Kate, Girl Reporter

God, I love getting back to NY. We went down a couple weekends ago to welcome Bridge back to the states after her London expedition.

I headed into the city on Saturday and did some very important shopping: Muji, CB2, Pearl River Mart. Met up with Bridge and we wandered around, then Ben met us at our standby, Inoteca, for dinner before Bridge’s party. I stayed over with Brooke and she and Bridge and I went to our favorite brunch place ever on Sunday morning, Clinton St. Baking Co. The wait is insane (2+ hours on weekends) but so are the pancakes. We order a plate for the table and then each get something amazing with eggs for ourselves–I had the Southern Breakfast, with maple glazed bacon, fried green tomatoes, cheese grits and eggs and sigh, now I’m hungry.

After brunch (during which Brooke asked us to be bridesmaids!!!) Brooke had to go to work, so we split off and Bridge and I went to The New Museum before I left to catch my train. The museum is really, really cool, and they have an amazing event space and terrace on the top floor.

Bridge tries out her iphone camera:

Not a bad view:

My favorite thing was looking at all the terraces/roof decks/fire escapes down below:

There is amazing pixelated tile “wallpaper” in the bathrooms downstairs:

I took the train up to Stamford and Ben met me there (coming from LI) and we had a nice visit with the Herberts before heading home. Lovely!

      

-1 bunch arugula (still very ratty)
-1 bag mixed greens
-1 large kohlrabi
-1/2 lb. edamame
-3 Carmen peppers (an heirloom bell variety)
-Handful dodgy cherry tomatoes
-2 asian pears
-1 bunch dill
-3 onions

I had to play catch-up, and I ended up mostly cooking with the previous week’s produce while doing my best to preserve this week’s. I had saved a recipe for Potato-Kale gratin from The Kitchn, and since I had several bags of potatoes from previous weeks, plus a bunch of kale that needed to be used up and some rapidly aging leeks in the crisper (eek!), I used that recipe as a starting point and improvised a variation.

Kale and Potato Gratin
Loosely adapted from The Kitchn
1 pound thin-skinned boiling potatoes such as red potatoes
1 bunch kale
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced (my cloves were large; I used about 2 tablespoons!)
2 normal or 4 small leeks, cleaned
2 italian sausages
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 teaspoons pepper
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Get a pot of water boiling with enough water to cover the potatoes, and prepare an ice bath.
Slice the potatoes 1/4″-thick. Remove and discard the spines from the kale then chop the remaining leaves in roughly 1/2″-thick ribbons. Cut the leeks in half (if you didn’t already when you were cleaning them) and then into thin half moons.

When the water is boiling, add a dash of salt and drop in the potatoes, cooking for about 2-3 minutes, until tender, but not cooked through. Drain and plunge into the ice bath. Drain again and dump onto a dish towel and blot.

In a large bowl, combine the olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Add the kale and rub the olive oil mixture into the leaves–they will sort of crumple up and absorb the oil.

Sauté the leeks in olive oil until they are starting to soften, then add in the sausage, crumbling it. Cook until the sausage is about 95% done.

Alternate layers of the potatoes, kale, and sausage mixture, along with sprinkles of bread crumbs and Parmesan in a 9″x12″ rectangular casserole or glass or ceramic baking dish (I used an 11×7 oval casserole). Top with more of the parm/bread crumbs.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 15 minutes, until top is crispy. I served it with slices of french bread.

This was almost a success, but not quite there. I gimped out and used grated parm/romano from Trader Joe’s and something about it had a really weird taste. Weird enough that I returned the cheese. I got a faint overtone of both goat cheese and bananas from the finished dish, but Ben thinks I’m totally nuts, so take that with a grain of salt. Sometimes kale does give me that “hint of banana” thing… Who knows. Anyway, I love the idea of this, and I want to try it again, maybe adding in a little more liquid or cooking the potatoes pretty much all the way instead of part way. The leek/sausage/kale combo is always nice. Anyway, I blame the weird TJ’s cheese and have learned my lesson and will go back to grating my own.

It did reheat extremely well–Ben enjoyed his so much that he emailed asking for the recipe, because one of his coworkers was jealous. Here it is, finally: This one’s for you, Alex!

      

So the other big house thing in the last couple weeks was something we’d talked about for a long time and finally decided to bite the bullet and do. We bought a piano.

The background: Ben is quite the musician; he attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (what a mouthful) in NYC–better known as the Fame school–where he played piano and trumpet, and in college he minored in trumpet performance. He decided against a career in music because he likes stability (hee), but he still plays trumpet in a community band and whenever he has access to a piano he plays for hours at a time. We had talked and talked about getting one but were daunted by the expense and hassle or getting one into the apartment, but last month we decided it was time. He picked out a Boston upright 49.5″ piano (it only came in a really shiny black, not the matte I liked, but oh well) and we arranged for the piano delivery company guy to come visit and see how they could get it into our 4th floor apartment.

I called to leave him a message. The voicemail recording was: “Thank you for calling Allston Piano Movers! The Fine way to move a Steinway!” I laughed for about 5 minutes. In fact, I’m giggling now. Is that not an awesome slogan?

