Still green

The tomatoes all blew over in the storm the other day. All 62 plants, laid out flat, like grass brushed back by a stream. It took me a few days, 62 stakes, and four changes of sweaty, tomato-stained laundry, but they're back on their feet. There were a few casualties. In the process—between the wind and the hammering and the detangling—I had to bring in almost four pounds of fruit still green.

Luckily, I don't mind green tomatoes. I kind of like them, even, though I realize that sounds a little crazy. There are all sorts of excellent things you can make with green tomatoes: rhubarb and green tomato chutney, green tomato jam, my great-grandmother's green tomato pickles.

But my favorite thing is green tomatoes dipped in milk, battered in cornmeal, and fried up for breakfast. It's a southern dish, I think—in Richmond, where my cousins live, it's on the menu at most brunch spots, and it's often served with a few eggs and some bacon. The green tomato slices get soft and meaty on the inside while the cornmeal crisps up on the bottom and top. The fried green tomato's closest cousin, I think, might be fried eggplant.

At any rate, we made fried green tomatoes for breakfast yesterday, and if you've never tried them, I highly recommend it. I used the recipe in the Joy of Cooking: thinly sliced green tomatoes, a saucer of milk, and a dipping mixture of flour, cornmeal, paprika, thyme, and parsley. It's simple but very good. I like to serve mine with a fried egg, sunny side up, still a little bit runny so you can sop up the yolk with the tomato slices. Oh! and hot sauce. Some people like theirs with a spicy mayo, and I'm definitely partial to that, but recently, Alex has turned me on to an orange-red Mexican hot sauce called Valentina, and I think I like that even better. It's more flavorful than spicy, but still a little hot, and it adds something of a tang to the whole dish.

We still don't have a single red tomato, unless you count the cherries. So in the meantime, we'll keep making this—until the weather improves and the green gives way to red.

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

I've adapted this recipe slightly from the one in the Joy of Cooking. It's nice to serve the tomatoes with fried eggs and, if you like, bacon. If you do decide to cook up some bacon, fry the tomatoes in the grease—they'll be that much tastier. This recipe serves 4.

4 large green tomatoes, sliced thin

1 and 1/2 cups cornmeal

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme

1 teaspoon paprika or Old Bay

salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

2/3 cup milk

olive oil, for frying

Combine the cornmeal, flour, parsley, thyme, and paprika in a small, shallow bowl or pie plate. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour the milk into a small, shallow bowl. Put a few glugs of oil into a large cast iron frying pan, and warm it up over medium-high heat.

Batter each tomato slice by dipping it first in the milk, then rolling it in the cornmeal mixture on both sides. Fry each slice until golden and crisp on both sides. Serve at once.

Easy to dream

It's hard to say before it happens what kind of mother you'd like to be. Or maybe it's the other way around—easy to dream, hard to be. Either way, I hope one day that our baby will have this: memories of a kitchen where homemade baked goods are everyday, routine.

I know there will be a thousand things to do come one baby, maybe two eventually. There will be diapers to wash and tears to dry and books to read. But I hope there will also be mama and helpers in the kitchen: aprons tied, flour flying, oven warming up to 350. I hope there will be silly substitutions and big messes and amidst it all, discovery. That's the kind of kitchen I grew up in, and I was lucky.

In the meantime, we're already baking together—me and this baby. We have to keep ourselves well-fed while we wait and grow and giddily count the weeks til meeting. We need snacks for work and Alex does, too. Mostly, we bake portable things—scones and muffins with ingredients we trust: whole grain flours, pastured yogurt and butter, eggs from the girls in Wellfleet.

This week, we baked with buckwheat. We got the whole grains this year as part of our CSA, and I ground them down right away. After a few rounds of pancakes the flour sat in the freezer, untouched, until I saw a Figgy Buckwheat Scones recipe. I had fig butter in the fridge—made last fall with fruit from a friend's tree—and plenty of buckwheat. And so we mixed: buckwheat, all-purpose, whole wheat. We whisked in sugar, baking powder, salt, then cut in the butter—cold, salty. Finally we stirred in yogurt and cream, then rolled out the dough into a thick, sticky plank. We scooped the fig butter on top in big, seedy dollops—then spread it thin and rolled the dough into logs. When we cut them, the fig butter spiraled into the dough, wrapping.

Almost half of them disappeared straight out of the oven, instantly. The taste was just like the recipe said—a sophisticated Fig Newton: rich, ripe, winey. But a few days later, we're still snacking.

Soon enough it will be time for a new mess, another hot oven, and one more homebaked recipe.

FIG & BUCKWHEAT SCONES

I've adapted this recipe from one I found in Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. I liked her base, but I added whole wheat flour and substituted yogurt for half of the heavy cream. These scones are delicious straight out of the oven, or cooled and spread with a dollop of butter the next day.

1 cup buckwheat flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick cold butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1/2 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup whole milk plain yogurt

1 cup fig butter

Whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Cut in the butter and work it into the dry mixture by rubbing it between your fingers until it is in pea-size pieces. Pour in the cream and yogurt and mix until just combined.

