Summer!!

I have been wildly delinquent in posting because we have been enjoying lots of sunshine and just generally staying pretty busy.  I have a few really yummy recipes to post.  Today, just a couple quickies.  For 4th of July lunch, we grilled up some bbq chicken on our stovetop grill pan and got some wonderful char marks!

We had this with thin-sliced grilled potatoes and grilled corn succotash.  The succotash was really simple and delicious with our chicken and potatoes.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the leftovers, but I made a ton of it, so I ate it a couple more times for lunch and snack.

Grilled Corn and Edamame Succotash

• 4 ears shucked corn
• 1 cup frozen edamame
• 2 cups green beans, washed and trimmed
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1.5 Tb butter
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1.5 Tb lemon juice
• 1 Tb balsamic vinegar
• Salt & Vinegar

1. Grill corn for about 10 minutes, turning often to get lots of grill marks all the way around.
2. Boil 4 cups water and cook edamame and beans for about 3 minutes to par cook.
3. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process.
4. Melt butter in a pan and sauté onion and garlic until lightly brown.
5. Add the corn and cook for a couple minutes.  Add bean/edamame mixture and cook for another couple minutes.
6. Remove from the pan to a large bowl and add tomatoes, lemon juice, balsamic, salt and pepper.  

Super easy and really fresh!

Matt and I don’t eat a lot of fresh fruit as snacks, so when our CSA box comes with new fruits that we’re not used to eating out of hand, I try to come up with somewhat healthy ways to use them and get as much fruit into our diet as possible. 

This past week I made another pie.  The last pie I made was a bit fancier, much prettier, and probably quite a bit healthier.  This pie, however, was amazingly wonderful and we finished it by Thursday night.  I didn’t get many pictures of the actual pie-making process, and the slice of pie that I have a picture of is a mushy mess, but this is what made it so delicious. 

Cherry Pluot Custard Pie Heaven

• 1 pie crust (Pillsbury for this one)
• 1 box Jell-O Pudding custard mix (I should have used two…it was a pretty thin layer of custard.  And the next time I make a pie like this, my plan is to actually make the custard.)
• ~1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and cut in quarters (I never liked fresh cherries when I was growing up, but now that I’m in Seattle, I’m finding that fresh cherries in Washington—which they offer up as samples while you walk around farmer’s markets—are a really wonderful summer snack)
• 4 pluots, peeled, pitted and chopped
• Cool whip galore

1. Prepare custard according to directions for thick pie filling.
2. Cook fruit over medium heat until it gets nice and juicy and wonderful.  I added a tiny bit of sugar to the mix.
3. Line pie plate with pie and blind bake until it is nice and brown.  You’ll notice in one of my pictures there is a big glob of white chocolate in one slice of pie…this is where I poked a hole in the baked crust.  I mended it with white chocolate chips melted into the space to prevent the custard filling from oozing out.  Matt did not object to a giant piece of white chocolate with his pie.
4. After the fruit has cooked down quite a bit, strain mostly solid parts from the liquid sweetness.  Save this! (I drizzled a bit over our first piece of pie, and the rest I shook up with some limeade for a sweet summer drink)
5. Mix the strained solids with the prepared custard (after it has rested like the package says).
6. Spread the custard mix evenly in the pie crust and top with cool whip.

Is there any question that this was delicious??? The tangy tart bite of the fruit mixed spectacularly with the thick rich custard, and a giant serving of whipped cream never made anything worse.  So satisfying!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 7:46 am and is filed under Holidays, Leftovers, Matthew, Non-Baking, Seattle, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.