Anyway, Bobby came out to look at our stairs and windows and after one glance at the stairs he said he’d never move a piano up them. A crane it was! We spent part of the weekend taking the big front window apart, with the help of our very patient and kind neighbor who has redone all of his. It’s 44″ wide by 54″ tall, with curved glass, and I was SO nervous about the whole thing. While the window was out Ben took the opportunity to replace the broken sash cord on one side and the worn one on the other, so now that window opens and closes really well. The weights inside the frame weigh about 20 pounds each.

I had made Ben promise he’d be the one to supervise the delivery, since the mere thought of a crane+piano+our apartment made me feel queasy, but he ended up with a meeting he couldn’t change, so I was on duty.

The crane man, piano truck and police detail all showed up right on time.

The impressively bearded window man climbed around to remove the storm frame.

And then all of a sudden while I was taking the photos of the window, the piano was off the truck, on the crane, and in the air! It took about 3 minutes. I sprinted downstairs to shoot a photo:

And then ran back up to see the inside part:

There were a couple interesting minutes while the enormous men hauled the piano in the window.

But before I knew it they were wheeling it down the hall to the dining room!

*Poof!* It was just under an hour from minute the crane showed up (before the piano/police) to the time the window guy finished putting the storm window back in. Amazing. I highly recommend Allston Piano Movers–it wasn’t cheap but they worked fast and carefully and made all the annoying permit arrangements, etc.

So now while I cook, Ben plays piano! It’s the loveliest thing. He mostly plays American Standards (think Ella Fitzgerald–all the great old Porter, Gershwin, etc. stuff), but he’s working on some more classical things, too. Also, the Pride & Prejudice piano score. I shot a shaky little video while I was in the middle of making dinner last night and Ben was playing that (he would be appalled to see this if he knew, and would insist on mentioning that the piano tuner hasn’t come yet!):

The kitchen was only that messy until I finished cooking, I swear!

ETA: Ben actually read the post and watched the video. His comment: “The piano is SO out of tune. I’m calling them right now.”

      

I am ashamed to think about, let alone admit, how little I’ve been cooking lately. I didn’t expect to experience the usual rush of activity come September, but we definitely have nevertheless. I hope in the next couple weeks that we can get back into a normal schedule and work our way through, say, the 900 bell peppers in the produce drawer. (A major upside to the CSA: Since I’m getting such very, very fresh produce, it lasts forever in the fridge! I know we should be eating it as quickly as possible but at least not much has gone to waste.)

There have been a few interesting additions to the apartment lately, so in lieu of any food today I thought I’d share some of the excitement. Part one: The chairs.

We went to Brimfield at the beginning of the month, wandering out around noon for the last day of the fair. I was a little overwhelmed but had chosen to make it a scouting trip so that next time I didn’t have newbie jitters. For the most part I picked up a couple random bits and bobs: a gorgeous antique L-Square with a rosewood handle, a lovely folding ruler, some Czech glass buttons, clothespins, an alphabet block with K (for me), B (for Ben) and T (for Tom) on it…

I would like to make some sort of tufted bulletin board (in rough natural linen) with these someday:

At the very end I found a set of four chairs that I loved and Ben hated. They were super-sturdy and had padded seats so I can cross one leg under me during long dinners without that bony bit on the side of my ankle hurting (this is key for comfort, if not good manners). They were a pale color that I don’t love for our dining room, but I got the guy to sell them for cheap. Then I forced Ben to get on board. My plan is to stain them ebony and recover the seats. Of course, once I got home I started poking around and posted a Good Question at Apartment Therapy and Anna at Door16 and someone else both said they’re probably Heywood Wakefield. I spent a few days agonizing over whether to re-sell them or go ahead and strip them and re-stain them, thus removing pretty much any value they might have had. I couldn’t find any photos of HW chairs with this style of back, and finally I decided I would just go for it.

Here is one of the chairs (I got four):

I took the seats off and put some plastic sheeting on the deck, then started brushing on paint stripper (it’s the slightly-less-toxic orange goo; the guy at the hardware store wouldn’t even sell me the really toxic stuff, not that I wanted it). Once the varnish was bubbled I scraped it with a plastic scraper (later I used a small metal one for narrow spots).

Pre-stripper:

Post-stripper:

That took a while, but on the flat surfaces, at least, it was super-satisfying. The next day I did some final touch-ups with the stripper, then rubbed the whole thing down with (I think) denatured alcohol. Or Thinner, or something. I will check all the labels at home. That ate away the not-exactly-solvent-resistant gloves I was wearing, so I need to get a pair of good solvent resistant ones before I move on to chairs two through four. After it dried out, I sanded the whole thing.

Post-sanding:

You can’t really tell from the photos, but after the stripping process the grain of the wood was raised and rough. The sanding made it nice and smooth, though I think there might be some spots where I didn’t really get all the varnish all the way off, especially around the joints.

I am terrified to start staining. I’ve never used stain and everyone says it’s a blotchy nightmare, especially on hard woods like maple (which I think these are), plus once I stain this there’s no going back and maybe I will have ruined a valuable mid-century antique. Agh! But imagine that in a nice dark stain with a fabulous print on the seat! I should go forward, right?

