Sunday, July 24, 2011

Weekend Cooking - outdoor style

Beth Fish Reads sponsors this weekly meme where we foodies can chat about cookbooks, cooking gadgets, recipes, or anything else gustatory. Be sure to stop over there to find other terrific weekend cooking posts.

I hadn't planned to do a weekend post, but circumstances presented me with a perfect opportunity.  Last week I read Katherine Hall Page's delightful book Body in the Gazebo and mentioned that the recipes in the back was also a wonderful addition.  This morning, since I had a couple of nectarines approaching their sell-by date, I decided to try her recipe for "Fruit Breakfast Puffs" on page 250.  These are essentially popovers with 1/2 a peach or nectarine or other fruit in the middle.

I got up at a decent (for me) hour, pre-heated my oven to 400°F, melted the butter and poured it into the tins, peeled the nectarines and plopped them on top the butter, whisked up the easy egg/flour/milk/OJ/sugar batter, and poured it over the fruit.  I opened the oven, popped them in, shut the oven door, and was reaching to set the timer for 20 minutes, when

PLOP.THUD.
DEEP SILENCE of an ominous variety decended on the world. 
WE HAD NO POWER.
The ceiling fans stopped, the TV went off, the lights went out, my gas oven shut itself off, and I really didn't appreciate my alarm system shrilly beeping and blinking to tell me the obvious.  I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Popovers were NOT going to POPUP in a dead oven.

On to plan B....................

When we moved to Maine, I was reluctantly convinced to purchase a gas grill for outdoor cooking, and have been enjoying it (and blessing whoever talked me into it) since.  So, we decided to experiment.  We lit off the grill, put the pan of pop-pops on the middle shelf, and 10 minutes later ------VOILA!


Fruit Breakfast Puffs à la gas grill.  They were scrumptious.  I'd like to give you the entire recipe, but I don't like to quote copyrighted stuff w/o permission, so go read the book, make the popovers and enjoy!

PS...obviously the power is back after 3+ hours, at least in time to watch the SOX!!

3 comments:

  1. we lost power a couple of times this week, but it was too darned hot for me to think of grilling anything. We headed to the food court at the mall and ate sandwiches in blissfully cool air conditioning!

    ReplyDelete
  2. were you reluctant because it was gas or reluctant at the whole grill thing?
    I must say, I never considered baking on a grill.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Caite - Initially reluctant because of bottled gas. Now, however, after 7 years of constantly - at least 3-4 x week-- firing up that puppie, I'm a true convert. I'd just never thought of baking....just had been using it for grilling. Now I have all kinds of adventures to explore

    ReplyDelete

Welcome, thanks for stopping by. Now that you've heard our two cents, perhaps you have a few pennies to throw into the discussion. Due to a bunch more anonymous spam getting through, I've had to disallow anonymous comments. I try to respond to all comments posing a question, but may not always get to you right away.