Summer's flowers

Summer flowers, wild and weedy, aromatic and opportunistic. Knapweed, Queen Anne's lace, white sweet clover and mugwort are feral fillers for this tangle of two bee balms and rudbeckia. 

Monarda punctata to the right, an underrated cut flower and edible herb. Plant more. 

And on the windowsill, some extras from the terrace: liatris and hyssop, and more obliging mugwort. Aside from being a very useful herb, this super-invader lasts exceptionally well in water. Just strip off the lower leaves and immerse it for 30 minutes to revive it after picking. Florists? Mugwort is everywhere, and it is free.

A vegetable love

When local greenmarkets spill over with produce it's hard not to be vegetarian. Corn is ritually peeled of its outer husks, the tender silk removed (it's very good to eat in a coconut milk soup), and then the inner husks folded back carefully over the kernels so that they are not burned by the fire that cooks them. 

We ate this corn with basil butter (heaps of basil whizzed in a food processor with as much or as little butter as you like), and an anchovy butter. So...not quite vegetarian. A quick cabbage slaw, and broccolini dressed with ramp leaf salt and a Palestinian olive oil made by Al'Ard. 

Late bees still buzzed the hyssop and African basil while we ate. 

Outside

 

Hot days, hot nights, heat advisories. Turning on the oven seems insane, so if we're not eating cool and cold food, we're cooking outside on the tiny terrace. 

The charcoal is always Red Oak's lump charcoal, never briquettes; the firelighters I use (I am the braai mistress!) are the little chunks made by If You Care. The lightweight charcoal lights fast and burns hot, so one doesn't need too much. 

Lillet, seltzer, rosemary, ice. A drink to sip while watching the chimneys swifts on insect patrol above us. Every night there are more and more fireflies, and every night they fly higher, coming right up to the terrace to blink as we eat.

Wax Bean Salad for Summer

The last week of June has resembled the first week of August. Daytime temperatures of 100 degrees. Watering the terrace two, and sometimes three, times a day. (How? A two-gallon watering can, carried from the kitchen - strangely I don't count the trips. But I do know that it take about two minutes to fill the can. I have to view the unavoidable task as a combination of patience and strength training.)

The weekend was better, and suppers returned outside after some evenings of respite in the cool of the air-conditioned indoors. Cooking indoors has been minimal, but the braai on the terrace has been in frequent use. Last night it was boneless short ribs marinated in shoyu with scallion greens - one rib for our supper, one to eat cold, tonight; with a wax bean salad and a farmers market salad of tomato, snap peas and purslane.

You know it's summer when the hyssop is tall and in bloom. It makes the bees very happy.

Wax Bean and Shoyu Salad with Perilla (or Shiso) Pickle

I use frilly shiso or perilla (also called sesame) leaves for this riff on the method for Korean kkaenip jangajji (sesame leaf pickle). They turn limp and soft but their rosewater flavor holds its own. 

Sesame Leaf Pickle:

15 young sesame leaves

1/4 cup shoyu (Ohsawa nama shoyu) or soy sauce

1/4 cup chopped scallion greens

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

1/2 teaspoon sugar 

1/4 teaspoon Korean chile flakes (gochugaru)

Beans:

8 oz wax beans

Toasted sesame oil

For the pickle: Layer the sesame leaves in a small bowl with the scallions. Add all the other ingredients. (Make sure the leaves are submerged.) Allow to marinate for an hour before using.

Cook the beans in boiling water (or steam)until bite-tender. Drain. 

Roll up and thinly slice 6 of your pickled sesame leaves (keep the rest in the fridge) and add them to the still-warm beans. Add two spoons of the marinade. Toss, and add a drizzle of toasted sesame oil and shower of chile flakes. Serve warm or at room temperature

No-Cook Food

 

Too hot. To trot.

So it's Caprese salads all the way, whee, whee, whee. 

We are so very, very lucky to have central air on days like these. That has not always been the case. The feel-like is allegedly 107°F. The crazy (cough, determined) Frenchman went for his five-mile run, regardless. 

I have some other insalata do Caprese ideas over here, at Gardenista.

Where are you? What is the temperature?

Tuna Mousse: Food for a Heatwave

It wobbles, it jiggles, it's straight out of the beginning of the middle of the last century. It's wonderful. It's tuna mousse. Wrong, somehow. But wonderful. And inhalable. I revive the recipe every year when heat threatens and I won't cook indoors. We are in for a possibly unprecedented week.

We  - the Frenchman and I - used to eat it on our rooftop in Cobble Hill, accompanied by Don Estorbo (de la Bodega Dominicana - a bodega cat before bodega cats were cool), with a wide view over New York Harbor. In those days we had a single, room airconditioner, whose roaring was no match for the baking heat. The rooftop was our evening escape.

Tuna...is overfished. Try and find pole-caught tuna: American Tuna, Wild Planet, or Whole Foods 365 brand are better choices. Walk past the Starkist. You are better than Starkist.

Tuna Mousse

The beauty of this decadent, 60's-suggestive mousse is that it goes with all the crunchy, healthy things: celery stalks, crisp cucumber spears, carrot sticks, endive leaves, snap peas (halved lengthwise), long breakfast radishes or round, stout ones, quartered.

Tuna Mixture:

2 cans tuna in olive oil, drained
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon ketchup
4 cornichons (tiny cucumber pickles) 
1 Tablespoon capers
2 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice
Freshly ground black pepper

Wobble Mixture:

1/3 cup just-boiled water
1 packet (1 Tablespoon) gelatin

For the tuna mixture: Combine the ingredients and whizz in a food processor till smooth. No food processor? Chop the capers and cornichons finely, then mash everything with a fork in a mixing bowl bowl.

Wobble mixture: In a small bowl, combine the gelatin and the extremely hot water and stir until the gelatin has dissolved. 

Add the gelatin mixture to the tuna mixture and whizz/mash again.

Taste. Assess the salt, pepper and lemon juice situation. Adjust.

Transfer the tuna mousse mixture into a small bowl or mold. Chill for at least 2 hours. To unmold, slide a knife dipped in hot water around its edges, cover with the serving plate, and shake until it plops out.

It wobbles. See?

Of course, you can also eat it with a good baguette, or dark brown Scandi bread. Or crackers. Or a spoon. Or on your own, with no one else watching.

Here's a bonus picture of Storbie, aka Estorbo loco, aka The Don. 

Gone, never forgotten. Eeep.

A tea to soothe sleep

 

Standing on the terrace recently I snuffed the air and smelled an unmistakable and welcome scent. Lindens were in city-wide bloom. Some still are.

Feeling besieged by the sense that the world is about to break over our heads?

Sip some linden tea.

Are the trees still in bloom, yet to bloom, soon to bloom, near you?

In New York, lindens are planted very, very widely. Littleleaf, bigleaf, European species, native North American species. 

Their flowers dry easily, and rehydrate gracefully. Linden tea has been used for a long, long time, to calm nerves, and soothe the sleepless. I am a convert.

Find the recipe and some gathering tips in my linden tea story for Gardenista.