Time & tomatoes

They say amniotic fluid has flavor---that babies can taste what their mothers eat, and develop food preferences in utero. If that's true, this baby is going to have quite a thing for tomatoes.

I've been eating tomatoes at least once a day since late July. Most of the time, I've been eating them simply---cut up and drizzled with olive oil, tucked into sandwiches and salads, cooked down into soups and sauce. A few weeks ago, Tom, one of the cooks at the restaurant, made a creamy tomato bisque, and I must have eaten a gallon of the stuff. I can't seem to get enough.

Out in the garden, the season's almost over, but we're still holding on. There are a few more meals left out there, and just in case this baby's not quite sure yet how it feels about tomatoes, I'm going to make these last few meals count. We're going to eat tomatoes my favorite way: sliced into big chunks, topped with torn basil and big hunks of creamy burrata mozzarella and grilled croutons, then drizzled with olive oil and sweet balsamic glaze and sprinkled with sea salt. We had this last night for dinner, and the day before for lunch.

Today when it gets to noon, I'm going to head out to the garden, pick a few last red globes, and make up another plate before time and tomatoes run out.

HEIRLOOM TOMATO SALAD

There are so many different versions of this it hardly counts as a recipe. The most important thing to focus on is the quality of your ingredients---you need sweet, super ripe tomatoes, and a rich creamy burrata. Recently I've been using a brand called Maplebrooks Farm from Vermont, but I also like the gorgonzola-stuffed mozarella that Kathleen Kadlik sells at the farmers' markets in Orleans, Falmouth, and Provincetown.

2 large heirloom tomatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks

a handful of basil leaves, torn in half if large

1 four ounce ball of burrata or mozzarella, cut into bite-size pieces

2 slices rustic bread

olive oil

balsamic glaze

sea salt

Warm up a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium heat. Meanwhile, arrange the tomatoes, basil leaves, and cheese in a wide, shallow bowl. When the griddle's hot, drizzle the bread slices with olive oil and grill until golden and just crispy on both sides. Cut the bread into croutons. Drizzle the salad with olive oil and balsamic glaze, arrange the croutons on top, and sprinkle with sea salt. Enjoy at once.

A plate to clean

Hi friends. Sorry for the radio silence. It's been a bit of a week around here---my computer decided, with exactly two weeks until my due date and exactly three radio shows still to finish---that now would be a good time to quit. I'm still waiting to hear back from the very nice man at Cape Mac, but in the meantime, I thought I'd stop by from Alex's computer.

I have to admit, it hasn't been all bad here in the land of the computer-less. I've planted lettuce, staked the dahlias, been to the beach twice, finished a book (The Shipping News---an excellent read!) and started another (The Help, so far excellent).

I've also been cooking. I made a huge batch of oven-roasted tomatoes the other day, and a big bowl of homemade salsa, and even an anchovy-garlic tomato sauce that we poured over pasta and topped with torn basil and toasted bread crumbs. As you can see, we're still in a very serious tomato phase.

That last recipe in particular turned out very nicely. I wanted to tell you about it because it came from one of those confusion inspirations---the type where you read a recipe wrong and then it turns out you're glad you did in the end. I was looking through the new Bon Appetit and there was a whole page on anchovies. I saw what I thought was a recipe for an anchovy-tomato pasta sauce, but what turned out to really be a recipe for an anchovy-laced vinaigrette that you poured over sliced tomatoes. Anyway, by the time it got to dinner time and I'd gone to the market to get anchovies and hauled in another few pounds of tomatoes from the garden, I had the pasta dish very set in my head. I didn't let it deter me, when I looked for the recipe, that it didn't actually exist.

Instead, I browned some garlic in olive oil, added the anchovies, and stirred until they sort of dissolved into a paste in the pan. Then in a separate pot I cooked down the tomatoes with onions and red wine and basil into sauce, the way I do when I'm going to put it up to freeze it. I pureed it at the end, so that it was smooth, and then added a good glug to the anchovy-garlic mixture. While the two came together, I put on a pot of water to boil and threw the pasta in, and then tore the leaves from a few basil stems. Finally, I toasted some Panko crumbs in olive oil and grated some Parmesan. When the pasta was hot and drained, I lit the candles, cut some fresh dahlias for the table, and pulled out the china. I tossed the pasta in with the anchovy-tomato sauce, arranged a nice nest of it on each plate, and sprinkled torn basil and grated Parmesan and toasted Panko crumbs on top.

Then we ate. I cleaned my plate, and Alex cleaned his. The dog sat under the table, wishing he had a plate to clean, and finally, we blew out the candles, closed the screen door, and went to bed. It was, all in all, pretty terrific.

PASTA WITH TOMATO-ANCHOVY SAUCE

If you're looking for anchovies, Alex sells a very nice Spanish variety at his market in Truro, which is what I used. Wherever you find yours, just be sure to use the kind marinated in vinegar, not oil, as it will give the pasta sauce a very different texture and taste. This recipe serves 2-3.

olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 package white anchovies marinated in vinegar (roughly 100 grams net weight)

1 and 1/2 cups thick, smooth tomato sauce (I used homemade tomato-basil)

1/3 pound spaghetti, cooked and drained

1/3 cup toasted Panko bread crumbs

1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated

a handful of torn basil leaves

optional: several oven roasted tomatoes, to place on top

Heat up a glug of olive oil in a large cast iron skillet over low heat. Add the garlic and saute, stirring constantly, for about a minute, or until it starts to get fragrant. Pour in the anchovies, vinegar and all, and turn the heat up to medium. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes, or until the anchovies dissolve into a sort of paste with the oil and the garlic. Add the tomato sauce and continue cooking until everything is well combined and comes to a simmer. Combine the pasta and sauce and toss well.

On each plate, arrange a nest of pasta and top with toasted Panko crumbs, grated Parmesan, torn basil leaves, and if you have some on hand, a few oven roasted tomatoes. Serve immediately.

A garden recipe

Sometimes, I imagine our lives through the neighbors' eyes, through the windows across the street.

I notice a routine: a man up early, the green Chevy pulling away. A woman—now noticably round—out in the briars each morning in her nightgown and bare feet. She brings an old pint container for the berries: first the black, then the red, now the golden raspberries.

She snacks while she picks—then waters the carrots, checks the kale and broccoli for the little green worms that devour holes in the leaves. She disappears inside and then is back on the front stoop. A black lab settles onto the brick beside her, and she spoons something out of a porcelain bowl—granola and yogurt maybe, with a handful of berries.

