Life

This morning I had the privilege of meeting some of New York’s smaller and rarer denizens. David Graves, owner of Berkshire Berries and one of Greenmarket’s Producers, keeps hives on some carefully selected (and assiduously permission granted) roofs in New York City. From these hives he has been gathering and selling New York City honey for eleven years.

David was kind enough to take some lucky Greenmarket staff to visit one of his hives. This meant an early morning start for me, but I can’t complain as most of our market managers have to get up well before my 5:30 wake up hour this morning. We walked up more floors than I generally care to and stepped out into brilliant sun with a few bees.

The bees increased drastically in number as David opened the hive and pulled out a comb, but they mostly ignored us, aside from the stray bee or five which kept thunking into my hair. (I am glad to have enough hair that my scalp is sheltered from a bee running into it.) The first hive Davide opened is nearly ready to be harvested with nearly fully combs. David let us sample some of the honey - it was incredibly clear, with very little color a complex flavor that I am at a loss to describe. Not as overwhelmingly sweet as some honeys can be. When asked about air pollutants, David responded that the nectar in flowers is so deep down into the flower that it is mostly protected from stray dust etc., and that if a bee gets into anything nasty, it will probably die before it makes it back to the hive.

David told us that honey bees are rare in the city, but that when introduced, they keep down the populations of wasps and yellow jackets. Amusingly, David passed on that these city bees seem to have picked up city habits, they work from early morning through until 8pm, unlike his country bees up in Massachusetts, who, he says, kick off right at 5pm.

After examining the first hive we went to a different part of this roof to take a look at a second - it needed to be “re-queened”. The old queen had either died or flown away and the colony needed a new queen to keep it going. David showed us the queen bee he had ordered in the mail (yes, you can ship lives bees through USPS - they have bright green stickers that say “Live Queen Bees” on them - and come in a little wood box with screen mesh on one side to all good air flow).

He opened up the top of the second hive, pulled out another comb and showed us where some of the worker bees had started trying to make a new queen. This hive definitley needed the new queen. After sliding the new queen, still in box (where she’ll stay until the bees eat the “candy plug” which keeps her in), into the hive, he set up a quart jar of home brewed nectar to fee the hive, making sure that the queen would see food coming into the hive and begin laying eggs to keep the hive’s population going (David said these worker bees only live for 35 days, so for a hive to survive the queen needs to keep pumping out new ones). David’s home brew for the bees is a mix of honey, sugar water and mint - sounds like a lovely beverage to me!

You can check out my gallery for a full set of photos from our visit. You’ll notice a lack of any protective gear - David described the bees as “very gentle”. I guess humans just aren’t too interesting when there are flowers to find.

It may not be early summer where you are, but here in New York, our seasons mostly align with the solar cycle. The Vernal Equinox heralded a string of warm, grey, drizzeling days during which the trees quickly sent out buds, the blossoms and soon leaves. With the Summer Solstice upon us we have already had a heat wave, the first cherries are in the farmer’s market and CSA’s have begun their deliveries.

This afternoon I attempted to leave work early and took a quick ride (less than 45 miutes to cover the 8 miles up Manhattan) up the bike path along the Hudson river to the church just two blocks from my apartment where the CSA I subscribe to has its Upper West Side pick-up location.

This week we had zucchini, yellow squash, mixed lettuce, garlic scapes, parsley, braising greens, turnips and broccoli! With paniers full of produce I headed home, trying to decide how to eat my way through it. I stil have some things left from last week, and eating your way through a CSA pick-up on your own can be bit daunting. I look forward to having Luis back to help me munch through all the beautiful vegetables.

Riding two minutes home (mostly spent at stop lights), my mind alighted on cream of broccoli soup. Something I never made for myself. The web offered a variety of options and as I organized and put away, and oggled the garlic scapes, I was reminded of a spread that one of my co-workers brought in to our staff-meeting potluck yesterday - onion, garlic scape and peas! Instead of cream of broccoli, creamless broccoli and pea soup sounded much more appealing. Light, summery, tasting fresh and bright.

Again with a few web suggestions, It worked out almost as well as I had hoped. Here is the recipe I will use the next time I make this soup.

