Endive & Fuyu Persimmon Salad with Pecans

You Say Persimmon, I say…Well…Persimmon

We are fortunate to have a Fuyu Persimmon tree in our backyard. For those who are unfamiliar, the Fuyu is the flat persimmon that you eat while it’s still firm. Not the ones that are teardrop shaped and make you pucker unless they are über soft.

I have never really been a huge fan of The Persimmon. My grandmother would make a persimmon salad for Thanksgiving every year, and every year I would scrape the persimmon off and eat the rest of the salad. She would also make persimmon pudding. Again, not one of my favorites. Of course, that’s when I was a kid. As I’ve gotten older my tastes have changed.

While persimmons are not exactly what I reach for when I am in need of a snack, I do enjoy them from time to time. My daughter, however, will go and grab them off the tree anytime the mood strikes. I wholeheartedly encourage this behavior, though she did teach the chickens to do the same thing. Nothin’ like playing in the yard and grabbing a snack.

The crop this year has been crazy-big and earlier than normal. I blame it on the cool summer and lack of water. We were eating persimmons in mid-September, way before you would see them in the market. Yesterday, we picked a bunch of persimmons to give to our neighbors for use in their restaurant. This was the third round of harvesting and it looks like we will probably get one more in before the leaves drop, though I may just pick them and use them as decoration. The color is perfect for October…as is this salad.

Endive & Fuyu Persimmon Salad with Pecans
Recipe adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rogers

A rich, slippery, fleshy salad that can just as easily be a dessert. Choose Fuyus that are saturated orange in color and as firm as a slightly underripe peach, or the skin of a just ripe banana. (Don’t use the torpedo-shaped Hachiya persimmons, which need to be jelly-soft before they are edible.) This salad is also nice with a few sprigs of watercress for contrast. You’ll get a very different flavor balance, still delicious and unusual. Read more…

Amy’s Hummus

Hummus Among Us

School has been back in session for a week, at least at my house. (It only took 4 days for two of my kids to get sick. Yay, school!) I am back in lunch making mode. The boys’ lunches are easy, albeit boring: turkey sandwich on wheat, yogurt, fruit, granola bar, and a drink. Every day. All Year. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

My daughter is the difficult one. She’s not a sandwich kind of gal. When she does have a sandwich, she prefers a PB&J but the PB in it is problematic when there are peanut allergies in your class. Any other options that I have given her are short lived. Egg salad is a favorite but I don’t want her to eat that everyday. She’ll eat any leftovers from dinner. There’s always crackers, cheese and salami, but sometimes this feels like cheating, and it’s not the greatest nutritionally.

The most recent solution is perhaps one of the best. She loves Hummus. I have started making my own and sending it in her lunch with various veggies. It’s been great. Plus it’s cheap when you make it yourself.

Hummus is so easy to make, and frankly tastes way better when you make it fresh. I adapted my recipe from a couple from my collection. It’s fast. I made a batch in 5 minutes yesterday. It’s a great go-to afternoon snack and keeps in the fridge for about 5 days—if it lasts that long. Play around with this recipe. I sometimes add harissa if I want it spicy.

Amy’s Hummus

Ingredients
2 14-ounce cans garbanzo beans (chickpeas) or 1 ¼ C dried garbanzo beans, soaked in water overnight, and cooked.
1/4 cup tahini
Juice of two Lemons, or to taste
3 garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin (optional)
1/4 cup olive oil

Directions
Drain the canned garbanzo beans in a colander over a bowl to retain the liquid.

Put the drained beans into a food processor. Add the tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and cumin if using.

Process the ingredients until a thick paste forms. While the processor is running, add the olive oil. Add some of the reserved liquid until the preferred consistency is achieved. Enjoy!

Tomato Cobbler with Blue Cheese Biscuits

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes
This is my favorite part of the summer growing season. I am experiencing a tomato explosion in my garden. It’s awesome. But I do tend to get tired of just popping the cherry tomatoes into my mouth, or eating the slicer tomatoes like apples. So when I saw this recipe for a tomato cobbler on one of my favorite blogs, I was intrigued and excited about making it. All my favorite flavors are there: tomatoes, basil, balsamic, and caramelized onions….and don’t forget the blue cheese!

I am fairly certain that the kids will go nowhere near it, but I also have a strong feeling that this will be served for dinner up at Tahoe next week to those of us who are over 5 feet tall, and have a more sophisticated palate than the chicken nugget crowd.

I encourage those of you who have the same backyard tomato largess to give it a try…
Read more…

Watermelon Gazpacho With Chile and Feta Cheese

That’s Usin’ Your Melon!
After an extended vacation and a lot of driving, we’re back home and I am looking for some good “real” food. It can be fun eating out, but eventually I get tired of shouting in a clown’s mouth and want to have a normal, family dinner around our kitchen table. I know. How very Norman Rockwell…

I gotta say, I’m pretty tired. So as much as I want a real meal, I also want it to be easy and perfect for the warm weather. Luckily, I have a recipe that covers both.

Last month at our Tyler Florence cookbook dinner, one of the recipes I went crazy for was the Watermelon Gazpacho with Chile and Feta Cheese. Just so you know, I don’t like watermelon—which makes my love of this recipe weird. But it’s good…really good. And it is made almost entirely in the blender. Nothing is easier than that. Add to that the fact that my tomatoes are abundant and melons are at the peak of their season, and you just can’t go wrong with this one. Read more…