by rivka
on September 9, 2013
A perfect tomato is a thing of wonder: its perfectly smooth red skin, its firm flesh, its juices suspended just so. I hesitate to do anything but drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt, and eat up.
But then the end of August rolls around, and farmers start in with the deals: a half-bushel of near-perfect “seconds” for $12. Â I can’t resist a deal like that. So I buy ’em, and over a week or so, the tomatoes make their way into salsa, tomato sauce, and other things that I jar and process for winter.
This summer, I got even luckier. Zach and Clay are the bloggers behind The Bitten Word;Â they’re also my neighbors. Every year, they go to their CSA farm at the end of August and pick their weight in tomatoes — in fact, one year, the Washington Post did a story on their adventure. This year, they overshot it on the picking. Lucky neighbor that I am, I got to share in the spoils.
We jarred a bunch as crushed tomatoes and a few more pounds as sauce. I’d already done salsa and jam, and there aren’t many other tomato-based staples that I use during the year. A cardinal rule of canning is “if you won’t use it, don’t can it.” Â So, with about 10 pounds of tomatoes to go, I cooked up tomato feast for weekend lunch.
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by rivka
on September 3, 2013
Ask my colleagues what I did this weekend, and they’ll tell you what I told them: relax, relax, relax.
And truly, that’s what I intended to do. It’s been an intense month at work, and I’ve been looking forward to this labor-day-without-weddings weekend for a long time. I had my sites set on the couch, a couple of movies downloaded on my ipad, and a bag of fantastic coffee beans ready for some pour-over action.
Turns out, I’m not so good at relaxing in the traditional sense. Sitting on the couch too long makes me twitch. I start poking around at the tomatoes on the counter, seeing if any is particularly soft and needs cutting. The second peaches in the fridge call my name and I’m up, flipping through cookbooks for that brown-butter cobbler recipe I’ve been meaning to try. And I can’t even blame it all on the last glorious produce of summer. Partly, I’m just a mad woman. At 8 am I’m reading The Kitchn on my ipad, and at 8:15 I’m in the kitchen, mixing up dough.
I’ve been eyeing a version of this loaf for over a year. Leite’s Culinaria first posted a recipe for lemon pull-apart bread by Flo Braker, she of best tea cookies on the planet-fame. Those cookies are so good, I’ll try pretty much any other recipe she writes. Lemon pull-apart loaf looked like cinnamon buns, minus the cinnamon, minus the bun, if you know what I mean. Doesn’t that sound delicious and totally self-explanatory? Lemme try again: it’s cinnamon bun dough, cut into squares, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with lemon delicious stuff, and stacked into a loaf pan. As it bakes, the strips rise up and fan out, so the edges crisp and the sugar and butter caramelize. Now then: delicious, am I right?
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by rivka
on August 30, 2013
Next week is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. We’ll have a full house, a fuller fridge, and a freezer stuffed so tight that eeek, please don’t open it too quickly. The lamb is cooked, frozen, and ready to go. (Want to make the one we made? It’s the best lamb ever and I shared the recipe with The Forward so you can make it, too. Go right ahead.) I also froze two soups — one’s a triple garlic soup from Melissa Clark; the other has teeny, tiny meatballs suspended in a sour, salty broth. It’s insanely delicious. I’m hoping to share it with you early next week.
And what about dessert? Well: I’ve got one last pint of fresh blueberries left in my fridge. wouldn’t my guests just love to be served this genius fresh blueberry tart after the big feast? And I’ve somehow managed to save a handful of the beautiful apricots I got from Randy a couple weeks back. They still look perfect. I wonder if I should work them into some sort of show-stopping finale for the new year?
Maybe not. Let’s face it: everyone wants honey cake. Those who don’t want honey cake just want apple cake. All the excitement about apricots and blueberries is so last month, I guess.
Apple cake and honey cake are great, don’t get me wrong. In fact, last year, I smushed the two together (is that turning into a habit?) and gave you a pretty stellar Apples and Honey Cake. That’s the recipe I’ll be making again for our new year dinner.
But I’ll also be making these roast figs, to serve alongside that old standby of a cake. You should too — if only to appease those of us who get sad at the thought of blueberries, strawberries, apricots, blackberries, raspberries, and peaches being replaced by just apples. Apples and honey are great, but summer doesn’t last forever. It’s worth celebrating it while you can.
