Friday, 10 September 2021

Summer Squash with Bacon (bookmarked)

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Summer Squash and Bacon summary: Katie’s (Thyme for Cooking) Summer Squash with Bacon; bookmarked recipe; who knew that other summer squashes were so fabulous? …maybe we should try growing this kind instead of zucchini; bounty from the neighbours, including the sweetest corn; edit: and spider….

Thanks to excellent neighbours, we were suddenly given stunning perfectly ripe field tomatoes, a yellow flesh(!!) watermelon, a red pepper, beautiful corn, and two yellow summer squashes!

Summer Squash and Corn

(So sorry, we neglected to photograph the tomatoes, red pepper, and watermelon. Silly us. Especially the watermelon that looked quite normal on the outside but was a beautiful golden colour inside. I’m afraid that, as usual, we were too busy eating them.)

Bookmarked RecipesBookmarked Recipe: Summer Squash with Bacon

Having never seen yellow summer squash like this, we looked around on the internet to find out what we should do.

There were recipes for ribbons salad, roasted rounds with or without parmesan cheese, grilled sliced squash, casseroles laced with cheese, stuffed squash, and STOP RIGHT THERE: Summer Squash (Courgette) with Bacon ⟸ recipe

A bit of salty bacon and sweet red onion adds big flavor to simply sautéed summer squash.
 
– Katie, Thyme for Cooking | Summer Squash (Courgette) with Bacon

(continue reading →)

Tuesday, 7 September 2021

Grapes aren’t just for pie…

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summary: Coronation grapes are in season; grape sauce is wonderful on grilled chicken; local carrots and corn; garden herbs galore; nasturtiums are finally blooming;

We had a few too many grapes to put into the best pie in the world. Of course, we could have just eaten those last few grape treelets as is; coronation grapes are wonderfully sweet/tart.

Coronation Grapes 2021

But instead, remembering the amazing grape marinade we made in 2015, as well as this past July’s sour cherry sauce for grilled chicken, T decided to make grape sauce from reduced chicken stock, red wine, and grapes.

Grapes and Chicken (continue reading →)

Thursday, 26 August 2021

We cannot stop making pita!

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go directly to the recipe

summary: recipe for wild pita; baking on the barbecue; storing pita in the – eeeeek!! – fridge; rejuvenating it in the toaster;

While most Israelis assume that the word pita is Arab in origin, it is actually Greek: Arabic has no “p” sound, hence the Arabic speaker’s “bita” for “pita.” The Jews of Salonika spoke Ladino, a mixture of medieval Spanish, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and they adopted the Greek word pita
 
– Maggie Glezer, ‘Pita and other Flatbreads’, A Blessing of Bread, p.238
pita (n.)
“thick, flat bread,” 1951, from Modern Hebrew pita or Modern Greek petta “bread,” which is perhaps from Greek peptos “cooked,” or from Gothic *bita- “bite, morsel,” from Proto-Germanic *biton-
 
– etymonline (online etymology dictionary)

The private FB group, Sourdough Bread Baking, holds a monthly “GroupBake”. (Anyone can find this FB group, but only members can see who is in the group and what is posted.) This August, the GroupBake just happened to be bread that we have been making all summer long: pita.

wild pita on the barbecue, August 2021
Top Row L-R: Shaping (preheat bbq at same time); Shaped Rounds; Rounds directly onto hot grill – lid down; puffing occurs almost immediately
Middle Row L-R: Puff!!! Basket of finished bread
Bottom Row L-R: Basket of finished pita; look at that pocket (continue reading →)

Sunday, 22 August 2021

Pickled Peppers

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summary: pickled peppers; hot hot hot – but really good; importance of actually reading books that have been given to us; another terrific idea from Barbara Tropp; another brief review of the “China Moon Cookbook”;

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
(from ‘Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation’ (1813) by John Harris)

Drying Chillis (2021)

A few weeks ago, we were looking through our cookbooks to see if any of them had ideas for what to do to make a vegetable dish Asian-style. As I was going through the index of Barbara Tropp’s “China Moon Cookbook”, it suddenly occurred to me that we hadn’t really made many things from the book. If any at all.

But it looked like a great book! And intriguing too – written by an opinionated New York Jewish woman. Of course she’s opinionated! Aren’t we all?

We started reading the book. And loved what we were reading.

We immediately started making things from it. And loved what we were eating. And kicked ourselves for waiting so long to delve into this beautiful cookbook.

Thank you again, B, for a lovely Christmas present (for Christmas 2000!!!) We’re so happy we have finally paid proper attention to it.

When we got to the recipe for “Pickled Red Cherry Peppers”, we realized that our search for decent pickled peppers was probably over. (continue reading →)