A few photos and happy news......

I'm so far behind, people! Since the tomato soup we've made eggplant parm, three kinds of jam, canned tomatoes and spent a week in Big Sur and the Bay Area. After an excellent summer together, Eric has left me to return to Richmond (wah!)and I'm left to wallow in my lonliness.

Then, lo and behold, such happy news from the homestead up north to cheer me up. People: we have CHICKENS!! Not just your average egg-layers. These ladies (and their one rooster) are very lovely Polish hens. They are our new friends and family and I'm just dying to meet them. Apparently, they are quite friendly and like to be held. I must recognize that these are a gift to Aunt Karen for her half-centennial birthday coming up in just a few weeks. Of course, they are Aunt Karen's chickens. But I'm sure they already know who feeds them. Can they crow for Gramma yet? Before any naming ceremonies take place, may I request that we call one of them Francine?

Aside from the chickens here are a few photos of the Berkeley Farmers Market from this past Saturday. O.M.G. I wanted to BUY IT ALL. If we weren't hopping a plane in three hours, I swear I would have made friends with someone who owned a home in Berkeley so I could cook this produce for dinner.

To come: jam and a comprehensive restaurant review from our trip. Let's just say that I'm on a diet.

Classic Tomato Soup with Croutons

I can remember watching Elmo and Big Bird on the couch as a four-year old, loudly slurping cream of tomato soup out of my white campbells soup bowl that had Mmm Mmm Good! printed around the edge and washing it down with cold (probably not organic) milk. It was 1985. There must have been Wonder bread too. Just the other day I thought of that bowl. Where has it gone? Then, I thought about the soup.





What is it about tomato soup that is so comforting and nostalgic? Perhaps its that tomatoes are essentially just really creatively constructed simple sugars that break down to sweet, complex flavors when you add heat. Perhaps its that adding cream to anything can make it taste better. Or maybe its because it reminds us all of the simple Sesame Street kind of days.

Whatever the reason for tomato soup being so gosh darn good, I wanted to make it like a grown up and eat it like a grown up......with wine, while watching Anthony Bourdain. The only thing that could have made it better was if I had eaten it out of my Mmm Mmm Good! bowl.

This recipe is one of my first ever truly "made up" recipes. Frankly, I found lots of recipes that sounded good, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I must have scanned at least 30 recipes from Epicurious, AllRecipies, Gourmet, etc. In the end this is mostly inspired by Ina Garten's recipe for Roasted Tomato Basil Soup.

Cream of Roasted Tomato Soup with Croutons

4 pounds tomatoes- I used a variety of whole, red, yellow and cherry

2 red peppers, cleaned and cut into wedges

6 cloves of garlic, cleaned and peeled

1 teaspoon kosher salt

generous fresh ground pepper

1/4 cup good quality olive oil

1/2 cup chicken or veggie stock

2 tablespoons sherry or white wine (you could probably also use vodka!)

1 tablspoon butter

2 finely diced shallots

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 large handful washed and torn basil leaves

2 springs italian parsely

Several sprigs of dill for garnish

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place your prepared tomatoes, peppers and garlic in a shallow baking pan and coat with the olive oil, salt and a few cranks of the pepper mill. Toss gently and put it in the oven to roast for about 40-50 minutes. When you take it out, let it cool for a solid 25 minutes to release and coagulate the yummy juices. In the meantime, wash and chop your basil and shallot.

Dump the contents of the baking pan (roasted tomato, pepper, garlic and all the liquid that has accumulated) plus the basil and parsely into the bowl of a food processor and process until its as smooth as you like it. I prefer it totally smooth, but you might prefer a rough, chunky chop. Let stand while you heat the butter in a medium sized pot (5 quarts is perfect). When the butter foams, drop into your finely chopped shallots and sautee for about 2 minutes to caramelize. Dump in your wine or spirit to deglaze the pan, then add the tomato puree. Bring it to a simmer and add the chicken stock. Let it simmer gently for about 20 minutes to thicken. Right before you are ready to serve, add the cream with a french whisk and let simmer a minute more to thicken. Garnish with dill and croutons.