Later in the day, she might come out and weed. The tomatoes need trimming, and the butternut squash vines are growing almost clear across the street. She checks the orchard—there were five ripe peaches before the birds stole two the other day—and sprays horticultural oil on the new pear leaves. She ties a loose asparagus fern to the others around the stake, pulls a few heads of lettuce.

Then she drives off, too—off to the restaurant in black skirt and shoes—and the yard is quiet for another afternoon.

GARDEN SALAD

We haven't been eating anything complicated recently. There's too much good fresh food to bother fussing with recipes and heat. But here's a suggestion for a simple salad with a tried and true dressing recipe that's good on just about any chilled spread of garden-fresh veggies. This recipe serves 2.

1/3 cup white vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced

2 ears of fresh corn, shucked and kernels cut off the cob

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

a handful of Thai basil

4 carrots, sliced into thin rounds

a handful of cheese—I used cheddar, cut into tiny cubes, but I also think goat cheese, shaved Manchego, or Parmesan ribbons would be good

Whisk together the white vinegar, olive oil, sugar, pepper, and salt in a small measuring cup. Set aside.

In a large shallow bowl, layer the cucumbers with the corn, cherry tomato halves, Thai basil leaves, and carrot rounds. Sprinkle or shave the cheese evenly over top. Pour the dressing on, and let the salad marinate at room temperature for at least 10 minutes before serving.

The Local Food Report: a local chocolatier

Chocolate is a pretty safe bet with me. Give me a chewy chocolate chip cookie with big, dark chunks, or a dense chocolate torte, and I will gladly hand over the keys to my car, or let you do your laundry in the basement. But handmade, local chocolates? Sixty-four percent single origin wrapped around a milk chocolate ganache infused with fresh local produce and herbs? You could probably empty our safe deposit box.

I'd never had a chocolate like that until the other day. A woman named Danielle Verizone makes those specimens up there. The one in the back is called Minty Fresh, and the one up front is a local strawberry ganache with a piece of dried strawberry on top. Danielle started her business back in 2009, after taking a class at L.A. Burdick Chocolate in New Hampshire. She calls herself the Sirenetta Seaside Chocolatier of Scituate, and she sells online and at the farmers' markets in Hingham, Falmouth, and Scituate.

The cool thing is that unlike most artisanal chocolatiers, she actually uses local produce and herbs in her chocolates. She was on her way to go strawberry picking in Bridgewater when I talked with her the other day, and for her other flavors, she uses things like basil from her garden and local mint and rosemary. Basically, they act as infusions—giving the dense milk chocolate ganache center its kick and flavor. She purees the berries or herbs, then heats them up with milk and honey, and finally purees the infused cream with milk chocolate. This makes a big slab of ganache, which she cuts into bite-sized pieces and dips in single origin sixty-four percent cacao dark chocolate. I tried four flavors—Rosemary with Olive Oil and Sea Salt, Spring Strawberry, Wild Minty Fresh, and Lavender Silk—and they were all delicious. Danielle puts out a new collection every season.

Right now, she's experimenting with raspberries and blueberries for summer—she's thinking raspberry-wasabi and blueberry lemon balm.

In the meantime, if you need a fix, there's a recipe to make your own chocolate sea salt caramels over here. Happy local chocolate, everyone.

At the very end

My mother has a habit of traveling with food. Whenever she comes she arrives with a packed cooler: extra arugula from their CSA pick-up, a half gallon of cream she thinks ought to be used up, a few prime tomatoes from the pots on the patio out back. This trip, she brought us an eggplant—a two-pound, deep purple, homegrown beaut.

It's getting late for eggplant—like the tomatoes and the squash, it's time to harvest the last few fruits, untangle the vines, and yank the rows out—but this is when I like it best. It's too hearty for the heat of August, too rich for Indian Summer, too elegant. It's better, I've always thought, as a crisp days, chilly nights kind of event, toward the close of the season, when you catch it at the very end.

When I first saw the one my mother brought, I was thinking ratatouille. But then the recipe next to it in Victory Garden Cookbook, the Eggplant Parmesan, caught my eye. The recipe was simple: we had tomatoes, onions, red wine for sauce, we had basil and oregano and bread crumbs for the eggplant's crust. We had eggs for the coating, a ball of mozzarella and the last of a hunk of Parmesan for the rich, bubbly top.

The oven warmed up the kitchen, spilled out into the dining room, took the chill off the windows and fogged up the glass. We cut through the layers and I could almost hear the change: warmth giving into frost in a small, quiet gasp.

EGGPLANT PARMESAN

This is the sort of recipe that you make once, and suddenly, you can't imagine life before Eggplant Parmesan. The header in the Victory Garden says that homemade tomato sauce is best, and I have to agree. Otherwise, success is pretty much guaranteed.

a roughly 2-pound eggplant
salt
3 eggs
2 tablespoons water
1 and 1/2 cups dried bread crumbs
4 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon dried
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup basil leaves, packed
1 ball mozzarella cheese, sliced
3 cups tomato sauce, preferably homemade

Peel the eggplant and trim the ends. Cut it into 1/4-inch thick slices the long way. Get out a 9- by 13-inch casserole dish, layer the eggplant slices in, and salt them. Let drain for 30 minutes, then pat dry with a dishtowel.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Get out two shallow bowls. In one, beat together the eggs with the water. In the other bowl, whisk together the bread crumbs and oregano. Dip the eggplant slices first into the egg mixture, then into the bread crumb mixture. Heat up 1/4 cup of the oil in a large frying pan, and sauté the eggplant slices until golden brown on both sides. Remove the slices and drain them on a dishtowel. Cook the rest of the eggplant, adding oil as needed, and drain.

Rinse out the casserole dish and layer half the eggplant slices evenly across the bottom. Sprinkle with a third of the Parmesan cheese and layer on half the basil leaves, a third of the mozzarella slices, and half the tomato sauce. Repeat the layers and top with the remaining Parmesan and mozzarella. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the layers are heated through and the cheese on top is golden brown and bubbly.

Gorge yourself

Restraint Over Watermelon is one of the most demanding tenets of eating locally. I mean who can turn down airplane watermelon for eleven months of the year, and then not go a little overboard when the real deal arrives? Not me.

When the watermelon comes in, I devour it. I bought my first specimen at the Truro Ag Fair last Sunday, and I have since eaten four. Four! Granted, the nice thing about watermelons is that they are mostly water, and so the sick feeling you have after eating seven slices only lasts for about an hour or so, but still.

Last weekend, when my parents were here, we made one of the simplest, most delicious salads I've ever had. The only ingredients were yellow watermelon, fresh basil, burrata with gorgonzola dolce wrapped inside, olive oil, balsamic glaze, and a sprinkle of salt. We ate the whole bowl that night, and two nights later, with a second ball of cheese (burrata with herbed goat cheese this time), Alex and I made it again. We ate ourselves silly both times.

