In full swing

Strawberry season is here! The rain is here, too, I know, but we can't let that put a damper on things. Saturday morning the berries were everywhere at the markets: plump, blushing, peeking out from cartons of green. They're in our garden, too, big and dark, in full swing.

Yesterday morning Alex and I decided to celebrate. We slept through the storm and made French toast and topped it with a whole quart of fresh-picked berries: sweet red slivers over soft slices of anadama soaked in eggs and cream. And then, between cleaning and organizing and dinner and a walk, we managed to eat a whole other quart over the course of the day.

I don't do much cooking with strawberries—for the most part, I think they're best plain—but I do have a few favorite recipes. There's my mother's strawberry jam, for one, and the award winning strawberry-rhubarb pie I picked up last year from Elise. We always put up a bunch—just hulled and sliced and sprinkled with a spoonful of sugar, so that they'll juice before they freeze. And usually, I make strawberry shortcake.

But this year, I have my eye on a new recipe. It's the Fresh Strawberry Pie from last month's Cook's Illustrated, and what I like about it is that it doesn't fuss much with the berries. (If you want to see a how-to video, click on that link up there.) You just puree a few berries and cook them down with sugar, cornstarch, Sure-Jell, and salt—to make a thick glaze—and then pour it over a bunch of fresh strawberries into an already-baked bottom pie crust. The glaze firms up and holds the strawberries in place, and since you're not baking them, they don't ooze or juice and they still taste like good, sweet, fresh berries. There isn't much sugar, or much work, and after you've let the pie chill and set, you cover the top with homemade whipped cream. It sounds like sort of a shortcake-in-a-pie thing to me.

So if you're looking for me today, that's where I'll be. I'm heading out to pick more berries now, and by tonight, I plan to be digging in to a chilled slice of homegrown berries and sweet cream.

NO-BAKE STRAWBERRY PIE WITH WHIPPED CREAM

I've adapted the recipe from Cook's Illustrated slightly, but the idea is all theirs. I'm thinking I might also try making this with cooked down homemade strawberry jam instead of making the fresh berry puree. Our jam tends to be soupy, but who knows---with a little more time on the stove and a hit of Sure-Jell, it might be just the thing!

1 and 1/2 quarts fresh strawberries, gently rinsed and hulled
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 and 1/2 teaspoons Sure-Jell for low-sugar recipes (the pink box!)
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 fully baked bottom pie crust
1 cup heavy cream
a dash of vanilla
1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar

Pick out a handful of the "worst" berries (think small, under-ripe, bruised, etc.). If you have a kitchen scale, they should weigh about 6 ounces; if not, aim for about a cup and a half. In a food processor, puree them until they're smooth.

Whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, Sure-Jell, and salt in a medium saucepan. Stir in the puree and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes (keep stirring!). Scrape the thickened puree into a bowl and stir in the lemon juice. Set this mixture aside and let it cool to room temperature.

When the glaze is cool, add the remaining strawberries. Stir gently until the berries are all coated, then scoop the mixture into the prepared pie crust and spread it around evenly. Put the pie in the fridge and let it chill until the glaze is set, about 2 hours.

Just before you're ready to serve the pie, whip the cream with the vanilla and confectioners' sugar until it is smooth and thick and forms soft peaks. Spoon the cream over the top of the pie, use a spatula to make it pretty, and serve immediately.

Homemade maple ice cream

Can you see happiness in a pair of hands?

I think so. Especially when they're clutching a pint of homemade maple ice cream, churned from just whole milk, cream, and maple syrup.

I don't know why we haven't talked about this ice cream before. I certainly would never withhold dessert on purpose. I think it's just that it's so routine, so everyday, that I would no more make a fuss over it than I would over my morning bowl of granola. It is my go-to ice cream, and it is so simple that we don't buy ice cream anymore. Really. If you own any sort of mechanized homemade ice cream maker, whipping this recipe up is literally easier than going to the store.

To be fair, it's really more of a formula than a recipe. I learned it from Heidi, over here, who in turn picked it up from a woman named Patricia Wells. You take 2 cups of heavy cream, 1 cup of whole milk, and 1/2 cup of sweetener. (In my experience, honey, maple syrup, and brown or white sugar all work.) If you want to get fancy you can infuse the milk with ginger—ginger ice cream, we've found, makes an excellent accompaniment to pumpkin pie—or add a bit of lemon extract or a pinch of nutmeg. But we usually keep it simple: for apple pie, plain maple; for a berry crisp, honey and a spoonful of vanilla.

Over time, you'll find your own favorites, too. I'd love to hear what you come up with!

HOMEMADE MAPLE ICE CREAM

Maple is the simplest flavor, because you don't need any extracts, and you also don't need to melt the sweetener with the milk.

(If you use honey or sugar, you will need to heat them with the milk until they dissolve, and then chill the mixture until it gets back down to fridge temp. Another thing to keep in mind is that maple and honey both impart their own particular flavor to the ice cream, which is compatible with some extracts and spices but not with others. Sugar tastes more neutral.)

With maple, you can just grab the cream, milk, and maple straight from the fridge (if your maple isn't refrigerated, you should put 1/2 cup in to chill before you begin), pour them into the ice cream maker, and sit down for dinner. When you're done, the ice cream will be too.

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup maple syrup

Mix all three ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined. Pour this mixture into the bowl of an ice cream machine and churn until thoroughly frozen. Eat some now, but also know that the ice cream will improve in flavor and texture over the course of a few days in the freezer. The maple flavor generally becomes more pronounced, and the ice cream firms up.

The concept is this

Is anyone up for a lasagna today? I'm thinking a summer-in-the-winter, put-up pesto and tomato sauce and homemade bechamel type of gig. Takers? Yes? Ok.

