I touched it gently to demonstrate its prickliness and drew blood.
Once we got there we saw lots of lovely vegetables, but most were very expensive: $4.99/lb for organic tomatoes! Carrots for $4.50 a bunch! Flavorless Red Havens were $3.99/lb! We found a few bargains, though, so dinner didn't end up costing $80. We got bird-bitten corn, three ears for a dollar; some $1.50/lb nectarines that, while not organic, were much better than the Red Havens; and tomato 'seconds' (they were mostly either overripe or green-shouldered) for a dollar a pound.
It's a good thing we got bargain corn, as our dinner called for 7 ears. We made Jean-Georges Vongerichten's corn ravioli with tomato salad and basil fondue from Great Chefs Cook Vegan,
Jose Andres' green bean salad,
and a nectarine galette, similar to last week's apricot cherry one.
The ravioli were pretty good, but I'm not sure that they were worth the trouble they were to make. Some of the corn was charred on the cob, then cut off and sautéed with a shallot, then cooked while soy creamer was gradually added and reduced, then ground up in the Cuisinart. More corn was cut off of the cob while raw, then sautéed and added to the liquidised basil; the rest was blanched and artfully scattered between the basil fondue and the ravioli. Not to mention the tomato salad. Lots of dishes to wash.
The galette was well worth the trouble, though. Here's the recipe (the crust is my adaptation of Cafe Fernando's adaptation of Dorie Greenspan's Good For Almost Everything Pie Dough):
Nectarine Galette
Crust:
225g all-purpose flour
1/2t salt
40g sugar
170g unsalted butter
50ml water
Filling:
550g nectarines, thinly sliced
2T each sugar and tapioca flour
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 pint jar of compatible jam (I used nectarine-raspberry)
Demerara or other coarse sugar, a couple of tablespoonsful
Make the crust well in advance to give it time chill in the refrigerator before rolling it out. First, whisk the dry ingredients together. Rub the butter in till it looks like cornmeal with the occasional pea-sized lump, then add the water and gently mix till it's just possible to form it into a ball. Flatten into a disk, wrap well, and chill for at least an hour (or a couple of days).
Toss the nectarines with the sugar an flour, then add the lemon and let it sit while you roll the dough out into an 11"/28cm circle. Transfer the dough to a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Spread the jam over the dough, leaving a 2.5"/6cm margin, then lay the fruit on top. Fold the edges in towards the center. Sprinkle the Demerara over the top, concentrating it on the crust. Bake in a 425ºF
oven for about 25 minutes, till the crust is browned and the fruit soft.
1 comment:
It was the yummiest ever. I had leftovers at work two days running and everyone marveled at it. They could not believe that a normal human could have cooked it. Of course my girl is not a normal human, but a ubernormal one. Love A
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