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One affogato
I love these affogato photos by Josephine Rozman. Affogato is the greatest overlooked desert. Every cafe should have them on the menu, but few do. Right now we have apple crumble ice cream in our freezer….imagine that with espresso!
More photos at Eat Boutique
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Follow the Honey // Cambridge
Let’s not bring up the shiver-inducing qualms about buying honey from generic brands. Where is this from? Who made it? What did the bees actually pollenate? Sure guys, we definitely believe you and your marketing department of plastic bears.
This is a timely topic in the season of colds too—the healing properties of raw honey. Thus I bring you: a brief tour of Follow the Honey in Harvard Square!
Every time I visit the shop there seems to be a new young maven of health behind the counter. Where does one find these women of honey passion? They look at you with wise eyes, nod eagerly at your questions, offer you samples of nearly everything you might want to try, and bring up tendrils of conversation you never would have thought of. Beeswax as ear plugs? Sure. Try some honey made from killer bees? Why not! Beeswax candles ionize your air? Sounds delicious.
Here’s another thing about a shop like this: when you mull over your options, read labels, flip through books written by the beekeepers, examine expensive choices and cheap ones—-when you are deep in the heart of Honey Temple, whatever you bring home, whatever it is, you will cherish it. Friends will come over and you will peer in your cupboards and say, “oh, would you like some honey?” or you might try to trick them into tea instead of coffee so you can plop some inside the mug. It will be that prize possession in your pantry.
My favorite thing is the Honey on Tap. I am one of those who dreams about small Italian villages where we bring our tins to be filled with olive oil from the local barrel, or we recycle our our wine carafes and refill them weekly. Thus, the idea of an enormous keg of honey, changing seasonally and always local, is perfect. The first time you buy a pound of honey from them, it is $18.60. Bring the jar back, it’s $16.50. Relishing in between? Priceless.
On your next visit to Harvard Square, stop in! And if your schedule is a bit footloose definitely sign up for their newsletter, they’re always hosting fun activities.
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Alice Waters’ Book for Children
I refer to Alice Waters The Art of Simple Cooking with an obsessive devotion. Her recipes are so simple, elegant, and delicious that I quickly became addicted and wanted to cook only as she said to do it.
So when I saw her book for children at the Boston Athenaeum, I scooped it up to take home with me.
It’s written from the perspective of Alice Waters’ daughter Fanny who grew up at Chez Panisse. Sort of Eloise-style, without the spoiled brat and the pug. (I love Eloise, but I think we can agreed she’s a bit of a brat.) I read it like an-easy-to-read memoir, thinking “what would it be like to be the daughter of a restaurant owner like Alice?”
This is what it would be like:
The illustrations are by Ann Arnold and they are so lovely you want them to fill your kitchen. The text is cheerful and all about food. Below, an illustration of composting:
She includes 46 recipes at the back, mostly really classic things like pizza dough, candied orange peel, and plain white rice. I was in the mood for a new bread recipe so I tried it. It’s a good one! A nice mix of whole wheat and white flour, hearty with salt and just a touch of milk. I recommend checking it out.
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A summer with Siena Farms CSA
This year we signed up for a CSA box because it had always been my one true dream to have a bunch of vegetables handed to me to deal with as I could muster. My friend offered to split a Siena Farms weekly box which was perfect because it took me two weeks to make my way through all of them every time.
Siena Farms must be the biggest, loveliest, and ritziest csa in the Boston area. They have over 500 members and their CSA program comprise 3/4 of their income. The rest is made up by their farmers market appearances and their year round retail space in the South End. Their vegetables are often the most beautiful at the market with colors, varieties, and tastes that you won’t see on other tables. Consequently their prices are higher, a 12 week csa box costs $550 or $46 a week.
(a sample box from September:)
And last week they held a thank-you party and tour of the farm for all their members.
My favorite part of the csa was the weekly emails that recapped the week at the farm, showed photos of the harvest, and recommended uses for all the vegetables in the box. Sometimes I really couldn’t believe the amount of work it had taken to get the vegetables to my table. The planting, the re-planting, the harvesting, the washing…it was amazing.
