Mini Dutch Babies with Lemon Curd and Blueberries

Mini Dutch Baby Pancakes cooked in individual cast iron skillets. They puff up and turn a beautiful golden brown before we spoon in homemade lemon curd and sprinkle with fresh blueberries.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cheesecake

Strawberry Rhubarb Cheesecake

A gorgeous and rich, cheesecake, flavored with rum and vanilla and topped with a summery compote of strawberries and rhubarb.

Hello Nerdlings!

Sometimes I wonder if we’re quite nerdy enough on this blog. I worry that our readers, steeped as are Westerosian Meisters in the lore of SF and fantasy, will flit from recipe to recipe, searching in vain for just the right clue that, yes, we too know the exact galactic co-ordinates of Gallifrey (*10-0-11-00 by 02),  we have read The Silmarillion (*Needed more dragons and fewer diacritics) and we have a perfect theory to reconcile, entirely within the Blake’s Seven mythos, Stephen Greif’s depiction of Travis vs Brian Croucher’s (*I have discovered a truly remarkable proof along these lines, which this blog is too small to contain).

Is it not enough to show you our collection of Alan Moore’s 2000AD, DC Comics and Vertigo works, including not only the obvious Swamp ThingPromethea and Ballad of Halo Jones but early Doctor Who Weekly? Must we dig out our Battlestar Galactica DVDs? Have we not mentioned that we named one of our pets (Arya) after a Game of Thrones character, and another (Bascule the Rascule) after the protagonist in the best of darling Iain M. Banks’ SF (although non-Culture) books, Feersum Enjinn?

Strawberry Rhubarb Cheesecake
Don’t worry. We WILL be talking about strawberries and rhubarb soon. Promise.

Read more

Vanilla Custard Tart with Berries

Vanilla custard tart with berries

Vanilla custard tart made from homemade pastry cream and an easy graham cracker crust, topped with fresh summer berries. Perfect for summer parties!

If there’s one challenge to keeping chickens – there aren’t, of course, there are dozens: keeping the dog out of the chicken pellets and poop, keeping the chickens out of the vegetable patch and flower border; keeping Bernie Sanders, our runty salmon favarolle, from being bullied by the other, bigger, chickens – but if there were only one challenge, it would be: what the hell do we do with all these eggs?

With seven hens, even giving them away to our friends and neighbors, we’re never shy of around six dozen eggs on the counter at any one moment, with five or six being added to the stock every day. Yes, there are worse problems to have, and most of the solutions are pretty delicious.

Vanilla Custard Tart with Berries
We topped our tart with strawberries, blackberries. golden berries and fresh mint.

Read more

Blueberry, Oat and Almond Crumb Bars

These blueberry crumb bars with oats and almonds are a perfect bake sale recipe and our favorite way to use up summer blueberries.

Blueberry, Oat and Almond Crumb Bars

A few years ago while we still lived in Brooklyn, Matt and I belonged to a CSA. If you’re not familiar with it, CSA stands for ‘community supported agriculture’. The gist of it is that you pay in advance for a ‘share’ of what the farm produces.

It helps the farmers because they get money in advance so they can better finance their year, and the customer gets a weekly (or bi-weekly) supply of the freshest, just-off-the-farm produce.

Of course, by investing in the farm’s potential, you also share some of the risks. If there’s a flood, or a blight, or a generally low yield of crop that season, you might not get as many tomatoes as you’d like and you just have to channel your inner hippie and roll with it, man. What’s more likely though, is that you’ll end up with way more of a certain fruit or vegetable than you know what to do with. And that’s when you have to get creative.
Blueberry, Oat and Almond Crumb Bars

There was one week during our CSA that we received more blueberries than I had ever seen in my life outside of a grocery store. It was a huge box of them. We had them on yogurt and on cereal. I made blueberry syrup. Matt made a crumble. And still we had more. And then I made Blueberry Oat Bars with the rest and kicked myself for not making them sooner because they were the best thing ever. They’re not so sweet that you’d feel guilty having one for breakfast but they have that crunchy, nutty topping that is such a treat.

Read more

Roasted Peaches with Honey and Thyme

Easy roasted peaches makes a versatile baked fruit that you can use as a side to duck or other dishes, or as a dessert.  

Roasted Peaches with Honey and ThymeThis 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.

Read more