Transfer the dough to a very well-floured surface. It will be sticky, so sprinkle some flour on top too. Use a rolling pin to shape it into a rectangle about 8 inches wide by 16 inches long by 3/4 of an inch thick.

Spread the fig butter over the dough. Roll the long edge of the dough up so that it makes a log 16 inches long. Cut the log into two pieces, transfer it to an airtight container, and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Cut each log into about 10 equal pieces and arrange each piece on the baking sheets so that the swirled side is up. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the top of the scones are golden brown.

Happy 4th

Have you had breakfast yet? I hope not. It's a holiday, and holidays are prime time for lazy breakfasts and sleeping in. If you have already eaten, that's okay. We can do this another day. But if you haven't, do me a favor:

Grab a colander and the kitchen scissors, and run outside barefoot to the garden. Cut a whole bunch of arugula. It doesn't matter if it's gone to seed, or even started to flower—the leaves will still be good. Fill your colander, then come back in to the kitchen. Light the flame under a cast iron skillet, medium high, and drizzle some olive oil in. Cut a slice of toast—some good, rustic bread—and grab an egg from the fridge. While the pan heats up rustle through your cheese drawer and look for a hunk that's hard, Mediterranean—something like Parmesan or Pecorino or Manchego, even.

At the stove, crack the egg in the pan and start back a little when it sizzles. Then watch as the white spreads and thins and finally gets golden around the edges and forms tiny bubbles on top. When you think it will hold, flip it—but only for a minute! You want that yolk still runny, just barely hot.

Move the egg to a plate, add some more oil to the pan, and throw the toast in. Let it cook til it's golden, then flip it and do the same thing again. When the toast is done move it over to the plate with the egg, and add the arugula to the pan. You'll need a little oil so that it can wilt, and a sprinkle of salt on top. The arugula doesn't need much—a minute at most. When it's done it should still be fairly firm, fairly solid, just warm and just starting to wilt. Turn the heat off. Now arrange the greens on the plate with the toast and the egg and grate the cheese over top. If you use a carrot peeler, you'll get big, thick ribbons of white, which I think is nice. Finally, cut a few wedges of lemon, and squeeze the juice over the greens, with another little drizzle of oil oil on top.

Now sit down, breathe deep, and take a bite.

On-the-spot sold

A year ago, I was eating a breakfast that looked like this:

Of course, I was also on my honeymoon, and in Paris. Today, I am at my dining room table with a mug of cold tea. Life is rough.

Except that actually, it's not. Buttery croissants and flaky baguette are all well and good, but really, if we're being honest, they're not what I need right now. After the turkey, and the creamed onions, and the grapenut pudding, what I really want is some whole grains, a few leafy greens, and a long walk.

That's where Ancient Grains comes in. I first had Ancient Grains at the Scottish Bakehouse on Martha's Vineyard with my friend Ali. It was early, and it was cold, and I'd just flown over for the day to do some interviews. Ali told me that what you're supposed to order at the Scottish Bakehouse is the egg sandwich, but I had already told the girl in line I wanted the hot spelt and quinoa, and so I got a steaming mug of whole grains, cranberries, pecans, and milk instead.

It was, hands down, one of the best mistakes I've ever made.

There was something about the combination—the way the spelt was big and nutty, the way the cranberries were at once sweet and tart, the way the quinoa swam around in the hot, sweet milk—that made warm cereal magical. There were undertones of cinnamon and hints of maple, and I was instantly, on-the-spot sold.

It took some fiddling, and some trial and error, but just in time for the cold weather and the annual interholiday health-food kick, I've finally figured out how to make Ancient Grains at home.

ANCIENT GRAINS

I'm not sure how close this is to the version I had at the Scottish Bakehouse, but it's easy to prepare and I think that taste-wise it comes pretty close. The key is to pre-cook big batches of spelt and quinoa—I keep bags of the cooked grains in the freezer, so that they're ready to go when I roll out of bed. This recipe makes two bowls.

1 cup cooked spelt
1 cup cooked quinoa
milk or cream to taste
1 tablespoon maple syrup, or more to taste
1/4 cup fresh cranberries, halved
1/4 cup crushed pecans

Combine the spelt and quinoa in a small pot. Add milk or cream to taste—depending on how thick you like your breakfast cereal—and the maple syrup, and stir well. Warm over medium heat until just steaming—you don't want to overheat the milk. Pour the cereal into bowls, top with cranberries and pecans, and serve at once.

Note: I haven't been able to find quinoa locally (or pecans, for that matter!), but I don't think any other grain complements the spelt as well. If you have local suggestions, let us know!

Of jazz—a riff

My mother is a profound believer in the power of zucchini. A zucchini patch, she says, is a meal. It can feed a family for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner on the grill. You name the zucchini recipe, she's made it. She has four recipes for zucchini bread alone.

