"with grapes, you always get another chance." Demitri Martin
This is a kind of lucky dip. The other day when I was looking for something - I now can't remember what - I picked up a book I don't look at very often for some reason - Use it All - from the Cornersmith people. It's an excellent book full of good ideas for what to do with gluts, and leftovers and the decaying stuff in your fridge. I opened it at random and found a double-page spread on grapes, and three quite interesting - and simple - recipes for using them up.
And so today I am just meandering around the net, whilst the washing is hanging on the line, and David is recovering after moving barrow loads of gravel from the bottom of the drive, back to where it came from - halfway up. A noble soul indeed. I should go for a walk, but it's a little too warm today, and I'm also pondering on which of my leftover meals I shall try for dinner tonight without making the kitchen too hot. But I digress. As usual.
Recipe number one Roasted wrinkly grapes. Now I could write a whole post on roasted grapes because they are quite a thing. There are heaps of recipes out there. Some are pretty simple, some more complicated but can be basically summarised in a similar way to Delia on roasted vegetables - roast them in a hot oven until blistered and oozing and maybe a little bit charred with stuff - up to you what the stuff is really but will probably involve, fat, herbs, flavourings, and maybe some cheese or nuts. The Cornersmith people added apple cider vinegar, olive oil and brown sugar with a touch of chilli flakes, salt and pepper. There are masses and masses of recipes for roasted grapes on the net - often roasted with a cheese such as brie, or feta or gorgonzola and frequently nuts too. Tom Hunt - The Guardian's waste not want not guru also tells you:
"If you don’t fancy powering up the oven, they’re also delicious fried or grilled, though they won’t have quite the same intensity of a slow roast"
Ottolenghi, however, seems to think that grilled is the way to go with his extremely popular Burrata with char-grilled grapes and basil and the less well-known Grilled red cabbage with gorgonzola and grapes
Also with cheese, however.
Recipe number 2 - Quick pickled grapes. Now Cornersmith seem to have two or three slight variations on this theme. There are two recipes online. Pickled ginger grapes on their own website, with no picture and Pickled red grapes on the SBS website - picture shown here,
Actually a second reason I decided to write this particular post, was because the pickled grapes shown here - Pickled grapes with black pepper and cinnamon caught my eye some time back, and had me writing it down as a potential post. Those are from Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman who says of them that: "Their flavor profile is more dessert than dinner". As with any pickle the method is similar in all of the recipes you will find, but the spices, vinegar and sugar that are used vary. A fun thing to play around with I guess.
The Live, Eat, Learn website also had a recipe for Quick pickled grapes, which were illustrated with one of the most common uses for pickled cherries - with the inevitable cheese - this time on toast. Other uses were in salads of various kinds, sandwiches, on charcuterie platters and so on. There was also at least one recipe for salsa from Saveur which stirred the pickled grapes with fresh cilantro, lime juice, honey and a little jalapeño. Again - you could play around with this.
Last recipe from Cornersmith - Tired grape and date paste, which I think from reading the recipe is meant to finish up as a kind of date paste - a mush rather than a solid jammy paste. The recipe is not online so I hope you can read the scanned version here.
Chutney is not far from this of course, and like pickles, chutney is a wonderful opportunity to play around with accompanying fruit or vegetables, flavours and liquids. And like pickles you can also play around a lot with how you use it - straight from the jar, with those cheese and meat platters, in stews, roasts, stir fries ... Sweet and spicy grape chutney from Madhuja on the Food 52 website is just one example of the genre. (see below)
But of course this is not all that you can do with tired grapes - well fresh and in good condition grapes too of course. Indeed some cooks were a bit precious Nigel I'm looking at you) about how the grapes had to be of the highest quality and of particular varieties that you might not be able to find unless you've got your own grape vine. In Persia there are also dishes made with sour grapes, and you would have to do a serious search of Middle-Eastern food emporiums to find those.
However, your savoury options with grapes do not just end there. The Italians seem to use them with focaccia - especially in Tuscany - Black grape focaccia from Nigel Slater and Focaccia with black grapes - from Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers of River Cafe. And in sort of similar vein Epicurious (and heaps of others) does pizza - Gorgonzola and grape pizza. Jamie has at least three different versions.
Chicken with grapes is the most common other pairing. Chicken Véronique is the classic of course, but there are others. Nigel has two or three but I'll just mention one here - Chicken with verjuice, celery and cream, mostly because I still have celery to use up. I'm pretty sure that Jamie and Maggie Beer also have recipes for chicken and grapes.
I also had a quick look at reddit, whose commenters had two other meaty suggestions worth mentioning:
"Grapes and shallots sautéed with garlic and butter drizzled over steak. Delicious." j89k/reddit
"Grape, mustard, and sausage is a good combo" detroit_dickdawes/reddit
I didn't check TikTok or Instagram but I can imagine that there are thousands of ideas there - some good and some just crazy - even repulsive..
I was about to stop my searching when I came across one of Nigel's dessert suggestions - an almost recipe on Facebook:
Plums and grapes, roasted with plum jam and Marsala - this photograph and a few brief words:
"We ate them outside, warm from the oven with Cote Hill blue cheese and thick slices of toast."
And I almost forgot - you can freeze them too, and just eat them as a snack, blitz them into smoothies or sorbets or popsicles. Or you can just put them in drinks, although I must admit I'm with the person who thought his teeth might crack on just eating them.
Jamie suggests eating them with chocolate and grappa. Now there's a different - and relatively light - kind of dessert. Pretty easy anyway and it does look impressive. Don't let the grapes warm up too much however, they don't taste that good as they thaw.
You freeze the grapes on trays, and when frozen transfer them to bags.
It's grape season, so start thinking of all the various different things you could do with them. As well as just eating them that is.
YEARS GONE BY
January 14
2022 - Veganism
2021 - A fashionable ingredient
2019 - Nothing
2018 - Simply perfect
2017 - Everyday magic
First time I ate cooked grapes was in a creamy chicken curry recipe which came from an aunt. The tiny green seedlesss grapes
Well this is alternative living, where grapes are grilled and pickled and combined to form something new and lingering. I H=ope we try some soon! 😎