roasted grapes with sweet labneh
one of these days i am going to be one of those people who, before leaving for a long trip, cleans out the fridge, washes the dishes, does laundry, and stocks the freezer with 12 individually portioned lasagnas for eggboy and one for me for the night that i return.
today is not that day.
look at this pile of laundry.
what's all of this stuff on my desk.
somebody send pizza.
ah!!
i am back from new york and l.a. i think this was the longest amount of time that i've spent in a city since i became a country bumpkin and toward the end of my trip i *almost* had a very real jazz freakout because wowwwww there are so many people in such a small space, but i was caught by a bed of tacos and brioche.
in a few days i'll get to the part where i tell you all about eggboy's first meeting with an eggslut (hold your jokes!), but first i must recover from what all just happened. you know, eat vegetables, wash underpants.
one great mess that i returned home to, however, was the giant stack of cookbooks that i received right before i left. among them was tara's book. holy cow is it beautiful! the words are beautiful, the recipes are beautiful, and where the beauty hits me hardest is the photos. they're perfect. they're not flashy or crowded, and they accomplish this wild task of showing how food should look in a very confident way. a way that i can't stop admiring.
there are so many recipes in here that i can't wait to make, like the plum macaroon cake, fig toasts with buttered honey, five-spice steak, roasted peaches with glazed sesame oats... i could go on and on. the first recipe i made was the roasted grapes with sweet labneh, because it's grape season (yay!) and you know i have a serious thing for labneh.
ingredients
labneh:
zest from 1/2 orange
1/3 c demerara sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 1/2 c labneh*
*if you make your own, layer the labneh with sugar during its initial straining process
grapes:
1 tb honey
2 tb grappa
1 lb seedless california table grapes
shortbread, to serve
clues
preheat oven to 375f.
to make the labneh, rub the orange zest into the demerara sugar and fold it into the labneh. spread the labneh in ripples on an ovenproof plate. sprinkle with more demerara.
to make the grapes, mix the honey with the grappa in a large bowl. snip the grapes into clusters and toss them in the mixture. transfer them to a roasting pan with a shallow rim.
bake the grapes and labneh until the grapes start to shrivel and the labneh is set and golden. begin checking for doneness at 12 minutes. you can either place the grapes and their juices on top of the labneh and then top with crushed shortbread, or you can layer everything into individual ramekins or glasses for a little parfait situation. (for the parfaits in these photos, i used unbaked labneh so that it would be easier to get a smooth layer, but both options taste great.)
enjoy!
-yeh!
thank you so much to grapes from california for sponsoring this post!