Early Summer Broccoli & Pea Soup - 4 servings

• olive oil
• 3 garlic scapes, finely chopped
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 c. chopped broccoli stems and some florets
• 2 c. of your favorite broth
• 1 heaping Tbs oats
• 1/2 c. peas (preferrably just shelled)
• 1 tsp lemon rind, finely chopped
• 1 - 1 1/2 c. broccoli florets, cut very small
• 1 - 2 Tbs lemon juice
• parsley and lemon zest for garnish

Instructions:

1. Heat a large sauce pan, add the oil and then the garlic scapes and onions. Allow to cook slowly over low heat with the lid on while you chop broccoli.

2. When the garlic and onion are soft but not brown, add the broccoli, broth and oats. Turn up the heat slightly and let simmer uncovered until the broccoli start to look bright green. Add the peas and simmer another 3-5 minutes.

3. Add the lemon rind/zest and remove from heat. Puree thoroughly, taste for salt, add more water if needed.

4. Return to very low heat and add broccoli florets. Let heat until the florets appear bright green and are to your crunch preference. Mix in the lemon juice, remove from the heat and serve garnished with chopped parsley and additional lemon rind/zest.

I garnished my soup with avocado, feta, lemon rind and parsley. I admit, that was a bit of an overkill, and the feta added a touch too much salt for the delicate soup. It was still very tasty and I look forward to trying it a second time to see if I can get it right instead of almost right.

Here’s to summer, enjoy the longest day and the beautiful fruit of summer’s early harvest.

On Friday night, Luis took me out for my birthday to Blue Hill at Stone Barns. While we have had many wonderful, great, fantastic meals in NYC, most of them I don’t blog about, because that’s what Bruni is for. But this dinner was special. Very special. Blue Hill is a restaurant in Greenwich Village (and also family farm of the chef Dan Barber). Stone Barns is a non-profit sustainable farm with an educational mission. Blue Hill at Stone Barns is pretty much what you’d guess, a fantastic restaurant located on an amazing farm.

I’ve known about Blue Hill’s country version for a while now, have heard great things about it, have even had the privilege of a guided tour of Stone Barns farm (we greatly enjoyed this particular benefit of working in NYC’s food community - thank you Gabrielle and Craig). I have not however made it to the NYC version or even considered indulging in a trip out to Stone Barns. Luis’s revelation a few weeks ago that he had planned this dinner for my birthday left plenty of time for anticipation. Despite all my colleagues at work asking if I was excited, saying how excited they were for me, I could not have imagined the amazing dinner that we had. So, with no further adieu, an homage to my stunning 30th birthday dinner.

We were seated side by side on a long cushioned bench at the edge of the dinning hall - so we could watch the action while whispering sweet nothings to each other. We opened with glasses of sparkling wine from Long Island, tasty and very bubbly, and were told that the chef was excited to have us and would love to put together a tasting menu for us. We didn’t even look at a menu. Then began the procession of food.

Amuse Bouches:

• Carrots and bok choy on a fence with apple-celery slushy shooters
• Beet-burger sliders (the size of a quarter)
• Stone Barns raised pork charcuterie with breaded salsify on a stick
• Toast with Blue Hill Farm butter and ricotta plus dehydrated carrot and arugula salts
• Stone Barns egg with baby collard greens and beluga lentils

Plates:

• Wrapped carrot with carrot puree/foam and fantastic butter sauce
• Poached hake in a puddle of shellfish soup
• Winter root and fruit salad
• Lamb belly with carrots

Dessert:

• Palate cleanser - bay leaf sorbet over diced pineapple
• Banana fritters with Stone Barns honey and peanut butter ice cream with pork cracklings

So, that’s the list. No description of mine can capture the freshness of the first carrot, the melting tenderness of the hake, the incredible richness of the lamb belly, the inspiration of peanut butter ice cream with pork cracklings, so I won’t waste space waxing rhapsodic about every item (since practically every item deserves it). I think what really caught me, aside from the incredible quality of the food, was that this was a truly American meal. No hint of ginger, no trace of curry was to be found anywhere. This tasted like the northeast, like the Hudson Valley, like Cape Cod, like the the pastures and woodlands just outside the window where the lamb and pork came from. This meal was not just beautiful and flavorful, it had a sense of place.

Of course, this particularly extravagant food experience was also ridiculously expensive - prohibitively expensive for most - and I feel quite lucky to have been able to share this special dinner with my best friend and partner. This was definitely a celebration dinner - the kind of experience you look forward to and talk about afterwards, a gift on its own. A celebration dinner worth celebrating.

