heirloom tomato and celery salad.

The first of  summer's tomatoes have arrived at the markets. Green Market stalls are  filled with piles of gorgeous and unusually shaped heirlooms in purples, stripes, blacks, whites, deep reds, orange and yellows. I love the wabi sabi-ness of heirloom tomatoes. I particularly like the ones that look as though they have been carelessly stitched and scratched like a beautiful Lousie Bourgeois sculpture. 

Tomatoes are one of those foods that are in my blood. If I were on a deserted island I  could get by if I had stockpiles of my great grandmothers marinara sauce.  When I think about the things I love to eat most... they almost always involve this diverse fruit! Foccacia with cherry tomatoes sunk deep into little wells of crunchy bread and pools of olive oil...marinara with a punch of garlic and hint of basil, Panzanella a delicious bread salad, a BLT with a  thick chunky slice of  a fresh garden tomato, tomato soup and grilled cheese, the ultimate in comfort food or a very simple summer salad of tomato and basil, olive oil and a little sea salt or in this case some crisp shaved celery. Just give me a piece of crusty Italian bread to soak up that juice and I will be in heaven!

More tomato love to come 

 Heirloom Tomato and Celery Salad (for two)

This is sort of a non-recipe. It is just an inspiration! As with most summer salads they just kind of get thrown together!

4 large heirloom tomatoes

1 stalk of celery with leaves

A handful of fresh basil

Really good olive oil

Sea salt

Cut the tomatoes into pieces and put in a large bowl

Shave the celery stalk into ultra thin slices with a mandolin and scatter on top of the tomatoes

Tear the celery leaf and basil into small pieces and add to the salad

Add a pinch of really good crunchy sea salt

Douse with an extra virgin olive oil 

Toss and Devour!

As simple as that and DO NOT forget some crusty bread lest you waste that amazing tomato juice!

summer daze.

 I woke up this morning with a start, wondering what I am late for and realized that I actually have today off! Summer has been flying by this year. I have no idea where the days have gone... one seems to tumble into the next until weeks have passed. I am looking forward to a few days off in August spent upstate and in the company of good friends. I have had no time for blogging this past month, life and work have been busy and the heat wave somewhat unbearable in our non air-conditioned loft. While busy is a good... I have reached the point of a much-needed break. I have had to reconcile that I am not going to be able to get to all the ideas, shoots and recipes I have had in mind for the summer season. I will do what I can and put some things off to next year. Sometimes you just have to take a moment.

Jam, however, is definitely on the agenda. It looks as though the blackberries upstate are about to burst, hundreds of them dripping from tangled thorny bramble. They, unlike me, seemed to have thrived in this heat! The black raspberries and blueberries in the photos below came from Flying Fox at The New Amsterdam Market. When I am in town on a Sunday it is my very favorite place to go.

Have a great weekend friends! 

x

bellocq. tempura edible flowers. chinese tea eggs and tea salt.

We always plant a bed of edible flowers in our garden upstate to add to salads or to eat straight from the garden. So, I was super inspired when we shot our favorite tea atelier, Bellocq, for the most recent issue of Kinfolk. Heidi Johannsen Stewart of Bellocq came up with this brilliant idea to tempura edible flowers and to serve them with tea salt! They were so good and so beautiful! We ate and drank a lot of tea inspired foods that day. We also made Chinese tea eggs and paired it with the same tea salt. I will share them soon! Have a great weekend!

 If you are going to try this make sure you have done your research as to what flowers are edible! Never use anything that has been sprayed!

Tea salt can add an interesting flavor to just about anything you are cooking.

Tea Salt/Lapsang Souchong Salt

1/3 cup tea

We used a smokey tea for this one! (no. 19 Lapsang Souchong) Organic black tea scented with pinewood smoke.  Plucked at high elevations in the Wuyi Mountains, this tea has a distinctive earthy flavor, with strong notes of honey and a rich red liquor.  You can order this tea online from Bellocq. 