So quick—while the season lasts—gorge yourself as much as you can. It'll be a while until the melons roll around again.

WATERMELON, BURRATA, AND BASIL SALAD

This salad makes the best of late summer—it is best when the watermelon is cold, straight out of the fridge. It probably lasts a few days in the fridge, but we wouldn't know; it's never made it that long.

6 cups chilled watermelon
1 ball local burata or mozzarella
2/3 cup packed basil leaves
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
balsamic glaze, for drizzling
salt to taste

Cut the watermelon into cubes and use your fingers to gently remove any seeds. Put the fruit in a bowl and toss it with the cheese, basil, and olive oil. When serving, drizzle lightly with balsamic glaze and sprinkle with salt to taste.

Ode to tomatoes

My friend Liam coined this phrase the other night.

He typed it up onto a paper menu, a print-out for an opening the restaurant was catering at our friend Susie's gallery, Farm. I saw it during service, pinned up in the kitchen alongside the flats of tomatoes from Jack Stacey's farm—oranges, crimsons, purples—long romas with skin like marbled paper, yellow and red. The words sounded so light—like instead of heat and exhaustion and crowds August meant Ode to Tomatoes Month.

I think for now, I'm going to pretend that it does. So in celebration, here you are—not a left hand turn on Route 6—but a simple, fresh Caprese with basil and slices of gorgonzola-dolce-stuffed mozzarella, piled sky-high on baguette.

ODE TO TOMATOES

The key to this recipe, obviously, is good tomatoes. They should be ripe, sweet, oozy—August tomatoes in the peak of heat. A good, grainy sea salt doesn't hurt either—for sprinkling at the last minute, on top.

1 baguette
4 big, sweet heirloom tomatoes
1 ball gorgonzola-dolce-stuffed mozzarella
1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed
extra virgin olive oil
balsamic glaze
sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste

Slice the baguette in half the long way, like you're cutting bread for a sub. Then cut the halves into reasonable lengths—6 inches or so. Core the tomatoes and slice them into rounds. Slice the mozzarella into rounds, too. Toast the bread, and once it's hot, drizzle it with olive oil and a few drops of balsamic glaze. Layer each piece with a handful of basil leaves, several slices of tomato, and a few rounds of mozzarella on top. Sprinkle with sea salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste.

Roasted beet, corn & basil salad

Monday, July 26th: lunchtime, at home

Something—a robin, maybe? a ghost?—ate every last green plum in the middle of the night. They are gone from the tree out back without a trace—no flesh, no pits, not so much on the ground as a twig.

Inside, the fridge is full: corn in its husk, fresh bluefish, arugula, broccoli. I can't concentrate on cooking—where are those plums? who stole them from me?—but I turn on the oven without thinking, then decide to roast the basket of beets.

When they come out—steaming, piping hot—I trim them, skin them, slice them into half tears, orange and ruddy. I husk the corn and cut the kernels from the cob; it's so sticky, milky when it's this sweet. I tear a handful of basil and arugula and toss them in a salad bowl, then squeeze a lime in, and a bit of vinegar, and olive oil. The corn and the beets go on top, still hot enough to fog up my face. I toss everything and then add a pinch of salt—mourn the plums and sit down to eat.

ROASTED BEET, CORN, AND BASIL SALAD

This salad is as simple as it is good. If you prefer your corn cooked, go ahead, but at this time of year, I eat mine straight from the cob, raw and milky. With the addition of cheese and a good slice of toast, this easily makes a meal.

4 beets
olive oil
4 ears corn
1 cup packed basil leaves
1 cup packed arugula leaves, torn
juice of 1 lime
1-2 tablespoons white vinegar (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan, for shaving

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place the beets—scrubbed but with about an inch of their top greens and their tails still on—on a baking sheet, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, and cover with tinfoil. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour, or until tender when pierced with a fork.

Husk the corn and cut the kernels from the cob. Put the kernels in a large bowl with the basil and arugula. When the beets have cooled down enough that you can handle them, cut off the tops and tails and peel off the skin. Then cut the beets in half, and then into thin half moon slices the way you would an apple. Add the beets to the bowl with the corn and greens.

Squeeze the lime juice over the vegetables and drizzle the salad with olive oil. Toss well, and taste for acid and oil. If you think it needs more acid, add the white vinegar one tablespoon at a time, tasting after each addition. If you think it needs more oil, drizzle with a bit more olive oil. (How much you add of both are really a matter of personal taste.) Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve while the beets are still warm, with shaved Parmesan over top.

Of another Sunday

Picture this:

You're sitting on your porch, in cotton shorts and a t-shirt, curled up at the blue iron table with a glass of Muscadel. Your husband is sitting across from you, in his white undershirt and plaid pajama bottoms, piling up bow tie pasta with melted Hannahbells and basil from the garden and Dorris's big heirloom tomatoes on toast. The pasta is tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and it's still hot, fresh from the pot.

Arts & Ideas wafts in through the screens: Eygptian youth, bad banking, Roosevelt. You take a bite and the basil breaks, suddenly fragrant. The tomato is still warm from its spot on the window sill—it has never seen a fridge, cold weather, the inside of a store. The cheese is sharp, gooey, distinctive—all muddled together with oil and starch.

The recipe is one you pulled out from a Martha Stewart magazine—the one you were reading at twilight, drinking iced tea, your legs draped over the leather arm rest of the couch. No one had volunteered to make dinner yet—after the beach, the sun, the salt. All either one of you wanted to do was read—first books, then magazines, then newspapers. When the energy for that ran out, it was just the radio.

When you came across the recipe—tomato and basil pasta—it was more of a reminder than a jolt. You'd been to the farmers' market yesterday where the tomatoes were ripe, and the basil was ready in the garden. Someone had brought bow tie pasta home from the marketplace the other day, and there were all sorts of cheeses still in the fridge from last week. All that was left to do was pick and chop and boil, season with salt and pepper, pour the wine, cut a few slices of toast.

So you did and now dinner is done. Your plates are clean and the sky is pink, blue, then dark. You sit for a while, silent, then finish your wine, walk inside, turn the kitchen lights out. It's time for more books—another chapter of The Time Traveler's Wife, maybe, or The Food of a Younger Land—then the end of another Sunday, and bed.

TOMATO AND BASIL PASTA

This is so simple, it's more of a recommendation than a recipe. So do this: get some good tomatoes, some fresh basil, and some good cheese (I recommend either Hannahbells from Shy Brothers Farm or the mozzarella with gorgonzola dolce from Fromage à Trois), and toss them together with some hot pasta, olive oil, and salt. Crack black pepper on top, pour yourself a glass of white wine or iced tea, and sit down to one of the easiest—and tastiest—summer meals around.

