I'm late posting because I spent last week in Chicago(!), but I had guests over for dinner on Saturday night and thought it would be the perfect time to try out the poached apples. I wasn't that excited about them. They sounded boring on their own, but none of the recommended toppings sounded that great to me either. Saturday morning I looked through a bunch of your posts and loved the idea of pairing this with rice pudding, but didn't think I'd have time to make it. Luckily, my guests (Ilana and Scott) insisted on bringing vanilla ice cream. I'm so glad they did. I really enjoyed the apples and ice cream together, much more than I thought I would. It was like an apple pie, but missing the crust (which, admittedly, is probably my favorite part). On the side, I served Dorie's Speculoos cookies. These were excellent.
The evening didn't quite go as planned. In the afternoon I had prepared a corn and tomato pie, marinated a chicken, and had potatoes and vegetables already to grill. I was baking the cookies and poaching the apples when I told Paul to go heat up the grill (he does all of the grilling in our house). He "heated" the grill, but when he went out about 20 minutes later to put the food on the grill, he realized that he was completely out of propane! We had about 10 minutes before our guests were supposed to arrive. Paul ran to the store. I probably should have worked to put together an appetizer (I didn't have one planned), but I was too angry to focus so I just finished the cookies and the apples and made a walnut dressing for the vegetables. When our friends arrived they were starving. Luckily, I had an entire drying rack full of little speculoos cookies. We ate MANY of these while we waited for our food to grill. I was a little bit worried about spoiling our dinner, but everybody seemed happy to eat when it was finally ready, and we all enjoyed the cookies after dinner as well. All in all, it was a great night, and I enjoyed both the apples and the speculoos.
Looks like a great dinner, delay or no. We had our poached apples with ice cream, too. Dorie's Speculoos cookies are great - perfect for saving the day!
ReplyDeleteThe entire dinner looks and sounds fabulous! Yum!
ReplyDeleteThat empty propane tank has gotten the best of me on more than one occasion... Very frustrating!
ReplyDeleteWhew - good thing there were cookies to save the day!
That's why I don't grill. I like control of my kitchen and not depend on others. (Like
ReplyDeletehusbands) Ha Ha. Your meal looks great, especially that corn and tomato pie. This was a
nice fall recipe and we all enjoyed the pears.
Life is short, so sometimes you need to eat dessert first! I can imagine that the flavors of the poached apples and the speculoos were the perfect match! Alas, mine fell apart and I had applesauce. What kind of apples did you use?
ReplyDeleteJora, speculoos cookies sound so wonderful with your spice poached apples and if you added some vanilla ice cream too that must have been even more decadent. Actually, I enjoyed eating the poached fruit all on their own - my grandma used to can a lot of pears, I always liked them "plain" but that is just one way of eating them, the rest of my family enjoyed the pears with vanilla ice cream and some syrup on the side. And the rest of your dinner sounds so good and wonderful too!
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