The Local Food Report: where we're headed

Do you remember my friend Drew from last week? The one who wants to raise organic, grass-fed chickens in Truro and sell broilers for meat and use the layers for eggs? Well, today I'd like to introduce you to the man who inspired him.

His name is Joel Salatin and in the farming world, he's kind of a big deal. He's the farmer who Michael Pollan profiled in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, for the chapter about pastured meat, and also the farmer who refused to ship a broiler from where he raised it in the Shenendoah Valley of Virginia to where Pollan lived in Berkeley, California. Pollan wanted to taste the chicken for his book, and Salatin explained that the author was welcome to do so anywhere within a four hour radius of Polyface Farm. Salatin feels very strongly about selling the food he raises only within his local foodshed.

Actually, come to think of it, Salatin feels pretty strongly about most things. He thinks that we're awfully arrogant to think that we can treat the earth the way we do, and to think that it won't have any consequences down the road. There's an old Chinese proverb he likes to quote, something along the lines of if we don't change our direction, we're likely to end up where we're headed. It's as close as he'll come to prophesizing a collapse.

When I met him this fall at Cape Cod Community College, he talked mostly about this arrogance, and the problems he thinks it's caused. He thinks that trying to shortcut nature, particularly when it comes to what we farm and in turn what we eat, is the cause of a lot of our current health problems. He looks at the industrial food system, and the way it has manipulated things like potatoes and corn into chips and soft drinks, and sees a fairly direct link to type two diabetes and obesity. And he looks at recent outbreaks of e. coli and listeria and bovine spongiform encephalopathy and sees a fairly direct link between them and the way we let animals stand around in their own feces eating corn they aren't meant to digest on factory farms. He also sees a connection between our environmental worries—climate change and flooding and drought and all sorts of wacky weather patterns—and the fact that we now use 15 calories of energy to produce a single calorie of food. Food should be a net producer of calories, he says, not a net consumer. Finally, he takes a look at our landscapes and sees a link between suburban sprawl and the Peruvian apples on our tables. If we valued locally grown food, he says, there would be an economic incentive to preserve open space.

It all makes a good amount of sense, I think.

But his best point—and the one he uses to try and tip real skeptics over the edge—is that even if we have decided that we're okay with sucking up oil and getting a bad case of salmonella every once in a while, from a community standpoint, we still aren't safe. The idea of a global foodshed—one in which to feed itself our little town of Wellfleet has to rely on imports from five or ten or fifteen other countries, instead of just Barnstable county or maybe Massachusetts or even New England—isn't safe. What if there's a war, or maybe a transportation glitch? Suddenly, we have nothing to eat.

It's pretty scary, if you think about it. It makes me admire people like Salatin and Drew even more, people who are doing what they can—inspiring or learning or coming up with business plans—to try and change the way things work. I read this quote the other day, from Tolstoy. Everyone thinks of changing the world, he said, but no one thinks of changing himself. It's a good point, and a good reminder that sometimes, it's the small actions that count. Sometimes, even, when the pickled beets are homemade from your garden and the eggs come from down the street, actions as small as making up a plate of beet-pickled deviled eggs can make a difference.


BEET-PICKLED DEVILED EGGS

adapted from this recipe published in Gourmet, November 2009

If you don't have any pickled beets on hand, check out the original recipe (through that link up above). It gives a step by step for making the pickling juice. If you do have pickled beets on hand, though, the beets make an excellent double appetizer with the eggs.


12 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
pickling juice from 1 quart pickled beets
1/3 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade
1 tablespoon sweet, whole-grained mustard like Raye's Fall Harvest blend
2 scallions, minced (roughly 2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon white pepper
salt to taste

Find a bowl or container that has a cover and will hold all 12 hard-boiled eggs. Put the eggs in the container, pour the pickling juice over top, and put the eggs in the refrigerator to chill for at least two hours. If the pickling juice doesn't quite cover the eggs, spin them every once in a while so that they turn a deep pink color all over.

Pull the container of eggs out of the fridge and pat them dry on a paper towel or old dishcloth. Cut the eggs in half lengthwise and, using a spoon and taking care not to rip the whites, scoop the yolks out into a small mixing bowl. Arrange the whites on a serving platter, face up. Beat the mayonnaise, mustard, scallions, and pepper into the egg yolks, and season with salt to taste. Using either a spoon or a cake piping kit, fill the wholes of the whites with the yolk mixture. Serve chilled.

