Today I picked up my first CSA delivery. I got Chinese cabbage, Siberian kale, chives, garlic chives, a spicy greens salad mix of about twenty greens, small bunches of Tango lettuce , spring herbs, granola and eggs.

My bag also had a note from the Clay HIll folks with an update on the irrigation system, information about the green house and hoop houses and a recipe for Garlic Scallion and Almond Pesto.

I’m planning on making fresh pasta and the pesto for dinner tomorrow night.  I let you know how it goes.  I made maple syrup seasoned salad dressing to top the spicy mixed greens for  a salad for dinner. Here’s how I did it: … read more

It was a snail that introduced me to garlic. My mother was from England and my father was from Slovakia so spice and punch came in the form of mustard, black pepper or sauerkraut. Olives, capers and anchovies never appeared on our table.

When I was nineteen, I moved to an apartment on the second floor of a converted town house in Washington, DC. The French Market, a boutique grocery store, was on the ground floor. It had become a successful business when John Kennedy was president and all things French became fashionable. By my third visit, I realized that my gastronomic education had begun.

The owner, Georges, was from Nice, in the south of France. He always had time to answer questions, share recipes or offer tastes. He never looked at his twelve-inch chef’s knife as he minced garlic, parsley and almonds to make snail butter and gossiped with market regulars. After he put a cooked snail into each shell he sealed the opening with a knob of the seasoned butter. When he suggested that I try the snails for dinner, I bought a dozen, a baguette and two sets of snail-eating equipment. He explained how to heat the snails in dimpled metal plates and how to use the tool that looked an eyelash curler to hold the hot shell while fishing them out with a small snail fork.

The snails were interesting, a bit chewy, but the apartment smelled wonderful! The chunks of bread soaked in the hot garlic butter were divine. It was the beginning of a new friendship, “Bonjour Garlic!”

Since that introduction, garlic has been a permanent resident in my pantry. It appears so frequently in my recipes that I use garlic scapes, the immature flower stalks of hard neck garlic, as my logo. The best way to store garlic is at room temperature, in a porous container. I have a ceramic garlic pot with a lid that keeps out the light and holes in the sides that allow air to circulate, preventing garlic from becoming moldy.

Georges showed me how to add zip to salads by rubbing the inside of a wooden salad bowl with a clove of garlic and a pinch of kosher salt. Occasionally, he had cooked artichokes next to mushroom, fennel and green bean salads. A small container of mayonnaise mixed with mince garlic, lemon juice, a pinch of cayenne pepper and an artichoke made a lunch that was tres chic.

The pate Georges made was perfumed with garlic and it inspired me to use garlic to season meatloaf. When Georges prepared chickens for roasting, he pushed a mixture of butter, garlic and thyme under the skin of the bird.

He seasoned legs of lamb with garlic, rosemary, sage and thyme before deftly forming each roast into the shape of a duck with the end of a bone as the duck’s head. I’ve never tried the fancy butchering but I do use the same herb and garlic mixture to season lamb.

I don’t remember who introduced me to the complex, sweet and earthy flavors of roasted garlic. I make it often by cutting off the top of plump garlic bulbs, drizzling them with olive oil, wrapping the bottoms of the bulbs in aluminum foil and roasting them. After half an hour in a 350-degree oven, the golden paste can be spread onto crusty bread to make appetizers that I serve with red wine.

Fifteen years later, my friend Gwen served a salad made with blanched garlic. She said that it was easier to digest and that it added flavor with less bite. She claimed that blanching eliminated volatile sulfur compounds that cause garlic breath and indigestion. Gwen simmered garlic in boiling water for a minute before peeling it and blending into salad dressing. Blanching garlic in the microwave by zapping unpeeled garlic cloves in a half-cup of water in a partially covered container for 30 seconds seems simpler to me. I use blanched garlic in barley or bean salads that will not be served within and hour.

