Al fresco

Outdoors. Why does it all taste better under an open sky?

Open sky. Not as open as it once was. But we can pretend. The chimney swifts hunting their in-flight dinners above us convince us everything might be as it should be.

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Suppertime

Warm baguette, wrapped in a napkin. A hot dish of bubbling olive oil, with garlic and melted anchovies. A bowl of raw vegetables for dipping. Bagna cauda, a favorite. 

And a cat, watching it all.

Going out

This New Year's Eve we treated ourselves to Champagne and a supper of smoked salmon on toast, with asparagus and a fennel slaw, followed by squashed, roasted potatoes topped with crème frâiche and salmon roe. The little jars of roe were $13. The next roe up, American sturgeon, was $80. After that Osetra sparkled at $180.

Salmon it was. And very delicious.

First, you boil little potatoes until cooked through. Then you squash each onto a lined baking sheet using something round and heavy. A wine bottle with a flat bottom is excellent. Roast them for about 45 minutes at 350°F. They don't require salmon roe, but it's very good.
 

Dessert was a beautiful galette des rois from a local bakery (Brooklyn French). My slice had the hidden "bean" but the bean was a tiny croissant, so I got to wear the provided crown. For a bit. I let the Frenchman wear it because he looked a little crestfallen. Childhood memories.

And now, in light snow, and sub-freezing temperatures, we walk to see the fireworks at Grand Army Plaza. Squirrels, raccoons, possums, birds, cats, and dogs, cover your ears. Poor things. When will we ever learn?

See you on the other side.

Stollen

I baked a couple of Stollen. One for our Christmas breakfast. One to freeze for dark days. The dried fruit is a mixture of hoshigaki (the air dried persimmons I make every year), black currants (dried after I made a fermented syrup in summer), and raisins. Soaked in some bourbon.

It is spiced with ground cardamom seeds and nutmeg.

That loaf has disappeared. Several slices were eaten while we drank coffee and unwrapped gifts. And the rest was devoured by some giant French mouse in the night. I need a bigger trap.

The recipe is from the King Arthur website, with minor changes( my own fruit mix, an extra quarter cup of water, and two loaves rather than three). But it's a good recipe. Try it.

A nightly netting

 

Our evening suppers are now netted, which is normal for summer. Usually, it's for tiny flying insects (smaller than fruit flies, but what are they?) that are attracted to anything acidic, like salad dressing, or wine, into which they hurl themselves to perish. But these last few evenings we have been joined by a persistent, chunky hornet, who buzzes our dinner relentlessly. I don't really mind it, but the Frenchman feels about hornets the way I feel about spiders. Heebie jeebies. We both know that both are beneficial, yet neither of us can stand being near them. So, net. 

Supper was a tangle of tiny wax beans soused while warm in shoyu with finely ribboned shiso leaves from the terrace, and dropped onto crisp-skinned, curry-powder-dusted roasted chicken thighs. Before adding the steamed beans I deglazed the hot pan with elderflower vinegar and honeysuckle cordial (the methods for these delightful concoctions are in Forage, Harvest, Feast).

It's 99°F as I write, and the African basil continues to persecute me (see previous post). It's been watered twice, today. But the bees are happy. Very, very happy.

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. 

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

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.

Supper edition

Cool, grey, misty mid-June days and evenings have sent us back indoors for supper. 

Tonight's was a salmon oven-roast that we've fallen in love with and repeated many times. I first started cooking it in Maine, where we had access to superb - if farmed - Gulf of Maine salmon, and it has translated well to Brooklyn (with salmon farmed in the Faroe Islands; eating fish is...tricky, to say the least). 

The recipe is based on this one: spicy slow-roasted salmon, from The New York Times. I riff a lot with the spices, and often use berbere (the fragrant East African spice blend). And tonight's version included three tender, sliceable heads of spring garlic.

I was lucky to sip an exceptional 2020 dry Riesling this evening, from our friends at Storm Cellar, in Colorado. I treated myself to a six-bottle box of their wines, which arrived at our door last week. 

We had company. Pirelli enjoys salmon nights. He was a little impatient for the meal to begin.