The croutons are simple; they just require an appaling amount of olive oil. Start this in the morning or night before by cutting your bread to the desired size and letting them sit out to stale. In a bowl combine about 1/3 cup olive oil (for half loaf bread) with garlic powder, salt, pepper, thyme and dried oregano. Drizzle that over the bread as you toss quickly to evenly coat. Dump them on a flat baking sheet and stick them in the oven at 400 for about 20-25 minutes. The best time to put them in the oven is right when you take out your tomatoes!

I think a little yogurt or sour cream would also be excellent on top of this soup. Or a fat grilled cheese for dipping!

Ratatouille

I have this friend who loves Ratatouille. Except she calls it "Rat. Tat. Two. EE" and I've never heard her pronounce it like the rest of the world does: "radatooee", a word that rolls quickly off the tongue. For someone who is as active as she, talks as fast as she does, and generally lives life rapidly, it throws me into a fit of giggles when she slows down to say each syllable of "RAT. TAT. TWO. EEE". It's completely endearing and an inspiration to take my windfall from a share I inherited at Clagett Farm and turn it into ratatouille. However you want to say it.

It's high eggplant and squash season and tomatoes are just beginning to reveal their glory. I received a little over 3 pounds of eggplant, 2 pounds of squash, a bunch of peppers, tons of herbs, and the cherry tomatoes were u-pick. Check out that color! The purple ones are called something like "black jewel" and their sweet taste and firm texture stood out from the rest.

I've made ratatouille several times before, but never with such stunning produce. This was going to be special. The secret to ratatouille is in the olive oil: to get that velvety texture, each vegetable is sauteed (almost fried....you need a hot temp) by itself in olive oil. Each veggie soaks up the oil, turning the final product into a luxurious stew of soft, golden veggies.

Ratatouille is something you with which you should take some "artistic freedoms". Most recipes call for eggplant, red and green peppers, onions, garlic, zucchini and/or yellow squash and whole, large tomatoes. This time around I had a few white mushrooms that needed to be put to use, used 1 large tomato and the rest cherry tomatoes, and I threw in basil, thyme and rosemary. If you love eggplant, use a ton. If you prefer zucchini, use more of that. You can't mess this up.

Take time to prep your veggies first: a range of textures and sizes will make your final dish more interesting. And if your eggplant is big and has lots of seeds, slice and salt it and let it sit over a colander to remove any bitterness. It will drip brown liquid that you'll want to discard. Rinse the eggplant slightly, pat dry and set aside. Then, heat your oil. I generally start with about 1.5 tablespoons of oil per vegetable. But the eggplant requires more, the peppers a little less.

So heat your oil in a 10" regular not non-stick fry pan and drop in your finely diced garlic (about two cloves...however garlicky you like it) and 1 sliced sweet white onion. After a few seconds of flash frying, sprinkle with salt to release the liquid. Sautee over high heat for about 3 mintues or until a few onions show some good caramel color. Remove it all to a bowl and set aside. Repeat this process with the peppers, eggplant, squash and zucchini.

When all of those veggies are done, use a larger pan or pot such as a 5 quart dutch oven or even a paella pan and heat about 2 tablespoons olive oil until it shimmers. Add all of your tomatoes and flash fry for about two minutes until they release their juices and the sugars start to thicken. Then, add all of the rest of your veggies including any juices they've left in their bowls plus your chosen diced herbs. Give it a few gentle stirs and pop it into a 325 degree oven for about 45 mintues. This will concentrate the flavors and bring out that velvety texture.

Serve it with a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesean over cous cous or rice. It's excellent reheated or at room tempterature and serves as a lovely bed for any grilled red meats or chicken. AND this gets better with time as the flavors blend. A third-day ratatouille is almost always better than the day you make it.

Eat at sunset with a bottle of pinot noir and some crusty bread, preferably while looking at a field of sunflowers. Now isn't that summer?