That one you see up there—the one with the thick, moist center and the thin green flecks—is her standby, the one she makes the most. She's had it for so long she can't remember where the recipe came from anymore—only that it's a keeper, and that it's equally good as muffins or loaves.

She makes the others every now and again—Chocolate Zucchini Bread from our friend Maddie, this Special Zucchini Bread from Heidi Swanson, Lynn's Spicy Zucchini Bread from the Victory Garden Cookbook.

But it's the loaf up there that tastes like zucchini season to me—the one that feels like sitting on the forest green stools at the kitchen counter with a knife and a stick of butter, carefully slathering one slice, then another, until the bread is gone. My mother's made a few twists over the years—swapped whole wheat pastry flour for all-purpose, thrown in a handful of poppyseeds, left in or out the nuts depending on who was home—but essentially, it's the same tried and true loaf.

The other day, I tried a version of my own. I found a baseball bat growing out from a vine wrapped around the raspberries in the garden and grated it down. I dug out a bag of rye flour from what we got in our grain CSA and added cinnamon, salt, nutmeg. I dug around in the cupboard until I found the apple cider molasses I bought this spring in a tiny store in New York, and a few minutes later, packed the oven with two loaves.

It wasn't too different from my mother's—but I was thrilled with the way the squash played off the rye. The shift reminded me of jazz—the way the same chord, played over and over, changes each time. It was a zucchini bread riff—an improv of whole wheat, molasses, spice—the same chord that somehow sounded different, new, just right.

ZUCCHINI-POPPYSEED BREAD

Though I usually make it into loaves, this recipe also makes wonderful muffins. Simply scoop the batter into prepared tins, and shorten the cooking time to about 20 minutes. Also, my mother says it's a good idea to wring out your zucchini after you grate it—otherwise the bread can get too wet.

3 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 tablespoon molasses or apple cider molasses
3 and 1/2 cups grated zucchini
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups rye flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup poppyseeds
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two bread tins. Whisk together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and molasses in a large bowl. Add the zucchini and stir well.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flours, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and poppyseeds. Pour these dry ingredients into the zucchini mixture and stir until just combined. Add the nuts if using, then divide the batter evenly between the two loaf pans.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the bread is still moist in the center but just cooked through.

The Local Food Report: Jersey Knight & Mary Washington

Every Saturday in Orleans, the asparagus at Ron Backer's stand is the first thing to go.

Right now, he has only Jersey Knight spears—from a patch of hybrids he planted back in 1998. The plants are sterile, meaning that they are all male and produce thicker, taller spears. Two years ago, though, when Backer realized that the local food movement was here to stay and his supply started having a hard time keeping up with demand, he planted another patch.

This time, he choose a more traditional asparagus called Mary Washington. Mary is known for her purple-tinged spears, although she won't produce as many big, fat ones. (Traditional asparagus has half male and half female plants, and because the female plants have to put energy into reproduction and going to seed, they produce thinner, smaller spears.) But she will make seedlings, and he can sell these at the market, so he figured it was a pretty fair trade. The Mary Washington patch is up and producing, but before he can pick it'll still be another year.

The thing about asparagus is that you have to wait three years before cutting any spears. As Backer explains it, asparagus grows from the stem, which is essentially a grass stem. The bud matures and grows four to six feet high and then turns into a fern. That fern acts like a photo cell: it captures carbon dioxide and water in the presences of sunlight and turns them into sugar. The sugar compounds into starch and gets sent down to the roots for storage. If you cut the spears before they turn into ferns those first few years, they aren't able to store any energy up. They need at least a few years storage to get off the ground; otherwise, there will never be fat spears.

Of course, once you're ready to pick Backer knows exactly what to do:

His recommendation is to blanch the asparagus, cut some toast, soft-poach an egg, mince some garlic, and finely chop a handful of basil. Then he likes to rub the toast with the garlic, layer the basil and then the egg on top, and finally, drape the spears across. Then he drizzles the whole pile with a bit of nice olive oil, sprinkles it with a few cracks of salt and pepper, and digs in.

After I got home from the market the other day with a bundle of Jersey Knights, I decided to follow the plan. Only I didn't, exactly. Instead of rubbing the toast with minced garlic, I made a garlic-anchovy butter that I'd been eying for a while from the April issue of Martha Stewart Living. I fried my egg instead of poaching it, made sure the yolk was nice and runny, and after I'd spread the toast with plenty of briny butter, layered the egg on top. Then I poached the asparagus until just al dente, sprinkled the whole thing with salt and pepper, and sat took a bite. The egg ran all over the plate, the garlic-anchovy butter melted into the bread, and the asparagus sopped it all up.

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good plan. So good, in fact, that if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go make it again.

FRIED EGGS AND ASPARAGUS ON TOAST

For the bread in this recipe I used a loaf of sourdough from Pain d'Avignon bakery in Hyannis. You could probably use any rustic loaf; the important thing about this recipe is to make sure the asparagus is fresh and the egg is under-cooked, so that the yolk oozes out all over the plate.