      

MMmmmm:

-1 bunch kale
-1/2 lb fresh edamame (!)
-1 lb carrots
-3 bell peppers (yellow and red)
-1 delicata squash
-1 bunch parsley
-1 bunch slightly motheaten arugula
-1 pound assorted small tomatoes
-1 head garlic

We are facing a major produce pile-up in the fridge, or we were (I took care of some of it this week; to be posted soon)–in the last couple weeks we’ve only eaten at home a couple times. Busy evenings, agh. But one day last week I looked at the eggplant slowly withering in the produce drawer and the fresh batch of tomatoes I’d received and thought I’d give my eggplant sauce from a couple weeks before another shot, since Ben liked it so much.

First, though, I boiled that edamame in salted water for about 5 minutes. Salt, bowl, yum.

It was a large and slightly woody japanese eggplant, so I peeled it carefully and decided to take a gamble that the seeds would be too bitter. I chopped up a lot of onion to keep it company.

Cooked those together in olive oil for a good bit–medium-low heat, with a lid, helped soften the eggplant up without scorching it. It sucks up the oil SO fast… Last time I started with the anchovy and garlic, which gave a nice flavor base. I forgot the anchovies this time and really noticed a difference.

I cut up the tomatoes but didn’t bother peeling or seeding them–I figured as much juice as possible would help make it saucier.

When the eggplant was pretty soft I tossed in the tomatoes and let all of it cook until the eggplant was really done and not at all spongy.

This time I did remember my too-much-pasta-to-sauce problem, so I added the pasta into the sauce gradually. I also ended up stirring in a bunch of grated parmesan to try to add the flavor that was missing from the anchovies. That did help, but next time I’ll use anchovies AND parm!

Stay tuned for a home project in progress and a new addition to the F—- household (nothing alive!)….

      

OMG, you guys. First of all, I’m only 1 week behind once I finish this post! But more important to note is that this is my biggest PSA post ever. I almost got pretty badly hurt but lucked out and am just fine, so READ ON to find out how not to be a jackass.

First of all, the week’s goodies:

-1 bunch basil
-1 enormous (slightly overgrown) japanese eggplant
-3 bell peppers; 2 red and 1 albino
-1 large, 1 medium, 1 small heirloom tomatoes, including a stripy Green Zebra
-3 onions
-1 hot pepper (I didn’t use it, ooops)
-1 head garlic
-1 pound potatoes

I had half a loaf of rather dull french bread sitting around getting stale, which led to a hankering for panzanella. I was on the phone with my mom, so she gave me a recipe for dressing that she usually uses; I dug out a cucumber that was still languishing in the produce drawer, and I decided to adapt her recipe by replacing fresh bell peppers with roasted. Because….I thought it would be fun, I guess.

I fired up the broiler, which in the Viking all-gas stove is quite a sight to behold. It’s infrared or something, and gets CRAZY hot, with a solid panel of tiny flames, etc. I daydreamed about croutons while I washed my peppers and popped them in a dish.

Does anyone spot the oncoming apocalypse?

Into the oven they went, where they blackened a hell of a lot faster than I expected–I think instructions that say to place your peppers 4 inches from the broiler do not take into account the CRAZY FLAMES of my oven. Next time I will stick to the middle rack so the peppers can soften a bit more before totally blackening.

I checked them a couple times, flipping them around to turn sooty on all sides, and then when they seemed about right I pulled them out, set the pan down on a baking sheet that was waiting on the stove for croutons, and stepped back towards the counter to grab my tongs.

And then:

Note that one pepper is missing. That is because it blasted a few feet away in the explosion. Seriously, you guys. EXPLOSION. HUGE shards of glass were scattered about 6 feet out to the left; tiny splinters coated everything within reach; Ben came running from the front of the apartment unsure of what he’d find… And what he found was me standing barefoot and perfectly still a few feet away from the stove, completely in shock at the fact that I wasn’t even scratched. He got my flip flops and the vacuum and we spent 45 minutes cleaning before I was able to return to making my humble little salad.

Anyway, I’m sure some of you have done this before, but a note from the idiot who did it most recently: PYREX DOES NOT GO IN THE BROILER. NO NO NO. IT WILL EXPLODE AND SCARE THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF YOU.

I’ll have you know, however, that after careful inspection I found that the peppers were salvageable, dammit! I peeled them and chopped up most of one of them for the salad (which would have been better off with the fresh, I think!) and sliced the other one up and put it in olive oil in a ziplock in the fridge for future consumption.

ANYWAY, the salad. The dressing included anchovies, capers, garlic, red wine vinegar and olive oil (and salt/pepper, of course), and I made it in the little mini-prep attachment to my stick blender, which worked great.

In the salad I included a cucumber, the three tomatoes, some finely chopped onion and the stupid roasted pepper (not pictured here).

I cut up the bread and started by pan-frying it, per mom’s suggestion, but I got bored and the croutons weren’t hardening enough so I threw them in the oven to dry out more. Added them to the vegetables (which I’d prepped first and salted so they’d get nice and juicy), holding back enough vegetables and croutons (separately) for lunch the next day, since you don’t want to mix them too far ahead of serving.

Yum:

Quite soothing after the stressful and ridiculously prolonged prep.

I must say, I felt slightly better about my ridiculous mistake considering that Ben had acquired a new dome for the exposed light in the kitchen while I was in London, and when I came back I said “Um, I don’t think that is big enough; also won’t plastic melt if it’s pretty much touching light bulbs?” and he said “No, no, it’s fine,” and the same night as the pepper incident we looked up and the dome looked like this:

Merp.