This just in: "DC Voters Choose Pizza"

There's a new match-up in town, and it has nothing to do with politics. Lately, we're arguing over our pizza. In truth, there weren't many contenders until a few years ago unless you count Jumbo Slice. If you count Jumbo Slice, your vote is immedietly disqualified on account of your probable drunkeness.

Take note of subject 1 below: Eric with jumbo slice, most likely at 3am, with a grease smudge on the lens of the camera. Brilliant.




So recently everyone's talking pizza! When did DC get to be a pizza town? Arugula Files just wrote about Pizzaria Orso, Mango and Tomato wrote about Pete's Apizza...Chowhound was talking about "We, The Pizza". All of this talk just makes me hungry.

I know that despite my age of "almost" 30, I still say that pizza is my favorite food and am immedietly tempted to add that "Full House" is my favorite show like any good 3rd-grader. But I like to think I have an evolved palette. Mature taste-buds. The good thing for my oh-so-sophisticated cravings is that DC has super grown-up pizza. It's not like Buffalo-style I grew up with, and don't get me wrong I LOVE Buffalo pizza, but here we have descriptors like "wood-fired" and "Neopolitan" whereas Buffalo sticks to descriptors like "half sheet with a bucket of wings and side of ranch dressing" (again, delicious).


Well, I must start my engines because I've tried almost NONE of these new pizza places. Awful for someone who claims pizza to be their favorite food, I know, but we generally make pizza at home. So in honor of joining the masses in arguing like a good DC-politico and taking part in my American right to vote, I've got to have an informed, educated opinion. I must try all the pizza in town. Well, not jumbo slice. I've had plenty of that. My list includes our city's recent openings of "boutique" pizza that you can't get past midnight. So sorry, Alberto's, even though you're kind of the darling of the jumbo slice.

The contenders, so far, include:

Pete's Apizza

Pizzaria Paradiso

We, The Pizza

Pizzaria Orso

Two Amy's (check)

Matchbox (check)

Radius

I figured that to be fair, Two Amy's deserved a revisit to refresh my memory. It had been a solid three years since my last visit and it has been around longer than many contenders on my list. So what a happy place to meet Dan and Caroline for dinner. Dan actually gets credit for the inspiration for this posting because he declared his favorite to be Paradiso. I hadn't had it, so I couldn't argue. I was bummed. I enjoy a good food argument.

We needed a good sampling of the menu so everyone got to choose one appetizer: we had several cheeses and meats, including a gorgeous duck prosciutto and some burrata and a plate of squash blossoms for the table. Then each couple got a pizza: both classic Neopolitan, one with pepperoni and the other with cherry tomatoes and sausage.

This is a prosciutto on what they described as a "sweet onion creame". Whoever thought to transform onions into little pillows of heaven needs to be knighted, STAT.




The pizza is excellent. You can't argue that. The crust is chewy and stretchy and crisp is all the right places, the sauces are added in the right amounts and the cheese and toppings are top-notch. And my favorite part is that they serve it with a little creamer of olive oil for drizzling (liberally, in my case) a top your pie. Below is Caroline and Dan's pizza with sausage and cherry tomatoes. They are adequately priced and just the right size for sharing.



The interesting thing about Two Amy's is this (which our server even said himself): everything ELSE is so good that many people actually go for the appetizers and small plates. If you go that route, you can easily spend a small fortune and not be full. On the other hand, it could totally be worth it. Here is our dessert: dark sweet cherries poached in spiced wine and served over ice cream. YUM.

So, I'm not going to make a judgement call yet. Two Amy's sets the bar rediculously high for the quality of their pizza, service, other menu offerings and atmosphere. It harkens back to a true Neopolitan pizzeria. I quite feared that if Captain McClusky and The Turk were eating there that we may have seen a gun fight. Anyways. I loved it. But I want more. The cravings are getting stronger.

Where is your favorite local place to get pizza?

Grampa's Chicken

I can't take much credit for this recipe except for the fact that I'm inextricably, forever linked to this chicken. I mean, I'm certain that since I was born in December and spent the spring, summer and fall in the womb, at least half my make-up must be bar-b-qued chicken (or however you want to spell it....barbeque? Bar-b-cue?) Anyways, many of us farm kids went straight from the breast to the chicken. And you know what? That's ok with me.



