if you live in dc and you’ve never been to the maine avenue fish market (1100 maine avenue SW), for shame! you’re going to want to get there this weekend. people from all over the city come to get fresh seafood, or just pick up something there to eat. i’ll let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves, but i’ll say that the crab cakes are excellent, as are the hush puppies.
what are you waiting for? go! go! go!
we’ve gone totally crazy for the grill here in our new place. you know that feeling, on the very last day of school, when you know you’re done for the year, and you’ve got a whole summer of doing whatever you want ahead of you? having a grill makes every day feel like that. there’s nothing more relaxing than lounging in the backyard and cooking up hot dogs and hamburgers, or something a bit more sophisticated, like pizza (that’s right, i’m calling pizza sophisticated).
it’s a little nerve racking throwing pizza dough right on the grill for the first time. i was sure it would fall through the grate, but sure enough, it cooked right up perfectly. the charcoal gives the dough a smokiness you don’t get from a conventional oven, plus the perfect combination of a crispy crust with a soft chewy interior.
here’s an extremely rare shot of me actually cooking. and readers, meet the girl. ain’t she sweet? sorry, no pictures of us together – it was just the two of us, so we had to take shots of each other. she’s a amazing cook and i’m an extremely lucky dude to have her.
look at those grill marks. this crust is about to be topped and tossed back on the grill to finish cooking.
here’s the girl adding a bit of sauce with fresh basil.
as you can see, i’m not a master at making a perfectly round pizza. we’ll just call it “rustic.” this one was topped with barbecue chicken, caramelized onions, mozzarella and more fresh basil. if you’ve never grilled pizza before, or even ever made pizza at home before, it’s actually easier than it looks. have all of your friends over, tell them to bring their favorite toppings, and just keep cooking them up until everyone is too full to move.
it doesn’t hurt to have a few glasses of wine to make the meal complete.
here’s the grilled chicken we added to the pizzas. we’ve been in our new place for 3 weeks, and this is the second time we’ve made this chicken. the girl whipped up a really incredible bbq sauce that caramelizes perfectly and makes the chicken tangy and hot.
hmmm…sausage, caramelized onions, local fresh ricotta, and swiss chard. this one got a helping of mozzarella once it hit the grill a second time. these were so much fun to make (and incredibly delicious), i might do it again this week.
one last thing – the kind folks at washingtonian.com were nice enough to do a little interview with me for their “blogger beat” section, which you can read here. it was totally humbling to get to do it, so i hope you enjoy it. i think i successfully came off looking like a total dork (totally my intention all along). big thanks to washingtonian.com and thanks to all of you for continuing to read this blog and just being generally awesome.
a week and a half in our new place, and this pie is already the third thing we’ve baked. the very first was a batch of chocolate chip cookies (to test out the oven), followed by blueberry muffins. but this past weekend we had a few people over for a bbq and i knew we had to have a pie. peaches are out in full force in dc right now, and peach pie + ice cream = good times.
now that we’re completely moved in and pretty much settled, we can really start enjoying summer. and now that we have a grill (which we plan to use several times a week), it feels more like summer than ever.
peach pie is one of the simplest pies to make, but also one of the most refreshing and delicious. there are few foods that actually taste like summer, but eating a slice of this pie just makes you feel like school’s out and nothing else matters except for taking a nap in the afternoon sun.
the key to this pie is getting good ripe peaches – once you’ve got that, you can just let the fruit do the work. so, you should probably get on making this pie, like immediately. don’t wait for the weekend – get yourself to the store, or better yet, the farmer’s market, and share the peach pie love now.
