Rhubarb with caramelized onions? Rhubarb salsa? Rhubarb and lentil potage? I can hear you now, the ornery ones of you that is: What the hell, woman…rhubarb’s for pie. Crisps. Crunches.

For April’s Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 event, I decided to explore the savory side of rhubarb, since there’s a ton of it growing about 50 feet from my front door. As rhubarb is technically a vegetable/herb, why not try some recipes that utilize rhubarb as a vegetable?

Hey, salsa has a tangy bite. I bet rhubarb could work in salsa. So I tracked down a viable candidate in The Joy of Rhubarb: The Versatile Summer Delight. It’s a classic Mexican salsa, with fresh cilantro, green onion (which made me happy; I can’t stand regular onions raw), lime juice, jalapeño for a bit of bite, barely-blanched rhubarb, and lots of sweet peppers and more sugar than salsa normally would have, to counteract the rhubarb’s bite.

Dad’s verdict? “It would be great on hamburgers. By the way, we’re having hamburgers tonight….” Subtle hint there, Dad. Yeah, he went home with some rhubarb salsa. Linda thought it had a bit of a bitter rhubarb taste to it and suggested more sweetener. I loved it. Fresh, crisp, clean salsa taste with the rhubarb adding uniqueness without overpowering it.

Overall verdict for rhubarb salsa: Two snaps up.

Jump to the rhubarb salsa recipe now or continue reading.

balsamic-rhubarb reduction

I swear, this was some fancy-pants shit I made. Asparagus with balsamic-rhubarb reduction (recipe here). It was dead easy, too. You cook down some balsamic vinegar and chopped rhubarb — along with a good little heap of sugar — until most of the liquid has evaporated and you get a thickish sauce. In this preparation, it’s served with roasted asparagus. You could really impress some guests with this stuff.

Dad’s verdict: Tasty, but the roasted asparagus was too soft. He grabbed a stalk of raw asparagus from the 10-pound bag I’d just picked and dipped that in the reduction instead. Linda’s verdict: “Too strong for asparagus. Would be really good with pork or something.” I liked the contrast between the tangy, balsamic-flavored reduction and the mild roasted asparagus, but I see her point. Comme-ci, comme ça.

Overall verdict for rhubarb-balsamic reduction: Two snaps sideways.

lentil and rhubarb potage

The original title of this Mark Bittman recipe is “Lentil and rhubarb stew with Indian spices,” but it’s too thick for a stew. So I did some Google-fu and discovered it was more of a potage, which also sounds fancier.

And man, it may be one ugly mofo of a dish, but damn, lentil and rhubarb potage is tasty. I was shocked. It had no added sugar. I was certain it would be inedible. But I had to try it, because it has cardamom in it, which is my new favorite spice ever.

Linda’s verdict: Really good and interesting. Nice balance of complex flavors. I’m transling from “Mmm” here, by the way.

Overall verdict for rhubarb and lentil potage: Two snaps up.

caramelized onion and rhubarb compote on herbed yogurt cheese

Hey Aunt Geri, I finally broke in the yogurt cheese maker! And all was good. This recipe, heavily adapted from one for caramelized onion, beet, and rhubarb compote, made me nervous. For one, it was another fancy-pants recipe. For another, I was adapting the living hell out of it. I’m not good at that sort of thing. Usually my adaptations tend to turn out more like the rhubarb mistake below. And for yet another thing, I was winging the whole herbed yogurt cheese thing. Entirely.

If you want to adapt the recipe like I did, simply make it without the beet purée, and add more maple syrup when you add the rhubarb, about 2 tablespoons worth. Trust me, you’ll need it. For the herbed cheese the easy way, go with a slightly sweet prepared cheese spread like Aloutte…because that was what I was shooting for. I put them in baked wonton cups, but they’d be better on small squares of puff pastry.

Dad’s verdict: “I really like the cheese and compote filling, but those wontons are like chewing on glass.” Linda’s verdict: “I love that filling!” Me? Shocked. And happy it worked. :p Cue the Smiths.

Overall verdict for caramelized onion and rhubarb compote: Two snaps way up.

rhubarb mistake

Since I had Mexican, Indian, and vaguely Italian (in the form of the caramelized onion and rhubarb compote), I decided to try incorporating rhubarb into a Thai curry. I’m not even going to link to the recipe I worked from, because the experiment was an utter disaster, and I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, so I don’t want to impugn the blogger who posted it.