1/2 pound cooked pasta—something small like Penne or bow tie—still hot
2 large heirloom tomatoes, cut into bite size chunks
1/2 cup basil leaves, packed
8 ounces soft cheese—such as Hannahbells or mozzarella
1/8 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
optional: balsamic glaze, for drizzling

Toss together the warm pasta, tomatoes, basil leaves, cheese, and olive oil in a large bowl. Continue mixing until the cheese melts into the pasta, then season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm—and if you like, drizzle each serving with a tiny bit of balsamic glaze.

It's here

The asparagus is in.

If you see my mother, you can let her know I finally made that asparagus stir-fry she keeps raving about. She found it on 101 Cookbooks last spring—sautéed asparagus and greens with seared tofu and lime juice and hoisin sauce—and it became a staple for her and my father. Only by the time she got around to telling me about it, the asparagus was gone. It's been a long nine months.

You can also tell her that I changed the recipe a little bit. I couldn't bring myself to buy tofu, so instead I used local sea scallops from Alex's market. They were wonderful—perfect, even—except that the first time around, I didn't account for just how much liquid a block of tofu sponges up. Everything was a little too limey, a little too hoisony, a little too sauced.

The second time around, though—the second time, I got it right. I used a bundle of Tim Friary's asparagus, basil from E & T Farms, mint and spinach from our garden, and almost half the hoisin and lime. The vegetables were springy, and fantastic, and just right. The sweetness of the hoisin toned down the tang of the lime, the greens wilted into soft, aromatic ribbons, and the scallops stood firm, golden, fresh.


It was the kind of stir-fry worth waiting nine months for. And now that the asparagus is here, I have a feeling we'll be making it over and over again until the spears disappear.

ASPARAGUS & SEA SCALLOP STIR-FRY

I adapted this recipe slightly from the original over at 101 Cookbooks to take advantage of the beautiful sea scallops that have been at Alex's market recently. The most time consuming part of this recipe is preparing the ingredients—do all the chopping first—and once you fire up the stove, the actual cooking will be done in less than five minutes. Now that the farmers' markets are open in Provincetown and Orleans ( ! ) all of the vegetables can be sourced locally, just picked, and fresh.

8 ounces small sea scallops
1/3 cup toasted sesame oil, divided
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon peeled and freshly grated ginger
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup cashews
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1/2 pound spinach or Swiss chard, roughly chopped
zest and juice of 1/2 lime
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1/2 cup fresh mint, slivered
1 cup fresh basil, slivered

Pat the scallops dry. Heat up half of the sesame oil over very high heat in a large soup pot or wok. When the pan and the oil are very hot, drop the scallops in and sear them for two minutes, or until they develop a nice golden crust. Flip the scallops and sear for another minute; this side shouldn't take as long. Turn the heat down to medium high, take the scallops out of the pan, and set them aside.

Add the remaining sesame oil. Once it's hot, add the scallions, ginger, red pepper, asparagus, and salt. Stir fry them for about a minute, then add the garlic, cashews, almonds, and spinach or Swiss chard. Stir fry, stirring frequently, for another minute or two, or until the greens start to wilt. Add the scallops back into the pan, pour in the lime juice and zest and hoisin sauce, and cook for another minute, stirring the whole time. Turn the heat off, stir in the mint and basil, and adjust the seasonings (more salt or hoisin) to taste. Serve hot, either on its own or over cooked oat groats or whole wheat noodles.

Hang on

You might remember the fuss I made over our caterer in the months leading up to our wedding. I declared finding her almost as exciting as meeting my husband, not to mention almost as trying. And so in the same way that I decided when I met Alex not to let go, I also decided with Katy to hang on. And so these days, when my mom or I write each other about a new recipe we tried, or one we'd like to find, we email Katy, too. We're still talking about food, only now that we're done with silverware rentals and napkin colors, it's lot more fun.

What you see up there—that simple combination of steamed wheat berries, torn fresh basil, a little bit of spinach, shaved Parmesan, and a sprinkle of pine nuts—is one of the recipes Katy sent along. She made it for Easter, tossed with olive oil and balsamic and sprinkled with salt, and she told us about it afterward, in the emails we were sending back and forth about Meyer lemon tarts and hot cross buns. I finally got my hands on a bag of fresh basil at the winter farmers' market last week in Marstons Mills, and this afternoon, it was the first thing I made. (For the record, Alex and I took our first ocean swim at LeCount's yesterday, so although we are still shopping the winter market, I think we can officially welcome the arrival of spring. If the basil doesn't prove it, I don't know what does. Hip-hip, hooray!)

At any rate, the salad was perfect: tangy balsamic with fresh basil, toasted pine nuts and crumbling Parm, and an excellent way to go through a fair amount of wheat berries from our grain CSA. If you aren't too busy watching out for thunderstorms or planning a wedding or waiting on your own basil to get big, I highly recommend you head into the kitchen and give it a try.

Thanks, Katy, for everything.

DECONSTRUCTED PESTO AND WHEAT BERRY SALAD

Katy warns against making too much of this at a time; make what you can eat, she says, but not much more. Wheat berries don't store well—they tend to get sort of smelly after a couple of days—and the greens will sort of ooze into the dressing overnight. Which is really to say, dig in, and hurry up, before someone else gets the last bite. The first time I made this I added a bit of spinach in addition to the basil, but I think I like it best with the tastes strong and plain. Feel free to experiment a little bit though; I plan to try it with cherry tomatoes once they come into season, and I think kalamata olives would be a nice addition any day.

2 cups cooked wheat berries
2 tablespoons balsamic glaze
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 pound fresh basil, torn into bite-size pieces
2/3 cup toasted pine nuts
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
2 ounces Parmesan, shaved

In a large mixing bowl, toss together the wheat berries, balsamic, and olive oil. Add the torn basil and pine nuts, and toss gently to mix. Season with salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste, and as you serve each bowl, shave the Parmesan over top.

The Local Food Report: Seed Ordering

Today, finally, I placed my seed order. Ordering seeds always seems very daunting to me—like taking on the Impossible Project or maybe surviving a twenty-six-point-two-mile run.

