stone fruit. purslane. and korean watercress salad. lunch for one.

The other day as I walked around the green market I had a stone fruit story churning in my head. I wasn't sure what I was going to do but I knew I wanted to make a salad of plums or peaches. So, with that in mind I started to pick up beautiful bits of this and that and slowly a salad began to form.

Two plums or one peach and one plum

A handful of purselane

A handful of Korean watercress

Mexican gherkins

Fresh dill flower

1 garlic scape

Sea salt

Extra virgin olive oil

Juice half a lime

1 teaspoon of rose syrup

Or maple syrup

The main ingredient in this salad is plum; everything else is just there to add a little bit of flavor and to play off the flavor of the plums.

Nothing here is that exotic, I found it all easily at the farmer’s market here in NYC. You can substitute and play around if you can’t find these exact ingredients. Embrace a little whimsy!

Stone fruit. Purslane. and Korean Watercress Salad.

Cut three medium size plums into small slices. Discard the pit. Use any kind. I used Elephant Heart and Santa Rosa plums.

Arrange the plums loosely on a plate.

Add a few sprigs of purselane ( a lemony tasting wild green )

Add a few sprigs of Korean watercress, which looks nothing like regular watercress. You can substitute celery leaf or parsley if you can’t find the watercress.

Cut in half a handful of Mexican Gherkins and sprinkle on top of the plums, again if you can’t find these use some other tender early cuke.

Add a few sprigs of dill flower, substitute dill if you can’t find dill flower

Thinly slice about an inch of garlic scape, use a finely chopped shallot or chive if you can’t find scape.

Sprinkle with a pinch of good crunchy seas salt

Squeeze the juice of half a lime over the salad

Drizzle with a good extra virgin olive oil

Finish with a teaspoon of rose syrup (I made my own from rose petals) If you can’t find a rose syrup then add a teaspoon of maple syrup!

It is all about improvising and throwing together whatever is in season.

Have fun! Let me know if you come up with any interesting summer salads!

Enjoy!

This salad is just about being inspired at the green market and then tossing it all together! Don’t be scared of combinations just be inspired by them. What is the worst thing that can happen?

More stone fruit recipes to come!!

 

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!

shaved asparagus and pea salad with rhubarb vinigrette

I love the Friday Greenmarket at Union Square, It is my favorite day to go as it is usually quite mellow there early in the morning. This week I met my friend Nancy Jo there. She is a crazy wild amazing intuitive cook and we generally bond over the baby Tuscan kale, the sweetest berries and the eggs from the Amish farmer. She gives the wave off to any produce she deems unacceptable like my Nonna in her flowered house dress. We talk about we ate that week and what we are going to make that weekend and then we dash off to work.

This past Friday we bought peas, pea shoots, asparagus, rhubarb, radishes, beets and summer savory. She had a plan to recreate a salad from Roman's and I wanted to continue my rhubarb lust by making a simple spring salad  with a rhubarb dressing.

Shaved Asparagus and Shell Pea Salad With Rhubarb Vinaigrette

This is a raw salad.

For The Salad

Ingredients;

6 stalks of asparagus

A handful of Fresh shell peas

 A handful of Fresh Mint

A handful of Pea Shoots

Shave the asparagus into long ribbons with a mandolin or a small shaver.

Arrange half on each plate

Shell the peas and divide between the two salad plates

Add a few pea shoots and some fresh mint and a few micro greens.

Makes 2 portions

Don't feel limited to my suggestions; throw on a few your favorite microgreens if you feel like it or some chives or chive blossom. I used beet micro greens and a ramp scape to pretty it up because that is what i had on hand and they are deliscious.