Visiting the farm was even cooler—to see the enormous fields of carrots, or long rows of mixed greens that I usually receive packed up neatly in bursting plastic bags.
The farmer’s wife is chef Ana who runs Oleana and Sofra, Cambridge middle eastern/Mediterranean inspired restaurant and cafe respectively, that specialize in warm atmosphere with flavors you’ve probably never encountered before. She writes remarks on the week’s vegetables and includes recipes in the email. I loved getting ideas straight from a wonderfully skilled chef like that.
Lux got a lot of “this little guy loves his carrot!” remarks. What can I say, most of the good warm stuff is “boy” themed! But it’s all hair length anyway, if she had longer hair peaking out under that cap everyone would find her adorable.
After touring the fields and grow house, we gathered back to have carrot soup with greek yogurt, hot dogs, and nibble on baguettes spread with Sofra toppings. A bonfire was started in one corner, and wine was abundant. There was a line of people waiting to sign-up for next year’s boxes.
If you are considering signing up for 2013, their prices are much better before November 1st. If you love to cook but don’t live close to the big farmers markets, or don’t have time to shop for produce during the week, I recommend it. The vegetables are so fresh that they keep easily for two weeks in your fridge. This year they are launching a full year share, 48 weeks of CSA! If you sign-up by November 1st, it’s $1600 instead of $2000.
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Shiitake Mushroom Strata and Sophistication
I moved to Somerville from Michigan four years ago. Within two months of moving to Boston I got a job at a ritzy flower shop in a ritzy college town, Wellesley. My coworkers had been working in the flower business for almost longer than I’d been alive. They knew how to dress so the walk-in refrigerators wouldn’t chill you to the bone. They knew how to grab a pair of scissors and trim an enormous box as tall as me, just shippped from the Netherlands, down to size and fit it all into an enormous 10 lbs vase in minutes.
One girl I worked with was only a little older than me, but much more sophisticated. She could bundle better hand-tied bouquets than me, she’d worked for the same flower shop in college, and she was constantly giving me advice. When I wanted to make something delicious for a dinner party, she went home during her lunch hour and wrote out her favorite strata.
This was early into my season of dinner parties, before I was invited to many parties hosted by Joe’s fellow graduate architecture students, some in their early thirties, who knew just how many flowers and candles would look festive and just how much food to make. Before I learned that it was ok to be half done with the cooking, but take a break with the cocktails when guests arrived anyway. Before I learned you should probably have one bottle of wine per person. Their effortlessness seemed like trained skill, and I wanted whatever book they were reading.
Now I know you learn all that from hosting party after party, and seeing how it goes.
I pulled out that recipe she wrote down for me years ago for a baby shower brunch this weekend. The first time I made it, the guy who was actually throwing the dinner party went all Thomas Keller and disappeared into the kitchen making noodles by hand, after the guests showed up. So I pulled this out of the oven and everyone over-ate their cheese portion and drank too much wine.
It went much better with Sunday’s menu of baby excitement, mimosas, herb biscuits, greek yogurt, maple bacon, and fruit tart.
It’s a show stopper and always will be. It’s delicious because of the ingredients, not the work, so it’s more expensive but quite easy to make. Wish I could write it out for each of you and send it along on monogrammed recipe cards.
1/4 C. butter
1 lb. Shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced (you can substitute cheaper mushrooms, but taste will tell)
1 French Baguette, cut into 1/2″ pieces
2 1/4 C. whole milk
1 1/2 C. Half and half
5 eggs
3/4 C. chives or green onion tops
2 Tbs chopped fresh thyme
3 cloves garlic-minced
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. pepper
9 oz. goat cheese crumbled
1 1/2 C. grated parmesan
1 C. grated fontina
Combine the chopped baguette and milk in a large bowl. Let it stand until milk is absorbed, approximately 30 mins, with stirring.
