Last night, five of my young-ish friends invited me to a progressive garden dinner they were hosting in their vintage West Asheville neighborhood. We bicycled to four urban bungalows and enjoyed a course at each with wine and garden tours. All the food was prepared by these professional bakers out of their front yard bungalow gardens … from homemade hard cider with veggie antipasti to gazpacho with homemade ciabatta, squash risotto, to squashamole and salad. Our final destination was to be a sunset dessert at an old 19th century rambling farmhouse. Too much schmoozing, we arrived at dark.
I noticed a big ladder on the porch, leaning on the roof with plates and forks nearby. Holey squash blossoms, I thought, we’re having a roof-top dessert. My perky dinner-mates chirped “are you ok to climb on the roof Barbara?” I am, after all, their mothers’ age. “Oh, of course, I do this all the time,” I say as up and more up we go. I tried hard to walk normal and not skooch on my butt. And then, perched on the roof apex, we ate pie. In the dark. Watching a beautiful lightening storm come our way. Closer and closer.
The pie was a caramel, chevre and onion with a flax seed and coconut crust. The cheese had red onions in it because somebody gave our young host a quart of homemade chevre mixed with raw red onions. So of course he made a frozen goat cheese and raw red onion caramel pie. Actually delicious, only i had to go to the dentist this morning and my breath stank to high heavens and there I was explaining to him about how I ate a raw red onion dessert pie on the roof with a bunch of young bakers in a lightening storm last night.
Remind me never to be an old lady.
If you have a dental appointment tomorrow, you might not want to eat a chevre, raw red onion and caramel pie. So here’s a little something quick and easy that includes a bit of creamy goat cheese.
Pick boy squash blossoms (with stem attached) in the morning. Shake out that bee. Rinse the little critters off and take out the little thingie in the middle if you want. Put in a spoonful of fresh goat cheese and some chopped herbs from your garden or someone elses. Fold in the edges of the flower and dip in buttermilk and then roll in some good fresh ground local cornmeal , coarse salt and few grindings of pepper. Melt a little butter in a hot iron skillet and panfry until brown and crispy. Serve them to your guests straight out of the skillet. And be sure to eat that little lump between the blossom and the stem; it’s sweet!
