Monday, August 07, 2006

My pathetic local meal

I have issues with crust. I just can't make a good one. And if it somehow works out, it was totally by accident and had nothing to do with me. The planets that influence crusts happened to be aligned that day or something. Recipes with crusts make me nervous and I avoid them, like when people don't hang out with anyone smarter than them, lest it highlight their intellectual deficiencies. Anyway, the meal on Satuday was made from this:

Tomatoes, peppers, garlic, cippolini onions, scallions, swiss chard, and basil were mine

Squash, eggplant, mozzarella came from Roots Farmers market from Tuesday.

Flour is from that mill in Annville, Lebanon County.

Artichoke hearts I had and olives are considered a condiment.




And turned out to be this. The only reason the guts aren't falling out is because I had a backup premade pie crust in the refrigerator (I always have emergency crust) and had to wrap that crust around my rapidly disintegrating homemade crust to keep everything inside. It was good though, as often happens with things ugly on the outside. Roasted veggies and a kalamata olives, and artichoke hearts and mozzarella. Yum.
















Dessert was just plain blackberries from the bush that just keeps on producing.














Also made on Saturday were these pickles. I am totally a pickle person and it kills me to let them alone for several days to let the flavor develop. Garlic, dill, and dried red pepper (from last year) are mine. Cukes from Roots on Tuesday. I still need to make pickles out of the "Some other kind" cukes.
Okay, off to Connecticut to play around trains for the next two days.

5 Comments:

Blogger EFB said...

Crust as in pizza dough or pastry crust?

4:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Those pickles look hard to resist. How do you make yours? Do you process them in a hot-water canner?

5:11 PM  
Blogger Liz said...

It doesn't look pathetic to me. What was it supposed to be? A calzone? A tart? It looks like it was good.

The pickles are awesome. I wish I liked pickles more. I do like them, but they have to be the right kind, with the right crunch, and saltiness, etc. And I only eat them with sandwiches and I don't really eat a lot of sandwiches. So, really I'm better off buying a random pickle.

4:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think your crust looks fine. I am not a good crust maker, either.

The whole meal looks wonderful. And, I would frame that pickle shot, and put it on the wall!

6:09 PM  
Blogger meresy_g said...

It was supposed to be a torta rustica, whatever that is. Basically roasted vegetables in a sort of savory pastry crust. I saved it with a pie crust in a pinch.

These pickles are just refrigerator pickles. Stuff dill heads, garlic cloves and hot peppers in sterilized jars, slice up cukes and put in jars and pour in a vinegar/water/pickling salt mixture that has been boiled. They last for up to a year in the refrigerator, although I know they won't last that long. I haven't touched them yet, but only because I was away. I need to make some canned ones also.

12:36 PM  

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