Suffice it to say: disaster. Coconut milk wasn’t enough sweetness to balance rhubarb’s astringency, the rhubarb became gloopy, and it tasted awful. Oh well.

The experience did cement my dedication to you, the reader: You will never be subjected to a recipe I don’t absolutely love. I want everything you try to be something well-tested and well-liked before it ever hits this page.

Overall verdict for rhubarb mistake: Two snaps way down. Let’s forget all about it and move on to the rhubarb salsa recipe.

rhubarb salsa

Adapted from The Joy of Rhubarb: The Versatile Summer Delight by Theresa Millang.

2 cups finely diced fresh rhubarb
½ cup sweet red pepper, chopped
½ cup sweet yellow pepper, chopped
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
3 green onions, tops only, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar, or to taste
salt and ground black pepper to taste

Blanch rhubarb in a saucepan of boiling water for 10 seconds. Seriously. Ten seconds. No more. Remove rhubarb promptly from heat, dump into a strainer, and rinse under cold water until rhubarb is lukewarm or cool. This is to stop the blanching process.

Place rhubarb in a glass bowl.  Add remaining ingredients, and mix well. Refrigerate at least an hour before serving to allow flavors to develop.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: balsamic vinegar, cilantro, lentils, onions, rhubarb, sweet peppers

We love seaweed, how about you?

People were confused when I told them my aunt Linda and I would be making sushi for January’s 24, 24, 24 event. “Isn’t that raw fish?” they asked, knowing I’m not a huge fan of animal foods. Technically, sushi is rice that’s been specially prepared with vinegar and a little sugar, and topped with or rolled with…something.

It could be a shaped piece of rice with a slice of lightly steamed bias-cut carrot on top, tied with a scallion. This is nigiri sushi.

It could be a fat roll of rice bound in nori (seaweed) and filled with imitation crab strips, tamago (japanese omelet), scallion, and cucumber. This is futo maki.

It could be an inside out roll, with the rice outside the seaweed, all enveloping imitation crab, avocado, and pickled beets. This is uramaki. But everyone calls it inside out roll.

It could even be dessert.

Other forms of sushi include battleship roll (gunkan), which we didn’t make, temaki, which we didn’t make, and hosomaki, or thin rolls, which we did make, but I didn’t get any closeups of. Thin rolls use half a sheet of nori and are filled with only one or two ingredients besides the sushi rice.

what’s in this post, and what isn’t

This post isn’t going to include detailed instructions for making sushi. One, I’m no expert. I just made it for the first time. Two, if I started giving instructions, I’d never stop, and this would run 2,000 words or more. What I will tell you is what’s involved, the accompaniments, how our experience went, and a few links where you can get more information if you’d like to give it a try yourself.

And a recipe for rice for dessert sushi at the end!

accompaniments and fillings we used

One thing that’s absolutely necessary is a bamboo rolling mat. We got ours for $1.99 at a Chinese grocery. Well, we also got two more in a sushi kit Linda found at Barnes and Noble. The kit contained the book Sushi with Style, which turned out to be a clearly-written, informative resource. There’s a bamboo sushi rolling mat at Amazon for $6 that includes a paddle if you have any trouble finding one.

Pickled ginger.

Pink slivers of tangy ginger, these are meant to cleans the palate between bites of sushi. Right. Philistine that I am, I slap a piece of pickled ginger right on top of every piece of sushi I eat. It’s that good.

For this experiment, I made some pickled ginger of my own. Let’s just say that the inner, woody parts of ginger are not something you want to chew on, unless you really enjoy chewing.

Wasabi.

Green, insanely hot horseradish. Sold as a paste or powder. The lady at the Chinese supermarket and the sushi book both recommend using the powder as it’s better tasting. I wouldn’t know. I won’t touch the stuff. We did make some and use it, though. It makes a good glue for pasting toppings to the rice in nigiri.

Toasted sesame seeds.

Nice for decorating the outsides of inside-out rolls. Like a dumbass, I bought the unroasted kind a while back so now I have to toast them myself. Hey, look at my shiny new pan.

Tamago.

A Japanese omelet made with, among other things, mirin, a sweet rice wine usually found near the vinegars in the store. Or the Asian section. I made one of these, too.

Vegetables.

We used cucumber, carrot, scallions, pickled beets, and avocado.

Fish, raw and cooked.

We used imitation crab and raw tuna steak. I got to keep the leftover tuna to cook up later, slapped it in a lime-ginger marinade, pan-seared it, and it was good.

Rice!

