Oh, sigh! It felt so good to be back to a normal(-er) routine this weekend. After taking care of work deadlines on Saturday, I gave myself Sunday off to just take it easy and relax. And by "take it easy and relax," I meant "get back in the kitchen and behind the camera and make a mess in the kitchen and studio without bothering to clean up at all." Also known as "baking and photographing with reckless abandon." And yes, it felt very good. So, so good.
Of course a day of baking and photographing must first be preceded by a trip to the farmers' market, where I wandered slowly from stall to stall, stopping whenever people handed me samples (it's better than Costco, I swear!), snacking on fresh seafood ceviche (yes, one of the local farmers' markets here has fresh ceviche--be jealous), and, lo-and-behold, running into fellow food photographers/bloggers (yes, the SF Bay Area is so crawling with foodies that you literally can't walk out of your house without tripping over food bloggers). I was on the lookout for apricots, but it seems as if during my work-imposed hermitude from the food world, apricots had gone out of season. Sad. But! I did stumble across plenty of beautiful plums that would nicely substitute in my intended plans.
[click on photo for a larger image]
One of my favorite stands for getting fruit is run by this lovely old grandmother figure, who is so awesome that she's the reason I buy fruit there in the first place. (The same woman who sold me these persimmons.) She takes such great and wonderful pride in her crops that she usually insists on picking your fruit for you so as to insure that you have the best selection possible for whatever use you specify. Today, though, she was busy offering samples to a few other shoppers, so I ended up picking my own plums. Upon presenting them to her for weighing, she said to me, "You have a good taste--you picked perfect plums!" Ah! I'm taking that as a huge compliment.
[click on photo for a larger image]
Anyways, this is the recipe that I had in mind originally for apricots, but I have to say, I think that it came out even better with the multi-colored varieties of plums that I brought home from the market. And by "even better," I mean, that these honey thyme roasted plums are most likely one of the most delicious things that I've made in a long time. Seriously. When the plums came out of the oven bubbling intensely in their own juices, and then with the warm honey drizzled on them, all soft and sweet and slightly earthy from the thyme leaves... it was divine. Sigh.
To go with the plums, I finally got to break out a recipe that I've been meaning to try for ages, modifying it with a little bit of herb infusion: thyme-flecked sable breton. It's not often that I bake with salted butter, but this shortbread was so well worth it: buttery, crumbly, herb-y, with just a light sprinkling of coarse sugar on top. Its crispiness makes it a perfect companion to the soft plums, and it also makes a very nice vessel with which to soak up the plum juices left on your plate at the end. :-)
Anyways, I'd call this a very successful day off. I'm also very glad that I have a few more plums and some more sable breton dough squirreled away so that I can relive the weekend just a bit sometime during the week.
Welcome to Monday!
Read on for recipes....