Common sense, you guys. I recommend it. And I’m looking for some, if you have extra.

(Also I changed the theme to fix the image-cropping issue. I don’t like this one as much, but oh well!)

[Argh, until I work out a solution please imagine another third of each photo off to the right. Annoying.]

The goods:
-3 ears corn (I cut off the kernels and froze them)
-1 delicata squash (!!)
-3 bell peppers, red, yellow and purple
-1 lb orange carrots
-2 onions
-1 ginormous yellow tomato
-1 regular-sized red tomato

I find heirloom tomatoes entertaining. This one had some issues–I failed to notice that the bottom was torn up, so I had to do something with it right away but most of it wasn’t really that ripe, so the less said the better. The colors, though:

Anyway, I looked at those peppers and eggplant and thought “ratatouille.” Which is hilarious to me, since as a kid ratatouille was one of the very few things I refused to eat. I remember calling it out as the most disgusting food of all time, one time when I was asked about favorite/least favorite foods–I hated the name, I hated bell peppers, I hated the idea of it. I really did eat nearly everything as a kid, but ratatouille just grossed me out. Now, though, I find anything with zucchini and eggplant cooked in tomato sauce with olive oil so deeply, deeply appealing… Something about the way olive oil soaks into those soft vegetables, and then they get so silky and flavorful?

For the second or third time since June, I did have to go buy some vegetables–zucchini is long-gone from the CSA at this point–but all the rest of it I had on hand:

I basically made a half-batch of the EveryDay Food recipe, which is very simple:

Ratatouille, from EveryDay Food
1/3 cup olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 large eggplants, (2 pounds), peeled in strips and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
4 to 5 medium zucchini, (2 pounds), cut into 1-inch cubes
Coarse salt and ground pepper
3 yellow or red bell peppers, ribs and seeds removed, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried thyme [I didn't have any, so I used a pinch or two of herbes de provence. Sadly mine are the type w/ lavender flowers in them, which lent a bit of an odd note to the bites containing it!]
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Directions:
In a Dutch oven (or other heavy 5-quart pot with a tight-fitting lid), heat oil over medium heat. Cook onions, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic; cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in eggplant and zucchini; season generously with salt and pepper.
Add 3/4 cup water; cover, and simmer until vegetables are beginning to soften, stirring once, about 5 minutes. Stir in bell peppers; simmer, covered, until softened, 5 minutes.
Stir in tomatoes and thyme; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Partially cover; simmer, stirring often, until vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat. If serving immediately, stir in basil. (If freezing, leave out basil.)

It did feel sinful to use canned tomatoes in august, but I didn’t have fresh ones and I did have a can of Muir Glen. Still, next time I’ll definitely blanch/peel/chop up a couple pounds of tomatoes instead of using canned, if I can.

Ben grilled sausages and I toasted some oiled bread on the hot grill, then rubbed it with garlic. A simple and delicious meal: It was perfect for the chilly evening that night; still summery with all the vegetables, but also warm and comforting.

Plus, even making a half batch I had enough for lunch the next day AND a big ziplock full to freeze.

I was reminded, eating that night, that I always meant to make the Ratatouille-the-movie version: The NYTimes published the recipe back when it came out, and I still need to give it a shot… How pretty is that?

(Image from the movie, via inuyaki.com)

The last two posts, WordPress is taking my images from Picasa and cropping them into squares. Why?? Does anyone know how I can fix it?

I just clicked on Tom’s Flickr stream and saw this photo of our parents unpacking a picnic on a day trip last week. I miss them and wish I’d been there!

Photo from Tom

A couple weeks ago I got lovely multi-colored carrots in the CSA share, and since I’d seen Jamie Oliver’s “Carrots & Beets” Jamie at Home episode a few days before, I was inspired to make carrot ribbons for a salad.

I just peeled the carrots, then kept using the peeler to make strips of carrot:

Made a tangy dressing to counteract the sweet carrots, and voila. It was tasty, but I think shredding the carrots would have made them juicier, as well as easier to eat. I’ll try again soon! They sure looked pretty, though…

By the way, that’s a stuffed pepper (made using some CSA peppers and onions) that I took a major short cut to make. Mom, avert your eyes. Trader Joe’s sells, ahem, vacuum-packed precooked rice. I only found wild, brown or flavored varieties, so I used brown. One package was exactly as much as I needed for the recipe. You can’t tell the difference between white and brown in this, since there’s so much else going on, and I loved the convenience. (Last time I used cooked white rice from the Whole Foods hot bar–this was way cheaper.)

We’ve been watching the conventions. We won’t be talking about that here. But Ben and I were CRYING laughing last night during the extended balloon release, as poor Andrea Mitchell tried solemnly to report while being buried under 8 trillion “Republican Balloons,” as Tom Brokaw called them. Brokaw slayed us, all “I’ve seen Andrea “Boom Boom” Mitchell report through sniper fire! She will not be stopped by balloons!”

Thank god for video clips. Unless someone can tell me why WordPress doesn’t accept the “embed code” from MSNBC, you can check it out here (sorry about the ad; it is worth it though). Sadly I don’t think the clip includes the section where they added one of those news tickers at the bottom saying “Andrea Mitchell under attack by balloons.”