The Local Food Report: personal lettuce

I visited a farm the other day devoted entirely to lettuce. It was Veronica Worthington's garden, the Herb Farm in West Dennis, the sister to her Pleasant Lake Farm in Harwich.

Veronica tried her hand at a lettuce checkerboard a few years back—you know, the sort with carefully measured one foot squares and perfectly spaced heads of Lola Rosa and Lola Bionda in zig-zags of green and red—and by the end of June, she'd fallen in love.

She'd haul her stepladder out from the garage every few days or so, set it up in the backyard and get up high to admire her work. When the heads were ready to harvest, she threw a party in the garden, a benefit for the library downtown, and everyone milled around ooh-ing and ahh-ing and snapping pictures of her work. Finally, they pulled the lettuce from the ground, shook off the dirt, and sat down in the yard to eat. 

The checkerboard has been getting bigger every year since. These days, it's an acre on the outskirts of town, 3,000 heads of lettuce in perfect squares. She says the pattern has sort of gone out the window, because every time she picks a head to sell at the farmers' market, she stuffs another one back in. There might be a tiny icebery next to a huge, leafy romaine, or a whole row of full size black-seeded Simpsons.

All in all, she grows 35 varieties of lettuce, but she's heard there are over 800. That's her next goal—to try growing every single one.

But for now, she's focused on miniatures. Personal lettuces, she calls them, miniature icebergs and miniature romaines and miniature Boston heads. The icebergs are her favorite—plain green, and tight-knit heads that change from burgundy to jade. Partially, this is a matter of appearances; the minis are a charming size, perfect in their pressed little heads and closely held drapes. But it's also about taste.

The miniature icebergs are crisp, cool, watery—the antitode to humid June afternoons and sun burnt ears, the prelude to Hendrick's and tonics in chilled pewter cups. Veronica imagines a world where we all return to the Russian and iceberg pairing of the 1960s, housewives across the country filling up their shopping carts with mayonnaise and ketchup, minced pickles and dill. She remembers that era well—the time when iceberg was all we knew, after the Boston lettuce of the 1800s and during the reign of California as the salad bowl king, before we discovered mixed greens and nutrients. The wedge is in vogue these days, but somehow, by some trick, the Russian dressing didn't reappear with it.

Except on my table. Veronica made Russian dressing sound so good, so just the thing for miniature iceberg, that when she sent me home with a head, I had to whip a batch up. I dug through the refrigerator for ingredients: homemade mayo, one of my mother's pickles, a bundle of dill. I have no idea if the results are anything like the Russian dressing of the 1960s, but if they were, well, I'm a convert. I'm still not sure about platform shoes or Pocahontas headbands, but I think—I'm quite certain, in fact—that Russian dressing deserves another spin. 

RUSSIAN WEDGE

I didn't turn up any ketchup when I went to make this dressing, so I used rosehip jelly instead. I remembered thinking when I made the jelly last summer that it smelled a lot like tomato sauce, and it made a fine substitute. Any of the following three—ketchup, tomato jelly, or rosehip jelly—would work well in this recipe, I think.

2 heads miniature iceberg lettuce

1/2 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade

equal parts white vinegar and water, to taste

1 tablespoon ketchup, tomato jelly, or rosehip jelly 

1 dill pickle, minced

1 head dill, finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Pull any bruised outer leaves from the lettuce heads, and remove the stems from the bottoms. Place whole on two plates. 

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together mayo and ketchup or jelly. Add 1 teaspoon white vinegar and 1 teaspoon water to the mayo mix, and continue adding the two liquids in equal parts until the mixture reaches a consistency you like. Stir in the pickle and the dill, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour the dressing over the iceberg heads, and serve at once.

The Local Food Report: the first farmers' market

This week, I went to the farmers' market. I'm going to type that again, because I'm still pinching myself, trying to figure out whether or not it's really true.

This week, I went to the farmers' market. Phew!


I have been waiting for this day for months, every month, in fact, since last October, when the farmers' markets in Orleans and Provincetown and Hyannis and everywhere else on this sandy strip shut their doors. They simply put down their tent flaps and left—a terrible thing for a friend to do anytime, but in the gray, cold, rainy months in particular.

