Garden Update

on the left: my first (next generation) pea
on the right: tuesday night's bounty (shut it- we make do with what we've got)

I am Gravlax, of the Viking Brooklyn Sea

What is gravlax anyway you might ask. Well, it's cured salmon. Not smoked - but dry cured in a highly concentrated salt, sugar and dill mixture (I added a few other things). It has a fresher taste than smoked salmon and has an extremely delicate and buttery texture. The term gravlax, or graavilohi, in Finnish (from whence my relatives originate -- if you don't believe me, check out the photo of my Papa a few posts down. That guy is a Finn) basically means - salmon dug into the ground. grav = grave/ lax = salmon. This is a pretty ancient tradition. Fishermen would salt the salmon and bury it in the sand where it would ferment. Thankfully, there wasn't much fermentation taking place in my temperature regulated refrigerator, nor did I attempt to bury it anywhere other than in a shallow baking dish, however it did cure quite successfully. I feel slightly more authentically Scandinavian now. I even made a traditional mustard sauce.

Cockles Oreganata

Cockles are a lot like Manila clams, and can be substituted for recipes that call for clams, like one of my favorite dishes: clams oreganata. Except instead of baking them, I made an heirloom tomato and fresh oregano base with butter and white wine and then steamed the cockles open in the sauce and served with freshly toasted breadcrumbs and parmesan on top. with lots of extra bread for dipping.

The next best thing to a pumpkin...

zucchini squash baked and stuffed with israeli couscous, parmesan and sweet pea salad.

Stalking the Sweeter Things in Life

Rhubarb Berry Ginger Crumble... my chaotic (but tasty) version of a pie. A pile of pie. :)

A Man and His Garden

So when I set out every year to have a halfway decent garden, I have to first come to terms with the fact that whatever modest harvest I end up with, will inevitably pale in comparison to my grandfather's garden. Every year he has a magnificent garden full of tomatoes, squash, cabbage, cucumbers, cantaloupe (this year's wild card), chard and wild rhubarb. I am okay with this :) More than anything, his garden gives me the added motivation to see what I can get to grow in a pot or two on my fire escape. However, for the sake of documenting all things inspirational and food related, I am including this terrific photo of my Papa with a giant bunch of rhubarb that he was more than happy to give to me (since technically, the rhubarb season has passed*, my grandmother was done making strawberry rhubarb pies til next season, and I was making his job of clearing the patch a wee bit easier)




* spring really is the best time for rhubarb -- however, I find that in a somewhat cooler climate like northern mass - the shoots stay tender til mid summer and are not at all woody as you'd expect. more about rhubarb later...

We need a bigger cooler

Just returned from up north and .... you guessed it! S.S. Lobster. Ahoy! The Sous Chef is now officially a charter member. I am beginning to feel like every time we go home for a visit, the sheer volume of seafood we transport back to Brooklyn multiplies. See Above. The great Alaskan King Crab. Good with just about anything - but our favorite is as follows:
Plain and Simple (with a little butter and lemon)

Tonno!

Last year, when the Sous Chef and I were on a lengthy trip via treno from Austria to Italia - we quizzed each other on Italian food vocab. "la salsiccia! la pera! il pisello!" I like to think that I came out of that journey a little wiser, as we were recently at a restaurant and I magically conjured up the translation of the Italian word for cuttlefish. The Sous Chef however, fared a little less successfully and came back to the states with only the word for tuna - tonno, etched into his memory. It may have had something to do with the smuggled jar of tonno packed in oil that managed miraculously to survive the transcontinental flight and the subsequent, steaming hot Brooklyn summer. The tonno sat on our shelf for a few months, shunned by my trepidatious notion of food borne illness, but was relished secretly by the Sous Chef as a midnight snack sometime last fall. (I decided to take a pass on that particular edible delight). In honor of that brave jar, I whipped up a fresh and tasty Mediterranean mix of equally good-quality (imported) tuna in olive oil, sliced green olives, flat-leaf parsley, cannellini beans, chopped tomato, avocado, lemon juice, salt & pepper.

Salmon Ravioli with Pesto Cream Sauce

I can't really speak too highly of basil. It will freshen the dullest of dishes and it always finds its way into my summer salads. This summer, I'm lucky to have 5 varieties growing in a basket on my patio, so I can experiment with the intensity of flavor for each. Last night, I decided to make a quick almond pesto and a light cream sauce to go with the salmon ravioli I had from raffettos. Salmon and pasta are a great combination but it usually involves a fairly heavy cream sauce. I favor a much lighter sauce, almost like a broth with just a touch of cream for depth but not so much that it drowns the poor ravioli. This pesto had a bit more texture than usual, so you could really see the flecks of purple basil and bits of almond as they infused the simple cream, but not creamy sauce.

Thank you, Mark Bittman, for giving me something to do with the stuff already in my fridge

I love it when this happens. I come across a recipe and want to try it out, and by some miracle or stroke of fantastically good luck, I have all of the ingredients in my kitchen already and don't need to go on a pilgrimage to find them! (though to be fair, my little corner grocery store has surprisingly decent produce... but for meats, cheese, fish, spices and nearly everything else I have to trek elsewhere). Mark Bittman, the guy from the New York Times, who has these amusing foodie video clips, made a simple little salad with mint, edamame, olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper and shaved pecorino cheese. I watched this weekend's clip and exclaimed at 10 am, "I can make that without going grocery shopping!" -- and I did -- well, I waited til dinner, but it was so great- I could eat bowls and bowls of this stuff. I would recommend that you buy the pre-shelled edamame beans to save yourself some extra time if you are going to try this at home.

Garden Update

I've been holding off on posting a garden update for a while after the tragic pea episode of earlier this summer. However, the coast looks mostly clear and I've got a lot of green things shooting up on the fire escape that deserve a mention. From top: basil boat, peas on the go, summer squash. Stay tuned for green beans and 6 varieties of tomatoes!

Cold Curried Carrot Soup

I love to make soup, but I typically do so when there's a nip in the air or snow on the ground. How boring, right? There is a world of chilled soup out there and I was turning my back on it. Not one to let convention get me down, I decided to spin off of my curried apple butternut squash soup recipe and find a cold soup that has the same gingery, curried zing and sweetness that I love without being so thick. And lately, since I've been more interested in curries and eastern ingredients, I thought a carrot soup, lightened with coconut milk would be the perfect accompaniment to those frosty lemon gingerades pictured below...

Lemon Gingerade

What's better than lemonade on a hot summer's day? A lemon gingerade cocktail on a hot summer's day. First, I made a ginger-infused simple syrup and then went to work juicing a boatload of lemons. I gave each glass a sugar/ginger rim. This could be my new favorite drink.