(Screenshot from the video)

First, the goods:

-3 ears corn
-1 cucumber
-1 japanese eggplant
-1 pound….beans
-1 bunch lovely small leeks
-1 enormous heirloom tomato
-1 bunch sage
-1 pound red potatoes

So shortly before I picked up the bag full of goodness, I read that article in the NYTimes food section about slow-cooked green beans. And then I sent it to my mom, who has loads and loads of everything in her garden right now, and she cooked them and e-mailed something like “OMG, those were great,” and when I got the bag of beans I thought “Perfect!!”

Ok, so. I won’t lie, I’m pretty confident in my vegetable-identification skills. I’ve been eating farmer’s market heritage-style vegetables since I was a kid. My mom cooks all SORTS of things that you see on trendy farm-to-table restaurant menus. And yet it didn’t occur to me that the slightly tough-looking bag of beans I’d picked out (I grabbed biggish ones because I was going to slow cook them!) were, um, not string beans. They were….some other sort. Shell beans of some kind. As evidenced by the giant bulges in their sides, I realize as I look at the photos. But being an IDIOT, I didn’t work that out until they started to shell themselves while cooking, when lavender beans started tumbling out like a pinata prize. A starchy pinata prize. But more on that in a moment.

The recipe is a starting point: Basically the idea is to cook beans slowly, in liquid, until they are tender. I caramelized shallots and then used a bit of dry vermouth instead of wine. Again, as I think back I probably should have tried using the recipe (with tomatoes, etc.) the first time, but oh well. I did add water to keep the liquid level up, as she recommends.

That first batch of shallot met a truly tragic fate when I stepped away for, I swear to god, 20 seconds and they burned to a crisp. Dammit.

“Oh Kate, those don’t look so bad! Definitely salvageable!” Yeah, sure. Tell that to the bit I tasted, which I think is STILL stuck in my teeth. (Gross, not really.)

Ok, much better.

I don’t have photos of the intermediate steps, because I panicked. The pods started opening up and revealing those gorgeous purple beans inside and I didn’t know what to do, so I cooked the whole mess until the beans were at least edible. Maybe not quite how I’d have cooked them if I had realized in advance, but not so startchy they couldn’t be choked down.

And they looked lovely (the chicken was leftover; I sliced it and tossed it with the beans to warm it up):

And as a matter of fact the pods were awfully tasty–do you usually throw away the pod from shell beans? Are these even shell beans? Mom or Germi, can you help me out here?

We also had that One Pound Monster of a tomato in a very simple salad:

(I don’t believe in mucking around with a tomato that lovely–a drizzle of sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, and some basil.)

Those beans really were tender and delicious, in the end. I can’t wait to try again with actual green beans. And next time I luck into shell beans I want to make bruschetta!

Ben and I got married two years ago today, on a cool, overcast day on the North Shore of Long Island. It was perfect. Please indulge me as I share a few favorite pictures from the day:

Next month it will be nine years since we got together (we just passed nine years since we met; we worked fast!), and I hope we get 90 more.*

(Photos by Brett Chang)

*I know, I know, that would make us really grossly old. I’ll settle for 75.

Whee! August!

-1 huge bunch cavolo nero
-3 onions
-1 head amazing juicy fresh garlic
-2 green peppers
-5 carrots, white, yellow and orange
-1 ear corn
-1 bunch fresh oregano
-3 tomatoes
-3 small hot peppers

The very day I got this bag of treats, Germi commented about a long-cooked cavolo nero at Suzanne Goin’s AOC restaurant. I did some googling and am still not 100% sure I found the recipe, but the closest I could get was a recipe from Chowhound:

“Italian Greens

2 bunches cavolo nero, stemmed and cleaned
1/2 rosemary sprig
1 dried red chilli d’arbol
1 yellow onion; peeled, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves; peeled, thinly sliced
Salt; to taste

Blanch the cavolo nero in salted boiling water for 2 minutes, drain, allow to cool, then squeeze out the excess water with your hands.

Heat a medium saucepot over medium heat and pour in 1/3 cup Dandaragan Estate Olive Oil. Add the rosemary sprig and one chilli and let them sizzle in the oil for about one minute. Add the thinly sliced onion and garlic. Season with salt to taste and cook gently over medium to low heat for about 10 minutes, or until the onion is soft and starting to colour slightly. Then add the cavolo nero to the pot and stir to mix well. Season with more salt and cook the greens slowly over low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring often until they turn a dark, almost black colour and become slightly crispy on the edges. Adjust seasoning and set aside.”

I sort of followed those direction. I didn’t have rosemary so I threw in some fresh thyme (didn’t end up tasting it).

Strips of cavolo nero:

The difference between normal old grocery store garlic and the fresh stuff from the farm was amazing. Instead of being sticky it was juicy and sliced into lovely translucent pieces:

Am I weird that I find vegetables so beautiful? On a similar note, check out the water pooling up on the kale while I washed it:

I am always amazed by the wilting power of greens. You saw the cleaned ribbons of chard, above. Now here’s the same amount after being boiled for a couple minutes…

…and after I squeezed a crazy amount of bright-green water out of it (along with all the nutrients, I’m sure):

In addition to the garlic (love!) I cut up one of the lovely new onions from the farm, to flavor the greens along with a chili de arbol and the thyme leaves:

The amount of oil called for in the recipe seemed high, and I didn’t use quite so much. Still, the end result was too oily for my taste (and I love oily things–just give me some bread to mop it up with and I’m a happy girl). Very tasty, but not quite the “Now my life is complete” greens I hoped for. We’ll see if I end up with more as fall approaches; I’ll keep experimenting.