I very much enjoy reading food blogs.  They can be inspiring, informative and most importantly, beautiful.  My meagre attempts to do something similar have been hampered of late by the fact that I lost the cable I used to download pictures from my digital camera, and in my latest operating system upgrade, I became unable to download pictures from Luis’s camera.  So.  I have been cooking up a storm, and even documenting it, but am unwilling to share my culinary adventures without pictures.  Perhaps I should get over the need for pictures.  Or as Luis put it, “Buy a new cable.”  I new cable has been purchased, and hopefully, I will return to sharing kitchen exploits in the near future.  Of course, these pictures will only be from my feeble pocket sized camera, not the amazing, art-producing SLR in Luis’s possession, but they’ll be better than nothing.

Here’s to more pictures and food and stories.

I love warm goat cheese salads. Luis will attest to this, as he sees more order them in just about every restaurant where they appear on the menu. This obsession started in Paris when we met up for the first time in a year over New Year’s during my Peace Corps stint. Every restaurant had a “salade chevre chaude,” and they were always good. But not only do I order them in restaurants, I regularly make them at home. They’re easy! And fast. And wonderfully tasty. So, the warm goat cheese salad has become a staple in my recipe pantheon.

Since beginning to shop at Greenmarket, and particularly at Lynnhaven’s goat cheese stall, this salad has become even more common in the dinner rotation. We have it at least once a month, often twice (and sometimes once a week if I’m not feeling creative). I swing by the market, grab the cheese and greens, pick up my weekly loaf of whole wheat levain at Our Daily Bread, et voila! dinner.

It’s not that I’m planning to make a dinner of market ingredients (which I’m sure I will make a point of during the summer), it’s just that I can get wonderful cheese, beautiful fresh greens and great bread all in one place. I don’t even think of it as “having a local dinner” until it dawns on me that I happened to get all the major pieces from the market.

Of course, there are caveats. The dressing contains no market ingredients, the cashews also come from far away, and the wine served with dinner, while it may be local, it’s local to my CA hometown, not my current New York residence. As I said, this wasn’t a planned Greenmarket dinner. It just happened that way. And I love it. The fact that I can put most of a meal together from the pieces available at the market makes me smile. No wonder I love working there.

How to? Slice rounds off a log of goat cheese, put on yummy bread and broil until cheese is just melted or bread looks as brown as you want it. Make a mustard vinaigrette: dijon mustard, white wine vinegar (or rice vinegar), olive oil, salt pepper, dill, a little honey if desired. Dress. Cashews and anything else optional.

I was a princess yesterday. Or, at least, wonderfully lazy and treated quite nicely. Luis, on his first day of spring break, decided that he would cook dinner for me. After a lazy morning, we headed down to the Greenmarket at Union Square, picked up what we could there for the recipes of choice (this time of year, that’s mostly potatoes, onions and squash, plus a drinkable yogurt for Luis from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy). Then we hit Whole Foods for the non-seasonal, non-local items. Even with the best intentions, I can’t bring myself to eat *only* local and seasonal. I’d lose ginger, chocolate, citrus, bananas, peanuts and year-round bell peppers.

Back at home, I lounged and then played the occasional sous-chef for Luis. The result:

Curried Winter Squash and Sweet Potato soup (New World Kitchen) with Salmon Cakes and Corn Salsa (Foster’s Market Cookbook). Both of these cookbooks create dishes with amazing flavors, involving many ingredients and much time. We usually save cooking from them for weekends.

If you happen to have a weekend and feel like playing, the Salmon Cakes are absolutely worth trying. Every time we make them I think, “Oh, these really are worth it.” So, for the next time you have two hours and a craving for salmon cakes, here you go. Straight from Foster’s to you (via Luis’s cookbook purchase and my blog, reduced by half).