There's only one hitch. I made this about a month ago, and although I can still remember the fabulous August brightness of the tomatoes and the way the pesto made me feel like maybe, just maybe it might be time for a pond swim that afternoon, I did not exactly write down the recipe. Not that I had a recipe to begin with, which is why I think this might be okay. The thing about lasagna is, you really don't need a recipe. You need to understand the concept, and the concept is this:

Find a box of noodles, the thick, flat kind with crinkly edges made for lasagna (or make some yourself). Get out a 9" by 13" casserole dish, and butter it up. Go down to your freezer, or open your pantry, and pull out a pint of that fantastic tomato sauce you made back when you couldn't even imagine the meaning of the words Wintery Mix. While you're at it, grab a half cup or so of the pesto you made with your neighbor's extra basil. Now root around in the fridge and hope for some milk, and butter, and mozzarella, and grab a few spoonfuls of flour and make a bechamel sauce. (Preferably this one, but if you have your own favorite, you just need a similar amount.)

At this point you could also get out some frozen spinach or pick some fresh from the greenhouse, and cook it down with a little bit of olive oil and garlic. Or maybe you have a freezer full of sundried tomatoes. Or, you could be into sauteed mushrooms. Whatever you're feeling here, go with it.


Finally, heat up a pot of water, add a pinch of salt, and boil those noodles. Now comes the hard part: drain the noodles, put them back in the pot, and drizzle some olive oil over them. The noodles will be hot, painfully hot, but if you're like me, you won't have any dishgloves so you'll go ahead and burn your hands, because you need to work quickly before they all stick together in a glob.

Spread a tiny blob of bechamel across the bottom of the casserole dish. Put a layer of noodles on top. Then a layer of tomato sauce, then more noodles, then maybe a few dollops of pesto and whatever vegetables you've got. Then another layer of noodles, and a smooth one of bechamel, and so on and so on. Until you've got a big, layered sandwich of tomatoes and noodles and pesto and vegetables and creamy, delightful sauce. Then, when you get to the top, layer on some slices of mozzarella and maybe even a bit of grated Parmesan.

And there you go. You've got yourself an oven-ready Winter-Into-Summer Lasagna. Happy Monday, everyone, and happy almost-March. Only 22 days until spring!

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.

Higher callings

First off, Andrea, you were right:

Black raspberries have two higher callings, and one is definitely, without-a-doubt, ice cream. Embarrassingly enough, I was actually very surprised to discover that when you make your usual ice cream recipe and add black raspberries, it tastes like black raspberry ice cream. This might not sound like a revelation, but somehow, it never occured to me that the purple color and distinctive flavor you find when you get black raspberry ice cream at the store might have actually come from a plant once upon a time. I always assumed it was sort of like blue raspberry popsicles—completely made up—not a rare, delicious find.

At any rate, now that I know, I have made two batches. Two! I will never doubt black raspberries again, or ice cream flavors, or any of you.

And speaking of you, I have something else to thank you for today. Thanks to your suggestions about how to make a homemade hummus, I've been spending a lot of time recently working on my black bean dip. The peppers are in, and the celery, and the carrots, and when they're this pretty, it only seems right to have something properly homemade to dip them into.

And so I'm proud to announce that based on your suggestions, I think I've finally come up with something worthy of the title Black Bean Hummus. The version I made today—the third version of a turtle bean, garlic, and sesame oil riff—I'm pretty sure is it. It's the simplest I've tried, and also the best. The key is the ingredients: good, cooked-to-creamy-mush black turtle beans from our CSA, fresh roasted garlic, chives from the back deck, and a glug of top quality sesame oil. That's it.

I've been eating it on carrots, and those lovely, sweet, purple-with-a-tinge-of-green peppers you see up there (from Matt's Organic Garden in Dennis). It's been magnificent. If I were you, instead of trying to turn on a burner or a stove—as a sort of survival tactic to Beat The Heat!—I would make a batch right now. And maybe some black raspberry ice cream, too.

I hope you're enjoying summer, everyone.

BLACK RASPBERRY ICE CREAM

The base for this ice cream uses no eggs, which I like because it means you hardly have to turn on the stove. Also, with the exception of the vanilla, this can be an all-local ice cream. I got our milk and cream from Paskamansett Farms, the honey from Mel Hammond down the street, and the black raspberries from our very own yard. Hip-hip, hooray!

1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup honey
2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups black raspberries, crushed
chocolate chips (optional)

Heat the milk and honey up over low heat in a small pot, stirring constantly. They don't need to get hot—just warm them up enough that the honey melts into the milk. Pour the mixture into a small bowl along with the vanilla and the cream, and chill for at least 2 hours. When the mixture is cool, pour it along with the black raspberries into an ice cream machine, and freeze/churn as directed. If you like, at the very last minute, stir in a cup or so of good, dark chocolate chips. Spoon the ice cream into a container and freeze for several hours before serving—the ice cream will be very soft when you first make it, and it needs this time to set.

BLACK BEAN "HUMMUS"

This is not so much a hummus as a black bean dip, but since black bean dips are usually more of a nacho/football thing and this is much more of a carrot/green pepper recipe, I think the hummus deserves its place in the name. This should last for at least a few weeks in the fridge, and is perfect as a summer veggie dip.

2 cups cooked black beans
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/4 cup chives, chopped fine
3 big heads garlic, roasted (that's a link to a roasting technique that works just as well with a toaster oven, so that you don't have to warm the whole house up)
salt to taste

Put the black beans, sesame oil, and chives into a food processor. Squeeze the soft roasted garlic cloves from the heads in, too, and puree. Season with salt to taste, and refrigerate.

