Fruit Cobbler - Summery and Refreshing

I made this yummy fruit dessert last week to welcome my brother home from his Euro trip. I wanted to bake something summery and use all of the amazing fruit that my parents had in the house. The recipe that you'll find here--courtesy of Jamie Oliver-- uses apricots, pears, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb but you can substitute with any fruit that you like. I used plums, peaches, cherries, blueberries, raspberries and even small wild strawberries.

The result was fabulous and there weren't any leftovers by the end of the night. The recipe suggests eating this with vanilla ice cream and that's precisely what we did. It's a great complement that's refreshing, clean and simple.

This dish takes about a half hour to prepare and an hour to cook. The recipe calls for 35 minutes of cooking time but I didn't find this sufficient.

Try it here and enjoy!

Astorian Women Don't Get Fat...

Image of book: www.amazon.com

...if they cook, that is. I've been trying to stick to this principle lately--especially since this week turned out to be a dine-in instead of the originally planned dine-out week. Judging from the title of this entry, you can probably guess that I got inspired by a fun book I'm reading--French Women Don't Get Fat. While the actual book is nothing earth shattering--eating in moderation was not discovered in France--it offers a slew of cool recipes for every meal of the day. Below, you'll see that I made a semi-homemade version of the Fish en Papillote and also did my own spin on French Women's Chocolate Rice Pudding.

Fish en Papillote: This is actually called Halibut en Papillote in the book but I didn't have halibut so I substituted with tilapia. I used a pre-seasoned fish that I bought at Trader Joe's--my favorite grocery store. I put the fish in the parchment paper and also substituted the champagne/wine with small dollops of unsalted butter. I used a sprig of fresh parsley and omitted the thyme and fennel simply because I didn't have it. For all else, I followed the recipe and served it with a side of baked new potatoes.

Baked New Potatoes:

Ingredients: Serves 2-3 (depending on how hungry you are!)

4 medium sized new potatoes

Olive oil

Fresh parsley, chopped

Italian seasoning

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.

Wash the potatoes. Cut them in half and then into quarters and then into eighths. Place them on a mildly oiled cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. Use your hands to mix everything together and make sure that the seasoning is evenly distributed. Bake the potatoes for 40-45 minutes or until golden around the edges. Top with chopped parsley for garnish.

Hint: You might want to check on your potatoes halfway into the cooking process and using a spoon, toss them around so all sides get golden brown.

Chocolate Rice Pudding: This sounded absolutely delightful to me when reading French Women so I decided to make it for dessert with last night's dinner. From the recipe link here, it sounds very very easy and let me tell you that it's not. The end result is worth it but be extremely careful with arborio rice. It burns quickly and gets sticky. My suggestion would be to add twice (or more) the amount of milk than this recipe calls for. If you don't want the pudding to be too rich, add 1/2 milk and 1/2 water. In my version, I also added dried cranberries, which puffed up nicely and provided a yummy tang. The end result was very pleasing and the chocolate was the best part but just know that this is a "diva" dessert--definitely not low maintenance.

Supersize-Me Strawberry Brownies

Tonight was a perfect cozy, stay-in and watch a movie night. Moses and Grant came by and we all enjoyed the newest Wes Anderson flick--The Darjeeling Limited. And with a good film, of course comes good food. Dessert--in particular. I made humongous, super-fluffy brownies from scratch--none of that Duncan Hines mix (although I admit I use it from time to time). These were super-sized, moist brownies made with good Belgian chocolate, apple sauce and egg whites. I topped some of them with sliced strawberries for freshness and the rest were devoured au naturale. Check out the recipe here.

Variations: Instead of using pecans, which the recipe calls for, you can substitute with anything from dried fruit or even marshmallows. I also thought about making a strawberry preserve sauce to pour on top but then opted for fresh fruit. And yet another topping combination could be a fruit trio of sliced bananas, strawberries and blueberries.

Hope this hits your choco spot--I sure took care of mine!