1/4 cup of sea salt

Mortar and pestle until they are somewhat combined

Store in an airtight jar

Tea Eggs

Chinese Tea eggs are a populaur street food in China. I never ate them while I was there because I kind of avoid street food whle working. They were super beautiful however and stayed in my mind long after the trip.

Most recipies for Chinese Tea Eggs call for the eggs to be steeped in a combination of  black tea, star anise, cinnamon, soy sauce and black pepper  but you can get creative and add bits of citrus or ginger.

We served these with another fragant tea salt. We used Kiykuya from Bellocq.

 To Make The Tea Eggs:

One dozen Arucuana eggs

1/2 cup loose black tea.

We used Keemun Panda from Bellocq. A Organic full bodied black tea, prized for it's sweet earthy flavor and floral notes with a touch of smokiness. You can use any black tea.

6 star anice

4 large cinnamon sticks

4 tsp. cracked black pepper

1/2-cup soy sauce 

To Make;

Combine your eggs, spices and soy sauce in a large non-reactive pot with enough water to cover the eggs. Simmer your eggs for an hour. Remove the eggs from the liquid and set them aside to cool. Reserve the liquid and spices. (you will later add the eggs to the cooled liquid.)  When the eggs are cool enough to handle, gently crack the hard-boiled eggs with the back of a spoon all over the surface of the egg but not hard enough to remove the shell.

 Gently place the cracked hard-boiled eggs in the cooled spices and liquid in a big lidded jar and refrigerate for three days.

The liquid will steep in through the cracks and flavor and stain the white of the egg. The outside will become a beautiful brown.

I used Aracauna eggs so that when I cracked them, the shell on the inside would be blue. The outside of the egg took on the most perfect Wedgewood brown. I couldn't help but think that Martha just might fall in love with that color. Heidi and Michael saved the pieces of the egg shell and added them to their famously beautiful Bellocq tableaus.

Prop Styled by the ever talented Shane Powers! thank you Shane!xx

 

 

where the wild things are . no 21. chilled wild watercress soup and welsh rarebit with wild ginger

I used the last of the wild watercress for this soup. It has now become leggy and has flowered so it is sort of done for the season but it was lovely while it lasted. This recipe is from Alice Waters but I used two kinds of Sorrel instead of one. A wood sorrel and a sorrel I picked up from the Greenmarket.

 Chilled Wild Watercress and Sorrel Soup and Welsh Rarebit With Wild Ginger

 Adapted from Alice Water's Watercress and Sorrel Soup 

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup minced onion

1/2 pound yellow Finn or red potatoes, peeled and quartered

3 1/2 cups vegetable stock, chicken stock or canned low-sodium

chicken broth

1 pound watercress, tough stems discarded

1/2 pound sorrel, stems discarded

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion add cook over moderate heat, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the potatoes and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about

Stir in the watercress and sorrel, cover and simmer over low heat until the greens are wilted, about 5 minutes. Working in batches, puree the soup in a blender. Return the soup to the saucepan and re-warm over moderately high heat; season with salt and pepper. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with the croutons.

NOTES Sorrel is a perennial herb with a sour flavor. It is shaped like spinach, but the color of the leaves ranges from pale to dark green. Look for sorrel with bright, crisp leaves. The stems should not be woody. While sorrel is available year-round, its peak season is the spring, when it's at its mildest.

 Welsh Rarebit With Wild Ginger

The key to good Welsh Rarebit is a really good cheddar cheese. I like one with a bit of a bite. Don't worry no rabbits were harmed in this process!! Welsh Rarebit is just another way to say fancy cheese toast and it does not in fact have anything to do with rabbit!!

3 tablespoons of unsalted butter

3 tablespoons of AP flour

1 1/2 teaspoon of Dijon Mustard

1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce

1/2-teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 cup of heavy cream

1/2 cup of any dark beer

2 cups of grated sharp Cheddar cheese

1 tablespoon grated wild ginger or fresh horseradish

pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Toast 4-6 pieces of bread. I used a raisin nut loaf from Balthazar and the fruit in the bread was perfect with the bite of the Rarebit.