I was thinking about this the other day while playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe with Crisp Mint and Rouge d'Hiver on the lettuce page of the Fedco catalog, and I decided it was time to get help. (For seed ordering. Just to be clear.) I called my friend Tracy (who helped me start a garden for the chefs at one of Alex's restaurants last spring), and she told me to talk to a friend of hers, Master Gardener Celeste Makely. I met Celeste in her sunroom, we talked for two hours about seeds and seedlings and garden planning and even baked tomatoes. She sent me home with a tiny fig tree, a homegrown Valencia orange, and all sorts of excellent recommendations. I am not very good at sharing oranges, or potential fig factories, but fortunately, I do much better with notes. So for those of you who aren't quite sure what you want to plant, here are Celeste's top seed picks for 2010:

1. Danvers (carrot)

Apparently, the reason carrots are so tricky to grow is because they need a very fluffy soil. If they don't get it, they tend to become distorted. Unless they're Danvers. Celeste says these carrots stand up particularly well to heavy soils, and are thin and long with a strong top. (For yanking.)

2. Spinach and lettuce of any kind

Spinaches and lettuces are, by definition, easy, Celeste says. Order what you think is tasty, or pretty, plant a bunch, and don't worry about it too much unless the weather gets outrageously sunny and hot. If that happens, give the plants some shade and some water, and they will soldier on. Depending on how you plan to plant your garden, it might be a good idea to buy some early and late varieties, and some that can stand the heat. This way you can be in greens all the time.

3. Chioggia (beet)

These are those pretty magenta and white swirled beets you see at the farmers' markets all the time. Celeste cooks sometimes at the soup kitchen in Provincetown, and last year, a local gardener donated a whole bunch of these. She says they were the hit of the season—wonderfully sweet just roasted with a little bit of oil and salt and pepper.

4. Early Spring Burpless (cucumber)

Celeste likes these for slicing, because they are early, and prolific, and inside their bright white flesh is oh-so-crisp. They also grow long, and don't have too many spines.

5. Bush Pickles (cucumber)

These are ideal for people who don't have much space, but want lots of cucumbers and lots of pickles. Celeste says they grow small (about four to five inches, a.k.a. ideal pickle length), and stay firm, even jarred.

6. Bright Lights (Swiss chard)

We grew Bright Lights Swiss chard in our garden last year, and I can attest to its fabulous-ness. We planted it twice, once in the early spring, and once at the end of August, and we have been in red-yellow-pink-and-orange chard from April through today. I know! Two plantings, a million cuttings, lots of salads, lots of stir-fries, a whole bunch of soups, one Swiss chard gratin, a whole lot of blanching and freezing, and several pounds of onions and garlic later, and we are still eating from a single pack of seeds. Celeste likes it because it's beautiful, and prolific, and easy, and as I just mentioned, about as versatile in the kitchen as one green can be. She found this recipe for goat cheese rolled up in chard leaves and grilled, which even without having tried it I feel I can heartily recommend.


7. Pointsetta (hot pepper)

Pointsetta wins purely on cuteness. It's a new pick for Celeste this year, but she likes the way that the peppers point up instead of down, and are very bright and tiny and generally adorable. She's doing a demo garden for the new Wellfleet Community garden plots, and she says that when she saw this she simply couldn't resist.

8. Jalapeño (hot pepper)

Believe it or not, Celeste recently had a Jalapeño plant that lived for five years. She says she simply planted it in a pot, and brought it inside in the fall and back out again every spring. Jalapeños are easy, and better yet, produce peppers that sliced in half, stuffed with cheese, and broiled, will bring you to your knees.

9. Herbs (not Rosemary, or Parsley)

At least not from seed. Rosemary and Parsley are both difficult to germinate, Celeste says, and not worth your trouble at all. Get them, but buy them already robust in little pots at the garden store. As for the rest, plant Oregano and Spearmint but watch out because they spread, and accumulate as many varieties of Thyme and basil as you can. Oh! and while we're on basil, Celeste thinks Genovese, the big, broad-leafed Italian variety is very nice, as are Thai basil and lemon basil.

10. Tropical fruits (huh?)

Celeste's last recommendation is just in case you decide that this year, you want to go big time. She has a sunroom on the south side of her house, and for a while now, she's been experimenting with tropical fruit trees. Based on my Valencia-orange-eating-in-February experience, I'd say it's been a wild success. In addition to the oranges, she's ordered and successfully nursed to maturity a Meyer lemon tree, a Ponderosa lemon tree (which produces fruit the size of baseballs!), and several varieties of Italian figs. (The seeds for which her grandfather brought over from Italy.) She thinks that if you have a sunny room, you should go for it.

There you have it—Celeste's top ten for 2010. Before I go, though, a few notes. You probably noticed there are no tomato varieties up there. That's because next week, I will be bringing you another of Celeste's seed-ordering lists, this time ONLY for tomatoes. Yipee!


And a note about seed ordering: Celeste orders most of her seeds from Totally Tomatoes, which carries both tomatoes and a few other plants, like hot peppers and cucumbers and basils. It's a great catalog for anyone, but maybe more so for a tomato zealot like Celeste than for the rest of us.

I order all of my seeds from Fedco, a Maine-based company that I like because it a) sells only seeds adapted to our cold New England climate, b) is very committed to sustainable growing and non-GMO seeds, and c) has in its catalogs sections like "How Not to Order" and seed descriptions like this. Reading it makes my eyes water and my sides hurt.

To request a Fedco catalog, all you have to do is click on over here, and then call and leave a message with your name and address. They say it might take a few weeks to get it, but mine only took a few days. Have fun!

A terribly silly mistake

Hi.

Would you like to talk about pesto tortellini today? Good. Because while I tried, really I did, to cultivate an interest in chili dogs and men in tights and oddly orange jalapeño cheese dip, last night I failed only one beer in. I actually went to a separate room to sit sober and write wedding thank-you notes. It was a sorry, sorry state of affairs.

These pesto tortellini, on the other hand, went much better. In fact, I think I'd even go so far as to say they were a tremendous, out-and-out, smash hit. They might have been slightly time-consuming, and a little bit finicky, but they made the best work lunch I have had in months. I don't say this about many things, but they tasted, in a good way, like they came from a box. So I think that instead of the Super Bowl, we should focus on them.

I've been wanting these pesto tortellini for months, ever since we bought some in Charles de Gaulle on the way home from our honeymoon. They were outrageously expensive, and packaged in plastic, and drenched in cold, congealed, alfredo sauce, and somehow, they were superb. We had left our hotel in Rome without breakfast on what seemed, after the driving and the flight, like maybe another day, or even another trip, so that could have been it, and we were also headed onto an eight-and-a-half-hour flight. We had no food, and no idea that Air France is secretly a five-star restaurant that serves wine with your meal and cognac as an after dinner drink, and so we decided to stock up. We then astonished ourselves by eating the whole Air France plate and all of the tortellini, and declaring it far and away the most enjoyable in-transmit meal of our lives.

