Easy roasted peaches makes a versatile baked fruit that you can use as a side to duck or other dishes, or as a dessert.
This recipe is one of those surprises that happens when you find yourself with an abundance of an ingredient (in this case, peaches) and you decide to just wing it, making something up on the spot and it turns out even better than you imagined.
It’s crazy simple but it went so well along with the Crispy Spiced Duck Legs with Thyme, that I wanted to tell you how I did it.
Ultra- crispy duck legs are much easier to make than you might think. Spiced with fennel and thyme, they’ll make your dinner party guests very happy.
Last week we threw a little dinner party. Nothing fancy, mind you. Matt’s lovely sister Hayli and her delightful husband Tristan* were visiting us from France for a couple of weeks and since they are both actors/musicians/carnies we thought they would have a lot in common with our neighbors Andy and Gina, who are also in the arts.
When we came up with this bright idea, we were huddled under a blanket, shivering in the unseasonable cold that seemed to be the defining aspect of “Summer” 2014.
“What would be a good thing to make for a small crowd on a chilly evening?”, I asked Matt, who was trying to warm his toes by rubbing them very quickly on an angry cat’s belly.
“Duck legs.”
“But didn’t we make that las-“
“Duck legs. I want crispy duck legs.”
“Duck legs it is, then. And give me some of that cat belly. My feet are freezing too.”
*Hayli and Tristan live in the Ardèche region of France. Arguably one of the most sophisticated culinary environments in the world so when they came to visit us, we felt we needed to impress them with the refined, subtle American cuisine one can only find at…Cracker Barrel.
You, yes YOU, can make oven-baked ribs. And even better, you can slather those ribs all over with coffee-honey barbecue sauce. Prepare to be popular.
Grilled eggplant – or aubergine – is kicked up with a miso ginger glaze before grilling or broiling. This is our favorite addition to a barbecue party.
In the big city, grilling is often not something you have a lot of access to. Certainly where I was raised, in NYC, outdoor space was at such a premium that unless you had a rooftop grill, you were out of luck. The closest I ever came to such luxury was dragging a cooler of … Read more
We make grilled swordfish as soon as the weather is warm enough to fire the grill up – we use a quick marinade and serve it up with tomatoes and ramps.
I’m going to set a little scene for you. Ready?
It’s a warm, early summer evening and after days of torrential, flooding rains, the sky finally clears and you can see a million stars. You can smell the damp earth and the new leaves on the trees. You can hear the frogs that have just woken up from their winter-long sleep. You pull up to the lovely, perfect little restaurant where you’ve reserved a table, excited because you’ve heard great things about it and also because it’s been a long, hard winter and you haven’t gone out in what feels like forever. You hold your husband’s hand as you walk to the entryway, listening to a stream gurgling in the distance that you can’t see because it’s the country and it’s dark. You walk in and the place is adorable and there’s a seasonal cocktail menu written on the chalkboard above the bar and then they seat you at a table RIGHT NEXT TO PETER FRIGGIN DINKLAGE.
Yup. In the car on the way to the restaurant, Matt and I talked about how there was no Game of Thrones on Sunday because of Memorial Day and then they seat us right next to Tyrion Lannister himself. How tempted was I to say the waitress “Bring us bread, two of those little fish, and some bacon burned black?” Very. But I restrained myself. Just barely.
Oh, and they also had grilled ramps. So, yeah. It was a good night.