1/2 stick butter (1/8 pound)
1 large clove garlic, peeled
3 anchovy fillets (optional)
1 pound asparagus
olive oil
4 eggs
4 large slices sourdough bread
salt and freshly cracked pepper

In a food processor, combine the butter, garlic, and anchovy fillets. Pulse until smooth.

Cover the bottom of a large sauté pan with 1/2-inch of water and bring it to a boil. Lay the asparagus into the water and cover the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes, or until the asparagus turns bright green and is just al dente. Turn the heat off, pour the water out, cut the asparagus spears in half, and set aside.

Turn the heat to high under another large sauté pan. When the pan is hot add a splash of oil; once the oil is hot, crack the eggs into the pan. While they fry, toast the bread and get out four plates. Flip the eggs and cook them over-easy; then turn the heat off.

Put a piece of toast on each plate and spread the toast generously with garlic-anchovy butter. Put an egg on each piece of toast and arrange a layer of asparagus spears on top. Sprinkle with a few cracks of salt and pepper, and serve hot.

P.S. My Minolta is back! She arrived last week in excellent condition, and as you can see, I'm happy to have her home.

Dear Casey,

I don't know anyone who loves grape nuts the way you do.

I don't know anyone so faithful, so reverent, so unwavering in their support. There is no one so apt to drop what they're doing—a plate of scrambled eggs, steamy garlic spinach, a bowl of peppermint stick ice cream—for this humble food.

You love them, of course, in a particular way: with plain yogurt, a little bit of skim milk, chopped sweet apples, and a sprinkle of raisins on top. You like them for breakfast on the days when things are regimented—work, run, play. You like them after dinner, for dessert, milk and yogurt perfectly swirled to form a thin, silken cascade. You drop the cereal in at the last minute—splash!—so that it stays crisp. And those last few bites when you get to the bottom—when the milk and yogurt are almost gone, and all that's behind are a few grape-nuts-gone-mush—pooled, huddled in the center of the bowl—you appreciate that, too. You don't leave them behind, but rather, lift them up with the curve of your spoon.

I thought you should know that I made grape nuts today. (I know! It is hard even for me to believe.) But I found them in Kim Boyce's new book, Good to the Grain, and I thought that I should give them a whirl. I didn't have what they asked for—no graham flour, only half the buttermilk—but it turns out, they aren't a picky food. I ground down some Zorro winter wheat coarsely—graham flour is, after all, only an amalgamation of its parts—and cut the recipe in half. I sprinkled in cornmeal and brown sugar, baking soda and salt, a big wet bowl of buttermilk, vanilla, honey. I wasn't quite sure if it would all work out (grape nuts, after all, are your thing), but I fired up the oven and spread them, paddled them, across the pan anyway. The jam spreader made them smooth, and on the baking sheet in the oven they browned evenly, dark. I broke them up with a rolling pin, and what emerged was a cereal: deep mahogany, burnt sienna, cacao. I ate it for breakfast cold, with a pour of chilly milk, and sat down to write you the good news.

HOMEMADE GRAPE NUTS

adapted from the recipe for Graham Nuts in Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce (she, in turn, adapted her recipe from one in Cooking from Quilt Country, by Marcia Adams)

The flour in this recipe is a bit tricky. I made mine with our KitchenAid grain grinding attachment; I ground down whole grains of winter wheat first on the coarsest setting, then on a setting mid-way between coarse and very fine. If you do not have access to whole (literally un-ground) wheat grains or a grain grinder, you can substitute graham flour. Graham flour is made by grinding the endosperm and the bran and germ of wheat grains separately. The endosperm is ground finely, essentially into white flour, and the bran and germ are ground coarsely. The two parts are then mixed back together to form a flour with a nice coarse, flaky texture. (In contrast, whole wheat flour is made by grinding all three components together into a fine flour.) I was able to approximate this texture by only grinding my whole wheat "half way."

You can also make an approximate substitute for graham flour by mixing 2/3 cup all-purpose flour, a scant 1/3 cup wheat bran, and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons wheat germ for every cup of graham flour.

1 and 1/3 cup coarsely ground whole wheat kernels, graham flour, or graham flour equivalent
1/8 cup stone-ground cornmeal
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the "graham flour," cornmeal, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Pour the buttermilk into a smaller bowl and whisk in the honey and vanilla until smooth. Pour these wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix to form a batter.

Butter a cookie sheet. Spread the batter thinly across the pan, using a spreader or flat cake spatula to form a smooth, even sheet. (Any too thin or too thick patches will cook unevenly.) Bake for 20 minutes, turning the pan 180 degrees halfway through. Take the pan out of the oven and break off any pieces of cracker around the edges that look dark and dry. Set these pieces aside to cool, turn the oven down to 225 degrees F, and return the cookie sheet to the oven. Bake for another 30 to 40 minutes, checking on it every 10 or 15 minutes and continuing to break off any brown spots, until the cracker is a deep mahogany brown. It should also be very dry.

