The Yum Yum Factor

I love spicy jams and jellies with cheese and I also have been cooking with these spicy jams lately. I have a pepper blast berry jelly that is really quite hot and it's great with roast meats. The PC Bacon Marmalade is is thing of beauty and I feel sorry for all of you Americans who can't get your greasy paws on this stuff but it's a fair exchange for rotel, I guess. The high sugar content in jam means it really caramelizes nicely and it gives a nice, sticky, sweet glaze to a roast pork tenderloin or some chicken thighs. I throw in some chicken stock with some of the jam and make a delicious pan sauce and we are good to go. The magical asian produce store had a huge stack of fresh figs that were too cheap to pass up on so the only choice I had was to make a small batch of fig jam. Since I already know that I am only going to use it for dishes like this pork tenderloin with fig jam or with cheese, I decided to just throw some hot sauce right into the jam ...

I didn't have enough of any one fruit to do any fruit dedicated dessert so I turned to the kitchen sink of desserts again, the crisp. Since I am still all about Indian food after my Big Fat Hindu Wedding weekend, I knew that whatever I did, I would be adding cardamom to it. I needed something to serve after our dinner of Chorizo Sloppy Joes that wouldn't be terribly heavy or overly sweet. I can't tell you how much I am loving my Alton Brown crumble topping that I have been keeping in the fridge. Even if you only have a cup of fruit, you can turn it into a yummy crumble on a whim and have yourself a little sweet treat in the middle of the afternoon and nobody will ever even have to know. Peach, Fig and Raspberry Crisp with Cardamom 2 ripe peaches (i didn't bother to skin them) chopped 6 green figs, chopped about 1 cup of fresh raspberries juice from half a lemon the seeds from about 6 cardamom pods, crushed about 2 tbls brown sugar about 1/4 cup of cru...