When we got home, I did not forget the experience. I craved pesto tortellini the way I wished we were still in Paris, and they both seemed equally out of reach. And then on Christmas day, my parents gave Alex and me a beautiful, hardcover, full-color Italian cookbook. It took me precisely one month to reach the page that showed a man folding squares of pasta into tiny, handmade tortellini, and exactly two hours longer to get to work.

Once I finished, I had a hard time remembering what had seemed so daunting in the first place. It couldn't have been the pasta dough, because I've rolled out fettuccine and spaghetti and even angel hair plenty of times before. It most definitely couldn't have been the pesto, seeing as our (new! accurate!) freezer inventory sheet clearly states that we have a whole seven cups of basil and Parmesan and pine nuts and garlic already whipped up. It must have been the cutting, and the folding, and the squeezing, which as you can see was a terribly silly mistake.

Tortellini, as it turns out, are very much within reach. My reach, and your reach, and your grandmother's reach, and even your ten-year-old son's. They are a project, yes, but a fun one, and especially delightful because you get to eat your results. That is always an excellent criteria, I think. So if you don't mind, I'm going to show you some pictures and give you some instructions and turn you loose.

Enjoy.

PESTO TORTELLINI

Ok. In order for maximum success, it might be a good idea to look at some pictures before you get started. If I were you, I would download this guide from Cook's Illustrated, which has a lot of very helpful step-by-step pictures, in particular the ones on the right side of the third page with numbers in the 3s entitled "Making Tortellini." Have you looked at that? Good. We can get started with the pasta dough now. Here are the ingredients:

1 pound all-purpose flour
5 eggs at room temperature
water as needed
8 ounces pesto
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
grated Parmesan cheese (0ptional)

Measure the flour into a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center, and crack the eggs into the hole. Mix the eggs with a fork, whisking carefully, and slowly begin to bring in some flour. Continue whisking flour into the eggs until the mixture gets too thick to whisk; then work the eggs and remaining flour together into a dough using your hands. If the dough is too dry, add water, but take care not to go overboard. A good dough is moist but it should never stick to your fingers. (If it does, it will also stick to the pasta crank, and you will have quite a mess on your hands.) Knead the dough on a lightly floured counter-top until it is completely smooth. Break off a small, fist-sized piece; cover the rest with plastic wrap and set it aside.

Use a pasta crank to roll out the dough into a long, thin sheet. (We have this machine, and I usually pass it through settings one through seven before I decide it's thin enough.) Lay the sheet of pasta out flat on the (still lightly floured) counter-top and cut it into one-and-a-half-inch squares using either a knife or, if you have one, a pasta bike. Use a 1/4-teaspoon measuring spoon to scoop a tiny dollop of pesto into the center of each square. Working quickly so that the pasta does not dry out (if it does it will no longer stick to itself easily), gently fold the squares into triangles. Press the two open edges of the triangles together to seal the pesto in, taking care not to push the filling out.

Now comes the fun part: fold the bottom two corners of the triangle together and squeeze so that they stick, and congratulate yourself on making your first batch of tortellini.

(If you like, you can also fold the top corner of the triangle down backward. It makes the tortellini look more traditional, but it isn't entirely necessary. I kind of liked the way my tortellini looked with their top corners up—like the three cornered hats my sister and I got in Williamsburg when we were kids. Also, I had a hard time keeping the pasta wet enough to fold when I took the time to turn down the tops.)

Continue repeating this process—rolling out a thin sheet of dough, cutting it into squares, and filling and folding them, until you have either exhausted yourself or used up all of the dough and pesto. If you have extra dough, you can wrap it in plastic wrap and it will be fine in the fridge for a day or so. If you aren't ready to cook them yet, the tortellini will also be okay in a Tupperware for a few days, although they might stick together a bit if they're still moist when you throw them in.

If you are ready to cook the tortellini, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and drop them in. They will cook very, very quickly—in a matter of one or two minutes, three tops. Watch them carefully, tasting every thirty seconds or so for consistency, and when you have the pasta where you like it turn off the heat and strain them through a colander. Serve hot, tossed with just a smidgen of olive oil or butter so they don't stick and, if you like, a dusting of Parmesan cheese.

Something solid and normal

I have been trying not to tell you anything about the wedding this week. I have been trying to put it on a shelf, to sit down squarely, and to write you about something solid and normal, like butternut squash or apple pie or turkey soup. I have daydreamed stories about scalloped potatoes and cranberry crisp and basil-tomato-mozzarella sandwiches, but the trouble is, I haven't been making any of those things. I have been planning and thinking about and going over the wedding again and again—with my mother, with Alex, and with his mother, too.

This weekend was especially taken up by It That Shall Not Be Named. Alex and I went up to Wellesley, where he grew up, for a shower thrown by his mother's friend. My mother came down and my sister and her boyfriend, too, and we got all gussied up in black dresses and blue button downs and orange ties and brown boots and ate a whole heap of good food, including quite a few of Judy Harrington's famous grape jelly meatballs. (It sounds strange, I know, but I swear you have never tasted anything like those things.) And after the wine and the high heels and the hugs and the trash bags of wrapping paper, when all was said and done, we drove home with a ridiculous pile of loot.

We felt sort of like bank robbers on the car ride home, worried about getting out for a sandwich or a bottle of fizzy water or a pit stop lest we return to a rubble of missing dinner plates and broken glass, but we made it back unscathed. And when we did, we realized that no one had warned us about the next part. We realized that we had a rather full house and some very important decisions to make over the next few months about what stays and what goes, and then we took a vote about what to do. My vote was to unpack the car into the guestroom, to pile up the boxes and shut the door and lock it and throw away the key and come back after the whole wedding hoopla is over and do the opening all over again (it would be like Christmas! twice!), but Alex informed me that this was not how things would go. We would unpack the car now, and we would unpack it for real. Meaning that there would be all sorts of unpleasant things involved like cleaning out closets, going through clothes, and throwing backpacks from elementary school away. It seemed like a good way to make a mess of an otherwise perfectly wonderful weekend, but the man was determined.

Luckily for everyone's sanity, we unpacked the dinner plates first. They are Gien, from France, and they make plain, un-buttered toast look like a meal for Cherie Blair. I pulled out a batch a pesto from the freezer, and we made a pot of pasta before the big clean. There were still spiders in the entryway closet and packing peanuts all over the floor, but the plates—our first meal on our very own handpicked china—made it all much more okay. In fact, it made it rather splendid.

I have a feeling that from now on, between the wedding and the husband and the perfectly creamy plates, dinner will make me feel that way every single day.