Break the cracker sheet into pieces, and set it on a wire wrack to cool. Lay out the cooled cracker pieces on your counter and roll over them several times with a rolling pin; crumble any large pieces that remain by hand. Store in an airtight container, and enjoy as cereal with cold milk.

Only to find

Life can be surprising sometimes—

On a weekday morning, the man you love—that same man who wakes up every day and runs 4.3 miles in 36 minutes at 6:37 and is gone by 8:15—that man can decide to stay in bed til noon with a headache.

And you can go to make him pancakes, only to find you're short all-purpose flour and throw in a bag of rye—rye you ground down from the whole berries grown in Belchertown, MA at White Oak Farm for your grain CSA—extra flour from another project, another morning, another sort of day.

And on this day, this morning, you can find that rye transforms: whole grain into airy pancakes, heavy with sweet syrup, delicate and lacy around the golden-brown edges, plump with berries that spill out, down, into an oily swill—butter, hot, thin maple. You can find that rye and buttermilk and blueberries are synonymous with delight.

Oh, and that headache. What? You can find it's pancakes and coffee and cider, and off to work another afternoon.

BUTTERMILK RYE PANCAKES
[with blueberries from Silverbrook Farms]

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole grain rye flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
4 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons honey, stirred into the melted butter to warm
1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Separate the eggs, cracking the whites into a medium mixing bowl and the yolks into a small one. Whisk the buttermilk into the whites, and the melted butter and honey into the yolks. Then whisk these two egg mixtures together. Pour the wet ingredients into the large mixing bowl with the dry ingredients, and use the whisk to gently mix the two until just combined.

Have the blueberries at the ready, along with a spoon. Warm up a large, black iron skillet over medium heat. Coat the skillet with several tablespoons of oil or melted butter and ladle several third-cup scoops of pancake batter in. Use the spoon to plop a few blueberries into the top of each pancake. Cook for several minutes, or until the bottom side feels crispy and cohesive under a spatula and the top batter starts to form tiny bubbles. Flip the pancakes with the spatula. Cook for another few minutes (this side will want slightly less time than the first side, as the blueberries can burn).

Serve the pancakes hot, with plenty of butter and real, warm maple syrup.

The Local Food Report: cranberry apple cider donuts

Scott Morse grew up in Vermont. I don't know him very well, but I do know that he recently moved to Marstons Mills, and that the transition must have been hard. Having spent four years in Vermont myself, I know that when you leave, it isn't just real fall foliage and Mobil station stops for Ben & Jerry's seconds and warm, early springs you give up. You also leave apple cider donut territory behind.

Maine, where I grew up, is also an apple cider donut place. Every respectable pick-your-own orchard has a recipe, and you eat the donuts hot, after you pick. You get a paper cup of steaming cider for dunking, and you sit with your family on a bench or hay bales or in the back of your pick-up truck. While the cashier weighs and tallies up your haul, you watch your cider fill with cinnamon flecks and floating crumbs, and you wash one, one-and-a-half, then two donuts down.

It isn't the sort of tradition you want to give up, but until a few weeks ago, I had never seen an apple cider donut on the Cape.


That's where Scott Morse comes in. A few years back he left home and went out into the world and came to the same conclusion I did: that a life without apple cider donuts wasn't the sort he wanted to live. But instead of driving home to the Common Ground Fair each September for a visit, he set out to learn how to make apple cider donuts on the Cape. He and his friend, Patience Thomas, already ran a bakery operation, Great Cape Baking, in Marstons Mills. They moved into a new space with a fry-o-lator and a master donut maker came in to teach Scott how to do things just right. He learned how to make the dough: flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, with tiny minced dried apple flecks mixed in. He learned to use the cider hot, not cold, and to keep every step of the dough at room temperature along the way. He made batch after batch of dough in the bakery's big, Hobart mixer, and he developed a system for frying and drying and sugaring the donuts that he thought made them less greasy, lighter on clothes and hips. He learned to work the dough from start to finished product in under 30 minutes, just fast enough that the baking soda would set, but not so long that it would cease to act.

Finally, he started experimenting on his own. He had a bag of local dried cranberries lying around, and folded a handful into the dough. He made sure that none stuck out the sides (they'd burn), and tossed a few into hot oil. What emerged was the very first batch of Cape Cod Cranberry Apple Cider Donuts—an immediate smash hit.


These days, Scott sells both his classic apple cider donuts and the cranberry twist at the bakery's little front at Cash Market in Marstons Mills, and also at the new winter farmers' market at Liberty Hall. He gets in every morning at 3am to roll out the dough, and you can tell, from watching him, that he loves the process. But he says the best part is watching his customers' faces change as they dig in—women with kids, contractors holding hot coffee, men brushing cinnamon sugar off their business suits. They savor it at first, he says, a little bit in awe, and then finally, they break into a grin.

Clearly, he and I aren't the only ones missing home.