The Local Food Report: have your cake

You know that saying—you can have your cake, and eat it too? Well, with Marissa Ferry, it's true.

You can have your cupcake, or your rhubarb ginger stout cake, or your panna cotta, and you can know that it was made by an up-and-coming Wellfleet pastry chef who uses as many local ingredients as possible. That way, you can feel good about dessert, and she can too.

Marissa grew up around here—she started baking at Nauset and then went on to the Baking & Pastry Arts program at Johnson and Wales—but she did plenty of traveling before coming home. She's worked under bakers and chefs all over the place—in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, even Orlando. But she's been back on the Cape for a few years now, turning out cupcakes and ice creams and all sorts of other goodies from a space in the basement of the Flying Fish in Wellfleet. She says it's good to be home—that it feels like closing a loop.


Since she arrived, she's been building her foodshed—networking with local farmers, asking for lists of when they'll have rhubarb and blueberries and exactly how long the peaches last. Recently, she even started working with the cheesemakers over at Shy Brothers Farm. They're making this new curd—cloumage—which is sort of like a ricotta/cream cheese/yogurt blend. It's a soft cheese, and it has the same unique tang and creaminess of crème frâiche. Marissa's putting it into panna cotta, and after trying out her recipe for you all last night, I can say without reservation that it's divine.

Of course, that's partially the cheese, but it's also partially Marissa. We serve her desserts where I work at Blackfish, in Truro, and her other creations—things like a ginger stout cake made with Ipswich Stout and served over a local rhubarb compote with a spiced honey ice cream—will also stop you in your tracks. She's always coming up with new combinations—things like this spring's hot honey cake, made with honey from E & T farms and served with lemon confit and chamomile tea ice cream—to fit the seasons. Pretty soon, she'll swap out the spring fruits—strawberries and rhubarb—for the raspberries and blueberries as they get ripe. After that it will be apples and stone fruits, and with any luck, she'll be able to get her hands on some local cherries to make clafouti for the first time this year.

If you're looking for her, look for the Wildflour Bakery sign that will be going up in a few days beside the Flying Fish. Right now, she does all the desserts for them and for Blackfish, and a few catering events and special orders, too. She's good at everything from tarts to ice creams to cupcakes, and of course, panna cotta, too.

CLOUMAGE PANNA COTTA

This dessert is about as easy and as elegant as they get. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes from start to finish, and there's no baking. Just stir, whisk, and pour. After trying it once, I can't wait to start playing with flavors—maybe almond-raspberry? Blueberry-lemon? Coffee? Peaches with thyme? Of course, the cheese is important; there's a list of local places where you can find Cloumage over here. If you can't get that, crème frâiche will work, but you will need to play around with the amount of gelatin to get the consistency just right.

1 pound Cloumage
1/2 ounce gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon orange zest
1/4 teaspoon lemon zest
3/4 cup granulated sugar plus 1 tablespoon, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
sliced fresh strawberries and a few torn basil leaves, for topping

Arrange 8 small ramekins on a baking sheet and spoon the cloumage into a large mixing bowl.

Bloom the gelatin. (This is pastry-chef speak for pouring the packet of gelatin into the cold water, stirring, and waiting a bit.)

Pour the cream, orange and lemon zests, sugar, and salt into a medium-size, heavy-bottomed pot. Stir until the sugar dissolves and bring to a simmer. (Do not boil.) Turn the heat off, add the vanilla, and pour this mixture over the cloumage. Add the gelatin and whisk until smooth.

Divide the mixture evenly between the ramekins and put them on the baking sheet into the fridge to set for three hours. About an hour before you're ready to serve, mix the strawberries, remaining tablespoon of sugar, and basil, and leave at room temperature to juice. Serve the panna cotta chilled, with a spoonful of fresh strawberries and basil on top.

One, seven, ten

I can't say this for sure, but I have a feeling Ina Garten is living life right. Or maybe it's more that I think she's eating life right. I think it might be the fact that she is not afraid of butter, or cream, or combining absurd amounts of the two that makes me enjoy her so much. (I have a feeling she'd scoff at a stick of margarine, and I like that.) Whatever else it might be, it most certainly has to do with these chive biscuits.

These particular biscuits are from one of her older cookbooks: Barefoot Contessa Family Style. It's a simple, elegant book in her signature style—quick cooking with good ingredients and minimal fuss. The recipe is a one-bowl, seven-ingredient, ten-minute affair, and the biscuits are buttery, and crumbly, and just chive-y enough. They went into the oven as drop biscuits, and came out as steaming piles of heaven. If I were the type to carry food around in my pockets, these biscuits would be in. They are terribly, addictively good, and when it comes to pulling together a fast, classy dinner, they win.

Also, they make very good use of the one herb we have in abundance right now. The chive plant that has been living, untouched, unwatered, and utterly unloved for the past five years on the deck is thriving, and it is in full bloom. According to my super gardener friend Tracy, if we want to have chives all summer, we need to snap those flowers off. And so last week I gave the chive a haircut, consulted Ina, and we had chive biscuits all around.

Incidentally, if you leave out the chives, this recipe also makes excellent biscuits for strawberry shortcake. If I were you, I'd do what I did, and double the recipe. Then I'd divide the dough in half, take one chunk, green it up with chives, and make biscuits to eat with fried eggs alongside your salad at lunch. When that's done I'd take the other half, bake it plain, pile the sweet biscuits with sliced fresh berries from your garden and whipped cream, and call it a day.

However you work it, you're in for a treat.