Melt butter in a large pan. Add mushrooms and saute until tender. Season with salt and pepper and let cool.
Whisk half and half, and the next six ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir in goat cheese.
Place half of the bread mix in a single layer along the bottom of the dish. Top with mushrooms, parmesan, fontina, half and half mix. Repeat layering with all ingredients.
Bake uncovered until firm in the center, puffed and golden. One hour at 350.
You can use whatever type of pan you want for this, depending on what would be prettier, or if you want more dense layers.
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Pintos with Lux
She still doesn’t speak any words I recognize. But delight is her noisiest emotion and her palette has no expectations. For breakfast we can have oatmeal swirled with grated apple and heavy cream, or cold brown rice sprinkled with sesame seeds, or slices of roasted sweet potato dredged in lime juice and cilantro.
But it’s the lunches that I look forward to: at last they are the lunches I’d read about in my favorite food memoirs: lazy and slow with many plates crowding the table. My fellow diner has no compunction about being served from a pyrex from the fridge; and she loves to watch me trim and chop our food in front of her at the table. New ideas of simple combinations come to me as we eat, and I jump up to try them on the spot.
Inadvertently, it comes in courses. Begin with enormous slices of avocado and move to a plate piled with soft pinto beans doused in olive oil, bits of green onion and topped with a snowy layer of feta. Square of homemade bread, hers spread with olive oil or tahini, mine toasted and slathered with Justin’s chocolate peanut butter. We share gooey bits of camembert, spoonfuls of fig jam folded into greek yogurt, and tiny slices of strawberries, the red juice dying both of our fingers. A small plate of fluffy scrambled eggs and brown bits of potato. A sautéed pile of bitter greens with olive oil and slices of garlic. I chop up spoonfuls for her, wondering if suspicion of green things is inborn. It isn’t, she loves it more than the strawberries. Back to the avocado we go, for a final dessert slice. My kitchen has tripled its former avocado capacity—we eat the whole fruit in one meal, daily. She smears it in her hair as she eats, and why not? She has justified the ritual bath time yet again.
We look out the window, listen to the subway trains coming and going, and sip water. She loves to drink out of the glass. I watch as she eagerly sips and then lets the water trickle back out of her mouth, she looks thrilled with the experience. It’s quiet: our neighbors are at work, and the table in front of her has been stratified with everything we’ve eaten: all of it tasted, smeared, examined, and shared. It was a good lunch.
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Buying raw milk
Summer goal accomplished! Buying raw milk is something I wish I could do regularly, but had never done until two weeks ago. I’m intrigued that folks who have a hard time with lactose say that raw milk doesn’t bother them a bit. Even more intriguing was the promise of flavor—raw milk fans say the flavor is nothing like the boiled pasteurized stuff. So we slipped a trip to Robinson’s Farm on the way to the Book Mill and Tanglewood to pick up a few gallons.
In Massachusetts raw milk regulations require farmers to sell directly from their farm property. This keeps me from being able to buy it with any frequency, but I like the idea: see for yourself how clean our shop is, and buy if it looks good.Raw milk is $8 a gallon! For the farmers this higher price, paid directly into their money box, makes it possible to make a healthy living wage. Robinson’s also makes amazing aged cheese. One of them was called barn dance; best cheese name ever.
Look at all the reserved gallons! While we were there, multiple people pulled up, hopped out of their cars, picked up a couple gallons and headed on their way. Lucky ducks.
We started drinking it immediately. It was delicious. So creamy it almost looked faintly yellow, you shake up the whole gallon to mix the layer of cream on top. It was satisfying in a way skim milk could only claim on TV, one small cup was enough for me….until five minutes later when I wanted more. I am not exaggerating: I think I could taste the green grass the cows had munched to make the milk. And we had to chase down the cows–a good sign! Their pastures ranged far and wide and they were taking advantage of it.*
We brought home another gallon and made mozzarella from it. It took one gallon to make 3/4 of pound of cheese. It was so delicious, but now I have no problem paying $6 for 1/2 pound of fresh mozzarella–it’s real work to make fresh cheese!What about you? I’d love to be able to buy this regularly, and switch over to drinking all raw. Do you get to buy raw milk? Would you if location allowed?
