mean, there are vegetables in this thing and you eat it with a fork.  So, salad!  Perfectly acceptable for consumption in this austere month of January.  Don’t you agree?

Don’t tell my mother, but I almost ripped out the battery from my smoke alarm making this salad.  The thing is exceptional, in that if I accidentally breath on it wrong, it beeps uncontrollably.  Beep!  Beep!  Beeeeeeep!  It loved the “sautée the mushrooms in batches” step of this recipe.  Loved it.  BEEP BEEEEEEP!

But you know.  All’s well that ends well, some people say.  And I think I may have mentioned that this ends with truffle oil and crispy shallots.  So, yes.  Ends well.

 

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Jane’s Carrot Potato Soup

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Happy New Year!

Two-thousand twelve.  Twenty-twelve.  Two zero one two.  Too much math, frankly.

Rumor has it this is going to be an awesome year.  A shoulders-back, two-feet-in-the-water, go-out-and-grab-it year.  Two-thousand twelve.  You in?

Maybe we should start with some soup.

This is Jane Bursky’s carrot potato soup.  As soups go, this one is particularly friendly; it’s simple, healthy, and a vibrant shade of orange.  It’s also just plain good.  Like, make-three-batches-in-two-weeks-and-still-be-psyched-to-eat-it-for-dinner-on-night-thirteen-good.

Carrot potato soup!  Twenty-twelve, bring it on.

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Roasted Figs with Gorgonzola & Honey

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Just in case!

You might be hosting some friends on New Year’s, and you might need to feed them some little somethings.  These roasted figs are some somethings to get behind.  They’re easy and elegant, salty and sweet and a little herb-y, too.  Great with champagne.  You know, just in case.

Roasted Figs with Gorgonzola & Honey

This recipe is a snap to make, and the figs are delicious both warm and at room temperature. Be sure to leave out an empty bowl for the discarded fig stems.

Ingredients:

  • 10-12 fresh figs, any color (I used black mission figs), sliced in half lengthwise
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1/4 cup gorgonzola crumbles
  • 1/4 cup honey

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.  Cover a cookie sheet with tin foil (this makes for easy clean up), and lay the figs on the sheet, cut side up.

Drizzle the olive oil over the figs, lightly coating each one, and then sprinkle each with a bit of thyme, salt and pepper.  Place the figs in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes, until figs look slightly puckery and juice is beginning to leak from the fruit.  Remove from the oven.  While the figs are still warm, place a few crumbles of gorgonzola on top of each fig. Once all of the figs have been gorgonzola-ed, drizzle the honey lightly on top.

Remove figs to a serving platter. Enjoy!

Makes 20-24 pieces.

Classic Gingerbread Cookies

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I have this friend.  We’ll call him “Big Smooth.”  He recently sent me an email entitled “A Dunk & Crumble Complaint.”  In the interest of complete and total transparency, I think you should see it.  It reads:

“Dear Molly,

As you know, I have been a loyal reader of Dunk & Crumble for months now, and I am generally supportive of all content on the blog.  I find it refreshing and witty, and the recipes always look delicious.

However, I feel you have betrayed my trust as a reader by posting a recipe for pistachio cookies.  As you know, I am deathly allergic to pistachios, and I do not support any pistachio-related items of any kind.  And yet, you have done the unthinkable – you have ENCOURAGED your readership to not only cook with pistachios, but to feature them in the holiest of dessert forms – a cookie!  Well, I for one will not stand for this – the pistachio is a deadly, ugly and terrible tasting nut that has no business going near a cookie.  I am deeply disturbed by this post, and I hope your other readers feel much the same way.

I sincerely hope that your next series of posts on Dunk & Crumble returns to its roots and features a wide variety of nut-free items that all of America can enjoy safely and deliciously.  In the meantime, I shall go into hibernation for a few weeks to ensure that the mass production of pistachio cookies does not permanently wound me.  And with that, I say good day.

Steve “Big Smooth” Brauntuch”

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I know.  It’s quite a note.  My response was as follows:

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