Saturday, August 19, 2006

one local summer #8: pot luck

My featured local meal this week wasn't actually a meal. I made locally grown food the star of my potluck contributions (as it turned out, I wasn't the only one--there were some homegrown tomatoes in the salad and, I believe, local eggplant in the main dish).
I made 2 things--a kind of tapenade with garlic toasts and a fruit crumble. The tapenade was all local except for the olive oil and spices, and the bread was from a local bakery. The crumble (or was it a crisp?) had local plums and cherries and local butter from Hartzler's Dairy in the crumble topping. I made it with very little sugar because one of the potluckers is a diabetic.

Tapenade
1 small tomato, seeded
1/2 medium onion
8 oven-dried tomatoes (from last year)
1/2 mildly hot pepper
1 garlic clove
handful of local black walnuts, chopped
handful of mixed basil from the garden (green, purple, lime, and Thai)
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp of smoked paprika
1/2 tsp of chipotle powder
drizzle of olive oil
I put everything except the oil into the food processor and let it go for a minute. When it was chunky, I started adding the olive oil in dribs and drabs until it started to look spreadable (probably about 1/4 cup). It tasted fine, and was popular enough that it was half gone before I took a picture of it.

Plum-Cherry Crumble

about 15 prune plums, pitted and sliced
about twenty cherries, pitted
5 tbs white (divided use)
pinch of ginger
pinch of nutmeg
1/8 cup of red wine
1/4 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup flour
2tbs demerara sugar (although you could use brown)
3 tbs butter
pinch salt
I roasted the plums a little first after tossing them with 3 tbs of the sugar, the ginger and the nutmeg--about 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven to draw the juices out a little. I put the plums and their juice in my baking dish (a smallish 5-cup pyrex) along with the halved cherries. I added the wine and tossed them a little. (I had some rose petal syrup leftover from something else and added a couple of spoonsful, but this was optional.) I put the oatmeal, flour, butter, salt, and the rest of the sugars in a dish and mixed it with my hands (although you can use a pastry cutter if you want to). Then I spooned it onto the fruit and put it in the 350-degree oven for about 35 minutes (or until you can see the fruit juices bubbling up a little.
At the potluck we had this with Hartzler cream, and it was universally commended. It turned out very red/purple, despite the prune plums--some powerfully colored cherries, I guess.

6 comments:

Stacie said...

YUM!!!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for these terrific recipes! I love fruit crumble and have been noticing a lot of plums and blueberries in our house these days. I guess their time is now. (And what lovely photos you take.)

mary grimm said...

Stacie and BL--thanks. I love fruit crumbles, since you don't really need a recipe once you've made a few.

Kristin Ohlson said...

Yes, the eggplant was local!

I'll make the fruit crumble for my next book club thing-- I've been instructed to make dessert.

Kristin Ohlson said...

All right, I'm making this today. I assume that when you say "5 tbs white" you mean white sugar. I hope this works with prunes, blueberries and blackberries instead of cherries!

Kristin Ohlson said...

It was great! Came out a very very deep color with the blueberries and blackberries. I'm going to make it again today and double the crumble stuff on the top-- want it to be more like a crisp, hoping all that doesn't turn to mush.