BASIL PESTO

This pesto, adapted from The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, is the one I grew up with, and is one of my all-time favorite sauces. My mother used to make huge batches in the summer to freeze so that we could have homemade pesto all winter long. As a toddler, my sister was famous for finishing her pesto, then promptly placing her oily, green-flecked bowl on her head. She was also famous for going on strike from bathing, but luckily, the two phases didn't overlap much.

3 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
3 large cloves garlic
1/3 cup pine nuts
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup grated parmesan
salt and pepper to taste

Combine everything in a food processor and give it a whirl. Keep going until the pesto is thick and well-blended. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Plenty of huzzah

Good morning, everyone. I hope you had a nice weekend. The rain wasn't very nice, I know, or the misty gray drizzle, but we tried to enjoy ourselves anyways. After all, it's important to send off August with plenty of huzzah. We want it to know how welcome it is to return when the time rolls around again.

And of course, the rain felt pretty good in the kitchen. I can't remember the last time I've actually wanted to turn on the oven and cook, but yesterday, I did. I cranked that bad boy right up and cleaned out the fridge. There were chocolate chip cookies—these ones, with an extra pack of Ghiradelli's for oomph—another batch of roasted carrots and fennel for soup, and finally, Marion Cunningham's stuffed green peppers. Here are the cookies, waiting their turn.


Unfortunately, it isn't the cookies I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is the stuffed green peppers, and the picture I have for you of them is not nearly so pretty. (I could go into how a certain four-legged, black-haired member of my family has suddenly developed a rather soft spot for vegetables, particularly good-old fashioned ones baked and heaping with sautéed onions and garlic and tomatoes and oregano with a nice hefty slab of mozzarella plopped down on top, but I'm not sure you'd believe me.) The point is, don't judge these things by their picture. Please. They really are a lot tastier than they look.

In case you aren't quite convinced, here is a list of their top-shelf qualities, in order of importance:

1. They have a layer of melted, crispy-where-it-has-dribbled mozzarella on top, which, if you've done your shopping around here, came from the wonderful woman at the Provincetown farmers' market who sells it fresh on the street and who routinely empties your wallet without you noticing because she is That Good.

2. They are filled with sautéed onions and garlic and tomatoes and oregano and chunks of crusty bread.

3. Do we really need to go on here? If you're not convinced yet, then maybe Marion and I just aren't for you. Heck, if you even needed convincing after all that about the mozzarella, then maybe we're not for you. Even my dog thought these were good. And he does not eat vegetables, people, Ever. (Except for raw green beans. He will sit out on the deck and chew through a whole bushel of them as if they were the best marrow filled chew toy you ever licked. But beyond that, I swear, nothing. Especially nothing slippery, like say, baked peppers and garlic and onions and tomatoes sautéed.) Apparently, there are no safe bets anymore.

Anyways, it's a bit sunnier today I know, so you don't have to make them right away. But the next time it starts to drizzle or maybe even get dark, just think about it, okay? You don't need much—not a lot of ingredients or even time. A trip to the farmers' market this weekend might help, and maybe a pair of slippers and a good, colorful apron, but beyond that, you should be good to go. So enjoy the day, and when you get around to it, let me know how this went.

STUFFED GREEN PEPPERS

If you've never read any Marion Cunningham, you really ought to. She has a wonderfully old fashioned yet practical take on things, and she delivers it all without a fuss. These peppers are a perfect example—fresh and easy and satisfying but very healthy at the same time. I adapted them a bit to fit what I had in my kitchen—her version does not have bread cubes but uses eggplant, which I didn't have on hand—and she also did without the mozzarella on top. Feel free to play around a bit depending on what you have; so long as you keep the tomato-onion-garlic-oregano flavor base, you have a very good chance of success.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 green bell peppers, halved and seeded
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, chopped
1 pint very ripe cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 tablespoon fresh chopped oregano
1 slice stale crusty bread, cut into small cubes
salt and pepper to taste
2 ounces fresh mozzarella
4 basil leaves for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and use a little bit of the olive oil to grease a pie plate. Drop the pepper halves into a pot of salted boiling water and put a plate on top of them so they stay submerged. Parboil for 4 minutes, remove, and set aside.

In a large sauté pan, heat up the rest of the olive oil over medium high heat. When the pan is warm, add the onions and the garlic and cook for several minutes, or until both begin to get soft. Add the tomatoes and oregano and cook a few minutes more. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and add the bread cubes.

Arrange the pepper halves face up in the pie plate and stuff the tomato mixture into each. Top each one with a 1/2-ounce slice of mozzarella and bake for 20 minutes. When you pull them out, put a basil leaf on top of all the mozzarella slices, and enjoy the peppers at once. (Marion says you can also eat them cold, but I can only vouch for them hot.)

The Local Food Report: dust to dust

Strawberry season, in my family, is a religious thing. We pick strawberries in late June and early July the way other families watch Wimbledon or take Saturdays at the beach—every year, all together, no matter what. 

We wake up early, at seven or even six, and we drive out to Bowdoin, a few towns over from where I grew up in Maine. We bring our stained green quart containers from last year and our sunscreen and our hats, and we haul flats of empty boxes down the rows at Prout's field until they're picked full. We pick until our fingers are stained and our lips are red, and we make sure to get forty quarts at the very least. 

Then we haul the berries back home, lay them out on the kitchen counter like checkers, and everyone takes their spots. My father pulls the greens from the berry heads, my sister washes, I chop. My mother pulls out the big pots for jam—the jars in a water bath on the back burner and the sugar and the berries bubbling up front. We make pint upon pint of jam, to last all year on toast and peanut butter sandwiches and stirred into plain yogurt sometimes.

But not this year. 

This year, between the rain and the hail and the grey fruit mold—between those three, the strawberries were done in. There were some berries at the markets, certainly; they were big, plump, and juicy, and they had hardly any taste. They could have been California strawberries for all we knew.

I talked to Tim Friary about it the other day—Tim from Cape Cod Organics Farm in Barnstable who sells the berries at the markets in Hyannis and Orleans. He said he'd lost 150 cases by mid June, $6,000 down the drain. He said they just melted—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But it was the terrific lack of sunshine that got them the most. The strawberries come in June for a reason, he explained: they rely on the longest days of the year, on the peak of light and loads of sunshine to get that sweet, signature taste. Needless to say, they got hardly a single day.

Still, we've eaten a few. We've brought home a quart here and there from Tim, or from Andy Pollock in Provincetown, and we've doled them out on tip-toe. Mostly, we've been stretching them out on salads.

That one right up there is one of my favorites: butter lettuce, basil, and balsamic with just a sprinkling of strawberries. They go on a long way on salad, strawberries do—you only need two or maybe three to make the whole thing jump. The basil doesn't hurt, of course—it's been thick with strawberries since ages and ages ago—and the balsamic makes an excellent third wheel. But the strawberries are the ones that round up the troops, bringing together crisp and peppery and floral into one big, ecstatic bunch. 

