Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Pride of Ownership

Saturday I made Boeuf Bourguignon, but I don’t really know what to say about it. It is one of Julia’s most famous dishes and I assumed that after making and eating it the words would flow, but they don’t. It took 4 hours, including chopping, and it was absolutely delicious. But that was all to be expected. There were far too many onions, but that’s typical of JC. The beef was delicious and fell apart in my mouth. I’ll make it again (with fewer onions) once in a while for the rest of my life. It just wasn’t inspiring in the literary sense.

What was inspiring, was my lemon blueberry almond crumble. This one came from a recipe on epicurious.com, but I changed it enough that I think I can call it mine. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. Perhaps it’s a certain pride of ownership that makes me want to show the world. You don’t need me to tell you that boeuf bourguignon is time consuming and delicious, but if I don’t tell you about my dear little crumbles, no one will ever know.

Lemon, Blueberry and Almond crumble

Adapted from www.epicurious.com

1 cup sliced almonds with skins
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted
2 large egg yolks1 teaspoon vanilla
Fresh lemon juice
1 cup fresh blueberries
Sugar to taste

I started by popchopping the almonds into big chunks and toasting them for 5 minutes in a pan in the oven. Then I mixed flour, sugars, half the zest, cinnamon and salt with a wooden spoon. Boyfriend mixed in melted butter while I separated the eggs and lined the muffin pans with papers. Don’t forget to grease the papers I did, and it made for some tricky eating. Then we mixed in the yolks and vanilla. We pressed heaping tablespoons of the mixture into the papers, then chilled for 15 minutes (putting the remaining dough aside) while we prepared the blueberry filling. This was where I got really creative. I mashed the blueberries slightly to get the juice flowing, then I poured sugar over them, stirred, and added more sugar until the juice began to thicken. I added the remaining zest and as much lemon juice as I could squeeze out of the lemon. My friends and family like things really lemony. I dropped teaspoons of this mixture into the muffin cups while Boyfriend mixed the almonds into the remaining dough, which we then sprinkled to cover over the muffin cups. We baked for 20 minutes rotating halfway through. They were brown and toasty on top and very, very good.

2 comments:

  1. The Lemon, Blueberry and Almond crumble sounds delicious, I'll have to attempt making them someday :) Any photo of the finished crumble? I'm guessing something similar to the epicurious link (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/photo/Blueberry-Lemon-Crumbles-233292).

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  2. Not quite, my recipes never look just like the recipe picture! Mine are browner, and you can see a bit of blueberry on top. Also, my almonds are in messy chunks instead of nice slices.

    I'm working on figuring out the pictures. Hopefully I'll be able to include them on future recipes.

    Thanks for reading!

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