Garlic is called the stinky rose and blamed for causing bad breath but its presence is recognized in cuisines around the world as the promise of a tasty meal. The pan of garlic roasted root vegetables I served on Saturday delivered on that promise when Jim and Anne joined us for dinner.

Along with the roasted turnips, carrots and potatoes roasted, a can of cranberry sauce mixed with a couple of tablespoons of horseradish and a roasted chicken from the market were all I needed for our impromptu dinner party. The scent of the roasting vegetables made it seem as if I had spent the entire day, rather than half an hour, cooking. I started the vegetables in the microwave and they finished roasting while I set the table, and cut up the chicken. Here’s how I did it. … read more

I just discovered grape seed oil in the bulk section at the market. Initially I was attracted by its green color. What a surprise – a painter attracted by color! It is greener than any olive oil I have ever seen.

High in antioxidants, and bio-flavonoids, a polyunsaturated oil containing the highest amount among any oil or food source of linoleic acid, an essential fatty acid that the human body can not produce, it is healthier than olive oil. One tablespoon provides nearly the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin E.

Grape seed oil has a relatively high smoke point and can be safely used to cook at high temperature for deep frying as well as in stir-fries and sautéing. Its light, nutty taste makes it perfect for salad dressing, as a base for flavor infused oils, and in homemade mayonnaise. Although sometimes referred to as a vegetable oil it is actually fruit oil.

Grape seed oil is widely used as a base for skin care products, is used as a carrier for aromatherapy and makes great massage oil.

Surely with all of this to recommend it, you can find space in your pantry for a bottle of it.

The small ad in the newspaper said “Pick your own Red Currants.”

Riverview Farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire was the place. The sign at a bend in the Connecticut River pointed at the lane to the fields and the currants. The bushes were filled with stems of ruby spheres and picking was easy. There were no bugs, it wasn’t raining, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. In less than forty minutes we had picked three pounds of red currant.

Paul Franklin, proprietor of Riverview Farm weighted the currants and we talked recipes for a few minutes. He told me about his breakfast biscuits with red currants folded in.

Another farmer told me that red currants had been hunted and eliminated by federal agents in the early 1900′s because of concern for the ‘white pine blister rust’ and fear that white pines would suffer the same devastation as the elms. He went on with a smile, ‘If they had tried to take Granny’s red currant bushes, she would have met them with a shot gun.’

Let’s get to the juicy part. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Cayenne pepper, chili pepper flakes, fresh jalapeno, canned chili in sambal, and assorted whole dried chilies are always in my pantry.

A Pantry Basic
I use cayenne pepper in everything from creamed spinach to chocolate sauce for ice cream. The handle of a teaspoon or the tip of a butter knife are what I use to measure out the tiny quantity necessary to give a boost without a burn. Aztecs combined chili and chocolate in hot chocolate. I wonder if it was called Hot, Hot Chocolate.

I add a pinch of chili pepper flakes to olive oil, garlic and onion at the start of a marinara sauce. Poblano chili in adobo sauce combined with sour cream is a great sauce for grilled chicken.Jalapeno peppers are usually the only fresh at my market. I find the habanero and Scotch bonnet peppers too hot for my palette.

Sambal, an Indonesian condiment I first tasted when we lived in Singapore, heats up my nearly daily lunch of Asian Noodle soup with bitter greens.

I store whole dried and Serrano chilies in a tin until needed for a mole sauce. Experiment with chilies. Start cautiously, the goal is to enhance flavor not to set any fires.

Capsaicin, the chemical in chili, has been shown to stimulate endorphin release. Using chili may not only zip up what you’re cooking but put a smile on your face as well.

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Fleur de sel is the most expensive of the three kinds of salt in my pantry and with beautiful thin crystals and exquisite flavor it is my all time favorite for seasoning food at the table.
This salt comes from the south east coast of France near Collioure.  The salt flats were flecked with pink flamingos as my train whizzed by.

Sel de mer, also from France, is less expensive and quite fine making it perfect for sauces and salad dressings.