You need sushi rice, a medium-grain rice. We used brown rice because of the whole whole-grain dealy. After cooking the rice, you mix in a vinegar-sugar sauce that lightly flavors the rice and helps it stick together. I’m not going to get into all the detail, because there was all this anal-retentive dribbling of the sauce into the rice down the back of the rice paddle (yes, the paddle actually has a groove for this, it’s nuts), fanning of the rice to cool its delicate little toes, and speaking to the rice in hushed tones so as not to break its pretty little grains. However, the people at The Global Gourmet have a good how-to guide on preparing your sushi rice, and the technique for cooking brown sushi rice that I used — in a pressure cooker!

so, how did it go?

Linda arrived around noon bearing ingredients and her pressure cooker. I earned a well-deserved glower when I showed her the brand spanking new pressure cooker I had already borrowed from my friend Lori.

However, Linda’s old-school stovetop pressure cooker came in handy when the power went out just as I was about to get the rice going (it had been soaking, as instructed in the anal-retentive sushi rice instructions, for over an hour already). Twice. She took a batch of the rice to her house to cook on the gas stovetop.

Chubby gods smiled upon us and the power didn’t go out again, and we commenced work making the kitchen into a disaster zone.

As usual when we’re making something brand new to us, things were so hectic I didn’t get any nice step-by-step shots. However, I was able to sneak in a five-second breather to snap a pic of how rice looks spread on nori, ready for fillings. You’d just lay three or four ingredients lengthwise in the middle of the rice, next to one another, not on top, and use the mat to roll it all up.

Some fillings: steamed bias-cut carrot coins for nigiri, scallions, tamago.

dessert sushi?

The book offered a sushi rice recipe made with cream of coconut and rum instead of vinegar and sugar, and suggested trying dessert sushi. We didn’t have cream of coconut so I cracked open (get it? cracked? coconut?) a can of coconut milk and got some of the coconut cream that had solidified from that. We seasoned a batch of rice with it and shaped it into nigiri.

Instead of wasabi, which would be pretty damn gross with fruit, the “glue” we used was strawberry jam, boiled cider that I had in the fridge (don’t ask), or apple butter.

The fruit toppers were slices of kiwi and mango, and we topped those with flaked coconut, a slice of candied ginger, and/or coarse sparkling sugar.

sisterhood of the traveling sushi

Linda posited that we made a good $60 of sushi. This was kind of a lot for two people, so we took the show on the road, first to my sister’s.

After some trepidation, not only Jennifer, but her husband Dale, who isn’t the sushi type, tried several varieties. I was pretty shocked. The dessert sushi was a hit, as was the inside-out roll with crab, avocado, and pickled beet.

Maggie snubbed the sushi, instead making up a bowl of some soggy cereal and pretending to be shy for the camera.

Afterwards, we took some over to Mom and Dad’s, and Mom gamely tried a bit as well.

is this really something you want to do at home?

Absolutely! Don’t be frightened by our scary messy kitchen pic. That was from making like, a dozen? kinds of sushi, including both a sweet and savory rice. The actual technique isn’t that bad, nor is it very time-consuming. If you’re trying sushi for the first time, like I did, pick two or three varieties to try, and don’t stress too much over the rice. In fact, dessert nigiri might be just the ticket. You can make it up pretty quickly, it’s light on rolling technique, and looks absolutely stunning.

And on that note, I’m going to leave you with the recipe for dessert sushi rice.

rice for dessert sushi

Adapted from Sushi with Style by Ellen Brown.

2 cups hot cooked medium-grain rice
1/3 cup cream of coconut — the kind you mix sweet drinks with
2 tablespoons rum

Whisk together the cream of coconut and rum in a small bowl. Put hot rice in a medium bowl. Sprinkle cream of coconut and rum mixture over the rice, and gently mix in to avoid breaking the grains.

Once it’s mixed together, carefully turn over small sections of the rice to help it cool and allow steam to escape. The rice is ready to use once it’s cooled enough that it’s not giving off any steam.

Suggestions: shape rice into rectangular nigiri shapes, and top with sliced fresh fruit such as mango or kiwi. “Glue” fruit to the rice using jam or nut butter. Top with candied ginger, sweetened flaked coconut, or sparkling sugar (sugar will melt; do this immediately before serving).

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: carrots, coconut, cucumber, eggs, ginger, imitation crab, nori (seaweed), rice, scallions, tuna, wasabi

Weddings. Baby showers. Christmas.

