Recent Posts

The Eyes Have It: Peach and Raspberry Salad With Peach Vinaigrette

The Eyes Have It: Peach and Raspberry Salad With Peach Vinaigrette

Summer salads are a “thing” at my house. Cool and light after a hot day, a salad is the perfect way to wind down the day and ease into a cool evening with a good book and a sweet pup.     Here is a…

Bulgogi Eggplant

Bulgogi Eggplant

Bulgogi?  It’s a Korean specialty. Koreans have been making the classic dish for hundreds of years—sometimes grilled and sometimes in a broth.  In recent times, the dish has become rockstar-popular on Korean and international menus. Bulgogi roughly translates to “fire meat.” Although the dish is…

Apricot Upside-Down Cake

Apricot Upside-Down Cake

I’m pretty sure that Marie Antoinette had THIS Apricot Upside-Down Cake in mind when she said “Let them eat cake.”

It’s to die for.  

Here’s the recipe:

Apricot Upside-Down Cake

July 27, 2021
Ingredients
  • For The Topping:
  • 4 T. unsalted butter (melted)
  • 1/2 C. light or dark brown sugar (packed)
  • 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 t. fine sea salt
  • 8 medium apricots or about 1 pound (rinsed, dried and sliced in half)
  • For The Cake:
  • 1 C. all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 C. almond flour
  • 1 t. baking powder
  • 1/4 t. fine sea salt
  • 6 T. unsalted butter (at room temperature)
  • 2/3 C. granulated sugar
  • 1 t. vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs (at room temperature)
  • 1/2 C. whole milk
Directions
  • Step 1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and prepare a 9-inch round cake pan by greasing it liberally and flouring it.
  • Step 2 Prepare the topping by combining melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and 1/4 t. salt in a bowl. Spread this mixture evenly on the bottom of your prepared pan. Slice apricots in half and arrange halves on top of the topping. The halved apricots should be arranged cut side down in the pan. Set aside while you prepare the cake batter.
  • Step 3 To prepare the cake batter, sift the flour and almond flour together in a bowl, breaking up any clumps that don’t fit through the sieve. Whisk baking powder and salt into this mixture. Set aside.
  • Step 4 Using the large bowl of your stand mixer (or an electric hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar together until it is creamy. This will take 2 or 3 minutes. Add the vanilla extract to this mixture. Then add the eggs one at a time, mixing until your batter is smooth. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the sides of your bowl.
  • Step 5 Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to your batter. Then, add 1/2 of the milk, mixing to combine. Continue mixing the flour and milk using these proportions. Scrape down the sides of your bowl occasionally as you do this. Mix the ingredients until they are well combined but be careful not to over-mix.
  • Step 6 Spread the batter evenly on top of the apricots in your pan. Bake until the cake is firm and golden brown on top. A toothpick inserted in the top of the cake should come out clean. The time you need to bake your cake depends upon your oven. My cake took 45 minutes but the original recipe called for 35 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan to be sure your cake will release cleanly from the pan when you invert it onto a serving plate. Invert the cake onto a serving plate. Some of the topping will run down the side of the cake.

 

This recipe is adapted from a Vallery Lomas recipe in The New York Times. You can find the original recipe here.

Oldies But Goodies: Russian Salad

Oldies But Goodies: Russian Salad

Every month Blue Cayenne features one post from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. Here is a Russian Salad recipe. You don’t want to miss this great recipe…again. Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive?  Just click one of the categories at the…

Midsummer Pasta With Fresh Corn, Zucchini, and Tomatoes

Midsummer Pasta With Fresh Corn, Zucchini, and Tomatoes

Thinking about what you eat and why you eat it? Wondering what a really healthy diet might look like?  Welcome to the world of Mark Bittman. Bittman is the Special Advisor on Food Policy at Columbia University’s Mailman’s School of Public Health. He’s written thirty…

Want Some Pesto With Your Peaches?

Want Some Pesto With Your Peaches?