Note—updated 10.30.10: Great Cape Baking is no longer at the Cash Market in Marstons Mills. I have tried to no avail to get some hard facts, but in lieu of those can offer this: I heard that they moved to a location in Hyannis, but that it fell through, and they were still selling at the farmers' market in Sandwich until that closed for the season. I haven't heard whether or not the Marstons' Mills Winter Farmers' Market is going to happen again, but if it does, I'm hoping to find the donuts there.

CRANBERRY APPLE CIDER DONUTS

Adapted from this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen

My sister was the first one to try this recipe. She made it this fall when she was home for a visit, and my parents promptly helped her devour almost every single one. (She did, to her credit, bring me a few leftovers in a plastic bag.) We all agreed that they tasted just as good as the ones we've had at pick-your-own stands in Maine and Vermont. I changed things a bit on Scott's advice—he recommended doubling the amount of apple cider, whisking in a tad more nutmeg, and adding in chewy cranberries to give things a Cape twist. This man is serious about his apple cider donuts, and when it came to the tweaks, he was dead right. Just be sure to fold the cranberries in so that they aren't sticking out anywhere from the dough—otherwise, when they hit the oil, they'll burn. Oh! and if you're looking for a source of local dried cranberries, try here or here.

2 cups apple cider
3 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sea-salted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup dried cranberries
canola oil, for frying
cinnamon sugar (1 cup granulated sugar mixed with 1 and 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon)

Bring the cider to a boil in a small pot over medium-high heat. Turn the heat down to low and leave the cider to simmer, uncovered, until it reduces down to 1/4 cup. This will take about 35-40 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium mixing bowl.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue beating until the mixture is light, pale, and creamy—about a minute. Beat in the reduced cider and the buttermilk, and then fold the dry ingredients in gently until everything is just combined.

Roll the dough out to 1/2-inch thick on a well-floured surface. Fold it in half and roll it out again. Repeat this process several times until the dough feels smooth and moist but not sticky—it shouldn't cling to your hands. Let the dough rest for 5-1o minutes, then use your hands to shape it into a rectangle, keeping the top smooth and the sides 1/2-inch thick. Press the cranberries evenly into the top of the dough, fold it over once more (so that the cranberries are sandwiched in the middle) and roll it out and shape it into a rectangle again.

Use a 3-inch donut cutter (or a round cookie-cutter and a bottle top, if you need to improvise) to cut the dough into roughly 15 donuts. As when you make shaped cookies, you will need to ball up the scraps (but not the holes) and re-roll the dough several times. Arrange the cut donuts and holes on a cookie sheet and set aside.

Fill a medium-size pot with canola oil so that the oil reaches 3 inches up the side. (After you use this oil for frying the donuts, you can set it aside for general cooking use, so it doesn't need to go to waste.) Attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pot, and over medium-high heat bring the oil to 350 degrees. Drop the donuts in batches into the hot oil using a slotted spoon. They should fry for roughly one minute and ten seconds per side, or until they are a deep golden brown. Use the wrong end of a wooden spoon to flip them through their holes, and pull them out with the slotted spoon. Transfer them to another cookie sheet lined with a clean dish towel or a layer of paper towels. Flip them once so that both sides are patted dry, and let them cool for one minute before rolling them in the cinnamon sugar.

Repeat this process until all of the donuts are fried and sugared, and then enjoy them hot, with a glass of steaming cider or coffee.

Cooking by place

I write about food, local food, because I care about place. Mostly, I care about the connections that spring up between people and their places, the way that a caramelized onion and goat cheese and apple tart can make you remember the shape of a kitchen, the silhouette of a tree.

This tart reminds me of all my places at once. It reminds me of eating fried apples at my parents' kitchen counter, my mother leaning over their big black skillet on a winter morning sprinkling a pinch of cinnamon, tasting, sprinkling again. It reminds me of the Massachusetts goat cheese at our wedding, of the pickle and cheese buffet I never saw in the swirl of hugs and smiles and the feeling I just might burst. It reminds me of Vermont, of my time at Middlebury, of the crisp Octobers and the ruddy green apples in the dining hall and the first homecoming weekend my best friend and I spent picking McIntoshes in the rain.

The recipe for the tart is from one of my favorite books—Dishing up Vermont. It sits on my cookbook shelf right next to Dishing up Maine and Charleston Receipts, the cooking by place section, I suppose. The original recipe calls for cheddar cheese, but because I'm not just Vermont, because I've always been Maine and Cape Cod, now, too, I used Massachusetts goat cheese instead. It also calls for thyme, but I went with rosemary—the only herb alive and spirited still in our yard. It calls for green pepper jelly, but after digging through our cupboards, I used local cranberry, bright cherry red.


In the end, it felt like me—like a Maine girl gone to Vermont and now settled in to a little red salt box by the sea.