These are the some of the family gatherings where miloste, a Bohemian fried pastry, graced the banquet tables and spreads. Don’t bother googling; “miloste” is a phonetic spelling. We have no idea what the “real” name for these treats is. Hell, we usually call them “those fried things with beer in them and powdered sugar on top.”

Grandma’s wedding photo: Mary Masin got hitched to John Vondrasek. They had a large family — five children, and Grandma always called them by their full names: Marian, Alice, Don (Donald), Rich (Richard), and Charlotte (aka Mom). Mom was a surprise. At 40 years old, Grandma went to the doctor complaining of a swollen tummy and feeling icky. Doctor Schultz promptly diagnosed her as having a tumor, and gave her medication to kill the tumor.

Mom demonstrating how to roll and cut slits in miloste dough.

The tumor survived, and a few months later came squalling into the world. Mom’s brothers and sisters have passed away, not to mention Grandma and her four husbands, so Mom’s sort of the matriarch now, which I think she digs.

Thanks to Grandma, I have loads of cousins, and last year we girls decided to get together before Christmas and learn how to bake kolaches. We had a blast and decided to try to make it a yearly tradition. This year we made miloste.

Some I’ve talked to said miloste sounded like elephant ears, or fattimund, but from what I can tell it’s not like either. It’s a pie-type pastry, with butter being the fat that’s cut into it, with eggs added and most of a bottle of stale beer. Rolled thin and gently twisted, it’s then dropped into hot oil. If the dough’s been handled with a light touch, the fried dough comes out light and airy, with visible bubbles in it. It’s then dusted with powdered sugar. The recipe’s at the end of the post.

more family background, because i know you’re dying for more

Grandma with 2 of her 3 sisters, Vera and Rose. Her other, and oldest, sister Agnes had passed away by the time of this photo. I believe this was taken at Todd (her grandson) and Becky’s wedding reception. I just know someone will correct me if I’m wrong.

Mom and Aunt Jan shared some stories with us younguns about baking with Grandma and her sisters. Agnes was gruff; Vera would tell you you were doing it wrong and show you how to do it right; Rose would be sweet as always, and Grandma would help you by taking over completely. Mom remembered mixing up dough for kolaches with them. The dough was in a big bowl, and Mom was stirring it up a bit too lackadaisically for Aunt Vera’s tastes.

“Here, you have to do it like this,” Aunt Vera admonished, taking the bowl and wooden spoon. “Big, long strokes.” Mom punctuated the story by making sweeping arm motions to show us how briskly Aunt Vera showed her to do it. We’d all heard this story before, but Saturday’s baking day added a new twist: Mom had seen a chef on Food Network talk about the right way to mix that kind of dough: with a wooden spoon, and with sure, long strokes in order to relax and stretch the gluten in the flour. Turns out those ladies knew what they were doing after all!

Uncle Don, rockin’ the ’stache. I think this was at Les (Grandma’s grandson) and Cindy’s wedding, in the late? 70s. Grandma’s on the left, and Don’s with John, Shannon, and Aunt Jan. Shannon and Aunt Jan were at Mom’s Saturday!

Couldn’t resist adding in this one, for the cigarette, and for Shannon hopping around from a rock in her shoe.

Grandma liked doing the chicken dance.

This looks like Grandma’s fourth wedding, where she officially became Mary Masin-Vondrasek-Colom?-Hendrickson-Devota. How’s that for a hyphenated name? That’s her new husband Charlie to the left, and Uncle Rich to the right, looking pretty damn dapper. Was he her best man?

the return of the baking cousins: the reckoning

Time to get down to business! At 10 a.m. sharpish we descended upon Mom’s kitchen: Aunt Jan, her daughter Shannon, her daughter-in-law Kelly, my cousin Timmery and her son Jackson (he was allowed to girly baking day due to extreme youth), my sister Jennifer, and me.

Shannon cutting the eggs into the dough. Sounds weird, I know, but the recipe said to!

Beer levels after adding to half the dough, and then after adding to the second half. Mom told us how she brought a domestic beer to one of her aunts’ miloste-baking days once, and Aunt Rose gently pulled her aside, gravely chastising, “You know, dear, German beer works better.”

Mom showed us how to knead the dough. Jackson kept Jennifer from getting into trouble.

Now to let the dough rest 30 minutes. What could we do to take up 30 minutes?

Ooh, it’s lunch time!

