Blackberry Crumb Muffins and Two Books

Hello old friends!  After a bit of a hiatus (a little bit of a writing rut, reading rut, cooking rut and enjoying life outside the blog) I am returning to bookcooker.  I hope you will bear with me as slowly get back on the horse!  I made these pretty little muffins a while ago, when the recipe appeared in the New York Times.  It was perfect timing, because I had recently read two (very different) books that this recipe was perfect for -  Where'd You Go Bernadette and Bringing Up the Bodies.  Where'd You Go, by Maria Semple is a unique novel where much of the story is told through letters, emails and various other documents, like memos.  It is the very funny story of a daughter's search for her brilliant but more than slightly off mother (Bernadette) set in the milieu of affluent and politically correct Seattle.  A disastrous chain of events is set off when Bernadette gets into a dispute with her obnoxious neighbor concerning some unruly blackberry bushes on her property (inspiration for the blackberry part of the muffin.)  Bringing Up the Bodies is Hilary Mantel's riveting second book in her series of books about Henry VIII's right hand man - Thomas Cromwell.  This book follows the downfall of Anne Boleyn - and while this tale has been told many times before, unsurprisingly Mantel brings new wit and intelligence to the story.  While Anne is certainly a compelling distraction, the story is really about Thomas Cromwell - his relationship to the mercurial king and how he manages to survive yet another upheaval in the house of Tudor.  Those around Cromwell give him the nickname "Crumb", hence the crumb part of the muffin.   A two for one recipe was the perfect impetus to get me off my bum and back to blogging.  Here we go.

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Beautiful Ruins and Classic Pesto

I must admit, there is no pesto mentioned in Jess Walter's wonderful novel Beautiful Ruins.  The novel takes place both on Ligurian coast in the 1960's and in modern day Los Angeles.  Obviously, there is not much food in the Los Angeles part, but more disappointingly (only for purposes of this blog), there also is not much food in the Italy portions of the book.  The only mention of food that really stuck with me was the description of an unappetizing fish head soup.  Don't get me wrong, I love dishes made with "trash" ingredients, and I love a good culinary challenge, but fish head soup was not doing it for me.  So I googled around a bit, and it seemed like, in the middle of summer, a classic Ligurian pesto was in order.   More about the simple pesto and the book after the jump.

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Watermelon Mojitos

Nothing screams summer like watermelon. Watermelon has never been a real love of mine, I tolerate it, but the big cutting job and the dripping miss never did it for me.  This year, for some reason, I keep finding myself adding watermelon to my grocery cart.  Something just clicked, and I want to eat it all the time now.  Maybe its because the genetic modifying farmers have really found the right formula to make sweet, juicy seedless watermelons?  Who knows.  As we head into July, watermelon serves as the perfect starting ingredient for summer cocktails.  I could have gone a lot of ways mixing this into drinks - margarita, daiquiri, sangria, but decided to go with the mojito, with a healthy dose of mint adding an herbaceous balance to the sweetness of the watermelon and rum.   While this isn't red, white and blue, it will still be a great addition to any Fourth of July soiree, and pink and green is cuter anyway, right?

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Strawberry and Cherry Shortcake

Isn't that little strawberry on top of this shortcake just the cutest thing you have ever seen?  Every May and June, loads of big juicy California strawberries flood the market at lower than normal prices.  I usually stock up on these.  And then in late June, in New England, the local strawberries debut.  They are small, cute, fragrant, photogenic and really really expensive.  I always get sticker shock and resist for a bit, then I just break down and buy the 7 dollar little basket.  I shake my head at the receipt, consider myself a sucker, and then I bite into one, and all my negative feelings about the price slip away.  The local strawberries are worth every penny, not only are they picture perfect, they taste so much better than the gargantuan ones shipped in - juicy, sweet and pure strawberry flavor.  You have to eat them quickly though, they get mushy quickly.  The perfect thing to do with strawberries that are a tad past their prime (besides making jam), is strawberry shortcake.  I like to go the biscuit route with my shortcake, and these were so tender that they would have fallen apart if I tried to cut them in half.  So instead I made a little strawberry and cherry compote, by sauteing the fruit for just a few minutes with a little sugar and a little orange liqueur, and plopped the biscuit right on top.   The perfect way to enjoy June fruit.

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