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by rivka
on August 27, 2013
I can only assume that many of you hail from the Northeast, which is why I so hesitate to come down on one side of the chowder vs. chowder debate. There’s New England, milky and rich, and then there’s Manhattan, with a clear broth and plenty of tomatoes. Think Yankees vs. Red Sox: tensions run high.
But I’m not from New York, and I’m not from Boston, either. And ever since that Yankee kid snatched a ball straight from the hands of my Orioles and cost them the 1996 pennant, well, phooey. But I’m a peacemaker at heart. I don’t like these silly rivalries. And so, to celebrate the end of summer and the abundance (12 ears!) of corn in my fridge, I’m sharing my favorite chowder recipe, which — spoiler alert — combines the two varieties into one. I know, scandalous.
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by rivka
on August 23, 2013
We eat a mostly vegetarian diet at home. But every so often, I like to take a good bird, sprinkle it with plenty of salt and pepper, stuff a lemon in the cavity, and roast the hell out of it — we’re talking a 500-degree oven — until the thing is so crisp that the skin has puffed up and separated from the flesh, a crisp, crackling invitation to tuck into dinner.
For some reason, it’s a recipe I associate with winter. If it’s December, and D and I get home on Friday afternoon and don’t have plans, I’ll arrange the bird in a cast iron pan, heat that oven (and my cold hands) high, and get dinner going. That and roasted potatoes, and we’re set.
Summertime isn’t meant for roast chicken. If our birds don’t get rubbed with spices and grilled, they take a turn on the stove top. In this case, we treated them with summer’s best tomatoes and some fresh basil from a friend’s garden. I browned the chicken pieces, then cooked down those tomatoes with a bit of sliced garlic and plenty of olive oil. Once the tomatoes cooked down to a sauce, I added the chicken back in and finished cooking it in the sauce. Five ingredients, 45 minutes, perfect summer dinner.
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by rivka
on August 20, 2013
Just a quick note to say hi from here. I’m decompressing for a few days, after dancing the night away at my brother’s amazing wedding. See you all back here in a couple of days. Happy summer!
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by rivka
on August 16, 2013
The tricky cold August weather pulled quite a fast one on me. Here I was, thinking I had more time with summer, when we passed the halfway threshold in the last month of “vacation.” Where did it all go?
As if summer’s abrupt end weren’t enough, the holidays arrive early this year. We’ll be out on a boat on Labor Day, enjoying the breeze and (hopefully) some last summer heat, and the very next day, we’ll be in synagogue.
This one awesome time notwithstanding, I tend to plan my holiday menus at the 11th hour. The couple of days before Rosh Hashanah are a frenzied blur of grocery store lines, written and rewritten shopping lists, dirty dishes, and — okay — amazing, amazing smells wafting from the kitchen. But this year, I’m trying a more proactive approach. So for the next couple of weeks, I’ll share some recipes that celebrate the end of summer and the beginning of fall. I hope they’ll find a home on your table, whether you’re celebrating the New Year or just the turning of the seasons.
I’ve got a few dinner ideas up my sleeve, but if you’ll humor me, this year, I’m starting with lunch.
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by rivka
on August 12, 2013
I’m here to put a stake in the ground: bottom crust is not necessary. Buried under a pile of juicy summer fruit, it’s only a matter of time before the crust succumbs to its inevitable, soggy fate. Purists will tell you that a pie without a bottom crust is not a pie at all, and they will soldier on, pre-baking the thing, brushing it with egg, saying a special prayer before they fill it with juice. I’ve done that a lot, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. (Apple pie season is around the corner, gulp.) But for now, I just turn to Nigel Slater, the wonderful British food writer and cookbook author, who says with an air of authoritativeness and nonchalance that we should skip the bottom crust entirely.
That’s right: one crust, laid flat over summer’s juiciest, sweetest plums. It’s a genius recipe, really, because it takes all the anxiety out of making such a pie. You know, that thing where you par-bake the bottom crust and it shrinks away from the sides of your pan, banishing all hopes for an elegantly-shaped pie. Or that other thing where you take your pie out of the oven and anxiously count the minutes before people are eating it, for fear that if they take too long on their main course, they’ll definitely be eating mush for dessert. One-crust pies do away with those things.
As soon as you embark on making a pie that’s just got a top crust, you really can make that crust however you see fit. Nigel Slater adds an egg to his crust, nudging its texture ever so slightly toward cake. The result is billowy and light, still short like pie crust but less prone to tearing or crumbling. Its as unfussy as all summer recipes should be.
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