Baking Chez Moi - Chocolate-Cherry Brownies

Simmer dried cherries in red wine until plump.

Melt dark chocolate with butter.

Mix in sugar, eggs, and flour.
Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Gently fold in drunken cherries.

Toss in finely chopped chocolate.

Pour luscious batter into pan and bake.

Cool, chill, cut into squares.

Serve with red wine.

Fall in love.

Go to bed.

Sweet dreams.

***

Tuesdays with Dorie is an online cooking group where anyone can bake along. The group bakes from two books – Baking with Julia and Baking Chez Moi. I occasionally bake along with the Baking Chez Moi group. The group bakes two recipes per month (voted on by the members in advance) and posts on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. We are asked to refrain from including the actual recipe in our posts, to promote the publishing industry and encourage others to buy the cookbooks.

Check out all the other decadent brownies here.

How We Roll! Concert in the Park with Hollywood Stones

Coronado welcomed Hollywood Stones, a Rolling Stones tribute band, for the first time to Concert in the Park, and we offered our own tribute to The Rolling Stones with food inspired by the band's name and songs.

Dick Swagger, as Mick Jagger

A quick review of Rolling Stones songs revealed only a few obvious culinary ideas:  Brown Sugar,  Little Red Rooster and Potted Shrimp. Of course, with the band's name, we could go with something rolled or something with stone fruit. Getting creative with the names and/or lyrics of the songs provided many more options. With such a fabulous group this week, I think we covered the band quite nicely.

Although these Who Loves Ya Baby-Back? ribs from Alton Brown have a good amount of Brown Sugar in the dry rub, I preferred to name mine Anybody Seen My Baby? baby back ribs. I amped up the finishing glaze with a little stone fruit - tart cherry jam. The racks are braised low and slow in white wine, white wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, honey and garlic resulting in tender, moist, fall-off-the-bone deliciousness...and, I might add, Sticky Fingers.

I loved the dry rub ingredients and cooking method, but I didn't care for Alton's method of reducing down the braising liquid and using it as a glaze to finish the ribs under the broiler. It never reduced to a "syrup" consistency and, as some reviewers said, was a bit too salty. I had about a half cup of tart cherry jam leftover from my cookies, so I added that into the braising liquid which helped thicken the glaze and balance the saltiness.

Anybody Seen My Baby? baby back ribs

Dry Rub

Anybody seen my baby

Anybody seen him around

Love has gone and made me blind

I've looked but I just can't find

He has got lost in the crowd

I was never a Rolling Stones fan, but I do love the song Wild Horses. Michele jumped on that one with a few bottles of Wild Horse Cabernet!

Childhood living is easy to do

The things you wanted I bought them for you

Graceless lady you know who I am

You know I can't let you slide through my hands

Wild horses couldn't drag me away

Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Carmen came up with some great ideas during the week. Her first thought was to track down squid ink for these Grissini or to make pizza dough - Paint it Black. She also contemplated raw rainbow cheesecake using natural food dyes - She's a Rainbow. What ended up coming to the park was this gorgeous Summer Beet Borscht - Beat Beat Beat album. I had to ask Kerry to pose for a photo with a cup of borscht because it complemented her ensemble so well!

Summer Beet Borscht

Kai had Potted Shrimp covered...

Potted Shrimp

Alec's creative juices were flowing when he came up with Short Ribs and Curly Pasta inspired by Short and Curlies. He even printed out the lyrics for me!

Too bad she's got you by the balls

You can't get free at all

She's got your name

She's got your number

You're screamin'

Like thunder

And you can't get away from it all

Succulent Short Ribs and Curly Cavatappi Pasta

Also at the top in creativity, and voted best dish of the night, was the DeLauro's Shrimp-Athy Fra Diavolo - Sympathy for the Devil. Here's a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis.