We ate the greens with grilled sausages and yet another tomato/cucumber/feta salad.

So with that lovely japanese eggplant lurking in the fridge, I picked up a pint of cherry tomatoes and put together a quick pasta sauce one night.

Ingredients:
1 japanese eggplant, cut into chunks (quartered lengthwise and chopped)
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 anchovy
Copious garlic, minced
Chopped basil
Salt/Pepper
Olive oil
Penne

Wheee, summer!

I cut the anchovy up into very small pieces and cooked that first, dissolving it into the olive oil. Then I softened the garlic and added in the eggplant, then salted it. Eggplant, I will say once again, needs to be WELL-COOKED, and I don’t just mean “cooked with skill,” I mean “cooked thoroughly,” so that it is silky and delicious instead of bitter and spongy. I covered the pan a couple times to help it soften.

Once all the eggplant pieces were getting so they felt squishy under my spoon, I added in the halved cherry tomatoes and cooked the whole kit and kaboodle for a brief while.

When everything was nicely melded I tossed in a handful of basil ribbons and turned off the heat until the pasta was cooked. Then, after draining the pasta, I brilliantly poured the sauce over the pasta (in the pot) to toss it, instead of spooning pasta into sauce (my pan was too small). As a result, I had a bit too much pasta for the amount of sauce I had, SIGH. I crumbled feta on top and put on a few tiny basil leaves.

Despite the excess pasta, it was quite tasty and Ben really loved it. He seems to like nearly every vegetable now, which is a pleasant development.

Ok, now I am literally walking out the door to London, THIS VERY MINUTE. See you on the flip-side!

-4 ears of sweet corn
-1 bunch basil
-1/2 pound assorted cherry tomatoes
-1 pound beets
-1 japanese eggplant
-1 very small round watermelon, lots of seeds

I don’t believe in messing around with freshly picked sweet corn and cherry tomatoes. There’s a reason cooking gets easy in the late summer, and it’s because you’re better off not doing anything to those ingredients beyond a light dressing or quick boil (for the corn).

I haven’t run into too much, um, organic life in all this organic produce this summer, but it turns out the corn has been fairly riddled with caterpillars. I shucked the first couple ears with no problem but when I started on the third a really, really large caterpillar reared up at me, I shrieked and dropped the ear in the bag of husks, and he fell off before I could take a photo.

I have very strong memories of eating fresh “butter and sugar” sweet corn at my grandmother’s house in Western Massachusetts when I was little. The Williams’ Farm was across the street, and once the water was on the stove getting ready to boil we would go across and pick as much as we needed, leave money in a can, then shuck it and get it straight in the water. It’s important to eat corn on the cob as soon as possible after it’s picked, because the sugar in it starts converting to starch as soon as it is off the plant. When the corn is super-fresh you barely need to cook it; I think I boiled ours for about four minutes, tops. Remember: Don’t salt the water you cook corn in, it will toughen the kernels. Lots of butter, salt and pepper are crucial, too.

Beautiful:

Not quite as beautiful:

A much smaller Little Friend, found in an ear from the next week:

The fourth ear was similarly afflicted, so I broke off the ends of those two and we each had a little more than an ear and a half to go along with our tomato salad and a little fish fillet leftover from Ben’s Trader Joe’s fish and chips over the weekend.

BTW, here’s the lovely inside of that darling little watermelon:

Let’s wrap up this vacation before I leave on my next trip, shall we?

Thursday was Ben’s Birthday!! And it was a big one, though he’s not happy about that. Happy birthday, honey–I love you times 30. (Not that Ben reads this blog. I can write anything I want about him and he’ll never know. His coworkers might, though.)

Our friend Kiki and her kids (they have a house one lake over) joined us for dinner. We grilled sausages and I made sauteed peppers and onions, greek pasta salad, braised baby fennel (…meh) and Ben’s favorite lemon-chocolate tart.

Pasta salad ingredients:

(we were blessed with a decent grocery store a few minutes away–next time we needn’t bring NEARLY as much stuff with us!)

(No finished shot, oops!)

Gorgeous spring onions from the farm:

Colorful:

Fennel–I was improvising and I didn’t get it quite right. Cut up the the bulbs:

Browned them in the pan I’d cooked the peppers/onions in, with a bit of broth to deglaze:

Then roasted in the oven (covered, mostly) for a while. I dunno, they were boring and not quite right. Not like the time I did the ones from the Molly Stevens Braising book.

I spent a while Thursday morning hiding in the kitchen and secretly making Ben’s favorite dessert, the Lemon Chocolate Tart from Sunday Suppers at Lucques. He asks for it all the time, so I thought it would be a good birthday surprise (and I’m really sick of making it now, so that’s it for a while!). It turned out to be the best one yet–I was using a thinner pan than normal to make the curd, which cooked faster than I’m used to, but I think I’d been undercooking it a little because the flavor and texture were better this time.

I got fancy birthday candles before we left, but when it came time to put them into the tart I ran into trouble: They were so tall and the tart is so shallow that while Greta and I (laughing hysterically) got them to stand up while we lit them, the minute I started to move the thing they all started tipping over and dripping wax on my hands, etc.

