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

This post, focusing on Blood Oranges, is the first in a series of Ingredient Posts. I welcome your thoughts on ingredients that you are curious about, love or hate, use frequently or have never tried.

The fields outside of Siracusa are filled with citrus groves. The distinctive dark green, round trees that grow in orderly rows were visible when my plane circled Mt. Etna. Some of trees are so full of uniformly yellow fruit that it is possible to identify them as lemon trees from the air. Although Arabs are creditedwith bringing lemons and bitter oranges to Sicily sweet oranges were brought to Sicily in the15th century by Portuguese crusaders.

I have been taking full advantage of the possibilities that fresh lemons and oranges in the market offer.

Today, I am celebrating the blood oranges that fill the market.

I eat a blood orange before my morning cappuccino, I drink blood orange juice at lunch.

Insalata Fantasia di Arance is what I order if I want a salad of blood orange segments simply dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper at dinner. It may be topped with onion, anchovy or olives but however it comes, it is delicious.

Freshly squeezed, pink, blood orange juice, with or without a splash of vodka, is toast worthy. Salute!

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We had been invited to a gathering on Sunday afternoon and I roasted the last of the carrots as a base for a hearty carrot spread I took to share.

I haven’t figured out what to call it but it was delicious. Here’s how I did it: … read more

When I was seven, I liked to eat carrots with vinegar. I would peel a carrot and dip it into a small glass of cider vinegar between each bite. When the carrot was gone, I drank the vinegar. I thought it was wonderful. My sister thought I was out of my mind.

My interest in carrots may have been sparked by my desire to be able to read in the dark. I had learned from my mother that carrots were a rich source of carotene, also known as vitamin A, the vitamin that improves night vision. She was living in London, spending nights in the underground, during the Battle of Britain. One night, while waiting for the all-clear siren to sound, she was told that the common carrot would help the Allies win the war. This is the story that she often served with boiled carrots:  “In an attempt to mislead the Germans about their radar capabilities, the Royal Air Force circulated a story that British pilots were able to see in the dark because they ate enormous quantities of carrots. That is why many Britons, who anxious to improve their night vision because of the wartime blackouts, grew and ate so many carrots.”

I moved on from dipping carrots in vinegar to dipping carrots in hummus and blue cheese dressing and to using carrots in soups and stews. Carrots were a way to add a bit of taste and color but I didn’t consider them a vegetable with star power.

Before I came to Sicily, I thought of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, artichokes and mushrooms as Italian vegetables. Carrots were the wrong color for my red, white and green Italian palette. But, since my daily trips to the market, I have changed my mind. The carrots in the market are freshly pulled, sweet and crisp with attached greens that attest to their freshness. Carrots are no longer merely supporting players, edible utensils used to transport tasty bites from bowl to mouth. They shine as the primary ingredient in appetizers, soups and salads. I used carrots, honey and mint to make a salad that I served with baked salmon. Here’s how I did it:
… read more

I bought 300 g, a bit more than a quarter of a pound, of fresh swordfish at the market and brought it home is an insulated lunch bag that was extra cold because I remembered to freeze the insert that came with the bag and then to take it all to the market.

Our refrigerator is tiny, and I am trying to be mindful and use every bit of food I have before it gets green and fuzzy with mold. Everything is wrapped in either paper or a white plastic bag and that means that I frequently unwrap and rewrap the same leftover more than once. I have augmented the minimun number of bowls and containers by re-cycling the blue and green plastic cups from the gelateria and four of them where filled with the remainder of a steamed potatoes aand carrots from our first dinner party and there were also bits of mushroom salad and artichoke salad.

I thought that swordfish carpaccio would  pull all of the odd bits of food together. When we had finished lunched and washed up there were fewer packages in the fridge and more empty small bowls in the cuppboard. Lunch was a culinary success, a successful use of leftovers and certainly a dietary success. We ate a small amount of swordfish seasoned with lemon and olive oil and lots of vegetables. The carpaccio was a breeze to make. Here’s how I did it: … read more

I found green beans at the market yesterday for the first time since we arrived in Siracusa.

They were thin, unblemished and tender.  I decided to combine blanched green beans with fresh basil and pieces of roasted red pepper from the market. Here’s how I did it. … read more