CHIVE BISCUITS

I adapted this recipe ever so slightly from Ina Garten's recipe in Barefoot Contessa Family Style. Given the amount of butter and cream they call for, I think it is of the utmost importance to choose your dairy carefully. We're getting ours from Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth right now; if you go store-bought, for cream I recommend anything anti-biotic- and hormone-free, and for butter I like Kate's of Maine. Whatever you choose, just be sure not to do anything crazy, like, say, throw in a stick of margarine. I don't think Ina would approve.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 pound (1 stick) cold butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 scant cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh chives

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and work it in with a pastry cutter until it is in pea-size pieces. Add the heavy cream and stir until just mixed; gently fold in the chives.

Grease a baking sheet and use two spoons to form the dough into drop biscuits roughly an inch and a half in diameter. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown and the insides are cooked through. Serve warm.

I've fallen hard

I am well aware that we talked about rhubarb with gingerbread ten days ago, but today, we are going to have to talk about it again. The thing is, rhubarb season is short and sweet, and that was pudding, and this is shortcake, and well, what can I say. I've fallen hard.

Also, I have a feeling that once you take a bite—a bite of soft, puffy Raleigh Tavern Gingerbread with stewed rhubarb and a big pile of homemade whipped cream, you won't mind. You'll be thrilled, I think.

I found the recipe on a card a few weeks ago. It was a birthday card that my grandmother had sent to my mother, all the way back in 1994. It had a painting of the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia on the front, and inside, two notes. I can hardly read my grandfather's writing—he passed away two years after the card was written, when I was only eleven—but I can make out the words "baby girl" and "moment of great joy," and given the way my grandfather felt about my mother, I think it's a fairly safe bet to guess he's talking about her birth. My grandmother gets a little mushy too, but she manages to keep it together enough to tell my mother that their favorite gingerbread recipe, the one from Raleigh Tavern, is printed on the back.

Which is a good thing, because my mother loves that gingerbread. We used to go to Colonial Williamsburg a lot when my sister and I were little—my mother's family is from Richmond—and we stopped at Raleigh Tavern for a bag of gingerbread every trip. The thing about the Raleigh Tavern gingerbread is that it's different from any other specimen I've ever had. It's dry, and crumbly, and almost biscuit-like, and when you buy it at the tavern, it comes all puffed up in the shape of a scone. It's almost like a gingerbread shortcake, I've always thought.


Which is why I was so delighted to dig up the recipe the other day when I had a jug of fresh whipping cream (our first from the farm!) and a bag of pink, fresh-cut rhubarb stalks from the farmers' market that were just begging to be stewed. I had a sudden flash forward to rhubarb gingerbread shortcakes, and there was no turning back. There was instead a rush of cranking up the oven, pulling out the molasses, and turning on a burner. And then there was rhubarb gingerbread shortcake, and first bites, and something that felt a lot like falling in love.

RHUBARB GINGERBREAD SHORTCAKE

This recipe is adapted from a gingerbread cookie recipe my grandmother picked up at Raleigh Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg. I've tweaked it only twice—I substituted butter for margarine and heavy cream for evaporated milk. The cookies didn't rise quite as much as they usually do, which probably had something to do with the heavy cream, but for making shortcake they were a little bit moister, and just right.

1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup molasses
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups all-purpose flour

1 pound rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar

whipped cream

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. In a large bowl, mix together the melted butter, cream, molasses, and vanilla and stir until smooth. Add the flour a cup at a time, stirring until just incorporated after each addition. The dough should be stiff enough to handle without sticking to your fingers; you may need to add up to an extra 3/4 cup of flour. When the dough is smooth, roll it out 1/2-inch thick on a lightly-floured surface. Use a biscuit cutter to punch it into rounds, and bake for 8-10 minutes on greased cookie sheets.

To make the stewed rhubarb, combine the rhubarb, water, and brown sugar in a medium-size saucepot. (Do not use an aluminum pot; the rhubarb is acidic and will react with the metal.) Stir to combine. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, or until the mixture comes to a boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer and continue cooking 10 minutes, or until all the rhubarb pieces break down.

To make the shortcakes, cut each gingerbread cookie in half and spoon about 1/4 cup of stewed rhubarb over the bottom piece. Top this with a dollop of whipped cream and the top of the cookie, and serve at once.

P.S. About the photographs. Alex and I in a terrible joint blunder managed to drop and break my Minolta Instant Pro several weeks ago, an accident that almost cost us our marriage. And although our union survived and I just won a new one on eBay that should be arriving very shortly, I am currently without my Minolta and instead using an old sx-70. It works perfectly, but the only film currently available is old, wonky expired Polaroid film that does not seem to have its colors quite right. So, we're going with it, getting into the crazy, and holding our breath for a change in either film or cameras soon. Until then, bear with us. I do know that rhubarb should be pink and red, not orange and blue. I swear.

Feeling leek-y

Recently, I've been feeling sort of like a leek.

I've been feeling stretched a little thin, with layers and layers of thoughts and to-do's beneath. I've been feeling crazy, and a little bit out of control, but in an excited way—the kind of way that makes you unsure just which direction you ought to be going in at any given moment, but that makes you quite sure that whatever you pick will be good.

The leek-y-ness is related, I think, to the fact that I haven't been home much. After that perfect Seattle trip, I headed off to the Greenbrier in West Virginia for a food writers' symposium, and it’s been a whirlwind ever since. I loved every minute of being gone—I loved the writing panels and the brain stretching and the dinner conversations and the mint juleps and the great stories that came out of the bottles of Kentucky bourbon—but I have to admit I’m awfully glad to be back.

I think everyone else is glad to see me, too: the tomato seedlings are begging to be caged, the dog has some sort of strange canine cold that makes him sneeze in a weird, wobbly, tail-shuddering sort of way, and the Fishmonger doesn't seem to have touched a single thing in the fridge, not even the rhubarb, the entire time I was gone.

Even my film is a bit off its stride. See that picture below there? It was taken on a roll that passed through the security x-ray four times.


