Heirloom Tomatoes and Fresh Salsa

Heirloom tomatoes was on sale last week at my grocery store. They looked really good and I was planning on buying some ripe tomatoes to make fresh salsa. It is getting cooler and cooler here and some trees have started to turn. I am not ready for the cooler weather yet. This is my attempt to hold on to however many days of warmness we have left.

Happy Friday!

I felt like posting today so wanted to wish everyone a HAPPY FRIDAY and a very happy weekend! The weather has been cooler here in the morning. It was 56 degrees on my way to work at 7.30 AM. BRRRRR, I miss summer already. Though it is nice to have a cooler mornings on the weekend to sleep in. I also started getting more inspired and excited to do more baking when it's cooler, as I'm sure everyone are.

Aside from some baking and cooking this weekend, we are also going to see Defending the Caveman. I'm really excited! The synopsis sounds hilarious.

Rustic Cognac-Apple Pie

This is a rendition of Rustic Armagnac-Apple Pie from Vegetarian Times (VT). I've never heard of Armagnac before. According to wiki, Armagnac is an aged brandy from the Armagnac region in Gascony, southwest France. I did not see Armagnac in the liquor store so I bought brandy instead. Brandy is already expensive as it is - $9 for a 100ml bottle. I don't really want to know how much an aged brandy cost :).

It is a tasty pie and I like that it's easy to put together.  When I was putting this together, I felt the amount of dried fruits used is a bit overwhelming. I only make 1/2 the recipe and the dried fruits filled over half a 2-cup pyrex container. Dried fruits has quite a bit of sugar in it so I thought it would be overly sweet. But it turned out not too sweet at all and I did not notice all the dried fruits while eating it.

One note on the crust though. While it is good, it does not even hold a candle to my favorite cream cheese pie crust from Rose Levy Beranbaum. Next time I made this pie I will use this pie crust.

Bagels

I have been wanting to make bagels for a while now and finally did a couple of weekends ago. It is an easy recipe but it does take two days as it requires overnight resting.

The recipe I used is from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day. I found the recipe online at Epicurious. Epicurious has printed the recipe from the book with permission so I would not print the recipe here. But I am going to regal you with step by step photos.