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Choose your pepper wisely

 I didn't grow up with hot food. The spiciest it ever got was a single, intact chile (which would have been spelled chillie, in South Africa) in a curry—accompanied by strenuous warnings to the effect of, Watch out, there's a chillie in there somewhere! Perhaps a whole chillie in a bottle of sherry used for cooking. Surprisingly effective, actually. My mom added it to soups.

So where and how did I convert? This country. Living with a food-loving Mexican for four years may have had something to do with it. New York City, and it's plethora of Southeast Asian eateries. And simply being on the continent in proximity to so many forms of fresh and dried chiles had significant powers of persuasion.

I like heat, now. A lot. But there's heat and there's heat. For my recent experiments making shatta, a gently fermented and staple chile condiment eaten in Palestine (and other Eastern Mediterranean countries), I learned that long red cayenne peppers make a fantastic shatta—sweetly hot and mellow. But that compact Scotch bonnet peppers (I know, what was I thinking?) blew the house down.

I have been eating a dab of shatta almost daily, especially on lunchtime eggs. (The eggs above were for a picnic after a plant walk, and there were no complaints.)

And atop labne, with an egg and some crisp celery and mint? Delicious, and pretty darn healthy, too. 

My shatta recipe is up on Gardenista.

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Then, and now

Seeing red. Well, deep orange? Amber? A rufous hue? This is the perfect stage, not in a renewed presidency, not in the world, but in the short, truncated life of a tulip. Full blown. 

Supper began with snacks of olives that I salt-cured, given to me by the friend who came over last night to eat them. She grew them, just a few blocks west of us. Then, a couple of salads, drenched in a bright dressing of Thai lime juice (from the happier of our two trees) with fish sauce and some sugar: crisp endive, thin rounds of watermelon radish, a shaved heart of mustard, and tiny, vinegar-soused cucumbers. And another of peeled and naked pomelo sections, topped with fried shallots. After that, the duck legs, simmered forever in shoyu with many bay leaves (our tree, yay), on a starchy foundation of lacy lotus roots. With a side plate of chilled spinach stems, with shoyu and ginger and crisp sesame seeds. Followed by durian ice cream, just-churned, and cherimoya granita. 

Life in the big, evil city, where dozens of cultures collide daily and (mostly) get along.

Cherimoyas (custard apples) are in season for another couple of months, in California. I highly recommend treating yourself to a box, if you live within shipping reach of Rincon Tropics (a small business with a real, live human owner) whose fruit is wonderful and whose shredded paper packaging makes unpacking it a treasure hunt.

My granita recipe is at Gardenista.

That's all I've got. But we're all going to have to do better than gape, as each new violence unfolds. It is beyond anyone's experience, but catch up we must. If you don't already belong to the American Civil Liberties Union, there has never been a more insistent need to join. 

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ACLU

Once, it was summer

Wait, what, summer? 

Tidying up photographs, cleaning one of the two memory sticks I use in my Canon, I find myself drawn into meals eaten, seasons lived, flowers in bloom. This was June 2021. Yup - I have a lot of tidying to do. The terrace, and what is clearly a warm weather supper. The Frenchman's T-shirted arm pouring cold Sauvignon blanc. Salad - a deconstructed salade Niçoise. Grated carrot? I know. I take liberties (it was soused in lemon juice, with some chile flakes added - try it). 

I see radishes, too, halved cherry tomatoes and at the back - either eggs or potatoes? Maybe eggs on top of potatoes? And leaves. The tuna is always packed in olive oil, but was it Cento? Probably. The first purple basil from the garden. I usually only plant it in late May and have to restrain myself as it establishes itself.

Formosa lilies. They will bloom again, if they made it through the freak deep freeze of December. January is as freakily mild. Who knows what February holds?

But terrace days will come again.

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Maitake month still in full swing!

 

Leaves are drifting down. The grass and sidewalks underfoot are a-crunch, crunch crunch. And the most generous of mushrooms is in season, loaded with flavor.

One of my favorite autumn recipes is up on Gardenista - a maitake and farro pilaff. It's really delicious.

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November Walks and Forage-Picnics

 

Saturday in the city

Summer Saturdays have a rhythm. Well, one of two: One - much faster - would be a plant walk with last-minute picnic prep. But on Saturdays when I am free, they begin with a coffee on the terrace, where I sit and look at plants. Then it's a bicycle ride to the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza. I fill my basket with more plants (the edible sort), and come home. Stash everything. Escape to a park (to see plants) with the Frenchman, and come home to think about supper, which will be informed by whatever the market yielded. (Yesterday we came home a little faster than usual because our chosen park on Staten Island was swarmed by lanternfly nymphs. It was also parched.)

