A bumper crop of summer vegetables, fruits and herbs might well take us into early October this year, and there is no more inspiring guide for enjoying it than Canal House Cooking Volume N°4
recipes
canal house cooking Vol. 4 for summer’s bumper crop
tart-o-matic…improvising fresh fruit tarts
Years ago, I learned a wonderfully simple method for making a rustic freeform fruit tarts modeled after French galettes, whose charm lies in their rustic imperfection. The recipe involves little more than rolling flaky pie dough into a rough free-form round, piling cut-and-sugared fruits into the middle, and folding the dough up around it. It is the quickest method I know of creating a delectable fresh fruit pastry – about 20 minutes once you make the dough – akin to a pie but without the bother. Made with lush summer fruits like apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums and berries, it is the perfect summer house dessert. read more…
prosciutto as resource (w ones to try + a recipe)
We saw some fresh figs in the market the other day and were reminded of the simplest of dishes: prosciutto – ham that’s been carefully dry-cured for 8 to 24 months – and lush, gently-perfumed fruit like figs, melons, peaches, apricots or plumcots in summer…comice pears, fresh or roasted, in fall. We love this classic combo for breakfast, midnight supper, lone-lazy-dog supper, light lunch, and of course, appetizer.
There is a secret to a marriage of only two or three ingredients like this: that they be at their best. The fruit should be truly ripe and fragrant. The prosciutto should be of fine quality and sliced to order – NOT pre-sliced who-knows-when? and sealed in plastic packages which seem to suffocate its flavors and cause its creamy texture to turn rubbery. This means planning ahead a bit in order to have an ingredient so delicious and complete it requires hardly any effort at to serve or eat. Once you understand how prosciutto works, you can make it work for you. Here’s what you need to know… read more…
midnight snack: homemade peanut butter cups
After 10 pm, I am driven by a sweet-tooth so fierce, I never keep actual sweets like ice cream or cookies on hand; I’m afraid of what would happen. Then I find myself foraging through the cupboard, looking for something that will satisfy my craving. When I stumbled on the milk chocolate disks I usually use for dessert-making, I had a vision: peanut butter cups…chunky organic peanut butter sandwiched between really good chocolate…instant and brilliant to my mind.
I tried out the idea with both Valhrona chocolate and Guittard (which has a more overtly peanut-butter-cup shape) in a side-by-side tasting to discover how much better Valhrona really is: more deeply flavored, creamier, stunningly good. Then I swapped out the peanut butter for read more…
kitchen ‘tools for smashing’ + recipe: warm crushed olives (olivada)
One day, I devised a coarse olive paste as a way of using up several kinds of olives that were a little past their prime. I spread them on the counter and pitted them by tapping them lightly with a rock, one of the many pounding devices I’ve collected over the years to mash garlic, make pestos and aiolis, crush spices…The olives’ flesh broke open making the pit easy to remove. Then I kept gently pounding to smash the olives further and worked in a scrap of mashed garlic and some fresh herbs and orange zest. I use this versatile olivada as a topping for rustic bread, pizzas, and focaccias, as a sauce for pasta, even stirred into mashed potatoes When heated, the flavor of the olives becomes more complex and aromatic.
To pit the olives,tap them with something heavy-ish that has one flatish side: a pestle, a stone, a tin can, a hammer, rolling pin… read more…
4th of july reprise: warm fresh cherries (with leaves)
Sally Schneider
Since it’s high cherry season, we thought we’d reprise last years recipe for Warm Fresh Cherries (with Leaves), in honor of the Fourth of July. Too lazy to pit and stem some fresh cherries, a friend and I tried quickly sauteeing them as-is with butter and sugar, to discover the the stems and leaves provided unexpected delights:
“You picked a cherry up by the stem with your fingers, dunked it in crème fraiche and popped it in your mouth, working the fragrant flesh off the pit and stem; we dropped the spent leaves, pits and stems into little bowls set around the table, as you would olives pits or mussel shells. We ate the sublimely messy, almost primal dessert like children, savoring the cherries one-by-one and licking our fingers.”
