Pages

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Summer Sunday Brunch

And we're back! Sorry for the lack of posts lately - unfortunately my real work has not left me with much time for cooking fun meals. That's why it felt like the perfect time to throw a brunch! I had my family come over for frittata with corn, pancetta, and red peppers, cantaloupe salad, and sweet olive oil bread with fresh blueberry sauce. Doesn't that just scream summer?


Frittatas are a perfect one dish main course for a brunch. A frittata is just a method - almost any mix of vegetables, meat, and cheese work well in it. Corn immediately sounded delicious and I'm on a huge kick right now. My original thought was prosciutto but I spotted pancetta and went for it instead. I melted shredded mozzarella cheese on the top after adding garlic, red peppers, and scallions to the dish.

The cantaloupe salad was wonderful. I tossed cubes of cantaloupe with lime zest, lime juice, sugar, and honey. Mint was meant to be added but I was unable to find mint at the store (isn't that ridiculous?). It was unexpectedly delicious.

Finally, I made this interesting sweet olive oil quick bread. I've been dying to try an olive oil cake for a while now and I was drawn in by the ease of doing it as a quick bread (think banana bread). You don't even need two bowls to make this bread! There is no butter at all - only a 1/2 cup of olive oil - though I might add a bit more oil next time to make it just the slightest bit more moist. My only change was to top the bread with crushed almonds rather than pine nuts.


It baked up puffy and golden brown and was quite good. It was similar to a pound cake and lightly lemon scented. The blueberry sauce really took it over the top. For that I used Barefoot Contessa's Blueberry Sauce recipe, using just regular sugar and a touch of vanilla extract instead of vanilla sugar. As I mentioned, the bread was a little bit on the dry side so the sauce was a perfect additive. Sweet and a little tangy with lemon juice. How I love berry season!

No comments:

Post a Comment