Books winner!

But first, the miracle of vegetables! Here is a shot of my "tumbling tom" tomato plant on June 25th.

And here is a picture of a RED tomato(!) on July 10. So far I've only had one cherry tomato, but he was sweet and delicious.

Speaking of delicious, the winner of my pro/am gourmet book giveaway, as generated by random.org is.... comment number three! Congratulations, Josh... and you are a brave man to buy bitter melon with no plans! Send me an email with your address and I'll get the books in the mail.

Fourth of July + Book Winner + More Books

It's always so nice when dinner greets you with a friendly wave, eh? As usual, lobster was on the menu for the Fourth of July feast-ivities. We also ate some baby carrot salad (recipe via 101 cookbooks, I added feta and tossed it with quinoa).

Oh, and I made coffee-chocolate cake.

And some sweet and fluffy cloverleaf rolls.

We also tried out the jet skis, got caught in a rain storm, played cribbage, and ran into people playing cribbage. All in all a delightful way to spend the holiday weekend!

But now we're here to find out about the winner of my first book giveaway! I used random.org to generate a random winner because, well, it's 10pm and I'm here by myself. Also, I'm having a pretty bad hair day so I don't think you want to see pictures of me drawing a name out of a hat. I can't figure out how to show you how it works, so you're going to have to trust me: of the 13 eligible comments (I didn't include my own comments, people who commented after midnight, or people who said they didn't want the book), the random number generator spit out the number...... TWO! Congratulations, Aimee, you're the lucky winner of a paperback copy of Julie and Julia! Shoot me an email with your address and I'll get it in the mail.

What's that? You wish YOU had won the book? Well, let's see. How about I sweeten the deal a little bit? We'll go the nonfiction route, but this time it'll be a pair of books:


The United States of Arugula, by David Kamp, an essential history of the gourmet revolution in the US, and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, which if you haven't heard of by now... well, that's all the more reason for you to read it. I'll pick a winner at random on Friday. Two books for the low, low price of a comment left on this post before midnight (Boston time) on Thursday, July 9th. I want to know: what was the best thing you ate this weekend?

Grissini and a Giveaway!

Crunch. Crunch, crunch. Shnomf, munch, crinchety-cronch. Mmm. Pass me another?

These, my friends, are the thin, crunchy, Italian breadsticks known as grissini. A couple of weekends ago Adam and I spent an afternoon making sixty some-odd crunchy breadsticks for a dinner party we were going to that evening. No, I did not notice before we started that the recipe made 16 per portion of dough and therefore 16 x 4 = SIXTY FOUR. Heh.

But you know what? Between the 8 of us, we ate all of them. After a totally delicious meal of insalata caprese, goat cheese and portabello salad, eggplant Parmesan and cherry clafoutis, I looked over at the grissini platter and there were only 3 (!) left.

It stands to reason, then, that you should make these for your next party. I found them via Nick over at Macheesmo, who added a little whole wheat flour to the original recipe, but you don't need to. I used regular old all purpose flour and I was very happy with the results. If you play around with the toppings (cheese? chili powder? fennel seeds?) or flour (rye sticks with caraway seeds?) let us know in the comments, ok?

Oh what was that other thing I mentioned in the title? Riiight: giveaway! I'm moving into a new apartment in a month, and I'm trying to lighten my very heavy load of books. I thought you guys might appreciate some of the food-related novels and such so let's begin the giveaways with this one:

Have you read Julie and Julia yet? The movie's coming out at the beginning of August, so you better hop to it! If you'd like this copy, leave a comment on this post any time before midnight on Sunday, July 6. I'll pick a winner at random on Monday. Oh, and if you just cannot wait another minute to find out what other books I'll be giving away, you could sneak over to my Flickr photos. [Update: winner has been selected! Check it out here.]

Grissini
adapted from Wild Yeast and Macheesmo
makes 64 breadsticks

623 g flour (about 5 1/2 cups)
397 g water at room temperature (scant two cups)
6.5 g (2 t.) instant yeast
9 g (1.5 t.) salt
28 g (2 T.) olive oil
kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper

Combine the yeast, salt, and flour in a large bowl. Combine the water and olive oil in a small bowl or liquid measuring cup. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. Eventually you will need to use your hands, and once a shaggy dough has formed, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, 5-10 minutes. I added probably another 1/4 cup of flour total as I was kneading to keep my dough from sticking to the board.

Lightly oil the mixing bowl (no real need to wash it at this point) and place the dough in the lightly oiled bowl. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, 1.5-2 hours.

Once the dough has doubled, preheat the oven o 350F. Line a baking sheet (or two if you have them) with parchment. Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Start with one piece and keep the others covered. Flour a work surface and roll the dough into an approximately 12x8 inch rectangle (no need to bust out the ruler here!). Using a pizza cutter, slice the dough rectangle into 16 equal strips. Fold each strip in half the long way (they go from 8 inches long to four inches long) and roll them out into long snakes on an UNFLOURED surface. It has to be unfloured, they need a little stickiness in order to come together and stretch out. Each snake should be a little longer than your baking sheet.

Distribute the snakes evenly across your baking sheets. Lightly brush them with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Roll them around a little to catch the salt and pepper around them. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes until golden; if you think of it, rotate the sheets once while baking. Cool the grissini on a wire rack - the crunch develops as they cool! Repeat with the other 3 portions of dough as baking sheets become available.