Grate the cheese

Grate the Wild Ginger or Horseradish

Melt the butter over LOW heat in a small sauce pan and whisk in the four stirring constantly and taking care not to burn the butter or the flour. Add the cream, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, wild ginger, salt, pepper and beer and combine until smooth.  Slowly begin to add the cheese stirring constantly for 5 minutes or so until the sauce is smooth. Pour over the toasted bread and pop under the broiler for a minute or two until the cheese is bubbly. It is often served without broiling but I like it better with a little crisp.

wild watercess

 watercress, wood sorrel  and sorrel

 wood sorrel

 broiled rarebit

sweet and sour cherry jam.

Sweet and sour cherries are at their peak at the Green Market and sour cherry jam just happens to be the perfect partner to my toast addicton.

I love toast, it is the perfect comfort food. Maybe I love it becuase it reminds me of being a kid or perhaps I love it because it was one of the very first things I made on my own, burnt edges and all. Toast is about  crunch and good bread but delicious butter and jam are right up there in that equation. Last weekend I put up six jars of sweet and sour cherry jam. This might not seem like much but on a cold winter morning, that trio can bring me right back to summer. I have had moderate success with sour cherry jam in the past. When making jam, I sometimes err on the less is more side of the sugar bowl. Sour cherries are super low in pectin so getting it to "set" can be a bit of a challenge, especially when it is sugar deficient!. I was happy to stumble across David Lebovitz's no recipe cherry jam! That is just my style as I am a girl who often wings it in the kitchen. I am all about a no recipe recipe. This one was super easy AND successful! Now I have a little bit summer set aside for that toast on snowy days or maybe I will just eat all six jars before the first leaf falls. x

Taken from David Lebovitz's site Living The Sweet Life In Paris

below text David Lebovitz

1. Buy as many cherries as you feel like pitting.

Usually I have the patience for about 3 pounds, but it’s up to you. Figure one pound of cherries will make one good-sized jar of jam. Plump, dark Bing cherries work really well, although Burlats are good, and if you can find sour cherries, your jam will rock.

2. Wear something red. Rinse the cherries and remove the stems. Using the handy cherry pitter that I told you to buy a few weeks ago, pit the cherries. Make sure to remove all the pits. Chop about 3/4ths of them into smaller pieces, but not too small. Leave some cherries whole so people can see later on how hard you worked pitting real cherries. If you leave too many whole ones, they’ll tumble off your toast.

3. Cook the cherries in a large non-reactive stockpot. It should be pretty big since the juices bubble up. Add the zest and juice of one or two fresh lemons. Lemon juice adds pectin as well as acidity, and will help the jam gel later on.

4. Cook the cherries, stirring once in a while with a heatproof spatula, until they’re wilted and completely soft, which may take about 20 minutes, depending on how much heat you give them. Aren’t they beautiful, all juicy and red?

5. Once they’re cooked, measure out how many cherries you have (including the juice.) Use 3/4 of the amount of sugar. For example if you have 4 cups of cooked cherry matter, add 3 cups of sugar. It may seem like a lot, but that amount of sugar is necessary to keep the jam from spoilage.

6. Stir the sugar and the cherries in the pot and cook over moderate-to-high heat. The best jam is cooked quickly. While it’s cooking, put a small white plate in the freezer. Remain vigilant and stir the fruit often with a heatproof utensil. (Wouldn’t it be a shame to burn it at this point?) Scrape the bottom of the pot as you stir as well.

7. Once the bubbles subside and the jam appears a bit thick and looks like it is beginning to gel, (it will coat the spatula in a clear, thick-ish, jelly-like layer, but not too thick) turn off the heat and put a small amount of jam on the frozen plate and return to the freezer. After a few minutes, when you nudge it if it wrinkles, it’s done.