Pool parties, farm parties, birthday parties, sunday dinner, you name it....we had this chicken. It's integrity lies in the fact that in addition to how delicious it is, it can feed a lot of people. You see, this recipe calls for a whole quart of vinegar, a pint of cooking oil, a 1/2 cup of salt, and that's just to feed 12 people. Let's not get into the amount of oil it took to feed the crowd at my first communion party!

This recipe posting is 100% dedicated to my late grandpa, Ed. He's the one who built the family grill barrel. He's the guy who added the extra essence of cigar flavor to the experience (and its never really been the same without him). He's the brains behind with the ingenious method of turning the chicken so that the skin stays intact and never tears. He's the man who made this chicken so gosh-darn special. Even though it's a family legend, I think we'll all happily call it Grampa's Chicken forever. Mom, Mike and Uncle Kenny have carried the torch forward, ensuring that we'll nourish other babes in the womb with The Chicken for years to come. But for now and for always, this one's for you Grampa.



Marinade Recipe: bastes 12 chicken halves. Order your chicken from your butcher in halves. We get ours from Clark's Poultry and Seafood on Lake Street in Hamburg, NY.

1 Quart Cider Vinegar
4 Eggs
1 Tablespoon pepper
2 Tablespoons celery salt
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
1 pint cooking oil (canola or vegetable)
1/4 cup salt
2 Tablespoons poultry seasoning
2 Tablespoons paprika
1 Tablespoon Garlic Salt
(my grandma also lists "shots of chosen liquor" and "1 case beer" in the recipe....but now I understand that the alcohol is solely for the basting of the chefs and has nothing to add to the actual chicken!)

Beat the eggs until thick. Slowly add spices except salt. Beat well. Add oil, then add vinegar, stirring constantly. Stir in salt. Add thin coating to chicken for marinade prior to grill, then baste as you cook.

For the method: I am literally copying and pasting my mom's instructions from an email.

The secret basically is NOT TO RUSH the cooking process. You need a hot fire but the chicken has to be far enough away from the fire so it cooks slowly. You need 20 lbs. of charcoal briquets (not lump charcoal) for a "barrel" which will do 12 halves. The pit we used (in the photos) does 48 halves comfortably and uses 60-70 lbs of charcoal. Hot day no wind: 60 lbs, hot windy day with fire in wind: 70 lbs, cold day: 70-80 lbs. Mound the briquets up in the middle, soak down with very generous (whole bottle on big pit) lighter fluid. Let burn till you start seeing grey edges on briquets. Spread out briquets evenly in pit with shovel. Lay chicken skin side down on racks and watch carefully till skin turns golden yellow. Flip chicken over and baste generously. Continue to flip and baste approx every 10-12 minutes or so for the first hour. It must be watched carefully so your fire does not flame up and scorch chicken. If this happens, you have to move the chicken for a minute or two or if the fire is just starting to flame, you can raise your racks a little higher for 15-20 minutes. After the first hour, you will turn and baste a few more times.......total cooking time is anywhere from 1hr. 45 min. to 21/2 hrs. depending on weather, fire, amount of alcohol consumed while cooking etc. Chicken is done when you can freely twist drumstick in leg. Do not ever use grilling tools or tongs or forks on the chicken, you want the skin to remain intact. Always flip with racks or move chicken by hand with white gloves. Prepare racks by heating, cleaning and wiping with cooking oil or grill spray to prevent skin from sticking on initial placement.

So take notice of the flipping method: you need an extra grill rack to place on top of the chicken. Two people hold the sandwiched chicken in between the grill racks, pick it up, move it over on top of the other chicken, flip (so the excellent juices baste the other racks) and set it back down in its original place. See the photos.

This chicken is absolutely always served with potato salad, tomato salad or cucumber salad, and for some reason a handful of good old fashioned potato chips. And lots of napkins.....use your fingers for eating!

There's one catch: to do it correctly, you have to build a spit. For some extra cash, I'm guessing my brothers would do it!