“Pesto, or (to refer to the original dish) pesto alla genovese, is a sauce originating in Genoa, the capital city of Liguria, Italy. It traditionally consists of crushed garlic, European pine nuts, coarse salt, basil leaves, and hard cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano (also known as Parmesan cheese) or Pecorino Sardo (cheese made from sheep’s milk), all blended with olive oil.” en.wikipedia.org

So… Almond Pesto?  And throw some peaches in there, too?

Why not?

This Peaches With Almond Pesto dish is whatever you want it to be. It can be a salad. It can be a dessert. It could be that guilty pleasure of a dish you trundle to the refrigerator for at 2 a.m.. 

Here is the recipe. 

Peaches With Almond Pesto

July 11, 2021
Ingredients
  • For the Peaches
  • 1/2 C. extra-virgin olive oil
  • 20 fresh sage leaves
  • 1/2 t. salt
  • 3 medium perfectly-ripe peaches
  • 1/4 C. amaretto
  • 1 1/3 C. Almond Pesto
  • For The Almond Pesto
  • 2/3 C. raw, whole almonds
  • Zest of 1/2 orange
  • 1/4 C. Parmesan cheese (Cut into small rough pieces)
  • 1/4 t. chili flakes
  • 1/4 t. nutmeg
  • 1/4 t. salt
  • 2 t. honey
  • 1/2 C. orange juice (divided)
  • 1/2 C. extra-virgin olive oil (divided)
  • 1 T. lemon juice
Directions
  • Step 1 To make the pesto, toast the whole almonds in a skillet over medium heat for about 2 or 3 minutes. The almonds should be fragrant when they are roasted. Cool almonds to room temperature.
  • Step 2 Combine the roasted almonds, the orange zest, the Parmesan, the chili flakes, nutmeg and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the mixture is coarsely chopped.
  • Step 3 Combine the honey, half the orange juice, half the olive oil and all of the lemon juice in a container and whisk to mix. With the motor of your processor running, stream the honey mixture into the almond mixture.
  • Step 4 Spoon the almond/honey mixture into a bowl and stir in the remaining orange juice and olive oil. Set this “pesto” aside for at least an hour to let the flavors mix.
  • Step 5 To finish and serve the dish, heat olive oil in a small frying pan and fry the sage leaves in the hot oil. The sage leaves will curl up slightly and take on a crispy texture when fried and they will turn a pretty green. Drain the leaves on paper towels and set aside.
  • Step 6 To assemble the salad, slice (but don’t peel) ripe peaches into wedges. Toss them with amaretto. To plate the salad, put a generous dollop of almond pesto in a bowl, plate or wide-mouthed glass. (If your pesto is too thick, stir in some additional olive oil.) Arrange the peaches artfully on top of the pesto. Drizzle a generous amount of pesto over the peaches. Arrange the fried sage leaves on top of the peaches. Serve at room temperature.

 

This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Vivian Howard’s cookbook Deep Run Roots. The cookbook is available through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

 

Apricot Crumble Tart

Apricot Crumble Tart

Stone fruits! I’m pretty sure I could eat my weight in plums. Don’t even get me started on nectarines. And apricots! What velvety beauties they are! The Greeks called apricots “the golden eggs of the sun.” How pretty is that? They’re all in season right…

Let’s Do Blueberry Brunch Cake

Let’s Do Blueberry Brunch Cake

Brunch. It’s a portmanteau– a made up word joining two words and two meanings. You know, a blend. List and article: Listicle. Smoke and fog: Smog. Breakfast and lunch: Brunch.  Actually, Blue Cayenne’s sweet Chief Quality Officer (CQO)  Juliet is probably a portmanteau, too. Juliet…

Oldies But Goodies: Smashed And Seared Beets

Oldies But Goodies: Smashed And Seared Beets

Every month Blue Cayenne features one post from our archive of more than 350 recipes. Here is a Smashed and Seared Beets recipe.

You don’t want to miss this great recipe…again.

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive?  Just click one of the categories at the bottom of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

Here is the link to the recipe: Smashed and Seared Beets.

 

 

Crystalline Prose and Minestrone

Crystalline Prose and Minestrone

She was so gifted a writer that W.H. Auden said of her: “I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose.” She was so elegantly beautiful that the Dadaist artist Man Ray begged to photograph her, fascinated as he was…