Shrimp-Athy Fra Diavolo

Performing Sympathy for the Devil

Tell me baby, what's my name

Tell me honey, can ya guess my name

Tell me baby, what's my name

I tell you one time, you're to blame

Shrimp-Athy Fra Diavolo

Stone fruits were represented with Pammy's Apricot & Arugula Salad (with candied walnuts, fennel and goat cheese) and my Stoned Cherry & Chocolate Jammers

Apricot Salad

My Jammers were an adaptation of Dorie Greenspan's Port Jammers. I used dried cherries instead of cranberries in the dough and Amaretto instead of port to macerate the cherries and to spike the cherry jam. I also added a halved Luxardo cherry to the top of each cookie.

Amaretto Cherry & Chocolate Jammers

I wish I had my camera ready when Kellee rode up to the park on her bike with her basket overflowing with bags from Clayton's Mexican Take-Out! She unloaded boxes of taquitos with all the fixings and then proceeded to cut the taquitos in half with her kitchen shears...something "rolled" for Rolling Stones, or was her inspiration from the song Out of Time...?

You don't know what's going on

You've been away for far too long

You can't come back and think you are still mine

You're out of touch, my baby

My poor discarded baby

I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time

Rolled Taquitos from Clayton's 

More Rolling inspiration with these meatballs... (Here's a recipe for Grandma Maroni's Meatballs)

And Brown Sugar-inspired with Pam's Brown Sugar Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting, Bryan and Kelley's Brown Sugar-Crusted Baked Brie, and Michele's Roast Chicken Focaccia Sandwiches with Brown Sugar-Caramelized Onions...

Brown Sugar Cookies

Brown Sugar Crusted Baked Brie

Roast Chicken Focaccia Sandwiches

A few more desserts - Under My Thumb Thumbprint Cookies aka Hershey Kiss Cookies, and Stoned Brownies, not really - the brownies were herb-free ;-)

Hershey Kiss Cookies

Brownies (safe for the kids)

And finally, more people and band photos as promised!
(Note: Captions are just for fun and nothing is implied from the songs' lyrics)

"Start Me Up"

"Honky Tonk Women"

"Street Fighting Man"

"Some Girls"

"Wanna Hold You"

"Waiting on a Friend"

Will Hyman

Rick Taylor and Keef Riffoff 

Dick Swagger

"She Smiled Sweetly"

"I Wanna Be Your Man"

"Mother's Little Helper"

"She a Rainbow"

Have a great week!

Cherishing the Fruits of Summer - Cherry Clafoutis and Pear Flaugnarde

Clafoutis, from the Limousin region of France, is a baked dessert of black cherries arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a thick, flan-like batter. The clafoutis is dusted with powdered sugar and served lukewarm. Although black cherries are traditional, there are numerous variations using red cherries, plums, prunes, apples, cranberries or blackberries. When other kinds of fruit are used instead of cherries, the dish is called a flaugnarde.

I prepared a Cherry Clafoutis and a Pear Flaugnarde as part of our Coronado 3rd of July parade buffet.

Cherry Clafoutis
Slightly adapted from Barefoot in Paris: Easy French Food You Can Make at Home
Serves 8

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons brandy
1 lb. fresh cherries, pitted
Confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup sliced blanched almonds, lightly toasted

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Butter a 9-10 inch glass pie plate or baking dish, and sprinkle the bottom and sides with 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar.

Beat the eggs and the 1⁄3 cup of granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. On low speed, mix in the flour, cream, vanilla extract, lemon zest, salt, and brandy. Set aside for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, pit the cherries.  Arrange the cherries, in a single layer, in the baking dish. Pour the batter over the cherries and bake until the top is golden brown and the custard is firm, 35 to 40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature, sprinkled with confectioners' sugar, and toasted almonds.

For Pear Flaugnarde:  Substitute 2-3 firm Bartlett pears in place of the cherries.  Peel, quarter, core, and slice the pears, and arrange the slices, in a single layer, slightly fanned out, in the baking dish.