Thankfully, there is a cure for feeling leek-y, and that is to go ahead and cook some up. I have this theory that when you eat leeks, when you dress them up with white wine and cream and a pinch of nutmeg, the craziness of feeling leek-y subsides, and you come back down to earth. It sounds a little far-fetched, I know, but I swear it works every time.

Sunday morning, we ate a whole heaps of the sliced green stalks simmered in chicken stock and cream with an egg over easy and slices of imaginary toast. We mopped up the leek cream and yolk with our spoons, and though real bread would have been nice, it was a perfect meal all the same.

Besides, toast is around all the time. When there are vegetables as good as leeks in season, it can wait.

CREAMY LEEKS

adapted from the 1997 Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker

I found the bunch of leeks below at the first Orleans farmers' market of the season on Saturday morning. The woman I bought them from said they had wintered over and were the first things to show life once the brighter days came around. Since leeks are cold weather crops, they won't stay for long. I highly recommend picking some up while you can.


1 and 1/2 tablespoons butter
3 large spring leeks, cleaned and trimmed
1 cup chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 sprig fresh thyme, picked
salt to taste
1/4 cup white wine
2 tablespoons whole milk or cream
a teeny pinch of freshly ground nutmeg

Haul out a big frying pan and let it heat up over a medium-low flame while you cut the leeks. Slice them very thinly into rounds, so that they come off the knife in tiny concentric circles, keeping an eye out for dirt. (The higher up from the root you get, the more likely you are to see dirt embedded between the layers. Just pull off a few of the outermost leaves, and you should be able to wash it away.) Slice up to where the leek grows tough, and discard the leaves.

Put the butter in the hot frying pan, allow it to melt, and add the leeks. Cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly and being careful not to let them brown. Add the chicken stock, the thyme, and a few pinches of salt, and let this mixture simmer for about 5 minutes, or until the leeks are tender. Turn the heat up and pour in the white wine.

Let this boil for about 7 or 8 minutes, until the alcohol is cooked off and half the liquid is gone. Add milk and nutmeg, and cook for another minute or so, until the liquids come together and the spice is fully absorbed. Serve hot with toast and a fried egg, and salt and pepper to taste.

The Local Food Report: making goat cheese

Goat cheese is magical. Take what it does to this salad, for instance. You pile up a heap of spinach, one warm, sliced beet, and a bit of chevre. The goat cheese melts into the warm beets, coats the spinach with a thick, oozy glaze, and with a sprinkling of sea salt, a drizzle of olive oil, and a little bit of vinegar, suddenly, there's a meal on your plate.

But what's truly magical is making goat cheese. I learned how the other day.

Jen Holloman from Ocean Song Farm in Cummaquid taught me. She brought in two gallons of fresh goats' milk from the farm, poured them into a stainless steel bucket, and heated them up over the stove. When they started to steam, we began to whisk, and after a few minutes the milk was pasteurized. We turned down the heat, and made an ice bath in the sink.

From there, the work was quick. We stirred in a bit of rennet—the enzyme that separates the milk into curds and whey—and added a bacterial culture to give the cheese that distinct, chevre taste. Thick, soft curds came together into a ball, and we poured the liquid down the sink through a cheesecloth bag. (You can use whey in some recipes for biscuits and bread—but we had enough on our hands for one day.) What remained was a malleable, creamy ball of cheese—the first chevre I'd ever made.

Sadly, as I discovered when I went to eat the cheese three days later at home, we messed the process up. We didn't let the curds and whey cool for long enough after adding the rennet—usually Jen lets them sit overnight, but since I was there, we rushed things a bit—and my cheese turned into a rubbery ball. But that wasn't the important part. The important part was that I learned the basics, and now, whenever I please, I make magic on my own.

You can too. I'm might be a bit biased, but I recommend you start by listening to this week's show, which condenses an hour of step by steps into a mere four minutes—live! Once you've heard that, you can move on to the recipe below. Just don't forget the beets and spinach—the combination of the three is far and away the best part.


GOAT CHEESE

recipe & step by step thanks to Jen Holloman

2 gallons goat milk
1/8 teaspoon mesophilic culture
1/2 tablet junket rennet
1/2 cup cold water
1 heaping teaspoon of salt (table or kosher)

Pour goat milk into a VERY large saucepan. Heat to 160 degrees F, and hold it there for about 45 seconds. Cool in an ice bath—or by allowing time to pass—until it reaches 90 degrees F. Add mesophilic culture and stir until completely dissolved. Dissolve rennet in water and add to milk. Add salt, and then stir, stir, stir!

Allow this mixture to sit in a nice warm area, covered with plastic wrap, for at least 6 hours. It will separate into curds (solids) and whey (liquid)—that's good. Line a colander with a cheesecloth bag and pour the curds and whey through. Once most of the whey has drained out, put the whole shooting match in the fridge—leaving the bag full of curds in the colander with a big pot beneath to catch any remaining whey drips—and let it age for three days, or up to a week. The sour taste will mellow out of the cheese a bit, and it will form a soft, creamy ball, ready to eat. Enjoy as you would any old goat cheese.

For more on the upcoming Slow Food goat cheese making class, click here.

Make a night of it

When your taxes are due in a mere nine days, it is astounding how many projects you can get done. I believe if you continue with the projects indefinitely this strategy is referred to as tax evasion, but in the short term, it can be awfully productive.

In a mere 48 hours this weekend I managed to clean the house, repaint a deck table, weed the garden, write an essay, drink a bottle of wine, sew an oven mitt, take several very long walks and two tubs, bake a chocolate cake, eat most of said chocolate cake, watch Twilight on DVD, craft and mail two gifts (the contents and recipients of which must be Top Secret, you understand), and eat almost a pint of homemade garlic and herb dip.