Warm-evening drinks are tall and cool. This one is perfumed by candied yuzu, made late last year with the few fruit from my tree, and fresh Meyer lemon. An ounce of mezcal, a lot of tonic water, and a splash of gingerbeer (both Fever Tree). Smoky, citrussy, bittersweet.

The terrace lights come on. All the Silk Road lilies are now open. I light a fire to grill the first ears of corn we have eaten this year.

Indoors, the rest of supper is cooking. A market curry, with a base of ginger and green garlic, coconut milk, and a dash of fish sauce. To which I add a flock of tender summer squash, and dried daylily flowers (read all about those in Forage, Harvest, Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine). The dried flowers plump up and become silky, thickening the gravy. I squeeze in some lemon juice and stir it in with a pinch of sugar. Just before we eat, I will add a bouquet of squash blossoms. It's a riff on my zucchini and daylily curry recipe.

It has been very dry for the last few weeks, and I worry about this summer's rain-reliant crops. Will the corn stay plump enough? Our corn fixings include (to be added in this order): butter, curry powder, Aleppo pepper, lemon for squeezing, and microplaned parmesan. As exceptionally odd as that all sounds, it works.

No, I don't eat corn with a fork. I used it for scooping cheese!

As we eat a gang of herons flies above us, high, and north. I have never seen herons in a gang. Are they dry, too? I think drought is coming.

The Chicago glasses. Bought many years ago at a thrift store in that city.

By now it is almost dark, and the curry has arrived, the squash silky and soft, the sauce reduced, the blossoms wilted across the top. We use forks and spoons, to scoop up the last drops.

After supper, I pickle the baby cucumbers that have been sitting in salt in the fridge (this makes them crisp). And eat many of the apricots I was supposed to jam. They are so sweet. I am lucky: The same seller (Williams Fruit Farms) will be at our corner greenmarket on Sunday. I can re-stock.

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Cook Wildly

Tiny terrace summer

Evening time. After leading a friendly pack of 15 people on a plant walk on the 4th of July - none of us feeling celebratory - and feeding them a tasting picnic (what's a tasting picnic? A picnic where you have a taste of everything, of course), I came home, washed up, and thought about supper. I like thinking about supper. The Frenchman rolled some paper balls for me (we use paper shopping bags as fire lighters; never, ever the smelly liquid) and carried out the charcoal (hardwood, not briquettes), and I lit the fire. 

Then I picked some flowers for the table.

The summer-leafed prickly ash, with ginger and sesame sausages grilling alongside chicken soused in shoyu* with chopped cilantro stems. 

*I can't think when I started using Ohsawa nama shoyu (a Japanese organic, unpasteurized soy sauce, still slightly active in the bottle), but it's a game-changer. Noticeably more expensive than the Kikkoman I used to use and infinitely more delicious and rich.

And the Oscar goes to: the liatris. Plus, nobody got slapped. These plants (they grow from corms) slept quietly all through winter in galvanized bucket (with drainage holes punched into the base), and are now around three feet tall. I lost several lily bulbs to the old freeze-thaw cycle, but the liatris seem immune. Bees love them.

While fireworks crackled on the street and local rockets burst nearby, and giant dragonflies patrolled the sky, occasionally zooming past at ear level, the first 'Silk Road' lily opened, unafraid of the bright competition. As the evening darkened the lily's perfume grew stronger. By the time the thunderworks of the Macy's display had started, way north on the East River, out of sight but not sound, the terrace was drenched in scent.

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Suppers, lost and found

Forgotten suppers, found. The light isn't pretty and just means I didn't adjust the white balance - lazy photographer. It's softer, in person.

When you cook every evening, it's easy to forget some good things. Photos help. These are from my still-daily hour of downloading and sorting images from Memory Stick No. 1 (No. 2 is still waiting in the wings; I don't know who's more nervous, it or me). I've made it to November, 2021.

Naturally each digital file (photo) records the date and time a picture was taken. This helps me cross-reference with my calendar and with any digital recipe notes I may have made. 