Mom provided chicken salad and puff pastry shells (Pepperidge Farm, not as good as the ones I made in September), Aunt Jan brought salad, and Timmery made, oh crap, I forgot to find out how to spell this…ceponky? They’re awesome poppy seed dinner/sandwich rolls. Don’t they look like they came from a store? And she brought a veggie tray. Or maybe Jennifer brought the veggie tray. I’m sure one of them will be more than happy to correct me.

The 28th was Timmery’s birthday, so Mom put some candles on the apricot scones she’d made for dessert.

back to work, ladies!

Mom demonstrated the technique for rolling and prepping the miloste. Or, she tried as best she could, as we were sort of winging it. No one knew exactly what happened to the dough between the cutting of the slits and dropping it into the oil. I love the looks on Shannon’s face as she watches this. Like, “Neat…wow…wait, you expect me to do that???”

Aunt Jan and Mom remembered that Grandma would grab a few slits with her pinkies, a miracle happened, then it was dropped into the hot oil. It was our job to suss out that miracle.

Shannon was game, and rolled out a lot of miloste. That’s Aunt Jan and Kelly, center and right.

And she’s having fun doing it! I’m pretty sure.

Timmery rolled out quite a few too.

Jennifer mostly just hogged Jackson. I didn’t hog him. I swear.

Here’s a few examples of the twisting we tried. The top one wound up being closer to what we remembered them being like. Twists like the bottom came out too much like a ball.

fry them balls!

After all our jokes about Schwetty balls, it was time to drop the rolled miloste into the oil, a few at a time.

Fried and powdered-sugared miloste cooling on brown paper. Mom ripped open a paper grocery bag and laid it out on a towel.

And one example of the final result. They weren’t as light as Grandma made them, which means we probably handled the dough too much. But they tasted just as we remembered — flaky, crunchy, and very slightly sweet.

Cleanup time! Notice Mom doing all the work while we slack.

Like last year, we all had a great time getting together to bake. I wish we had room for more people, but it’s hard getting around in the kitchen just with who we had! It was loads of fun catching up, laughing together, and scratching our heads trying to figure out the recipe. In a way, it also kicked off holiday baking in general — now I know it’s time to make nutty crescents, Mexican wedding cakes, and other yummy stuff for Christmas.

Here comes the recipe, but before we go, an artsy picture of Jackson:

Miloste – Bohemian fried pastry

Unless you have a very large bowl, you will want to mix this up in 2 batches.

prep: 20 minutes, 30 minutes rest
total time: We spent about 4 hours, though the entire process could probably be done in under 3 hours
servings: makes about 50 miloste
temperature: deep fryer at 375 degrees

8 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 pound butter, chilled
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 can or bottle of German beer
powdered sugar, for dusting

The night before, open the beer and let it sit out.

In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, and salt. Cut chilled butter into approximate tablespoon size, and add to dry ingredients. Using a pastry cutter, cut in the butter as you would for pie crust: until pea-sized.

Add one egg, and cut it into the dough the same way you did the butter. Continue adding the eggs in this fashion until all four are incorporated into the dough. The dough will still be dry and not hold together. That’s all right — this is where the beer comes in. If you’ve ever made pie crust, this will remain a familiar process. You’re using beer in place of the usual ice water to add the needed moisture.

Sprinkle a few tablespoons to a quarter-cup of beer over the dough. Fluff with a fork to gently incorporate the beer. As with pie crust, your goal is to “work” the dough as little as possible, and add only as much liquid as necessary for the dough to hold together.

Continue adding beer in small increments, mixing it into the dough by fluffing it with the tines of a fork, until the dough holds together when squeezed. When we made this, the whole recipe used nearly all of one 12-ounce bottle of beer.

On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough — gently again, no need to be rough with it — until it’s smooth. Cover the dough with the bowl you mixed it in, or a towel, and let it sit for half an hour.

Near the end of the half hour, heat oil in a deep pan or deep fryer to 375 degrees.

After half an hour, divide the dough into quarters. You’re going to use one quarter at a time. Cover the remaining dough or wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until needed.

Cut the dough into pieces the size of half an egg and roll into ball shapes — again, with a light touch. Try to work the dough as little as possible throughout the process.

Roll the balls of dough out into thin discs, as thin as possible. You should have a very smooth, pliable dough by now, like a nutty crescent dough. Okay, like 32 old ladies know what I mean when I say that. Sigh. Basically, the dough will do whatever you want and not bitch about it. You don’t need much flour, if any, while rolling — if the disc sticks to your surface, it will peel up without complaint. Just use as much flour as needed to keep it from sticking, because it is kind of a pain to have to pull it up, and that awkward stretching probably doesn’t make it happy.