It all came crashing to an end yesterday afternoon when my father called and informed me with only a hint of gloom that it was time to meet my new friend Turbo Tax.

Luckily, I still had a few crackers hanging around, and enough garlic dip to get me through the crisis. (Please don't repeat this, but once I made a pot of tea and brought up the last of the chocolate cake, the crackers, and the dip, Turbo Tax and I actually were kind of having fun. My checkbook didn't seem particularly amused, but by the end of the evening, between the sense of accomplishment and the munching, T.T. and I were like old friends. Shhh.)

That said, I think we'll stay friends better if we're the long distance type, the kind you only see, say, once a year or so. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, you know. But not in the case of homemade crackers and dip. Even after a triple batch of crackers and an entire pint of dip, I feel that these two and I could make a night of it again. Soon.

So I'd like to introduce you all to both. The crackers are whole wheat and come from a friend of mine in Maine, a Mr. Bill Huntington. He unveiled them at a Christmas party a few years ago, and they were an instant hit. The garlic dip has a somewhat less intimate story; I found it in the Williams Sonoma catalog. (Have you noticed how many recipes they have in there?) Happily, it's just as good.

Both are also incredibly simple to make. So if you have things to do this week, like, say, avoid tax evasion, there should still be room for these two. They're good companions, I promise. At least when you've got a date with Turbo Tax.

ROASTED GARLIC & HERB DIP

adapted from a recent Williams Sonoma catalog

If you've never roasted garlic, it's quite easy. Cut the tops off the garlic so that the cloves are exposed, wrap the heads in tinfoil, and stick them in the oven the next time you've got the oven going (350 degrees F is a good general rule, but it's okay for the temperature to vary a bit if you're baking something else). Leave them to cook for about a half hour, then pull them out and you're good to go. The pulp also makes a very good spread for toast.

It's a good idea to make this dip ahead of time, because a night in the fridge gives the flavors a chance to leak into the sour cream and mayo, which makes for a much tastier, complex dip.

4 heads garlic, roasted
1 cup sour cream
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
a dash of A1 or Worcestershire sauce
1 to 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Squeeze the pulp from the garlic heads. Mash it up with a fork, them combine with remaining ingredients with a whisk in a medium-size mixing bowl. Adjust vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste. Serve chilled with crackers (below).

BILL'S HOMEMADE CRACKERS

The key to these crackers is to roll them out very, very thin. Otherwise, they won't get crisp. Also, I like to make a double or triple batch, because they tend to go fast.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 warm water
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
coarse salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a medium-size bowl, whisk together dry ingredients (except coarse salt). Add in 2 tablespoons of the melted butter, the warm water, and the cider vinegar, and mix thoroughly. Knead this mixture for 1 or 2 minutes, or until it forms a stiff dough.

Shape the dough into a 12-inch cylinder, and using a sharp knife, slice it into 16 pieces. For each piece, sprinkled a bit of coarse salt on your work surface and place the dough cut side down on top. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough until it is almost as thin as you'd like, then flip the dough and repeat until it is wafer thin. (The salt will not only add flavor but should also keep the dough from sticking to your counter top. You can also use seeds, nuts, oats, or even cornmeal instead.) Place the dough onto a cookie sheet and brush its top with some of remaining melted butter.

Repeat for all 16 crackers, and bake for 5 to 7 minutes, or until golden and crisp.

Onion soup without tears

When there is a new president, it is important to host a luncheon.

Even if it's only you, and your fiancé, and his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend who can attend. And even if you're cooking frantically, on a break from writing at your office across the street, just as the speech begins. Even if you've broken into his other cousin's kitchen to cook without consent; it doesn't matter the circumstance.


There is a new president, and so there ought to be a new recipe for lunch.

Also, it helps to use a new book. We're starting over, you see. From my Christmas pile, I picked Nigel Slater's latest cookbook to start the new term with. It's a kitchen diary, sort of like this one, except he wrote down everything he cooked, every meal, every day, for a year. The photographs are spectacular, and the text enchanting. The only trouble is, the seasons are a bit adrift. For instance, he starts the year like this:

January 8
The first rhubarb

Clearly, he lives in a much friendlier place. Around here, the first rhubarb appears in oh—say, April, probably May. Fat chance of digging any up today. Luckily, his January 11th entry offered something a little more realistic: namely, French onion soup.

I adore French onion soup. It is the absolute perfect evening winter meal: simple, warm, and just substantial enough to get you through the night. It can be made vegetarian, or carnivorous, and it is salty as the sea. Also, at the same time, it is sweet.

Slater's version is simple. It starts with roasting the onions with butter and salt and pepper in the oven, so that the whole experience is pleasantly tear-free. It then requires you to burn off a little white wine, simmer some vegetable stock, and keep the pot of soup warm while toast and Gruyére melt beneath the broiler. It's so easy that all of this can easily be accomplished, even while you are watching a speech on t.v.

I made a few changes—swapping vegetable stock for beef, and Shy Brother's cheese for Gruyére—but mainly, I stuck with his pot. I feel quite sure we'll be making it again.



ONION SOUP WITHOUT TEARS

adapted from The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater

5 medium onions
3 tablespoons butter
4 ounces (one glass) white wine
6 cups beef or vegetable stock
a loaf of crusty French-style bread
several ounces good melting cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Peel the onions and cut them in half from tip to root, then lay them in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and add the butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Roast about 30 minutes, or until they are golden and tender. You may want to check on them a few times to see if they need turning.

Put the pot, with the onions, on the stove. Add the wine, and reduce it until the liquid nearly disappears. (As Slater explains, this is because you want the flavor, not the alcohol.) Pour in the stock, bring to a boil, and simmer about 20 minutes.