*I’m curious to see what happens to grassfed dairy products this fall. Typical cornfed products are going way up because of the drought out west—will they soon be comparable to grassfed prices? Or will both go up?
Most raw milk farms are in Western Mass. There are several that sell raw milk, including Upinngil and Codman Farm. Cook Farm also sells ice cream and keeps the cows close by for the kids’ viewing sake. I’d love to go there next time.
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Food Revolutions of August
Two food revolutions going on around here.
1/ A girl named Jenny started writing down what she made her family for dinner every night. Then she did that for 4,500 dinners. Now, she has a cookbook and a fantastic dinner-centric blog. I can’t shake the image of her notebook, how viscerally aware she must be, as she pages through it, of those 14 years of living and living well. I want that for myself.
2/ Everyone who loves food is reading An Everlasting Meal, by Tamar Adler. It’s modelled on MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, a book she wrote in 1942 to help people through the hungry days of World War II. MFK’s is an amazingly readable and warm book that somehow gives advice on all of life, and I relaxed as soon as I read that Tamar hoped only to be like her. I’ve been jumping around from chapter to chapter, but here’s a quote from Chapter 2, that I loved:
And always buy a few dark, leafy greens. This will seem very pious. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though: hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil, they lose their moral urgency and become one of the most likable ingredients in your kitchen.
So true. Nothing judges me more as I hunt for maple syrup and heavy cream in my fridge than the bundle of bushy chard nearly forgotten in its foggy ziplock. The very cool company Joe works for would tell you that web video is worth a thousand words, and in the case of Tamar’s tactics, I certainly agree. She made this video to illustrate a few principals of cooking from that chapter, and it’s so great: how to stride ahead.
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planting from your spice drawer
Today I have a little post on Momfilter (a website I love) about planting cilantro from something in your spice cabinet–coriander seeds! I’m so proud of my little green seedlings. Look how strong they are. From the day I planted them, I think it’s taken about a month to get to this stage:
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the May foodswap
the May foodswap was last weekend and I made marshmallows! and a good thing too, because Monday, May 21, turned out rainy and cold.
When I made the first batch of marshmallows I thought, “those liars. This is hard! and sticky! Not easy like they promised me on the internets.” But after that I made the next two in quick succession and it seemed much easier. A marshmallow recipe is a good one to make while you’re replying to emails or doing something else; there is a lot of waiting time where the watched pot likes to be left alone.
Toasted Coconut, Lillet spiked, and Chocolate Cinnamon.
The toasted coconut was crunchy and squishy (I’m using all the leftover coconut in my oatmeal these days), the Chocolate Cinnamon had unexpected chunks of ultra dark chocolate hidden throughout, the Lillet spiked ones tasted of citrus with an alcohol twist dusted in powder sugar and brilliantly white. They were my favorite.
They were very popular at the swap–too popular. I only made 10 bags, and 12 people signed up to trade with me, and I wanted to trade with a few more after that! It was hard to decide how to trade, and I didn’t like not having enough for everyone! (aren’t the labels appropriate? Joe made them for me, the font is called Bello.)
I traded for a jar of chive kimchi, a jar of mole sauce, a bag of homemade cheddar crackers, a container of marinated mozzarella balls, a beautiful lemon poppy seed cupcake filled with violet jelly with mascarpone frosting, strawberry-sherry compote, a jar of arugula pesto, four decadent marshmallow brownies, a mini loaf of onion bread, and a bag of homemade chai! As usual I was stunned and awed at the awesome things everyone brought.
My friend Johanna made the chai and I thought the packaging turned out irresistible! How pretty are these?
Several of you commented that you would like to start a foodswap in your town. I think you should! You would probably need to recruit about 5-7 people to get it started, and then spread the word! The most unexpected people participate and really get into it.
