day 11

Day eleven and I sent the pickles to the fridge. The plump white cucumbers got soft -- one way too soft, mushy, yet with no signs of being bad per se. These had less salt than the first batch, so they're half-sour, and less garlicky (they tasted a bit better super garlicky). The small green and white ones are really good. Being wide at a larger size, the white ones get too seedy. If I use the lemon cukes in my garden they'll have to be very small, I think.

The kimchi is coming along -- slowly. It smells good, and is getting very gingery. The Thai chilis (fresh, not dried), aren't as hot as I'd have expected. They are seeded, but nonetheless I'd expect a bit more. The vegetables ones filled a five-quart bowl and now are 2/3 of a 2 quart crock.

day 8; summery dinner

I'm on day 9 of this last batch of pickles. They're going a little slower and are not as flavorful as I'd have expected at this point, but they're getting along. I thought that smaller would be quicker, but it's not.

I also started a batch of kimchi! LD thinks it smells really bad. And it's only been 48 hours. It tastes mild, and I think it's going to be really good. It's got bok choy, daikon, carrots, scallions and onions as well as garlic, ginger and thai chilis. LD says that these projects will be quarantined to the basement of the new apartment. I wanted the spare bedroom to be there for such purposes, heh.

I also bought some natto the other day. We'll see how that goes.

And tonight I made potato gnocchi with pesto tonight. It was really great: the pesto was relatively coarse, which was nice: bits of parmesan melted just right, chunks of pine nuts. All that with roasted purple cauliflower: just olive oil and salt was all it needed. It's nuttier than regular cauliflower. Crunchy, warm goodness.

a very massachusetts meal

Tonight was a particularly Massachusetts meal. I bought wild-caught Massachusetts bluefish and cooked it following
D.L.'s recent creation: simply dipped in brown rice flour (and he was right, it does make all the difference not using wheat flour) and served on a bed of zucchini that he told me about. (We discussed my -- until recent -- aversion to zucchini, mostly in that it's almost always overcooked and squishy). It's julienned zucchini tossed with hot olive oil and almonds: not cooked; just warmed. The zucchini was from Hadley, as well as the haricots verts that I blanched and tossed in olive oil, and then there were these incredible fingerling potatoes that I believe to have come from Deerfield. They're the Russian -- not French -- fingerlings, if I remember correctly, from Linda at the farmer's market. So creamy that it was incredible.

The the bluefish was done perfectly, rich and moist, and the vegetables complemented the fish very well, not overpowering, just there and fresh. The zucchini was just pliable enough to be twirled on a spoon like spaghetti.

last day/new day

So I'm retiring the pickles that I've been making to the fridge, and started new ones yesterday with yellow and green pickles from the Northampton market. I have a real crock, about 2L in size, where I can actually use a saucer as a weight. (The glass jar had two little sauce bowls in it, but they slide down as the pickles settle/get eaten and can't stop garlic from popping up without a network of grape leaves). Same recipe, I added yellow and brown mustard seeds this time.

day 10

A hardboiled egg, a tomato and a pickle for dinner.

It's day 10, and last night the pickles were half-sour dills, and quite good. I'm going to keep on going for a few more days and see how they continue as we go along.



Sorrel + ricotta + pine nuts + paramsean = this.

Throw it in the food processor, add it to fresh pasta, top it with parsley, and that's it.

(And there's wild purslane growing in the garden!)

day 5.

Pickles, day 5: some cloudiness, CO₂ bubbles come up when it's tapped, smells like pickles. Thinking I'll taste next week?

(and some fresh cucumbers, the first from the garden)

my garden.

borage, cabbage, parsley

cucumber plants, nasturtium, lemon cucumber

basil, pickling cucumber, borage [2]

a quick project; a new project; cauliflower

Today I bought a bunch of zucchini and made a zucchini-marmalade bread. Zucchini, orange marmalade and lots of walnuts made for a moist, dense bread. It's a Tartine recipe, from the book that M. gave me for my birthday last year...

...And, I started making pickles. I bought a dozen small cucumbers (they at least look like pickling types) at a farm stand on Hadley. I've yet to find a good pickle crock, so I used a two-liter jar with a locking lid (I'll save the lid for when I put them back in the fridge).