It is the perfect dessert for however-many-people you may have to serve: easy to make, with a summery hang-out-and-spit-cherry-(or watermelon)-pit thing going on. Here’s the recipe, with our wishes for a wonderful Fourth of July:
recipes: strawberry-rhubarb confit and syrup for improvising
I was playing around with with rhubarb and strawberries which are in season now and discovered two delicious “base materials” for improvising. Simmering strawberries and rhubarb briefly in a sauterne-like white wine syrup released their flavor to make an intensely-flavored “juice”. When I strained it, I discovered that I had not only made strawberry-rhubarb syrup, but the leftover solids were in fact a delectable cross between a sauce and a compote – a velvety confit. Each inspired other improvisations… read more…
strategies: fresh fava beans (or soy beans or peas) + recipe
Although we’d tasted many wondrous dishes in restaurant-going lives, there is only one that we felt compelled to order three times during the same meal, eating it as appetizer, main course, dessert. Fresh fava beans, dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and a fine dice of young Pecorino cheese, were offered as a “special appetizer” one warm spring night at a Tuscan-style restaurant in New York City. We knew that such a dish is a rarity on restaurant menus because fava beans are work to prepare in quantity; they require both shucking and peeling.”We’ll start with the favas” we said, “and then figure out the rest.”
We were stunned by that first simple dish of beans with their buttery, slightly bitter, “green” pea-like taste. So we ordered it for the next course, and then the next, without restraint or care for propriety. THAT was the dinner we needed. (When we returned the following evening hungering for more, we were told by our waiter that the favas were no longer available: “They were a losing proposition; the staff kept eating them…”)
This is the season for favas and it’s worth the effort to mine yourself and your loved ones a plateful. A fine solution to their laborious-in-quantity prep is read more…
canal house cooking: fast, in-the-pod peas, artichoke-style
It is peak pea season and we can’t think of a better, easier, more delightful way to eat them than this simple recipe from Canal House Cooking Vol. 3
“The idea is to pull the peas out of the pods with your teeth, just as you would eat an artichoke leaf. The charred bits of the pod and the salt sticks to your lips, flavoring the tender peas.”
Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton got the recipe from Niloufer Ichaporia King, who wrote My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking
Serves 2 to 4
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound English peas in their pod (preferably organic)
Maldon or other coarse, flaky salt
Pour a little extra-virgin olive oil in a large cast iron pan. Wipe the pan out with a paper towel, leaving the thinnest film of oil. Heat the pan over high heat. When it’s very hot, add the peas in their pods in a single layer, turning them with a spatula until they turn from bright green to a blistery blackened olive color. Work in batches. Transfer to a plate, sprinkle with salt and serve right away.
Related post: Canal House Cooking: Home Cooks as Indie Publisher
With thanks to our friends at Canal House Cooking!
canal house cooking: home cooks as indie publisher
The other day, Maria Robledo sent over some cookbooks with a note: “2 women are doing this lovely diary type home cooking book and one is CHRISTOPHER HIRSHEIMER.”
Maria and I both worked with Christopher years ago when she was the food editor of Metropolitan Home and then Saveur. Christopher is famous for having become a superb photographer, with no formal training, just…like…that! having been a highly regarded editor and writer. (How she did it is a story in itself which we’ll post later.)
Christopher, along with her friend and colleague Melissa Hamilton, has again defied the usual notions of how things work and created an ongoing series of utterly charming, absolutely usable cookbooks without a mainstream publisher. It’s called Canal House Cooking.
“We are home cooks writing about home cooking for other home cooks…Everyday we cook. Starting in the morning we tell each other what we made for dinner the night before. Midday, we stop our work, set the table simply with paper napkins, and have lunch. We cook seasonally because that’s what makes sense. So it came naturally to write down what we cook…”
The books are so compelling and such a pleasure, and so beautifully produced, that I called Christopher up to find out the story behind them (which I want to know whenever someone does something amazing, in a completely unexpected way). read more…
foraging for ‘REAL’: ramps etc with recipe
This weekend, I will take a few days off to go down to West Virginia to the Ramp Supper in Helvetia, West Virginia, a feast served family style in the community hall by the Farm Women’s Association – ham, beans, cornbread, slaw, applesauce, hash browns, ramps raw and cooked. Depending on the weather, the raw ramps – like a lily of the valley with a scallion bulb - could range from fiercely peppery to sweetly pungent riffs on garlic-leek-shallot-chive. Fried with rendered bacon in an iron skillet, they melt into garlicy greens, their flavors deeply mellowed. The supper is followed at dusk by a square dance that rocks the hall for hours with fiddle music whose wild strains reverberate throughout the valley. These people mean it. The yearly ramp supper is in celebration of the first living thing to poke through the ground in spring and the end of a long, harsh winter. read more…
want to be a: hunter angler gardener cook?
