the SIMMER blog

SvelteGourmand giveaway!

Hey! If you haven't gotten your hands on a copy of The Kitchen Daughter yet, here's your chance -- enter to win with a comment on the fabulous food site SvelteGourmand.

Click here for the giveaway post!

stuffed squash blossoms

So on my farmer's market run for the 5-course corn dinner this past weekend, I noticed a very reasonably priced package of squash blossoms, and I said to myself, "Self: you should pick these up and maybe you could add them to the menu if time permits."

My response probably should have been, "Ha, Self, you ridiculous fool! You know you're always cooking right up to the last minute, you overambitious dinner party menu planner, you. The chances of you having 'extra' time is downright laughable."

I bought the blossoms, and I didn't have the chance to use them at the party, but they were a perfect vehicle for a wonderful mishmash of dinner party leftovers. So, let's call that success!

I wiped them off with a wet paper towel to remove dirt and a bug or two, and laid them out at the ready. And then I concocted a leftover-driven stuffing that I will never in a million years be able to replicate*, but here's the full ingredient list to give you the basic idea:

• about half a cup of fresh ricotta
• some shredded parm
• shredded, cooked golden zucchini with onion and garlic (probably half a cup-ish)
• a quarter-cup or so of crumbled queso fresco
• a tablespoon of mascarpone just to smooth/bind everything
• a quarter-cup of sauteed, chopped mushrooms
• a tablespoon of the leftover corn solids from making corn ice cream (* told you)
• black pepper

 And then I spooned the stuffing into the blossoms, and twisted them neatly at the top to close.

 

And while most squash blossom recipes I've seen call for breading and frying, for health reasons I decided to just saute unbreadded blossoms instead, and I have to say, I think it was totally the right call.

some words about words

A couple of pieces up this week on other sites I'd like to point you toward --

My post on Writer Unboxed is for soon-to-be-published authors looking to reach out to bloggers who review books. Click to read: How Book Bloggers Are Like Agents.

And then there's my piece on Intrepid Media, in which I try to capture at least some of the happy madness of the last few months: What It Feels Like For An Author: Notes From the Far Side of Publication.

So today, there's writing, and tomorrow? Well, tomorrow, there are squash blossoms.

wordless wednesday lii

 

5-course corn dinner

This was one of those weekends that just flew by! Mainly because I spent most of it shopping and prepping for a dinner for eight friends, building a theme around one of my favorite foods.

Corn.

 

More detail soon, but in the meantime, here are the five courses I made (with links to some recipes I drew from):

• Smoked Salmon on Corn Blini
• Esquites
• Corn Vichysoisse (from the Union Square Cafe cookbook)
• Gnudi with Corn and Almonds (gnudi from another Union Square Cafe cookbook, sauce improvised)
• Tomato Panzanella (improvised)
• Kaiserschmarrn with sweet corn ice cream

(All so very delicious.)