The leaves are falling, the air is crisp. Fall is right around the corner, and being back in the Midwest I feel a strong connection to the seasons. Summer has been a season to enjoy food, the company of friends, and the outdoors. Here are my three favorite recipes from this summer:
Truck-Stop Buttermilk Pancakes. Mark discovered this recipe when he was planning for our Memorial Day Pancake Breakfast. Now it is in our regular breakfast rotation. The secret to successful pancakes appears to be butter! and buttermilk! This one will get carried through to fall and winter, I’m sure.
Zucchini Fritters. I was inspired to seek out this recipe when thinking about how to make zucchini into a filling and satisfying meal. This recipe was perfect (I didn’t use scallions because we didn’t have them). Using olive oil to fry the fritters, rather than canola oil or something else, makes a huge difference. Also, salting the zucchini to get rid of the excess moisture makes them fry much better. I cooked some Indian-inspired chickpeas with onions to go with the fritters.
Plum and Peach Crisp. Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks is awesome. I had been wanting to try one of Heidi’s dessert recipes, and the perfect opportunity presented itself when I was searching for a good dessert to pair with a Mediterranean meal we were making for some friends. We had grilled vegetables, stuffed grape leaves, hummus, tabouli, Moroccan spiced rice, marinated feta, spiced almonds, olives, and plum and peach crisp with vanilla ice cream. I used brown sugar in the topping, used cornstarch for the arrowroot, and skipped the orange blossom water. I really liked the yogurt in the topping - this crisp was not too buttery or too sweet, and the fruit to crisp ratio was perfect.