APPLE, CARAMELIZED ONION, AND GOAT CHEESE TART

In the tart you see above, I used a mix of McIntosh and Northern Spy apples, and I didn't peel them. The original recipe called for a more tart, crisp variety—Granny Smiths—with their skins off, and I regretted my choice of varieties. The apples don't have to be Granny Smiths necessarily, but they should be tart, firm, and peeled. Otherwise, you'll end up with apples that are a little too mushy and all tough around the edges. So long as you have the apples right, feel free to substitute cheeses and herbs and jellies as you see fit. I don't think you can go wrong.

dough for 1 bottom 9-inch pie crust
2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 medium onion, chopped
1 lemon slice, seeds removed
1 and 1/2 tart, firm apples, peeled and sliced into thin half moons
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped
1/3 cup cranberry jelly, warmed up, and divided
4 ounces goat cheese

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough for the pie crust. Press it into a 9-inch tart pan, and pinch off any extra dough. Set the pan aside and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Melt one tablespoon of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté the onions, stirring frequently, until soft and translucent, about eight minutes. Transfer the onions to a bowl and set aside.

In the same skillet, melt the remaining butter over medium-high heat and add the lemon, apples, and rosemary. Sauté until the apples feel tender when pierced with a fork, then turn off the heat and set aside.

Brush half of the warm jelly over the bottom of the pie crust. Sprinkle the goat cheese evenly over the jelly, and layer the onions on top. Carefully arrange the apples in two concentric circles over the onions. Gently brush the tops of the apples with the remaining cranberry jelly; if it has cooled, be sure to warm it back up. Bake the tart for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the apples are lightly browned. Serve warm.

Mornings like this

Some mornings start too early, with too little milk, and too far away from home. For instance, this morning. By 4:34 am I had already shampooed my hair, checked my bag, and made it through security to Gate A7 at Boston Logan. Some people, I understand, do things like this routinely, but I am not one of them. Nor do I ever hope to be.

No.

Instead, mornings like this make me wish I could still be at home, asleep, waking up in a few hours to red and yellow tulips and a breakfast spread like the one above. Because that blackened baguette you see up there? That is a very good thing.

It’s a French thing, one that I’d heard my father talk about once or twice—but one that I’d never dreamed of making until we grew a crop of very spicy radishes this spring. They’re black radishes, nero tondo or gros noir d'hiver, from 16th century Europe, and they grow crazy fast. We have to eat at least two a day, otherwise the leaves will completely overshadow the row of scallions next door, and we might never see the spinach again. We bring them in, shower them, and scrub their skins clean. Then, I peel them off, because the other day I figured out that the skin is where the spice lives.

When it comes to radishes, I am no fan of spice.

Actually, if we're being honest, I don’t really love any radishes, spice or not. I like them alright, in a salad or a stir-fry, but for the most part, I don't think they add much. They kind of disappear between the butter lettuce and the dressing without giving even a passing kick.

But that spread above—radishes on toast? It changes all that. Or rather, I should say, very thinly sliced radishes and salted butter and sea salt on toast that is slightly burnt and still warm. The change has everything to do with the details.

For starters, the toast needs to be a little bit black. I burnt it accidentally the first time I made this, but then when I got to the end, to the tiny section of the loaf that was only golden brown, I realized it had been a serendipitous mistake. The butter tastes sweeter on slightly burnt toast, and the radishes do, too. With a sprinkling of salt, the whole thing melds together. The radishes get so bendy they nearly blend in with the butter, the toast stays stiff underneath, and the salt bring the whole thing alive.

It's the kind of breakfast that makes you want to dance around the room. But since I only have 13 minutes more of paid time on Cleaveland International's wireless at&t, I'm not going to stick around for that.

I'll see you Thursday, and you'll just have to let me know how it went.


NERO TONDO ON TOAST

The variety of radishes I used for this, nero tondo, is very spicy. If you're going to buy yours at the farmers' market or grow them yourself, I think I would stick with a pink variety—one that is more delicate, with a little less kick. French breakfast would be nice, or the ones that they call Easter eggs.

half a baguette, sliced in half horizontally and then cut in half again
6 or 7 large radishes, sliced very thin
butter, for shaving
sea salt to taste

Toast the baguette until it is just a little bit black. Shave as much butter as you feel is right over the warm toast in long peels. Layer with radishes, and sprinkle sea salt over top. Eat warm, with a cup of creamy coffee or sweet black tea.

Worth saving

I have been fooled by a whole lot of low-fat recipes in my time. As a kid, I drank only skim milk. I often ate 98% lean hamburgers with whole-wheat buns and 50% skim cheddar cheese slices on top, and I liked them quite a bit.

But once I tasted the real things—sharp cheddar, creamy milk, hamburgers with just a smidgen of grease—the jig was up. My parents tried their hardest, but innocence can't last forever, and it was terribly hard to rewind.


Which is why the low-fat waffles I made this weekend didn't fool me one bit. They were clipped from a magazine whose name reads something like Booking Bight and whose March 2007 issue contained a recipe for Gingerbread Waffles as part of the menu for a champagne brunch.

