Corduroy Orange

When you see ‘raisins’ in a recipe, feel free to think beyond dried grapes. Look at that word as a placeholder for ‘dried fruit’ and think of all the variations that are possible.

Larger fruits, such as the apricots and plums, should be cut into smaller pieces for most purposes (who wants to get a cookie with a whole prune* in it?), but once chopped down to raisin-esque size may be substituted and/or combined without hassle. Apricots are known to match well with pistachios; prunes I tend to use in conjunction with other fruits in order to add a new layer of flavor. Tart cherries and cranberries have almost endless possibilities in my mind, and I’ve taken to including them in many of my salads.

Perhaps the classic manifestation of raisins where few people ever think to make substitutions is in the Oatmeal-Raisin Cookie, which most people make with just plain old raisins. Last night, I made a batch that included a mix of raisins, golden raisins, cranberries, and tart montmorency cherries. My recipe: the supposed Neiman Marcus $250 cookie recipe with dried fruit substituted for the chocolate chips

Pittsburghers have several options for where they can find good selections of dried fruits at bulk prices. My favorite three are (in alphabetical order): the East End Food Co-Op, Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, and Trader Joe’s. We tend to ‘cherry pick’ as it were, choosing which fruit to buy where based in large part by how well priced it is. For instance, raisins tend to be the best deal at the Co-Op; cherries at Trader Joe’s, and cranberries at Penn Mac.

*** **** ***** **** ***

Footnotes:

*At this juncture, i think it prudent to put in a word in defense of dried plums. Admittedly, not every prune is good (Dole, for instance, packages a prune which I find to have a somewhat slimy texture)—but a good prune has very sweet flavor and a somewhat chewy texture. Fresh plums aren’t associated with grandparents and regularity–so why are the dried variety? I recommend the ones sold in the bulk section of Pennsylvania Macaroni Company to any Pittsburgher who enjoys this delicacy.

+ Should you decide to make this recipe as a chocolate chip cookie recipe, I strongly suggest that you either omit the Hershey bar or substitute a higher quality chocolate for it. Any recipe with the supposed price tag of twelve and a half scores of dollars ought not include such a low quality chocolate.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am and is filed under Cooking Tips, Pittsburgh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.