I made pickles back when I was canning, but those were pickled in vinegar. They did come out quite well, although more than one clove in a pint jar is way too much. Even one clove made for a strong pickle -- I liked it moderation (only 3 cans had any cloves).

This time I used the Wild Fermentation recipe. It's a real pickle, vinegar-free and preserved by lactic acid fermentation. I'm excited to see how it come out. Because the jar tapers, I couldn't fit a plate in there so there's just a weight (and grape leaves). (I'd love one of those fancy water-sealed Harsch crocks, but they start at a hundred bucks.)


Last night we have some of L.'s interns over for dinner and had mostly vegan fare: orecchiette with grilled red peppers, basil and pine nuts, a slow-cooked onion tart, mizuna-pear-walnut salad and cookies and a cake were brought. The discovery of the evening, an experiment really, was grilled cauliflower. I've roasted it, so I figured I could grill it. I seasoned it, drizzled it on olive oil, grilled it until browned and chopped it up. I grated some nutmeg on top and it was really quite incredible.

raspberries, blueberries, currants and some cream.

Family function this weekend, and I got some raspberries and blueberries from a farm stand (the currants are from a bush I planted -- the robins had more than I did, actually).

The borage and nasturtium are from the garden (what's left of it -- it's still recovering from roaming house painters). Basic pastry cream (with tapioca starch, not corn), and a pâte sablée (sweet egg-based) for the crust.

And, more exciting than the post, I have a digital camera that works again.

july. peas.

I saw a recipe for a pea pesto a couple of weeks ago. It had cooked, frozen peas. (Not particularly aestival). I forget what else was in it.

It's July, and I had a bunch of fresh peas, and it's hot and I wanted simplicity, so I decided to work with that. I made papardelle with 1/3 whole wheat pastry flour and 2/3 semolina. I then put 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, a half-handful of pine nuts, maybe 2 cups of shelled raw peas, some grapeseed oil and some parsley.

The result was almost fluorescent green and certainly very delicious. Really really really good. And it'd be quick if I hadn't tried to make hand-cut pasta by hand on a hot, humid day. (It got fickle and a little sticky...)

(Now I need to figure out what to do with purple kohlrabi...)

two desserts.

During the height of strawberry season, I made a strawberry-rhubarb tart. First, I made a pâte sablée, the sweet and made-with-eggs crust that I somehow had never bothered to make, mostly in trying to perfect the flaky crust. Next, I made a pastry cream but substituted buttermilk for the milk or cream (out of principle: I wanted a tangy cream), and tapioca flour for cornstarch (out of necessity: I bought a whole box last summer for peach pie and have no cornstarch at home). Right as the vanilla bean-buttermilk mixture was about to separate (think of heating yogurt), I added the eggs and tapioca. The separation of the buttermilk was a first moment of doubt, the stickiness of the tapioca in the cream a second. But, once settled, the pastry cream was incredible.

Tart crust baked, cooled and filled with pastry cream, I topped it with strawberry lightly macerated in lemon juice and sugar and added one-inch lengths of rhubarb cooked in sugar until just soft.

If was really good. Really really good. I brought an 8" tart to work and it was gone (with four of us) by the end of the day.


On another note, today: Grilled nectarines. Vanilla ice cream. That after chorizo and pattypan squash grilled was really really good (I'm in love with my hibachi). Think warm peach pie without the work and crust.

fiddleheads, chiffon

Wednesday, while on the bike path, I passed a patch of ferns and thought "shit, is it too late?"; On the way back I passed two friends harvesting fiddleheads! Obviously, it just took it little more work than a quick pass. I went back last night, since Wednesday I was without bag or pockets, and collected some.

I boiled them for the sake of pulling out any potential toxins (I did some research, and these should be the Ostrich ferns, whereas the Bracken have been tied to stomach cancer), and then sautéed them in butter and ate them with toast and 4-minute eggs. It was really good. Very green, very earthy.

I'm also making a birthday cake (for my Dad), a strawberry chiffon (from Tartine's recipes)... the chiffon cake rose (& fell) like a soufflé. It cut into rounds well. I halved a 10-in recipe into a 7-in (10in² is roughly twice 7in²). It's two layers of cake soaked with strawberry purée with strawberries in a layer a pastry cream and whipped cream. This is the first real cake I've made... we'll see.