So in the picture above I see pork chops. And then I have to think. What's on them? Zoom in and it's...black currants (yum), field garlic, and I see something else - please tell me I wrote this down. Turns out I did, sketchily. And that this was the evening of a day I'd led a walk for 15 people, with a six-course tasting picnic. One of the picnic snacks had included a confit of black trumpet mushrooms. And the mushrooms I did not use went into the pan sauce of black currants and sweet clover for the pork chops. Phew. It was delicious. (If you're wondering, the currants were frozen. I keep little stashes in reusable bags for quick deployment.) I think the bowl on the left contains a celeriac remoulade: grate the peeled celeriac, mix with mayonnaise and mustard: done.

And still November, and again after a walk: an old favorite: Chicken pieces roasted with tomato, potato wedges, lots of lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and rosemary. About an hour at 425'F.  Truffle cheese.  And salad. Always salad.

And look, the candles are fresh.

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My Books

How to have a holiday

For me, much of the appeal of traveling - even a small distance - is to meet the plants that grow in the other place. (I can't imagine what it is like not to see plants, and perhaps people who don't, or can't, lead more focused lives?) And if some of those plants are edible, it is an intense pleasure to use them in the kitchen. It's an immersion in place and season. (Also, I just like to eat.)

So in coastal Maine bayberry (Morella pensylvanica) has featured frequently. Last night's dinner was a shepherd's pie, made partly to use up leftover meaty pieces that I'd braaied when a friend came over for supper (hi, Friend!), and partly to amuse the Frenchman, who adores the rustic dish. This time I added a lot of young bayberry leaves, still at that tender, chewable stage. And topped the ragú with stamped potatoes (because our cottage has no masher or potato ricer, so stamp, stamp, stamp).

Fir and spruce tips are still new and soft up here (as opposed to down there in New York) and so there is a batch of very fragrant fir salt drying on the wide table in the wide room with the endless, wide windows. Air-drying keeps the flavor better than oven-drying.

The benefits of car travel: you can carry heavy luggage home. So, vermouth. I always finish my vermouths with perfumed (edible) flowers, infused overnight in the wine I use for blending. That relatively brief soak captures their scent. And the countryside is covered with lilac bushes in bloom. Like clouds across the green fields.

For vermouth basics see the Mugwort Chapter of Forage, Harvest, Feast.

The longer infusions (in vodka) were forest-heavy: fir, spruce, hemlock (Tsuga, not Conium), as well as bayberry and a syrup of baby spruce cones (the pink glass). Into the wine they go, according to taste, and now it is bottled. Downeast Vermouth.

On a hike we found a massive lilac on an abandoned farmstead. The bush must have been 15 feet across and bowed down with flowers. So some came home, where I stripped the blossoms to infuse in honey I had bought at the side of the road from a stall that also sold eggs. No human in sight, just a jar for money. 

And yes, I bought eggs, too.

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Winter night, before the snow

Saturday supper. In cold weather we eat at the kitchen counter. So, all winter. And last night it was covered substantially in the loot we had gathered in a giddy half-day of shopping at the Union Square greenmarket and Eataly (downtown). Inbetween food-buying stops we walked up and down the Arctic length of the winter High Line. The sky was blue, the sun shone, and we felt like visitors in our own city.

My guiltiest pleasure was a potful of New Zealand cockles. I love them. Just some garlic, finely chopped in butter, an overly-generous dash (meaning about one-third of a cup) of dry vermouth, cooked till boiling, and then the shellfish, steamed until open. 

After those we moved on to a smoked trout pâté (made by whipping flaked trout with cream cheese and Meyer lemon juice), unapologetic, oil-cured anchovies, smoked oysters (part of our early pandemic stash), green Italian olives marinated for an hour with blood orange zest in good olive oil, nine-minute eggs topped with bottarga, cucumbers washed in tulip poplar honey (a summer find at the greenmarket) and white wine vinegar and...a couple of rich slices of wild smoked salmon, each. 

The radishes were crunched as palate cleansers.

There is the out-of-focus Frenchman with an in-focus potful of cockles. With last week's tulips, our much-delayed bottle of New Year's Eve Champagne, and hot sourdough toast under the red napkin.

It is snowing, now.

And January has come to an end. We thought it never would. 

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