Grape salad calls for a manageable larder of grapes, sour cream, brown sugar, and (optional) pecans. Three ingredients if youre fending off a moose while shoveling snow while preparing the salad. Four if youre feeling a surge of Midwestern can-do spirit. Rinse two pounds of grapes and pat them dry. Use your calloused pioneer hands to pluck each grape from its stem and collect in a large bowl. Measure out two cups of sour cream and indelicately plop each blob into the grape bowl. Mix well. Think to yourself, Holy shit, thats a lot of sour cream. Transfer this painstakingly prepared blend of grapes and sour cream to an oven-safe dish. Ask yourself, Am I about to put grapes in the oven? You betcha. Cover the top of the grape-sour cream mixture with a cup of brown sugar. Do your god-fearing Minnesotan best, as some of the granules wont stay on top. They will fall through the cracks, much like Minnesota when the Times was scouring the nation for examples of each states beloved cuisine. Put the dish in the oven as far away from the broiler as possible to avoid burning the sugary top. Youll want it caramelized, not blackened. The recipe will say about 5 minutes but the recipe is a damn liar. Budget 20 minutes of sitting on your kitchen floor next to the oven, carefully tending to your caramelizing sugar like its a newborn Minnesota loon. Meanwhile, toast some pecans on your stovetop. Take it from us: If you burn them, throw them away and start over. Dont think people wont notice. Dont think people will confuse the char for toastiness. They wont. Start over. When the sugar top starts to brown and a bit of golden syrup is pooling in the bottom of the dish, take the salad out of the oven. Pop it in the fridge for at least an hour (really, more like two hours) and set the pecans aside for people to sprinkle on at their leisure. Once the serving has begun, you may notice that the salad has little clotted clumps of sour cream and what looks like dumpster juice collecting in the bottom of the dish. Its not pretty. Occasionally scoop that up and drizzle it over the remaining salad like youre basting a turkey, which is apparently the signature dish of Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, New Hampshire, and New Mexico, but not Minnesota even though were the nations biggest producer of turkey.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 22:16:00 +0000
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