Of late we are smitten with a rather homely blog whose content is so good, and its straightforwardness so compelling, that it overcomes its strangely distracting design and ads for cutting down belly fat. Hunter Angler Gardener Cook is Hank Shaw‘s site about being just that:
“I fish. I dig earth, raise plants, live for food and kill wild animals…But most of all I think daily about new ways to cook and eat anything that walks, flies, swims, crawls, skitters, jumps – or grows…Honest food is what I’m seeking…I am especially interested in those meats and veggies that people don’t eat much any more, like pigeons or shad or cardoons.”
Shaw blogs his “wanderings in the edible world” and explorations of foods that strike his fancy – explorations that invariably lead to improvising and figuring things out himself. The blog is a good place for learning about what’s REALLY in season, and what to do with foods you’ve foraged one way or another, or have just wondered about. We like his step-by-step instructions (with photos) of how to break down a (game) bird, and make bottarga (salt-cured fish roe), and are impressed with his thoughts on Wild Game Fat and Flavor, which we haven’t seen written about elsewhere. And even though we can’t get with his use of garlic powder and Instacure No.2 (sodium nitrite) in what looks like an otherwise fine recipe for Lardo, we love his original voice and take and insights into the process of sussing out a new ingredient; the guy is game to learn and get his hands dirty.
The blog is a fine reminder of what is out there, from acorns and borage, to elderflower and shad: all the fabulous possibilities for eating in the natural world… read more…
green chickpeas (produce as house gift) + recipe
One of my favorite house gifts (to give or to get) is an of-the-season treasure from a good local market, like perfect cherries in early summer, or a bunches of lemon verbena for tea in August, or Meyer Lemons in late winter… These gifts require an eye on the market and a bit of luck, which is part of their great charm to people who like to cook. Recently, I discovered an unlikely treasure in Whole Foods’ normally risk-averse produce section: fresh chickpeas, for a few bucks a pound. They look like a cross between a fat, blunted pea and an edamame (soybean in its shell). Standing in the aisle, I shucked one and ate it, to discover its vegetal pea-like flavor and crunchy texture. I realized that I never considered what the fresh form of a dried chickpea might be.
I scooped some into a bag and took them to a friends’ dinner party. read more…
more miso recipes: almond-miso spread + miso vinaigrette
Dana Joy Altman of Real Food Rehab blog emailed asking for a couple of recipes she’d heard Sally mention on public radio’s The Splendid Table recently when she was talking about ways to improvise with miso. We’ve come to view recipes as notations of ideas, examples of ways to use an ingredient or a techniques that can inspire other improvisations…And since we only posted two miso recipes, we thought it couldn’t hurt to post the ones Dana Joy requested, to help give a sense of the possibilities in this wonderful long-keeping staple. So here are: Roasted Almond Miso Spread and Orange Hazelnut (or Walnut) Vinaigrette. Both started as improvisations on the idea of using this traditional Japanese ingredient in a more Western mode… read more…
recipe: rich porcini miso broth
Miso is most well-known for being the base of the miso soup served in Japanese restaurants (although it is also fabulous transformer of fatty fish…One day, I decided to try taking making a miso soup using a classic flavor mix of western cooking: caramelized shallots, Madeira and dried porcini mushrooms. The result was a rich broth that seemed more like a veal or beef broth than miso.
It makes a wonderful brothy base for impromptu composed soups. Simply heat the broth and float in any precooked ingredients you like, pastas like ravioli or tortellini; cooked dried beans; or roasted or steamed root vegetables, with some shredded pork or chicken. In Spring, steamed baby turnips, carrots, beets, potatoes and parsnips are particularly lovely along with a few tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, like flat-leaf parsley, chives, or chervil.
(I”ll be talking about ways to improvise with Miso this weekend on national public radio’s The Splendid Table. We’ll send an update about how to listen to the show later today.) read more…
