Data visualization for your taste buds...

This is from informationisbeautiful.net and it was just too good not to share. Go here to see (and use!) this visually elegant way to help you play "what's in the pantry?"

Calvados and ginger

We have been feeling fall around here...time to put away the Campari and uncork the Calvados! This is the drink de casa at the moment so I thought I'd share--combine a few healthy slugs of Calvados with a good ginger beer and a lime twist, over ice. Like a Dark and Stormy but with a sweet apple-y flavor from the Calvados. Delicioso.

Green tomato sauté

This time of year there are plenty of green tomatoes hanging around. It's the end of the season--if you're my mother, you've probably got bushels of them in your garden that never got a chance to ripen up before the fall set in. I have been loving their tangy flavor in a simple sauté (maybe actually even more of a quick stewing, since there ends up being so much moisture?). It tastes like it could be eggplant but it is sweet-and-sour in the best possible way. This can use up a ton of them and I love it served over buttery orzo. I used 4 pretty big sized green tomatoes. It made enough for a side dish for 4 people with a bit left over. You'll also want about 1/2 of a Vidalia onion--both the onion and the green tomatoes came from a farm stand while on a trip to Savannah and Tybee Island a week or so ago...still seemed like summer just then!
Slice up half the Vidalia into thin thin thin half moons. To sauté the vegetables you can use any number of cooking fats...once I cooked them in the brown fond left over from roasting a chicken and it was practically transcendent. This time I made them in a healthy tablespoon of bacon fat. You can also easily sauté them in a combination of 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil.
Turn them around frequently...about 5 minutes or so over medium heat until they are nicely soft and lightly colored but not crispy-brown. You want to get them cooked before you add any tomatoes since the acid will keep the onions from cooking properly any further.
And cut up all your gorgeous greenies! I like thin wedges best for this recipe.
Turn up the heat slightly, and stuff them all into your pan. This is sort of stupid looking--probably you can use fewer tomatoes, cook in batches, or use a bigger pan. But I am dumb. They do cook down though, sort of like spinach?
I just sort of mooshed them around. This is why it was more like stewing and less like a sauté.
I stirred them around semi-frequently, allowing them to develop some nice browned bits and probably cooked them for about 10 minutes or so until they fell apart in the right way. Add 1 teaspoon each fresh ground black pepper, salt, and sugar.
Meanwhile, chop up about 3-4 whole, peeled canned tomatoes. You can also use red fresh tomatoes, but I didn't find any in the markets at this point. They make a nice sweet contrast to the tangy green ones. Add them and all their juice into the green tomatoes and continue to sauté for another 3 minutes or so.
They should be completely falling apart and looking sort of chutney-like. I also added in 4 sliced sweet pickled peppadew peppers right before the tomatoes finished up.
Taste for salt and serve hot or at room temperature. Goodbye to summer--but if it ends like this, I'm cool with it.

Watermelon and feta steaks

This is in imitation of a watermelon steaks appetizer from Abbatoir that I had a few weeks ago. It's a really pretty, really simple first course that hits sweet, salty, tangy and spicy all at the same time. At Abbatoir they use watermelon rind pickles but I didn't have any so I just made a quick pickle with thin slices of vidalia onion marinated for a few hours in 1/4 cup cider vinegar, a little olive oil, plus two teaspoons sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt.You'll need a sweet, in-season watermelon...You'll only need enough to cut 4 long bricks. Save the rest for snacking on all week long.I cut these by slicing two thick wedges and trimming them down into 2 pieces each.Gather about a quarter cup each of mint and basil leaves...Mince them all up together and set aside. They'll go on top.I wanted a mild, not-too-sharp feta--the cheese gal at Whole Foods thought this would do the trick. Cut it into slabs to fit on top of your watermelon.And you'll need some heat! I don't know what kind of peppers these were but they were aromatic, fruity and quite hot.De-seed them unless you're really a masochist. I touched my eyes after this accidentally by the way...regrets, I've had a few.And slice them into thin strips.Assembly is easy! Slab of feta over the watermelon...
Then vidalia pickle tucked in and around the melon, plus peppers and basil/mint mixture right on top. I sprinkled with a little crushed black pepper as well, right before serving.

Fruit and nut crackers

There's a new place in the neighborhood called Wrecking Bar Brew Pub and not only do they have the freshest, tastiest beer in town, but they also have these delicious little crackers. They're packed full of different seeds, nuts and fruit and they are great with cheese. I was slightly tipsy there one evening and was begging our server to just bring me a huge pile of them to wallow in ("All I want...are some more of these crackers. Can just get, like, a basket of these? But they're so gooooood!" And so on). She gracefully/wisely demurred and so I went home and figured out how to make them myself. This recipe is flexible--feel free to change it up with different combos of fruits and nuts! It uses a technique similar to making biscotti--first you bake the cracker batter together in a loaf, then once it is cool you slice into thin sections and bake once more until crisped.You need a total of 1 1/2 cups of seeds/nuts and 1 cup of dried fruit. In this batch I used a combination of hazelnuts, almonds, pecans and sunflower seeds for the nuts...And golden raisins and dates for the fruit. Dried cranberries would be excellent in here! Or dried apricots. So would pumpkin seeds.I liked the nutty, full flavor of the crackers at Wrecking Bar, so I figured I'd try to duplicate with a combination of whole grains along with regular white flour. You will need 2 cups of flour total and I think at least 1 cup should be regular white flour, to keep the loaf from being too dense. My combination was the following: 1 cup white + 1/2 cup rye flour + 1/4 cup wheat bran + 1/4 cup flax seed meal. The rye was a great touch although Phil thought it tasted a little like a bagel (not a bad thing if you like bagels). But you can do 1:1 with white and whole wheat, or even just all white if you feel like it.Mix the flours up very well along with 2 teaspoons baking soda and 1 teaspoon salt.Make a well in the center and add in 1/2 cup of sweetener. I used 1/4 cup each of brown sugar and honey.Measure out 2 cups of yogurt. You can also use buttermilk.And add it in!It will be a very thick batter so get ready to wrestle.And add in all your fruits and nuts! Mix it up as well you can but don't overbeat it.Actually, I don't think you can overbeat it. It's like concrete.Grease a couple of loaf pans well with olive oil, or a cooking spray. If you only have one loaf pan and really have no idea where the other one went go ahead and use your weird vintage Fire King dishes. At one point I kind of kitsch collected this stuff. These are the only two pieces I have left, now that the loaf pan has walked off.Fill 'em up. They will rise a little bit so leave some room.They bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. After they've cooled for a few minutes in their pans, turn them out to a wire rack to finish cooling off.Very nicely browned. Put the loaves into your freezer for about 15 minutes. This will make them firm and easy to slice for the next step of cracker-making. You'll need a sharp knife! I sliced mine into very thin wafer-like slices. I only used the big loaf and it made an epic quantity of these crackers. I froze the two other little ones to slice up and bake at a later point.So many crackers...Lay them in a single layer on an ungreased baking sheet... And let them crisp up for 10 minutes in a 300 degree oven. Flip them over and let crisp on the other side for another 10 minutes. Some of the thinner ones may get a bit over-toasty but that's OK. Take them out and let cool.They're so flavorful! And possibly even nutritious?Wonderful with brie or farmer's cheese and some fresh figs. Enjoy!