For the Dressing;

Rhubarb Vinaigrette

1 stalk of Rhubarb

1 shallot (I used a ramp bulb because I was out of shallot)

2 tblsp. raw apple cider vinegar

2 tblsp. sugar

3 juniper berries

1/3 cup water

Makes about 1/2 cup

Chop the rhubarb into 1/2 inch pieces

Crush the juniper berries with a mortar and pestle or the back of a spoon until just broken

Combine the rhubarb, the juniper berries the sugar and the waterr in a pan

Simmer the rhubarb, the juniper berries,the sugar and 1/3 cup of water in non reactive pan for about 5 minutes or until soft and tender. It should fall apart. Puree or strain through a sieve into a small bowl and set aside to cool. 

In the meantime; chop the shallot finely.

Add the shallot to the cooled rhubarb vinegar mixture.

Spoon the dressing over the salad and top with a really good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

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Add a pinch of sea salt and cracket black pepper on top

fava bean ragout

 

 Copyright © 2011 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved

 Fava beans are one of the fleeting mid-Summer vegetables that are quite easy to miss. They show up at the market for a short time only. They start appearing in the late Spring and are gone by mid to late July. I was just on the cusp of not finding them this year and may have found the last of them. The Fava bean, sometimes called the Broad Bean is popular in Europe and the Middle East. It has long been a staple in the Mediterranean diet. I was first introduced to the Fava bean as a kid by my grandmother, as Fava Beans and Chicory is a popular Puglian dish. You can find them dried year round in many US. markets. They are a long oversized fuzzy  grean bean and require quite a bit of work to prepare, this may account for thier somewhat obscure status.

When looking for a recipie for the odd or unusual vegetable. I always turn, with out fail, to Alice Waters. One of the cookbooks I cannot live without is Alice Water's Chez Panisse Vegetables. If i were only allowed one book, this is the book I would choose.  I love it because I can look up any seasonal vegetable in the index and go to a complete section of recipies using said vegetable. Today, I chose Fava beans. After two long weeks of work and catering everyday, I really wanted to be in control of my own food choice. I had some fava beans I needed to use from last week's farmers market upstate.

I was a little torn between Fava bean ragout and Fava bean puree but decide to go with the former. I used Alice Waters recipie as my guide and then improvised a bit as I usually do.

I substituted  fresh lemon balm and fresh mint for the rosemary as that is what I had on hand. I sometimes find rosemary to be a bit heavy in the summer.  I used far less beans because I didn't have as many as the recipe called for. I added a little bit of Bhutanese red pepper at the end and lime instead of lemon and some shavings of pecorino.

 

FAVA BEAN RAGOUT FROM ALICE WATER"S CHEZ PANISSE VEGETABLES

3-4lbs of young fava beans

1 large clove of garlic

1 small sprig rosemary

olive oil

salt and pepper

1/2 lemon

Shell the fava beans and discard the pods.

Bring a pot of water to boil, add the fava beans and simmer for 1 minute.

Drain and cool immediately in cold water ( i used an ice bath)

Pierce the outer skin with a thumbnail and squeeze each bean out of it's skin with thumb and forefinger.

 Peel and chop the garlic very fine.

Put the fava beans in a suacepan with a mixture of half water and half olive oil enough to just cover them.

Add the garlic and rosemary and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook until the beans are tender, 5 minutes or so more or less. finish with a squeeze of lemon and another grind or two of pepper.

This ragout is great over pasta or on toasted crostini.

My improvised version is below.

Fava Bean Ragout

Follow above steps for shelling and cooling

Add shelled peeled fava beans to a large cast iron skillet, cover with 1/2 olive oil 1/2 water until just covered

Add  1 clove of finely chopped garlic and 1/2 cup of finely choped mint and lemon balm

salt to taste 

Simmer for 5 minutes or so or until the beans are tender and some of the liquid has eveaporated

Remove from the heat

Add the juice of 1/2 lime and some red pepper flakes

 If seving with pasta:

transfer to pasta and add some shaved pecorino romano.

For Crostini

Cut a nice crusty loaf of bread into thick slices

Rub each slice with a garlic

Brush with olive oil and toast under the broiler for a minute or until just brown

Add the fava bean ragout add a drizzle of olive oil and a shaving of pecorino.