We blew them out in a hurry and I fished out the little old-school candle holders I’d bought at the grocery store that day. Those were able to stick through into the crust and stayed up a bit better. And the burn on my hand is all healed now.

The next day was MY birthday (and no, I was not turning a special age). Greta made Sausage Balls for breakfast. MMMmmm:

I had awkwardly insisted on cooking dinner that night, because I was holding a secret: Our friends Ann and Chris (the ones we and Chris/Greta went to the lake with last Memorial Day) were going to drive over from Ann’s parents’ place on Friday afternoon to join us for the day. We’d been planning it for ages, and I wanted it to be a surprise for everybody. And despite being tempted to admit the plan, I kept the secret and Chris and Ann wandered down the path from the house while we were all out in the lake after a slow start to the day. It was a wonderful moment, and everyone was so happy. Yay!

They stayed for dinner and I made what I SHOULD have made for Ben’s birthday dinner–the famous Triple Pork burgers, also from Sunday Suppers. Another thing he asks for all the time and that I don’t make often!

But that’s boring, since I’ve shown photos of making them several times already. Here are Ann, Jack and Greta, chilling out:

And the boys, acting ridiculous (yes, they tipped over within a minute of this photo being taken):

Oh, food? Well, it’s certainly easier making the pork burgers with fresh mexican chorizo (as the recipe calls for) instead of the hard spanish stuff I’d had to use previously.

Greta and I had a fairly hilarious time making fresh mayo (eventually aioli to spread on the burger rolls). She’d only made larger quantities, in a cuisinart, and I’d never made it. We did eventually figure it out, though it was tricky with the equipment on hand. Worth it, though, and I’ll be trying again soon.

Poor Ben had some struggles cooking the burgers over a charcoal fire, since he’s used to propane, but once we peeled off the scorched bit (they had the cheese on too early, per the directions, so he couldn’t flip them to keep the cooking even) they were extremely tasty:

We also had another take on the german potato salad I served with the tuna the week before (I added sugar to the dressing this time for some reason: not necessary) and local corn on the cob:

And then after dinner greta slipped away and when she came back it was with freshly baked cornmeal shortcakes covered in strawberries and whipped cream (blended with leftover lemon curd from the tart–SO good)! I was delighted:

And that was that. We packed up and left the next morning–another lake trip over. I can’t wait for next year.

I can’t be too sad, though: In a stroke of Best Husband Ever, Ben got me a ticket to go visit Bridget in London as my birthday gift. And I leave THURSDAY NIGHT!!!! OMG.

Ok, vacation. Greta and I spent some time before the trip working on a google doc (brilliant) spreadsheet to plan the meals we’d each cook and what groceries we were each bringing. I hadn’t thought of using google docs and it was perfect–I highly recommend them if you’re working on anything like an address list or planning document that a couple people might edit.

Anyway.

We each had a few dinners to plan, plus lunches. For breakfasts we all just had english muffins or cereal, though Greta made her famous sausage balls on my birthday!

Happy times, the lake…

Night one: Kate
I brought vegetables from the CSA–small cavolo nero leaves I had blanched ahead of time, as well as a couple summer squash. I also brought cheese, etc. Greta brought dough, since she makes pizza every friday night. The dough rested at her feet during the 9 hour (lots of stops!) trip up to the lake (Ben and I were glad to have traded the 6 hour drive from NY for the 2 hour drive from Boston), and it was a little odd to work with but tasted fine.

(This one also has basil from my happy plant on the porch!)

We had a big salad, as well.

Night two: Greta
Greta made sirloin tips (marinated in Soy Joy), cous cous and roasted asparagus. I was in charge of getting the charcoal grill going–Dad would be proud of my chimney-use skills, though we never quite mastered cooking on charcoal instead of gas!

It’s important to keep your strength up at the lake, since the days are packed with strenuous activity:

Best Lunch Ever

Ok, fine, we didn’t have the baby for lunch, but doesn’t he look edible with his cabbage leaf hat? That day we actually had grilled hotdogs and cabbage slaw, and it was awesome. (The first full day we were all swimming when we got hungry, and Chris had brought beers down to the lake so we maybe had a beer or two before lunch (yikes) (it was late!) and I tipsily made sandwiches, then put them in a ziplock bag and paddled them out to everyone, floating in floaty-chairs and the canoe out on the lake! Whee!)

Dinner three: Greta

Pork tenderloin in a dried cranberry/red wine reduction, with roasted potatoes.
Delicious. Tender and tangy and luscious. She’s something, that Greta.

Wait, maybe THIS was the Best Lunch Ever

The next day we had a whole extra tenderloin all cooked, and Greta had the brilliant idea to make BBQ pork sandwiches. We got onion rolls and barbecue sauce and OMG SO GOOD.

The boys had gone out sailing and ran into some problems, so we ate around 1:30 and they ate around…4:30? At which point I had another little snack, too.

Night four: Joint effort

We were supposed to eat halibut and other lovely things for dinner, but shockingly no one was really in the mood after the heavy, late lunches. Greta (a veritable font of brilliance) suggested breakfast for dinner, and broke out one of the FOUR 1-pound packages of bacon she’d brought. Ben made blueberry pancakes. I made mimosas. We ate around the coffee table around 9:30.

