All sorts of keepers

You know where's a good place to find recipes? The Williams Sonoma catalog. Honestly. I find all sorts of keepers in there. The gadgets that go with them—banana slicers and salad dressing emulsifiers—get a little ridiculous, but the recipes are terrific.

Take, for instance, the roasted beet salad recipe I tried the other day. The base ingredients are pretty standard—watercress, roasted beets, toasted walnuts, goat cheese—but the dressing is something else altogether. Basically you take lemon juice and a little bit of crème fraîche and add oil and shallots and a big handful of dill. The dairy makes it creamy, the lemon juice gives it kick, and the shallots and dill make it feel big and zippy. When you pour it over the greens and beets, a sort of magic happens, and everything feels at the same time rich and fresh.

We've made it about three times this week, and today, I'm thinking of having it for lunch again. It's just the thing for a hot day—filling but not heavy, satisfying in a very summer sort of way. Enjoy the sunshine, friends.

ROASTED BEET SALAD

I made a few changes to the Williams Sonoma original of this recipe. For starters, I used arugula and spinach from our garden in place of the watercress. I also added homemade croutons (rustic bread seared in olive oil on our cast iron griddle) and swapped out the crème fraîche for whole milk plain yogurt and Cloumage cheese.

(Cloumage, for those of you who have never had it, is the newest cheese from the Shy Brothers. It tastes sort of like a cross between ricotta and crème fraîche, and they sell it at the Provincetown and Falmouth farmers markets.)

Finally, I upped the dill. I don't know about you, but I can't get enough of that green.

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 and 1/2 tablespoons Cloumage

2 and 1/2 tablespoons whole milk plain yogurt

5 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 teaspoons minced shallot

salt and pepper

4 cups arugula or watercress

2 large beets, roasted, peeled, and cut into wedges (for a roasting tutorial, click here)

1/3 cup toasted walnuts

4 ounces crumbled goat cheese

2 slices good rustic bread, toasted in olive oil in a cast iron skillet or griddle and cut into croutons

Combine the lemon juice, Cloumage, yogurt, olive oil, dill, shallot, and salt and pepper in a Mason jar or salad dressing container. Shake vigorously to emulsify and set aside.

You can plate the salads either individually or on a large shallow platter. Arrange the greens on the bottom, then layer on the roasted beet wedges, toasted walnuts, crumbled goat cheese, and homemade croutons. Drizzle with dressing and toss just before serving.

I just wanted to say

That it might be cold, but with a pair of smart-wool tights and thick jeans, hiked up cashmere socks tucked into thinsulate boots, two cotton shirts, a wool sweater, a scarf, a hat, leather mittens, and a down vest on top, it's really not that bad out there. Even the Swiss chard—upright and perky despite a dip into the twenties in the greenhouse last night—seems to agree.

I was worried about it yesterday, so for dinner we made a spur-of-the-moment, balsamic-doused salad with Swiss chard, raw shaved beets, chunks of apple and crumbles of goat cheese, toasted pecans, grated Brussels sprouts, and dried cranberries.

I thought of you.

And it was lovely.

Wellfleet-grown fruit

I have one word for you today: FIGS.

My friend Tracy grew them, on the tall, mittened fig tree in her backyard, the one tucked up against the kitchen window on the north wall. She transplanted the tree all the way from Brewster, despite the fact that everyone told her it would never make it, that it didn't have a chance so close to the water, that it would start to lose its leaves and then a few branches, and eventually, it would peter out and die.

Instead, it flourished. It got so big that now it's taller than the window, taller even than the first story. It reaches up high, almost to the roof. And every fall, around this time, it makes hundreds of figs—fresh, ripe, bursting, Wellfleet-grown fruit.

When I play my cards right, I'm usually lucky enough to get a few. The other day, Tracy gave me four.

I knew immediately how I wanted to eat them, what I wanted to do. I got out a bag of arugula from Lucas at Halcyon Farms, and tossed it with some red wine vinegar, olive oil, mustard, and a bit of salt. I sliced up an orange heirloom tomato, crumbled a round of goat cheese we picked up at a farm stand on our trip to Maine, and tossed both in. Then I sliced the figs in half, plated two salads, and gently laid them on top—two and two.

We have our own fig tree coming along—potted, and still quite petite—but with a little nurturing and a sunny winter window, I'm hoping we'll be eating our own figs some fall soon.

If you know someone who has a fig tree, you can take a cutting and it will root. Ours started out that way—as a tiny shoot with only one leaf, and now it has nine! (I know, still tiny.) If you don't know anyone with a mature tree and you're inspired to plant figs, I know Bayberry Gardens in Truro has a few.

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.

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.

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.