Just before you're ready to eat, put several slices of French bread beneath the broiler, or in the toaster oven (one slice per bowl of soup). Toast one side, then flip them and toast the other, layering several slices of cheese on top. When the cheese is bubbling and hot, ladle the soup into bowls and rest the cheese toasts on top. Serve immediately, with a spoon and a knife.

As a general rule

We went skiing this weekend. In my book, skiing as a general rule ought to include the following: normally attractive friends totally nonplussed by the fact that their greasy, bodyless hair has taken on the shape of a ski helmet, long underwear so beloved and worn it forms a saggy hammock reaching nearly to your knees, and, most importantly, headbonk medicine.


My father first came up with headbonk medicine when my sister and I were little girls. He was a bit of a ski Nazi. Anytime it snowed, we had to go skiing, or else he would get "ski stress," as my mother referred to the affliction. Growing up in Maine as we did, this meant we went skiing quite a bit. To ensure we skied through all fifty dollars of our day passes, my father kept a supply of Starbursts, Rolos, and miniature Snickers bars in his pockets. Anyone who bonked their head and wanted to go in could be easily enticed into another run with a reach into his jacket.

While I have come to love skiing and no longer require bribery, I still always ski with a good supply of headbonk medicine in my jacket pocket. My favorite kind is Milk Duds, which freeze into brittle lumps of caramel in your pocket and last the entire lift ride slowly melting sugar from your teeth. If you carry enough headbonk medicine, I've even found you can skip lunch on an especially spectacular powder day.

We had one of those Sunday. It snowed nearly a foot while we were out, and it was hardly worth stopping for long. We went in for hot chocolate late morning, and a quick p.b. and j. in the early afternoon, but other than that we were squatting recklessly down the hill and hitting every puffy cloud of fresh snow we could. The Milk Duds got us through the day, and even into the hot tub and through a few bottles of beer, but needless to say they weren't doing much when dinner time rolled around.

Luckily, we'd made a big pot of soup the night before, so all that was left to make was a few sides. It was a haddock and chorizo soup, with corn frozen this summer, and lots and lots of sea scallops, and saffron, and onions, and plenty of garlic. It was salty, warm, and above all, filled you up quite well. But after a day of chocolate, caramel, and elaborate hot drinks, we thought maybe a salad and some bread would be a good idea too.

That's where the blue cheese dressing came in. We had sort of a motley assortment of foods in the fridge, but the one thing we had plenty of was blue cheese. We had nearly 10 pounds, in fact, certainly enough to top a salad. So I began whisking an egg yolk while a friend drizzled in olive oil, and before long we had a greenish, virgin oil mayo.


I added a bit of smoked sea salt, a whole wedge of cheese, and a bit of apple cider vinegar. The resulting dressing was certainly not light, but it was very good. It was especially good over a wintry mix of bitter greens, with thinly sliced onions, and nothing else.

HEARTY BLUE CHEESE DRESSING

1 egg yolk
3/4 cup olive oil
1 small wedge blue cheese
cider vinegar

In a medium sized measuring cup, using a small whisk or fork, beat egg yolk for several seconds. Begin drizzling in olive oil, very, very slowly at first, whisking all the while. As the mixture thickens and turns opaque, begin adding oil more quickly, still whisking constantly. The egg yolk should absorb all 3/4 cups of the oil.

Using this homemade mayonnaise as a base, crumble in blue cheese. Stir well, and add 1 tablespoon cider vinegar. Taste the dressing. Continue adding vinegar to taste, or until it balances out the mayo and blue cheese. You won't need much of this over salad; a little bit goes a long way. It's especially good over endive leaves or spinach tossed with red onion and small pieces of bacon.

Comfort food

Calzone. Just the word sounds good. And it's been one of those weeks, I'll admit, where a good sounding word is in order. Not to mention a delicious snack.

The calzone wasn't an idea on its own. It was the leftover offspring of the clam pie crust, homeless, with no where to go. I could have saved it, left it in the refrigerator just lying around, but I've found that pie crust, after a few days, just tends to get old. It doesn't roll out quite so well, and it's never as flakey as its young, vibrant self.

So calzoning we went, or trouser-legging, if you're into Italy speak. That's where the word came from—this filled pizza's strange, folded-over shape. Kind of like your pant leg, or so the Italians seem to think.

Anyways, whatever you want to call it, it's an easy success. It used up the pie crust and helped clear a container of homemade tomato sauce from the freezer. (What was I thinking when I made so much!?) Not to mention, it's comfort food. With goat cheese, red wine, bacon, and tomatoes, it's really pretty hard to go wrong.

So given the cold, the gray, and all the rain, I think it's time to break out a good hunk of cheese, the rolling pin, and some frozen tomato sauce tonight. At the very least, comfort food is worth a try.

GOAT CHEESE CALZONE

Serves 2

leftover pie crust (about 1/2 a crust's worth)

3/4 cup tomato sauce, chilled (the thicker the better, otherwise it will leak juice)

2 to 3 ounces goat cheese or mozzarella if you prefer

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out pie crust into a rectangle about twice as long as it is wide. A few inches in from all edges on the side closest to you, spoon thick tomato sauce over a patch of crust reaching nearly halfway down its length. Crumble goat cheese over top. Fold the other half of the crust evenly over top, so that the edges on three sides line up. Close the edges by pressing them together with a fork; be careful not to leave any holes. Cut three slits in the calzone's top, and bake for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Enjoy warm.

Last call for raw milk

As you may know, I'm part of a milk coop that buys raw milk straight from Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth. I've gotten a pig there, and several chickens, and even a turkey this Thanksgiving, but mostly, it's about the milk.

