• Recipes,  Vegetarian Recipes

    Grape pie, revisited.

    Concord grape pieAges back, I tried my hand at making a grape pie.

    It was… good but really not great and I purposely didn’t include a recipe for it at the time, because I wasn’t that thrilled with the way it turned out. It was kind of runny and overly sweet.

    BUT!

    I have since revamped the ingredients and method I tried originally and turned it into this post I wrote for my neighborhood paper, the Manhattan Times.

    I’m pretty pleased with the results.

    Better-than-Before Grape Pie

    – 4-5 cups (about 2 pounds) of grapes (ideally Concords, but any variety will do)
    – 3/4 cup sugar
    – 1/4 cup instant tapioca pearls
    – 2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces
    – Pastry for a 9-inch pie (top and bottom crusts)

    Wash the grapes and remove the skins. (Just pinch opposite the stem, and the pulp will pop right out.) Set the skins aside for now. Put the pulp into a heavy pan, bring it to a boil, and let it boil until the pulp starts to separate from the seeds. Remove the seeds by putting the mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Pour the hot pulp over the skins and let the mixture sit for 6 hours or overnight.

    Stir in the sugar and tapioca, set aside for about 20 minutes, then pour the mixture into the bottom pie crust and dot with butter. Put on the top crust.

    Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350 degrees and cook 20 minutes more until the crust is browned and the juice begins to bubble up. Serve warm or at room temperature.

    Reminder: tomorrow at noon, I pick a winner for my first book giveaway!
    To enter to win, just become a fan of gezellig-girl.com on Facebook.

  • Greenmarket Grub,  Recipes

    Greenmarket Grub: Concord Grapes

    Concord grapes

    This isn’t a word I use often, but I must ask: aren’t they just gorgeous?

    If you’ve only ever tasted supermarket grapes (as I had until last year), you have no idea what you’re missing. It’s an intensely… grapey flavor. After one grape, you will suddenly understand what artificial grape flavor is striving towards and yet never really getting it right. Those grapes are from Wager’s Cider Mill from out near the Finger Lakes in upstate New York.

    I have to admit, I love the grape people. They sell from a small table on the outer edge of my neighborhood Greenmarket, and spur you to try the grapes (knowing, as I just said, you’ll be amazed at how they taste). I’ve had Concord as well as Seneca and Yates varieties of grapes from them so far, all slightly different but equally delicious.

    Still, my usual Greenmarket problem arises: my urge to buy grapes can often outstrip my ability to eat said grapes in a timely manner. So, what to do with all these lovely grapes?