Unlikely Words

This is the second year that we’ve participated in the Ledge Ends CSA with our friends Janie and Ken, and the second year that we’ve celebrated the last share of the season with a “well, what’d we get?” pizza potluck. We elected to leave the rutabagas, radishes, and kale off of the pizza, but Ken and I still made four delicious pies using locally grown organic vegetables, and, uh, the bounty of the neighborhood Whole Foods:

Left: tomato sauce with mozzarella and parmigiano.
Right: sliced heirloom tomato, spinach, garlic, and mozzarella.

Left: hot italian sausage, green pepper, red onion, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and parmigiano.
Right: olive oil, garlic, leek, fingerling potato, black forest bacon, chevre, and mozzarella.

Four deeeelicious pizzas. Thanks to Ken and Janie for sharing delicious veggies with us all year long.

Update: Behind-the-scenes photos from Ken here and here.

Yesterday was a big day. For one thing, it was my first day of school. Hooray for school! I’m feeling more educated already.

However, yesterday was also my third wedding anniversary. Yes, three years ago this morning Rachel and I were jumping in a lake. Three years might not seem that long, but since we’d been dating for seven years before we got married, 2007 is in some senses our tenth anniversary, which seems like a biggish deal. Just like last year, we decided to have a nice dinner in rather than a nice dinner out, and so I turned to my fanciest cookbook, The Elements of Taste by Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky.

(This is a really cool book, by the way. I picked it up for a song at a used bookstore in Northampton, and every recipe in it is guaranteed to impress the hell out of your guests. Last night was my second time making a recipe from the book: about a year ago I made the Braised Short Ribs of Beef with an Aromatic Barbecue Sauce. I’m kicking myself that there are no pictures of that meal, since the recipe is four damn pages long and people seemed to like it.)

We got another ridiculous haul of incredible tomatoes from Ledge Ends, so it was clear they’d be involved. I happened to flip the book open to:

Two-Tomato Coulis with Three Basils

Except here’s the thing: I couldn’t find purple basil, or basil flowers, but I did have a bag of fresh Ledge Ends green basil, so I just made:

Two-Tomato Coulis with One Rather Delicious Basil

The recipe for this is pretty ludicrously simple. Just chuck a whole bunch of red cherry tomatoes in a blender, and puree the crap out of them. Then do the same with some yellow tomatoes, and put both purees in a bowl with some basil, white pepper, and kosher salt.

The recipe called for 2 pounds each of red and yellow cherry tomatoes, which is ridiculous, so as I was only trying to make two servings I used a pound each, and supplemented the cherry tomatoes with some fabulous heirloom globe tomatoes. I also left out the sugar because, uh, I forgot it, but it didn’t need any. Delicious, sweet, and garden-y.

This was by far the most visually striking thing I’ve ever prepared. So cool. When we started eating, we discovered that the colors stay separate even as you move them around a bit, so if I ever make this again I might go for swirlier patterns instead of just the yin-yang.

When we were in Maine a few weeks ago, Rachel reminded me how much she loves lobster so it seemed clear that would be in the main course. Kunz and Kaminsky provided:

Lobster in Syrah Reduction with Aromatic Grits

I mean, delicious, right? Not even too difficult to make.

The sauce is a piece of cake: sauté onions, garlic, shallots, carrots, and celery until soft, and then pour in a bottle of red wine. Reduce, strain out the vegetables, and reduce again until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Whisk in some butter at the end, and you’re good to go.

The grits were also easy and delicious. I couldn’t find the quick-cooking grits the recipe calls for, but a pretty standard 4:1 milk and water to cornmeal ratio produced what I wanted. A little nutmeg and white pepper and butter go in at the end.

Finally the lobster: the hardest part was buying them, since Whole Foods apparently doesn’t sell live lobsters any more. However, I was pleased to discover Captain’s Catch in North Providence, which does, and has a pretty good looking seafood selection. Once I got the doomed fellows home, they were blanched in boiling water for 5 minutes, shocked in ice water, and relieved of their shells. (I now have a Ziploc back full of lobster parts ready for the stockpot.) Five to ten minutes in a 350 degree oven (with butter, of course) finished the cooking.

‘Twas damn good, and we even had room left over for dessert:

Lemon-Basil Sorbet

I’d bookmarked this recipe for Lemon-basil vodka gimlets as they looked delicious and refreshing, and indeed they were, but the fact is I don’t drink anywhere near enough vodka to use up all that syrup. As soon as I tasted it, though, I said: sorbet. Now, the syrup is way too sweet to make a sorbet on its own (and yes, I went through the trouble of making a batch to find that out) but with the juice of about four lemons added to it, it because perfect. Light, tart, with a subtle herbitude.

So, that’s three years. Believe it or not, Rachel just gets better and better. Don’t think for a second I fail to realize how lucky I am to have a wife willing to support us while I quit my job and sleep in every morning go back to grad school. A plate of lobster and a song are the least I can do.

Our best haul all summer from Ledge Ends inspired a rather delicious dinner.

Caprice salad (or insalata caprese, if you prefer) is pretty simple to make, and we got so many tomatoes it seemed ridiculous not to. The basil was delicious, and adding watermelon seemed the thing to do.

Someone at the vegetable pickup mentioned an edamame dip, and since we got a huge bunch of fresh edamame it seemed like a good idea. I found this recipe thanks to Google, and sort of improvised something similar.

It was crazy delicious, and this may well be one of my new go-to potluck contributions.

I’ve been looking through the list of 101 Summer Meals from Mark Bittman in the New York Times since it came out, and I think it’s got some good ideas. I hate deciding what to make for dinner, so having a list of 101 options, only some of which are gross, is pretty helpful.

Rachel loves scallops and this looked incredibly interesting and easy, so:

The hardest part of making this meal was slicing the scallops into the thin little slices. We had some cucumbers from our CSA, and they looked like they’d be about the same size, so I threw them in there as well. I laid them out on the plate in what I thought was an attractive pattern, scattered some scallions and parsley, sprinkled liberally with kosher salt, pepper, and red chile flake, squeezed half a lime over each plate, drizzled with olive oil, and waited five minutes.

I served with extra lime wedges in case we found ourselves uncomfortable with the rawness of the scallops, but half a lime’s worth of juice was plenty. It was light, summery, and really tasty. If I were serving it to company, I probably would have tried to spruce up the color somehow. Circles of red bell pepper? Maybe? I dunno.

Today was a beautiful day. Hot, sunny, and a bit slow, as no one was around. I decided to use some of the produce I bought yesterday at the Hope High School farmer’s market. It took less than five minutes to throw together a casual variation on a Caprese salad:

The tomatoes were, to be sure, not perfect. (No tomatoes on earth approach the late summer tomatoes from Ledgewood Farms in Moultonborough, NH.) And the mozzarella was a few days old, from Whole Foods. But the basil was fresh, and the combination (with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pepper, and sea salt) was just the thing.

Yum.