I went to a few markets in other states while they were gone—a winter market in my hometown of Brunswick, Maine, and the huge year-round market in Providence, Rhode Island. They were both exciting, but not the same. I couldn't wake up bleary-eyed, throw on my jeans, and run out the door. Julie wasn't there, and neither was Gretel, or Claire or Darnell or Tim. I didn't know anyone's name, or what they usually had for sale—they could've just gotten a crazy new hair cut and stopped growing radishes and decided to be a lobsterman, and I'd never have known.

The Orleans market, on the other hand, is like one of those friends you've always known—warm and smart and inviting—the kind that you can read like a book. It has 21 vendors, all from the Outer Cape, selling everything from rhubarb to radishes to asparagus to greens. They have muffins, too, and other baked goods, and live lobster and shiitake mushrooms and flower bouquets. This week, they had seedlings—things like celeriac and strawberries and mesclun mix and 150 different varieties of tomatoes. Now that's what I call a friend.

This first week, I did more catching up than shopping, but I still brought a full bag of veggies home. I tucked away a bunch of French Breakfast radishes, a bundle of scallions, three leeks, a dozen eggs, a pint of cherry tomatoes (from the E & T Farms greenhouse!), and a flowering currant plant for a friend. All in all, a pretty good haul.


Other markets will be opening up soon—in Provincetown and Hyannis, on the islands, and up Cape. There's a full list here. So keep your eyes peeled for those rows of white tents, and just as soon as you can, pick up the makings for the salad below. It's the best I've had since October.

SALAD OF SPRING GREENS, RADISHES, AND SCALLIONS

I mixed the radishes greens from the bunch above with spinach, butter lettuce, Italian dandelion, and tat soi from my garden to make a spring salad mix. Look for very young radishes if you plan to use the greens; the bigger they get the more fuzz they have on their skin, and they also tend to acquire a more bitter taste. This recipe makes enough salad for roughly four.

for the salad:
1 pound spring greens
1 bunch French breakfast radishes, sliced into thin half moons
2 scallions, thinly sliced

for the dressing:
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons wine vinegar (slightly sweet is nice)
5 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons mayonnaise (preferably homemade)

Wash and dry the greens and toss with radishes and scallions. On a cutting board, mash together garlic and salt with a fork. Scrape into a small jar and shake together with vinegar, olive oil, and mayonnaise until well mixed. Pour dressing over greens and toss well.

There's time

Is is wrong to eat the same dish every night for a week straight?

If it is, well, we're doomed. We've been eating the same root vegetable and cilantro slaw with Thai fish cakes for dinner for six days now. (Okay, okay. Sometimes we have it for lunch too.) Six days!

In our defense, this meal is good. And the every day part isn't entirely unwarranted. When you boil three pounds of frozen flounder to make fish stock, you can't just throw all that white meat away. It may have lost a little flavor, but that's why fish cakes were invented. With red curry paste, cilantro, sugar, and a pinch of salt, you can make anything come to life. As for the slaw, well; it isn't quite farmers' market season yet. Those root vegetables are still kicking around, and slicing them up very thinly, sprinkling them with cilantro, and drizzling them with a light, lemon-mayo dressing makes them seem much, much more acceptable this time of year. In fact, between the curry-spiced fish cakes and the cilantro-spiked slaw, I've almost been able to imagine myself down to the fish taco street stand we visited on a trip to Sayulita. I'm not quite there, but then again, we're only halfway through the fish. There's time.


If you look very closely at the picture above, you will see the edge of a little white bowl with a peanut dipping sauce peeking out. This mixture of vinegar, sugar, and crushed nuts is essential. It makes the fish cakes just the slightest bit sweet, and it adds crunch. And, well, if you're going to eat something every day for a week, you ought to go all out.

THAI FISH CAKES

This recipe is a take-off on the traditional Thai fish cakes, Thod Mun Pla. A friend gave us a recipe for those, but since we lacked both string beans and kaffir lime leaves (the two key ingredients) we decided to go with cilantro instead. This turned out to be a very happy decision, as it led us to a recipe we like better yet.

