Say Cheese...and grapes
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I love grapes. Maybe it's the European influence of my upbringing. There were always grapes (red and seedless in our case) on the table. They were for snacking the way some of my friends had bags of chips ready to grab.
So, recently I was looking for a healthy appetizer and my mind went straight for grapes, which are looking pretty nice at the grocery about now.
Grapes have no fat, no sodium and no cholesterol. They are high in Vitamin C, They are filled with antioxidants, those chemicals that interact with the body to whisk away the oxidizing stressors that cause cell damage and often lead to disease. Also, some recent studies (just in animals, at this point) have shown that grapes may have some properties that might help prevent diabetes.
And what goes well with grapes? Cheese, naturally.
Grapes and cheese need nothing besides each other if you are snacking at home alone or with your quarantine crew on an average afternoon, but i was doing a romantic lunch with the hubby so I decided to get a little fancier. This is an easy recipe but it looks a bit more upscale.
I had a bit of left over frozen phyllo, so I layered the sheets with generous amounts of melted butter in a round pan and baked it for 10 minutes or so. What I ended up with was a sort of crispy crumbly bowl in which to serve my appetizer. You could just as easily pile this on a plate and eat.
In my search for inspiration, I saw a great recipe with grapes and cheese and some sumac on the BBC Cooks site. Oh my! If you haven't tried sumac, grab some of it and start adding it to dishes. It's grown in temperate and subtropical areas but it's available everywhere. It is a roughly ground, bright red, dried berry that has a slightly lemony taste and brings a delicious tang to your dish.
Give this a try and let me know how you served it and how you liked it.
Grape and Feta Starter
- 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon of raw sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon of sea salt
- 1 pound of red, seedless grapes, pulled from the stems
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 2 teaspoons of sumac
- 3 tablespoons of finely chopped dill
- 1 block of feta cheese, crumbled
- Put the onion in a bowl with the vinegar, the sugar and the salt. Rub all this together for a minute using your fingers. This is a very quick pickling method,
- Preheat the oven to 400° F.
- Put the grapes in a small baking dish and drizzle one tablespoon of the olive oil on them.
- Dust them with 1 tablespoon of the sumac and most of the dill. Mix everything very well.
- Scatter the onions and the pickling juice among the grapes.
- Put the feta in all the nooks and crannies between the grapes. Put the rest of the sumac on the mixture.
- Bake for half an hour until the grapes are puffed up and juicy.
- Pour the rest of the olive oil over the dish and serve with a good bread for sopping up all the juices.