After two whole years of anticipation, you can imagine the let down when they came out sort of floppy and with a distinct lack of oomph. They were good, but I'd been hoping for some va-va-voom, if you know what I mean.

I may have played some part.

First of all, there was the two-year build up, which never helps expectations, and secondly, I did some ingredient swapping here and there. I added in whole-wheat flour where I maybe shouldn't have, substituted candied ginger for the real, fresh thing, and used sour milk instead of buttermilk. Maybe, maybe, if I had kept everything just so, the recipe might have turned out perfectly. But I kind of doubt it.

I think the real problem was that the waffles were low-fat.

I don't make this claim lightly. I've spent an awful lot of Sundays doing research, eating waffles at friends' houses and from my own press, and I've learned that the basic recipe can take almost any sort of milk or fruit or flour variation. Whole-wheat flour, powdered buttermilk, sparkling water, even, can all turn out a mean batch of Belgians. But when you start fudging fat content, well, that's where things start to go downhill.

For starters, the waffles lose their crispness. They get kind of spongy and floppy, better for toasting from the freezer than eating on the spot with a puddle of syrup. They also require a lot more butter spread on top, which sort of defeats the original purpose, if you see what I mean.


I should have seen it coming, what with the applesauce and the canola oil and the fat-free buttermilk.

The good news is, I think the recipe can be salvaged, and handily at that. Anything with a title like Gingerbread Waffles is worth saving, after all. The waffles also have on their side the fact that they used up a good deal of applesauce from the freezer, had a delightful Christmas-morning sort of ring, and popped up bites of candied ginger at all the right times.

I think, in fact, that with their fat back, they're going to be not just average March Sunday keepers, but maybe even New Year's Day or Easter material. So here's a modified recipe. Tweak it further as you'd like, just don't leave out the fat. Once you've lost your innocence, they just won't taste the same.

GINGERBREAD WAFFLES

adapted, ahem, from this recipe, published in this magazine in March 2007

1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 and 1/2 cups sour milk or buttermilk (I'd stick with 2% or whole for best results)
6 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons finely grated peeled ginger
2 eggs, separated
a pinch of cream of tartar
1 cup applesauce
1/3 cup minced candied ginger (optional)

Plug in your waffle press to preheat it, so that as soon as the batter is mixed it'll be ready to go. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. In a medium-size bowl, stir together milk, butter, molasses, grated ginger, and both egg yolks. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Sprinkle in the candied ginger, and mix that in too.

In another medium-size mixing bowl, whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar until they form soft peaks. Using a spatula, gently fold the beaten whites into the batter. Ladle about a cup of batter onto the preheated iron, and cook according to manufacturers instructions. (A good rule of thumb is that when the steaming stops, the waffles are ready to come out.) Serve hot with butter and maple syrup, or as the original recipe recommends, champagne and a dollop of lemon curd. Hear, hear!

Dune bogs

My friend Talilla took me adventuring the other day. A fine mist fell as we packed into the car, dog and bags and rain jackets jostling loudly.

We drove away from her house, past the East End playground and out towards the highway on Snail Road. At an old abandoned parking lot at the base of the dunes, we camoflauged the car behind a bush and piled out.

We wound up the sand track, rolling up and down the sea of dunes as we headed towards the water. The vegetation changed—trees gave way to shrubs, shrubs to beach grass, and finally sand to sea. The waves rolled in, crashing white, and we walked south along the shore.

It took us nearly a half hour to reach the bog. Talilla veered inland, suddenly, and there it was: a massive expanse of wild cranberries. The plants burned red. Growing amongst the berries were clumps of grass, and strange tan mushrooms the consistency of jello. We picked, stooped over, until we'd each filled a bag. The berries were firm, a deep scarlet, and big in hand.

When our backs began to ache, we straightened and turned home. We wandered back through the warm rain, searching out the expanse of pavement and the silver glint of my car. We hadn't picked much, I realized later, at home. A few cups, perhaps, barely enough for a pie. I wondered what to do with mine—a pudding, maybe a salad?

I found a few pudding recipes scattered online—most too sweet, one with rice, another with cinnamon and apples. But none were quite what I was looking for. It was morning, still, and I wanted a breakfast dish.

I decided to adapt a dessert pudding, cutting the sugar and raisins and adding an egg for thickness. The rest was easy: scalded milk, a cup of oatmeal, a few spoonfuls of sugar and the cranberries, halved. All told, it couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes to prepare, and after a half hour in the oven, it was ready to eat. I cleaned my bowl, twice, and scribbled the recipe down for safe keeping.

CRANBERRY OATMEAL BREAKFAST PUDDING

Serves 4

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium heavy-bottomed pot, stir together 2 cups whole milk, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. Stir well, and heat until very hot but not boiling. While you wait, half 2 cups fresh cranberries. Stir together with 1/4 cup white sugar in a bowl. When milk is hot, stir in 1 cup oatmeal, 1 egg, beaten well, and cranberries. Bake 30 minutes; enjoy hot with cream or milk.