KITCHEN PRODUCTION

The other day I was chatting with my soon-to-be really old friend, Baseball Steve, and he asked me if I ever do anything in the kitchen other than the random loaf of bread.

Well, of course, I said.

Every Friday night I make dinner.

But he began to laugh when I told him that consists of buying a frozen pizza from the grocery store and . . .

But wait, I said, I make it my OWN by adding more pepperoni and mozzarella and parmesan and peppers and, when we had a container garden, fresh Italian parsley and basil and so on.

I should have mentioned that I just made eggplant parmesan the other day.

And I have mastered a Chinese-style breakfast egg wrap known as Jian Bing, which is really easy and quick and pretty darned tasty.

And I did try a recipe . . . just a small portion for myself to see what it was like . . . of spaghetti with mint.

That sounded strange but I liked it.

Judy just gives me the side-eye when I mention it.

So I do cook in spurts, meaning that I'll be fairly active for a few days and then turn those chores back to the real cook in the house.

But speaking of SWMBO, she said to me this morning that she knew what I could make.

I gave her a bit of the side-eye until she said "a blueberry clafoutis."

She came home from the store one day with a fairly large carton of the berries and I had just been thinking about them yesterday and imagining one of my favorites, a blueberry banana bread or maybe some blueberry muffins.

But a clafoutis, which I discovered last year on a blog from Paris by David Lebovitz that I read, is simpler than simple.

It's just fruit in a single layer in a buttered dish, topped with a simple batter and baked in an oven.

It should be topped with a dusting of powdered sugar before serving.

But you could use instead some whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I suppose.

The first one I made was with cherries, then I made one with blueberries and red raspberries for a dessert at our Christmas Eve brunch with the BRD and her Beau Jack.

Incidentally, I just learned while doing some research for this post that when the dessert is made with anything but cherries it is more properly known as a flaugnarde.

So here then is the product of my kitchen labor today: a blueberry flaugnarde.

The best part of all this?

It will be as we attack it after finishing off the left-over eggplant parmesan in sandwiches with some of Judy's freshly cooked pepper bacon this evening.

Bon appetit!