Your discs will probably be 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Bigger or smaller should be fine, but I’d shoot for 4 to 6; it will be a good size to handle and deep fry. With a sharp knife, cut several slits in the disc of dough, about half an inch apart. You will get 3 to 5 slits.

This is the grandma-magic part we never quite got down. I think the goal is to twist up the dough slightly to make it more attractive when fried. Mom says Grandma would cross her hands, slip each pinky under a strip, do some mysterious twist, and drop it into the oil. Do what you like; see the pictures in this post for examples. My main recommendation would be to avoid balling up the dough too much — it’s neater when it’s still mostly flat in shape with some twistiness to it.

So tuck a few of your slits across and/or into one another, and drop into the hot oil. Fry until light golden brown — about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from oil to paper towels or brown paper.

When miloste are cool, sift generously with powdered sugar.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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The end of summer is a bittersweet time for a vegetable garden. Many plants are ripe or ripening, while others still bravely put out blossoms, uncognizant of the coming frost that will put a halt to their reproductive attempts. Indeterminate tomatoes are the most tragic example of this, showing off their dainty little yellow flowers into October if weather allows.

Tomatoes are living proof of plucky optimism. “Winter is coming? I’ll believe it when I see it!”

In my garden still there are carrots, chard, overgrown bunching onions, zucchini, tomatillos, sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, baby watermelon, and a stalwart little eggplant.

For Foodbuzz’s monthly 24, 24, 24 event (24 meals by 24 bloggers in a 24 hour period), I chose to celebrate this last hurrah of the garden, at least in northern climes. The frost date for my area is September 25th, so the end of the month usually coincides with the end of the garden’s frost-tender plants, which is most of them.

The original plan was to host a meal. I know! I haven’t hosted a family meal at my place yet!

However, my nephew Justin’s birthday is September 25th, and Jennifer decided to throw his birthday celebration on the 26th — the day I was required to hold my 24, 24, 24 event. We decided I would provide several dishes based on summer’s last hurrah.

I made up two plates of sliced heirloom tomatoes, coleslaw, sliced beets, cucumber salad, and…apple pie vols-au-vent. All of the vegetables, herbs, and apples came from the garden or the yard!

The presentation may look a bit simple, but that’s on purpose. The goal was to showcase the bounty in as close to natural form as possible, so that you could taste the essence of their origins. For example, the beets have only a touch of butter, salt, and pepper on them, allowing their earthy sweetness to come through. The coleslaw puts forth cabbage in a sweet buttermilk dressing. The cucumbers are sliced thinly, tossed with dill, and dressed in sugar and vinegar. The tomatoes are simply sliced, and offered with salt and pepper or sugar.

Those of you who follow food blogging might recognize vols-au-vent as this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. Yep, I did the challenge, but I’ll be posting the results in a day or two. These apple pie filling-filled vols-au-vent were made with apples from my aunt’s tree across the road.

The tomatoes were pink (Sudduth’s) brandywine, eva purple, and black krim. The plate on the left is one pink brandywine.

Dad likes the tomatoes.

Maggie doesn’t really like tomatoes.

A closer look at the veggie dishes. Except for the beets. They tasted pretty awesome, but they photographed pretty crappy. No, I did not have the time to snap them in perfect light before taking everything over to Jennifer’s!

Jennifer and Denise in a totally unstaged, natural moment.

The birthday cake. I think Justin likes Pokemon. Just a hunch.

Justin versus the cake. Who will win? The suspense is killing me.

Oh, he wins. Whew.

Aren’t teenagers annoying?

I had a crazy time preparing everything Saturday. These dishes aren’t complicated, but there’s a bit more involved when you’re pulling things out of the garden.

Everything is dirtier, for one thing. I’d go out and get a basket of ingredients, beets, for example. Did you know they grow in the ground? Dirt clings to them! And the leaves — they have to come off! More mess.

Repeat the above like 20 times. Cabbage, dill, dying tomato plants, cucumbers, onion — for the coleslaw, and so on and so forth. Then clean it all. Cut it all. Grate, boil, slice, salt, roll, simmer, and bake it all. Oops, I’m complaining again. Sorry. Kind of.

Overall though, it was loads of fun and I’m so appreciative of Foodbuzz for sponsoring the 24, 24, 24 events. Check them out, and see what the other 23 24, 24, 24 bloggers did this month as well!

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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