Credit for the photos of Grampa goes to Uncle Brack, the family archivist.

Dear Pickles: I heart you. Love, me.

So, this posting is somewhat ceremonious. The really big pickling operation takes place back home on the farm. But since I'm not necessarily a kid anymore (don't tell my mom that) I figured I should try to do this completely on my own for once. I wasn't without calls to grandma (only three!) and I only panicked once when I didn't hear the third jar seal....but it was 2:00 a.m. I may have fallen asleep, dreams of pickles swimming in brine. It ended up sealing just fine :)

I love dill pickes. And sweet pickles. And bread-and-butter pickles. I've yet to meet a pickle I don't like and I think this gene runs in our family (yes, I'm looking at you, Noah). So its no surprise that dill is a staple of the garden. I was home in Buffalo last weekend for my little-est brother's 21st birthday when pickle season started rocking. With the lack of rain this year, many of the little green darlings were drying up on the vine! We needed to get whatever survived into jars as quickly as possible. Since they came off the vine monday morning and I was flying back to DC monday afternoon with a suitcase already dominated by a massive jar of webers mustard, I started the process for a few jars at home, packed it all up, and finished it at night in DC.

Pickling is really simple. You need pickles (these are the big dill-sized ones), dill, ingredients for brine, jars and lids. First, dump your pickles in a bath of cold water. Give them a good swish and then let them chill for about two hours. This is a good time to also clean out your jars- scrub them well in HOT water and set aside to fully dry.

Then find some sort of a brush with medium bristles to really clean your pickles. You can use a toothbrush, a mushroom brush, whatever. The dirt just needs to be totally gone. Rinse them thoroughly and let them fully dry on a towel.

Once your pickles are ready for their jars, start the brine. This recipe will fill 7 quart jars packed full with pickles. I halved this recipe and still had a little leftover.

3 quarts waters

1 quart white vinegar

3/4 cup canning salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp (or more!) of turmeric

Put all ingredients in a saucepan and let it come to a boil for a moment. It should still be pretty warm or hot when you put it into the jars.

Next, pack your jars. At the bottom place about 3 marble-sized hunks of peeled garlic (3 whole cloves seems to be too much) and fold up one stem of dill and shove it into the jar kind of haphazardly so it bends and fits. I remember helping with this process as a child and falling in love with the smell of garlic and dill. One year I even taped a clove of garlic to the neck of my barbie doll and put some dill in her hair. I was so disappointed when her cheap plastic skin and synthetic hair never absorbed the smell! Perhaps I should pitch this idea to a perfumery...

You might have to slice a few pickles to make them fit. You can slice them all if you want; it makes do difference in their pickling. I generally start with the straightest, tallest pickle in the center of the jar and then pack around him. You can see we added strips of hot pepper to one jar to see what would happen. I'll let you know when we open it!

At this point, stick the lids (without the rings) in a hot saucepan and bring them to a simmer. You are making sure they are sterilized. Keep them nice and hot while you pack.

Once packed, use a funnel to add your hot brine to the jars. Don't add too quickly; give the brine a few minutes to trickle into the spaces between the pickles. Also, be sure to fill the jars all the way to the brim. Any pickles left sticking out of the brine will get soft...and that's ok, just don't eat that pickle or part of the pickle. It won't contaminate the rest of the jar.

CAREFULLY grab your hot lids and press them onto the tops of the jars. The heat will help create a seal. Put the clean rings on next and completely tighten them down to really batten the hatches.

Next, find the biggest pot with a lid you've got. I happen to have a 12 quart pot which was perfect...but you can find a cheap one anywhere, like here for example. Now, I don't know why but you're not supposed to place the jars directly on the bottom of the pot. A canning pot generally has a rack inside of it for all of your jars. I didn't have one of those, but I did have a stainless steel trivet that fit in the pot. I suppose this is to ensure that one part of the jar doesn't receive more heat than the rest of it.