1 pound boiled white fish
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped thin
1 tablespoon red curry paste
1 egg
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
oil/fat for frying

Knead fish, cilantro, curry paste, egg, sugar, and salt by hand in a mixing bowl. Fill a deep, wide pan about an inch full with cooking oil or fat drippings. When the oil is hot, pat the fish mixture into cakes and drop as many will fit into the pan. Cook about 2 minutes each side, or until golden brown. Serve warm over some sort of crunchy slaw, with peanut dipping sauce.

PEANUT DIPPING SAUCE

1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanuts, crushed

In a saucepan, heat up vinegar and sugar. Bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Add peanuts; mix well and serve.

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.

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.

Fish tacos

By the time we set out the fixings, our guests had been there for hours. It was a potluck, of sorts—a celebration. The gifts piled up in the form of venison, wagyu steak, fresh dug steamers, and pollock.

Once a full inventory was taken, we set the menu: fish, game, and beef tacos, with a primer of Orleans clams.

I threw together a tortilla dough, and began thinning the dense flour balls with a rolling pin. A friend joined in using an already empty wine bottle, and the room began to sweat. The gas ran high, another friend manned the pan, and we churned out a full stack of soft, pliable wraps.

Meanwhile, another friend took to the toppings. He chopped cabbage and lettuce, simmered beans and spice, and finally sliced a lone tomato before looking around for more. A basket of ground cherries caught my eye, and we dropped them in to soak, half-ripened green balls falling from their dusty husks.

By the time we finally settled into our chairs, the gentle comfort of good food and company sat heavy in the air. There was a toast; perhaps two, and we talked into the night—plates scraped clean, dogs licking their chops, women bustling through the kitchen with dishrags and soap. We gave thanks for family and friends, and for the lingering fruits of the season, and settled in for a restful fall night.

FALL FISH TACOS

Serves 12

Make ahead a double batch of flour tortillas. Keep warm (wrapped in cloth) in the oven. Cut 6 pounds pollock into 12 steaks. Mix 1 tablespoon each of: cumin, chilli pepper, cayenne, black pepper, and salt. Rub spices on fish, drizzle with olive oil, and set aside. Arrange on a long platter 1 cup cabbage, cut into very thin strips, and 1/2 cup ground cherries. Make a hot aioli from 1/2 cup mayonnaise and 1 tablespoon hot sauce (such as Sriracha). In a hot pan, sear pollock for several minutes on each side. Bring out to table along with tortillas, and let guests create their own tacos.

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.

Pink & green slaw

I haven't always liked coleslaw. I worked at a bakery when I was younger, and for years afterwards, the mere mention of mayonnaise was enough to turn up my nose.

Other people liked the spread on everything: slathered in thick gobs across perfectly good sandwich bread, yellowed and jiggly against their tuna salad (which, I cannot help but point out, already has plenty mayo in it), and even—and this may have been my breaking point—on cinnamon swirl breakfast toast. Needless to say, the thought of adding it to perfectly good vegetables was not something I could condone.

Until I began making my own mayonnaise this winter. The process of actually whisking egg and oil into suspension myself reversed my aversion almost instantly, lending the spread a newfound aura of magic and reverence, and bringing it back onto my plate.

Last night's slaw brought yet another incarnation of my beloved condiment. After grating a small green cabbage and heap of candy radishes, a few carrots from the garden and a sweet, red onion, I whisked together egg and oil in anticipation of a dressing. From the cupboard I pulled a jar of Cape Cod cranberry drizzle—a flavored cider vinegar sold by Joan Massi at the mid-Cape farmers' market—and added it to the mix.

The pink, creamy mayo drizzled thin over the vegetables, and with a pinch of salt, a sprinkling of toasted watermelon seeds, and a few hot peppers, the salad was ready. Not only did I fill my bowl; upon finishing one course I hurried back for another.

PINK & GREEN SUMMER SLAW

Serves 4

Chop 1 small, green cabbage into thin strips. Mix with 3 grated candy-stripe radishes, 4 small grated carrots, 1 small thinly sliced red onion, 2 small finely minced hot peppers, and several tablespoons toasted watermelon or squash seeds (optional).

In a separate bowl, whisk together 1 egg yolk and 1 cup oil, adding oil very slowly at first and whisking constantly until the mixture becomes opaque (then oil can be added more quickly). Mix mayo with 1/4 to 1/2 cup cranberry drizzle vinegar, to taste. Toss over slaw and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve chilled or at room temperature.