We get grapes from so many places around the world now that we forget to think of them as seasonal fruit, but anyone who lives in or near wine country knows that fall is the time of the grape harvest, and that applies to table grapes as well. The best, sweetest, most flavorful varieties abound in fall – the red, green and black grapes we see every day, but also the headily perfumed muscat grapes and the classically flavored concord grapes. I had long wanted to make a grape pie, but the grapes with the truest “grape” flavor — the flavor of grape juice and grape jelly — are Concord grapes, which are also famous for their grape seeds.
Entries Tagged as 'Make Ahead'
Fresh Grape Pie
October 12th, 2011 · 6 Comments · Autumn, Baked Goods and Desserts, Make Ahead, Recipes, Seasonal
Essential Potato Salad
September 1st, 2011 · 2 Comments · Entertaining, Make Ahead, Quick, Recipes, Salads, Seasonal, Summer, Vegetables and Sides
I love old fashioned potato salad made by my grandmother, but this isn’t that. I also love newfangled potato salads, but this isn’t that, either. This is potato salad reduced to its essentials — a little mayonnaise, a sprinkle of tart vinegar, the oniony breath of chives, and at the end, a dusting of lemon, to add aroma and color, to wake the tastebuds and make the salad sing. It’s hardly a recipe at all, but it’s well worth making all the same, in this last weekend of summer.
Preserving Summer — Tomato Jam
August 29th, 2011 · 11 Comments · Condiments, Make Ahead, Recipes, Seasonal, Summer
I can’t stop time, but I can preserve the summer just a little, and capture some of my childhood summers at the same time. When I was a little girl, I would spend some of those infinite summers with my great grandmother, eating berries out of her garden, getting into her cookie jar (I can still remember where it was kept), and eating her homemade tomato jam. Not a chutney, or another version of ketchup, the way so many tomato preserves recipes are, but a tomato jam, brightened with lemon, with that musky tomato flavor and the pure sweetness of preserved summer. Perfect on toast, for that lazy summer breakfast, this really is summer in a jar.