One issue I had was that my jars were kind of sitting lopsided on the trivet. Once the water started to bubble, it could potentially move the hot jars around and perhaps crack one. I stuck the insert of my asparagus pot in there so all the jars fit snuggly. Fill the pot with water up to the neck of the jar and let it sit on medium heat JUST until it comes to a boil. The second it boils, shut it off. Let it sit for just a few minutes then using gloves, remove the jars and sit them gently on a towel to cool. Hot jars that meet cool air can crack easily if they bang on something. "Nice and Easy" is the appropriate method.

After about 3 hours the jars will seal with a "pop!" sound and the button on the lid will depress into the jar. I only had three jars to seal....but it brought back fond memories of 20-40 jars sitting on the kitchen table at home making a nice racket in the middle of the night. If your jar doesn't seal for some reason, its ok. Put that jar in the fridge, give the pickles a few days to process, and eat that jar within two months. Just keep it cold. The sealed jars will keep at room temperature or in a cool, dark cupboard for about a year with consistant quality. They'll be ready to eat within 3-4 weeks.

This brine is fairly versitile so you should feel free to introduce some variations that appeal to you! Increase the sugar and decrease the salt, or add some hot pepper flakes or peppercorns. The point is to have fun with it. The work will be worth it when one winter day you finally crack open that jar and smell the perfume of summer when you really need it most.

Eat your greens...with this dressing....

I know I've casually mentioned the new Whole Foods that opened literally right across the street from me in Friendship Heights but I've got to let the choir finally cry out on this: I'm thrilled to have Whole Foods in the neighborhood. Sure, I'll admit its not financially prudent to walk in there. And yes, I often go in for a pound of coffee and walk out $56 bucks later with a $6.00 yogurt that comes in a glass bottle with a $2.00 deposit on the bottle that I never actually return to get my $2.00 back because its also a pretty vase (what? Whole Foods also has lovely flowers. Just you try to walk out without peonies.)

But I'm a fast learner and quickly found that if I don't institute all kinds of rules and restrictions on my spending habits, there could be trouble. For instance: no emu eggs unless I'm having a party. Ok that's an easy one. A better rule is that I have to make a list ahead of time and am only allowed to be seduced by ONE off-list luxury product per visit. Good thing I let myself have that easement, otherwise I wouldn't have found my new favorite salad dressing.


A few sundays ago during high-pandemonium time at WF I was shopping for our Phish picnic when an all american, fresh-faced teenage boy with an agonizingly sweet smile and braces asked if I'd try his mom's salad dressing. Holy crap...is mom a marketing genius or what? Way to use your adorable 15 year old who probably plays lacrosse and has a girlfriend named Sally to hawk your wares. It really only took one bite and I was hooked. Really, the dressing is super simple: lemons, olive oil, salt and pepper. And at $5.99 a bottle, you're probably thinking "dude, you can make that at home".


You're right. You can make it at home. That's what this mama did. And then she figured out that most people who get home from work, workout, happy hour, etc at 9:00 at night aren't going to make their own. And that's how she got me. It's fresh and light and will entice me to eat salad at 9:00 a night even when I don't feel like slicing garlic or zesting lemons or engaging in any other dressing-making activies. I'll gladly pay the $5.99 for a bottle that lasts me two months to save me from eating tortilla chips and hummus because I have nothing healthy and delicious to eat on my salad.

Plus, as I checked out their website this morning I noticed that there are THREE fresh-faced teenage boys hustling salad dressing somewhere across the state of Maryland. Go find one and try a bottle. I swear you'll be hooked.


http://www.tessemaes.com/


And really, that's kind of what WF is all about: getting you to spend a little extra on food you feel good about. They only work really well in cities because we're full of busy, young and single, career-minded, socially concious people who pay attention to how their consumer choices have an impact on the world around them. How many of you are guilty of buying a pound of WF curried chicken salad to take to work all week because (a) you didn't get a chance to make your own chicken salad this week and (b) you can trust that what you're eating is mostly natural, organic and anti-biotic free? For all of the cooking I do, I proudly raise my hand and say "I am!" That chicken salad is addictive.

Thanks to my new neighborhood store for turning me onto Tessamae's dressing, a local Maryland product!