Salmon Cakes with Crunchy Corn Relish - makes ~8 2″ cakes (4 servings)

Ingredients - relish (make first and allow to chill)

• 1 c. fresh or frozen corn kernels
• 1/2 small red onion, diced
• 1/8 c. dry white wine (Vermentino works well, and is good w/ dinner)
• 1 1/2 Tbs. white wine vinegar
• 1/2 Tbs. julienned fresh ginger
• 1 1/2 Tbs. fresh thyme (or 1/2 Tbs. dried thyme - can be omitted)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 Tbs. pink peppercorns (if available)
• 1 tsp. whole coriander seeds
• 1/2 Tbs. sugar
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 green bell pepper, cored seeded and diced
• 1/2 red bell pepper, cored seeded and diced
• 4 scallions, trimmed and sliced into thin rounds
• 3 fresh basil leaves, chiffonaded
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Instructions - relish

1. Place the corn, wine, vinegar, ginger, thyme, garlic, peppercorns, coriander, sugar, salt and bay leaf in a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir and cook about 5-7 minutes, until the seasonings are incorporated. (If using frozen corn, reserve the corn, let other ingredients cook for 5 minutes than add corn for the last 2 minutes.) Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
2. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, combine the green bell pepper, red bell pepper, scallions and basil and stir to mix.
3. Add the corn mixture to the pepper mixture and stir to mix. Season with pepper and check for salt balance. Refrigerate in an airtight container until ready to use. Discard the bay leaf before serving.

Ingredients - salmon cakes

• 1 lb. cooked salmon (poached, grilled or canned)
• 1/2 c. bread crumbs
• 1/4 mayonnaise
• 2 1/2 Tbs. finely chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 Tbs. Dijon mustard
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 small red onion, minced
• 1/2 jalapeno, seeded and minced
• 1/2 tsp. chopped fresh dill
• 1/2 tsp. hot sauce
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
• 1/8 c. canola/safflower oil (for frying)

Instructions - salmon cakes

1. Carefully break up the salmon with a fork into large chunks in a large bowl. Add all the ingredients EXCEPT the cooking oil and stir gently to combine. Do not over mix; the salmon pieces should be bite-sized chunks, not fine flakes.
2. Form the mixture into 8 2-inch cakes about 1 inch thick. Coat both sides of the cakes lightly with the remaining 1/4 c. bread crumbs, shaking off excess crumbs.
3. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large, non-stick skillet. 3-4 cakes at a time, about 3 minutes per side, turning only once, until light golden brown. Remove from the oil and place on a paper towel to drain. If desired, place in pre-heated oven to keep warm while cooking the second batch of cakes. Serve immediately with Crunchy Corn Relish.

The prep is pretty simple, just lots of time-consuming chopping, mincing and dicing. Still, let me repeat, it is absolutely worth it. Ever so tasty, and what a wonderful treat to have them made for me!

One might think based on my lack of blogging that Valentine’s Day was not a big holiday for us. Well, that is true - we tend to think of it as made up silliness, an excuse for diamond sellers to put out sappy promotions. However, we still tend to acknowledge it. Indulging in chocolate, flowers, cookies, lovely dinners - these are things that should be done on a regular basis, and V-day can provide an excuse. This year our little celebrations lasted a week.

Luis pulled out some Chocolate Bar truffles on Monday (I was genuinely surprised!). There aren’t any pictures. We ate them. They were good.

On the actual day, Luis had other plans, so I made myself a dinner, and then attempted some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, in heart shape, for him. Unfortunately, it was my first try at that particular oatmeal cookie recipe, and they didn’t so much hold their shape. They did occasion lots of smiles and laughter. And they still tasted good.

Above, you see the beautiful tulips that arrived for me (a day late, thanks to a massive sleet/snow storm - lovely nonetheless).

On Friday, we had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant that was new to both of us, Dennis Foy. VERY tasty. We followed that with a nuevo Flamenco performance by Compañía Rafaela Carrasco as part of the 2007 Flamenco Festival.  (I enjoyed the modern aspects incorporated into the dancing, Luis found them distracting, watering down the passion and rawness of the form.)

It was a week full of fun bits, lots of smiles. More than anything else, it was an excuse to indulge, to do small (and large) things that say “I love you” and “I love what we do together.” A good week, if belatedly described here.

I promise my next post will be about food.

I love pizza, but don’t order it very frequently. Not enough veggie options, too greasy, too enticingly cheesy, I enjoy cooking at home, I want Luis not to die of a heart attack while we’re dating. So many reasons not to order pizza. So, instead, when I have the time, I make pizza crusts to keep on hand when the pizza craving strikes.

Yummy, tasty, crusty, and most importantly, whole wheat, crusts are not hard to make. It takes a bit of thought in advance, but less than your average loaf of bread. Only one rising is required. It is a great Sunday afternoon activity. In addition to satisfying my craving for pizza this afternoon, I also got to try out my new toy.