Um, the four of us ate the entire pound of bacon.

Wednesday we rented an old-school pontoon boat for the day, and rolled like old people in total floating living room comfort. The guys really enjoyed being outside:

Jack was impressed when we went back to the house for panini and salad dockside at lunchtime:

And we all swam a lot:

We ate dinner that night early, at a restaurant in town. Everyone was tired, but Jack and Greta were able to play cards for a while:

While Chris kicked back:

To be continued, with back-to-back birthday dinners…

Some nights I really don’t feel like cooking but I crave a real dinner. Before we left for vacation I was also overrun with cucumbers from the farm share, and while I was talking to my mom one evening she suggested using them in a sort of salsa to put with fish. I am nothing if not obedient (HA), so I put a package of frozen tuna (Trader Joe’s) in the fridge to thaw overnight, and the next night I made just what my mom told me to make.

The salad for the fish used up a couple cucumbers as well as a spring onion from the farm box. I supplemented it with a local hothouse tomato and some feta cheese.

I cut the onion into very fine pieces–spring onions are sweet and mild but I still don’t like a big crunchy chunk of raw onion!

I mixed the vegetables with a bit of oil and salt (I can’t remember now, but I think I also added a splash of cider vinegar) and let them sit while I prepped the rest of dinner.

I made a cheater’s knockoff of german potato salad as another side: Boiled red potatoes in salted until they were tender, and while the boiled I added in a couple peeled cloves of garlic. When the potatoes were done I drained them and returned them to the pot, covered, to “pull themselves together,” as my mom says. I mashed up the garlic cloves and mixed them with oil and cider vinegar and salt and pepper to make a tangy dressing. (Mom says 1 to 1; I’m not sure quite what this was because I didn’t make enough, so I kept adding splashes of one or the other as I added the potatoes). Instead of being organized and cutting up the potatoes, then pouring over the dressing, I cut up one smoking hot potato at a time and added it into the bowl with the dressing, trying to get some dressing on each piece. My fingers were unamused. Like I said, I also kept having to add more oil and vinegar towards the end because I’d made too little dressing. It looked like a total mess at the end but it was delicious.

Meanwhile the vegetables had gotten nice and juicy (I cut feta into tiny pieces and added it in before serving):

When Ben got home he grilled the fish according to the instructions on the package, and we were ready to eat 10 minutes later:

This was seriously tasty. And actually, the leftovers were so good that I did an embarrassing happy dance in my seat in the work cafe the next day and everyone looked at me like I had three heads. Whatever, they were just jealous.

No Week 5 CSA box–since I was going to Oregon I had a friend from work pick it up.

Before vacation I picked up two half shares (which is not equal to a whole share, since there are different veggies for each), because we were about to head off to the lake for the week and I wanted to prep as much as possible to take with us.

The goods (Double quantities):
-2 bunches spring onions
-2 bunches chard
-3 eggplants (two long purple; one white–these died a tragic lakeside fridge death, ie. they got abandoned all week in the back of the overstuffed fridge. Eek!)
-4 baby fennel bulbs
-1 pound string beans
-800 more cucumbers (1.5 pounds? 2 pounds?)

When I saw cavolo nero tucked in with the regular stuff in the Chard box I grabbed it immediately, remembering a variety of delicious things made with the stuff when I was last in Italy with my family. Sure enough, I got home and went to the journal entry for a big dinner we had at Le Lance, a restaurant in Fiezole outside of Florence, and found that Ben’s primi course was a “Risotto allo spazzacamino” with cavolo nero, gorgonzola and cannellini beans.

Some google work turned up a variety of cavolo nero/cannellini combos in Tuscan cooking, and I decided to take advantage of the oddly cool weather to reproduce the risotto in question.

It turns out “spazzacamino” means chimney sweep–I seem to remember Ben’s risotto at the restaurant being colored dark green/black by the chard, though that didn’t happen in mine, and I wonder if that is where the name comes from? (On a side note, there is a gelato flavor called Spazzacamino, which contains finely ground espresso beans and scotch. Wow.) Many of the recipes I found with that in the name contain truffles, though I did find a risotto with the cavolo nero and black beans (no mention of gorgonzola).

ANYWAY, I went with what I’d written down. I cleaned the chard and found that the first bunch was still all attached to the stems:

Which meant there was a variety of leaf sizes–I was, of course, charmed by the tiny ones:

I set aside all the smallish ones to blanch for pizza at the lake, and chopped up the rest of that bunch for the risotto. I also rinsed the beans and, um, opened a container of crumbled gorgonzola from Whole Foods. Sigh. I was at the small one! Options were limited! I still have a lot of this left, even after pizza-making too.

I cooked the risotto about halfway before adding in the cavolo nero. Next time I will put it in right at the beginning, as soon as I’ve put in the first round of broth. I think in the one Ben had the chard had dissolved into it more, blackening the rice. I added the beans almost at the very end, so they just heated up, and stirred in gorgonzola once it was finished. I sprinkled a little on top, too, but next time I’ll leave that off.

Verdict: Tasty but needs tweaking. Chard first, next time!

As a special bonus, when I was flipping through the trip notes I found one of my food sketches, detailing the filling in a series of ridiculously good sandwiches at a foccaceria where we ate lunch a couple times. These are spring fillings but don’t they make you want a foccacia sandwich?