Cooking all over the World: [Update] There are 2 new posts in "Simply Recipes"

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

[Update] There are 2 new posts in "Simply Recipes"

Simply Recipes

Here is the Simply Recipes update for jorgehumbertocoelho.cooking@blogger.com

Green Beans with Bacon
Blackberry Slump

There are 2 new posts in "Simply Recipes"

Green Beans with Bacon

There is nothing better than garden fresh green beans. Even when my parents abandoned their garden beds for ten years, they still had their green bean "tee-pees" every summer. My father is rather picky about his beans. They must snap and break when you bend them, not wiggle around like a rubber band. That's how you know they're fresh. I have a couple rows of green beans this year, planted from seed right after I pulled out the fava beans and spring peas. (BTW, if you grow green beans from seed, it helps to soak the beans over night in water before planting them, or place them between two layers of wet paper towels for a couple of days, so they germinate first.) They like heat, and at least in our part of the world, come into their own in August and September. When I left for vacation the plants were only a foot high, two weeks later they are climbing over the fence.

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Blackberry Slump

Have you ever heard of a dessert called a slump? The Joy of Cooking defines a slump as "steamed fruit topped with dumplings". I first encountered the idea of a slump in a cookbook about the cooking of Newport, Rhode Island, in the first chapter on colonial cooking. Apparently, this dessert goes back to colonial days. It's synonymous with a "grunt", and which word you use, slump or grunt, depends on the locale. In Rhode Island, slump is used. In Massachusetts, grunt is more common.

Etymology aside, what's cool about slumps is that they are like cobblers, except they're made on the stove-top instead of the oven, and they have dumplings instead of biscuits. Yes, berries cooked with sugar, topped with dumplings. (You should have seen my dad's face when I explained the dessert I made for him. The way he lit up when the word "dumpling" was mentioned was priceless.) Soft, fluffy dumplings, bathed in sweet, tart, ruby berries, and doused with cream.

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