It isn't legal to sell raw milk at stores in Massachusetts. The laws vary state by state, some allowing cow sharing, others sales at farmers markets, and still others full delivery.

Growing up in Maine, where raw milk can be sold legally on store shelves, I was surprised to find it so much harder to find on the Cape. Once you get the grassy, full-fat taste of the stuff in your mouth, you understand, it's hard to go back to the stuff you find in plastic jugs. Raw milk isn't pasteurized, or homogenized, so the cream separates from the milk and floats to the top. Sometimes I skim it off for coffee or tea, other times to make butter, though you'd be surprised how much you need to make even half a stick.

Photo courtesy of Paskamansett Farms

The reason raw milk is so controversial is because of its potential to carry bacteria. Kept cool and clean, there's very little chance of contamination from a small, family farm. We drank raw milk for hundreds of years before industrialization came on the scene. But then, with hygiene and health conditions deteriorating quickly, scorching the milk offered a quick fix to dangerous bacteria. Rather than require clean milk, we decided to clean it ourselves, putting the industrial milk filled with hormones, corn, and anti-biotics on the shelves as we find them today.

Next week, our milk coop is splitting up. There's such a demand for the milk that we're breaking into two groups—one from Wellfleet and Truro, the other out towards Orleans. We take turns doing the pick-up—the more people we have, the less often you have to make the trip. And while it is a drive, I only do it a few times a year, and each time so far I've picked up an animal to boot.

The milk costs $3.50 per half gallon, and comes in on Saturdays. It's from grass-fed, antibiotic free cows, and it tastes to match. That being said, you have to do your own research to decide whether or not you're comfortable with un-pasteurized milk. If you decide you're interested in joining, now's the time.

Links to read up on raw milk:

Paskamansett Farms

Raw Milk Facts.com

Real Milk.com

Boston Globe Article

Green peppers & dip

It always startles me how late in the season green peppers come in. They rush onto the tables of the last farmers' markets, harried and out of breath but stunning just the same.

I bought my last two over a week ago, on the streets of Provincetown, while a dog fight played out at my feet. I picked them carefully from the finale table, and tucked them atop storage onions and winter squash in my well-laden bag.

They sat at home until just yesterday. Still perfectly crisp, their skin cool and green, they split without caving beneath the weight of the knife. I cut them into slices and arranged them carefully on a plate next to my computer. Word after word I typed, crunching through the sweetest of peppers as the afternoon slipped by.

HERB DIP

Serves 6 to 8

Beat together 1/2 cup mayonnaise and 1/2 cup sour cream. Add 1/4 cup parsley, chopped, 1/4 cup chives, chopped, 2 cloves garlic, minced, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. (The herbs in my garden are still hanging on. If yours are not, try your own blend of dried herbs in place of the fresh ones). Mix well and enjoy with veggies.

Rainy day latte

This morning was one of those lazy, stormy sort of starts. It's hard to rally for such a day: windy, rainy, and altogether gray. There was only one way to get out of bed, really, and that was to bribe ourselves with a latte.

I'd purchased the magnificent milk frother a few weeks before. Sleek and silver, it churned hot milk into foam, pushing tiny bubbles into a fuzzy coat. On the stove, the teakettle steamed and finally whistled, screaming coffee at the top of its lungs.

The beans were Beanstock, roasted in Eastham to a dark, rich perfection. The milk was our raw, creamy liquid from Paskamansett Farms in Dartmouth. Boiling water poured over the grinds, coffee aroma steamed hot, and the cups warmed up on the shelf over the stove. Between the Beanstock and the foam, it was a latte worth getting up for.

BEANSTOCK LATTE

Serves 2

Boil 1 cup water; pour over 2 tablespoons Beanstock espresso grinds. Heat up 3/4 cup whole milk; foam with electric frother. Pour a shot of espresso into each mug, top with milk and foam, and enjoy hot.

Top milk

Top milk is a discovery too tickling to keep to myself. As I flipped through a book of recipes the other day, I came across an entry for the phrase. Top milk? I wondered aloud. I'd never seen the term in print.

In my head, of course, it was perfectly clear: I'd used a sort of top milk the other day in place of half and half, pouring the cream as best I could from a well-settled jug of milk. A bit of the skimmed liquid fell out as well, mixing with the heavy fat into something reminiscent of the cream that is best in coffee.

With no supposition that this imagined definition could hold true, I turned to Merriam Webster for assistance:

[Main Entry: top milk

Function: noun

Date: 1891

: the upper layer of milk in a container enriched by whatever cream has risen]

The date was a decade or so before homogenization and pasteurization changed the look of the milk bottle forever. Before this new milk overshadowed the old raw, Louis Starr dedicated a whole book to the topic of proper milk feeding regimens. To my little patients—some of whom in the rapid passing of time, may soon assume parental duties—this volume is affectionately dedicated, he writes, introducing The Hygiene of the Nursery.

As this 1913 manual described, top milk is procured with a one ounce ladle, scooping the settled cream from a chilled quart bottle and putting it aside for a formula mixture. This milk when used in making a properly combined food mixture gives a proportion of fat to proteins of 2 to 1, he instructs, blending top milk with sugar, lime-water, and water. For the first 6 months of life, he says, this should do any infant well when needed.

While I prefer cake over formula, it's amazing the fun a word can make.

TOP MILK CAKE

(adapted from a recipe I found here)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 by 13 inch Pyrex baking pan and dust lightly with flour. Sift together 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup cake flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1 teaspoon salt. Cream 12 tablespoons butter and 1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Add 3 duck eggs (I found some at the Cohasset Farmers market, but extra large chicken eggs will also do), 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, and mix well. Add 1 cup top milk slowly, mixing batter well as you pour.