It may not feel like a big, ecstatic bunch sort of season in general, I know. But for this last week—before the berries disappear until next year—I plan to revel in the possibility all I can. 

STRAWBERRY BASIL SALAD

There might not be enough strawberries for jam, but there are certainly plenty to top a salad. Basil and strawberries are a well known pair, and the balsamic in this recipe compliments both. Look for a mild lettuce without too much of its own personality—that way the basil and berries won't have anything too strong to compete with.

1 pound sweet, mild lettuce, washed and dried

1 bunch basil, leaves picked, washed, and dried

3 tablespoons sweet balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper 

1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced

Toss lettuce and basil together in a large serving bowl. Dress with oil and vinegar, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the strawberries last, sprinkling them on top, so that they don't disappear to the bottom too fast. 

P.S. This year, I planted my own strawberry patch. Luckily, I wasn't counting on any berries just yet, but the plants sent out runners all over the place, and from just six plants they've nearly filled in a 10 foot space. Spring and August are the two best times to plant, so if you have any interest in getting a patch going, I recommend doing some research over here first. There are all sorts of tid-bits about choosing varieties and how to mulch and what not. Good luck!

September picnic

The sun filtered through the trees like moonlight as we took off our packs and swung our legs over the old railroad bridge. It was a perfect day for a picnic—cool, crisp with the promise of fall, with a stunning blue sky and white light overhead. Poplars and oaks rustled as the river meandered by beneath us, and we spread our napkins for the noontime meal.

My mother had helped me with the sandwiches: big, thick slices of squash bread from Cottage Street Bakery in Orleans, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes from my garden, a thick wedge of goat cheese invited down from Maine, and a few leaves of basil from the pot on the deck.

But the star was the spread. I made it finally—Nelia Dunbar's rosehip jelly—the recipe I received from my call to arms last week. It was a thick, luxurious red, with the aroma of tomato soup and the gooey sweetness of pie. Back in the kitchen, we'd spread it thick on toast and set out through the woods to enjoy that first taste.

The bridge made it come alive, our legs running free through empty air, spurred on by their own reflection and a swig of cider here and there. It seemed appropriate to enjoy the jelly there in the manmade wild, on the banks of a century-diked river still fighting for freedom and an empty railroad bed that wished it'd never found it. The rosehips were like that too, introduced but adopted, long ago washashores now passing as natives.

When we finally shook out our napkins and packed up to go, I wondered how many picnics the bridge had seen. This—our first—would be far from the last.

SEPTEMBER PICNIC SANDWICHES

Toast 2 slices good bread. Spread one side with rosehip or other savory jelly, and the other with a generous layer of soft chevre. Stack one side with sliced tomatoes, basil leaves, and sliced cucumbers, and top with the other. Cut in half, place in a plastic sandwich bag, and rubberband so as to keep from shifting. Bring along a salt shaker, a bit of cider, and one good apple. Enjoy outdoors.

Basil, beets & cicadas

It isn't often I have an evening of uninterrupted solitude. Even tonight, I suppose, you could count the contented furry beast at my side as a companion or distraction. But let free from the restaurant, with a Sox fanatic at the game and a roommate fled to the city, I sped home in the twilight, seeped in freedom.

Equally unexpected was dinner. I'd expected a bowl of stolen staff food after closing, guzzled down with a glass of Peak's nut brown and still settling as I made my way to bed. It was a treat, this meal for one, but I was unprepared.

I tallied the troops:

1 pound dried, homemade pasta,
the entire beet harvest from my garden,
4 dirty, rumpled garden white onions,
several tablespoons bacon fat,
and 4 live, healthy basil plants.

Hardly Thanksgiving, but certainly enough to march on. I began with the fat and onions. As the cicadas whispered through the screens, their steady violins readying the night to fall, the smell of bacon wafted out into the air. I sliced basil and beets, and watched as a plan appeared beneath my hands.

Pasta water went on to boil, a pinch of salt sinking slowly as temperature rose. Then went the flat, crisp noodles themselves—the garlic pepper pasta of a post just passed. Bacon and onion formed a slow, translucent stew, while the sudden drop of beets added cubes and color. Next followed noodles and finally basil, and dinner was set. Alone on the deck, I settled in to enjoy.

BEET BASIL PASTA

Serves 2-3

Boil 3 medium red beets until tender, about 45 minutes. Slice into small cubes. Sauté 4 chopped medium sized white onions in 4 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil until translucent. Meanwhile, boil 1/2 pound whole wheat pasta. When pasta is done, drain and add to onion pan. Add beet cubes, 1 cup fresh basil leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Toss well and serve warm with hard, grated cheese.

Plum season

Plums have always held a special power over me. As a child, our family friend had low, branching plum tree, stretching with strong limbs towards the root cellar door with one arm and a set of creaky wooden swings with another.

Each fall, laden with fruit, it would hold out its hands to us with an offering. The plump, tender purple fruits would fall into our baskets, splattering sticky juice across our fingers as we fought for that first ripe orb.

I haven't visited the tree in season in years. I've seen it at Christmas, stark and bare, and perhaps in early spring, just breaking buds in the crisp air. But this week at the Cohasset farmers' market, it appeared again in my memory at the sight of the first homegrown plum of the season. They were prune plums, the busy seller told me, tart and firm—not the thick, succulent fruit of my childhood—but I bought a bag anyway, and headed home.

I left them to sit in the kitchen bowl for a few days, to let them ripen and soften. But eventually, I could no longer resist. I pulled out a baguette and tip-toed out to the porch to pick a handful of basil. The sandwich I had in mind would cut the tartness with a thick hunk of melted brie, the soft insides of the bread replaced by chopped plums and basil and a sprinkling of sea salt.

When the oven began to steam hot, I placed the stuffed loaf inside, plum and cheese teetering dangerously over the crust, and slipped shut the door. As I waited, dishpan hands scrubbing knife and board, the smell of roasting fruit and fresh bread overwhelmed the kitchen. I pulled it out, cheese bubbling, to find the tart plums finally tender.

PLUM, BASIL, & BRIE BRUSCHETTA

Serves 4-6

Cut one baguette down the middle, scooping out some of inside bread if necessary. Stuff with 1 cup basil leaves, 2 cups chopped plums, and brie or other soft cheese to taste (Shy Brothers Hannahbells would work quite nicely). Preheat the oven to 350, place sandwich in baking pan, and bake until bread is crisp, plums tender, and cheese melted. Enjoy hot.