My mother gave me this lovely Jenn-air mixer as an Epiphany/Birthday/I love you gift. Aside from being a nice piece of art gracing my home, it also has a bread hook - something I’ve never had the chance to use before. I found that it creates a very smooth, even, dough, still a little sticky when it balls completely around the hook - which gave me the opportunity to knead by hand (which I must admit enjoying greatly), for about two minutes. Somehow, making any sort of bread without kneading doesn’t feel right. Not just that it’s too easy, but I’m not as connected as I like to be. It definitely is easy though, and lets you do other things while the bread is kneading.

I ended up with a lovely dough, which rose, from the generous ball above, very quickly (less than an hour!). Then I rolled out the dough and onto the hot pizza stone in the pre-heated oven it went, and 5-8 minutes later: half-baked pizza crust! I let them cool and three of the four crusts went into the freezer for future easy dinners.

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust - makes 4 12-inch crusts

Ingredients:

• 2 packages yeast (4 1/2 tsp.)
• 2 2/3 c. warm water
• 7 c. flour (5 whole wheat, 2 white)
• 1 1/2 T salt
• 1 T sugar
• 1/4 c. olive oil

Instructions:

1. Mix water and yeast in a deep bread bowl or bottom of a mixer. Allow yeast to “melt” for about 5 minutes.
2. Turn mixer on low and add 5 c. flour, salt, sugar and olive oil (or add olive oil to yeast mixture and add wet ingredients to dries) and mix to combine. If using a mixer, wait until a dough forms, then slowly add the rest of the flour, and wait until the dough balls up on the bread hook, take out of the bowl and knead for 2 minutes until the dough is smooth and only tacky. If mixing my hand, stir until a dough forms, then knead for 8-10 minutes.
3. Allow to rise for an hour, or until the dough doubles.
4. Punch down the dough and shape into four balls. Allow the dough to rest for 10-15 minutes and pre-heat the oven to 475F.
5. Flour your board with corn meal and roll out one ball into and 12-inch circle, crimp the edge, divot the rest of the dough to avoid bubbles and spread olive oil on top.
6. Bake the crust for 5-8 minutes until no longer wet and only just beginning to brown.
7. Repeat the process with the other three balls et voila! you have four beautiful half-baked crusts, ready for topping or freezing for future dinners.

All that remained of tonight’s butternut squash, tofu, red bell pepper, sun-dried tomato, feta and mozarella pizza. It seems to have gone over well.

…make meringue cookies!

This week involved a bit of a kitchen challenge. On Wednesday, after I left for work, went to the market and picked up some local milk and goat cheese to take home, then had a day during which I just couldn’t concentrate - aches and pains and general malaise - I received an e-mail from Luis (I had left my phone at home, oops) saying that our refrigerator was dead. Had in fact died quite completely in between breakfast and when he returned for lunch.

The raspberry frozen yogurt that I made last weekend was a puddle leaking onto the floor. The 5 lbs. of peaches I had purchased this summer, cut up and frozen for winter use were a bag of mush. The frozen lasagna was warm through and through.

We went out for dinner. There wasn’t enough in the fridge that I was confident was salvageable to make dinner.

We returned and cleaned the whole thing out, tossing everything from science projects to the much beloved, now melted, frozen yogurt. The chutneys and mustards and jams would be fine, so I left them. The cheese and eggs and butter went into the fridge across the hall. The 3 egg whites went outside to freeze, since I didn’t think they were bad yet, and I really wanted to make the meringue cookies from the February 2007 Eating Well magazine. (Why it didn’t dawn on me to just put EVERYTHING outside until the next morning, I don’t know.) I went to bed.

Thursday evening I followed up on cookie plans, and made what are truly divine little drops of chocolate heaven. I usually avoid meringue cookies at parties, they’re dry and leave my mouth feeling like I ate chalk. Sweet, usually pastel colored, chalk. But the description of these little bites, “These meringue cookies have a puffy, fragile exterior and a moist, soft interior. They deliver an enticingly bold, knock-your-socks-off bittersweet chocolate experience,” was just too much to miss. Plus, I had those three egg-whites.

It turns out, while mine aren’t as lovely as the ones pictured in the magazine, they are as tasty and delightful as advertised. I took them to work, and secretly was very happy that many people were out, so I could bring more home.

So, with no further ado, the unadulterated recipe, straight from Eating Well (I make no claims of originality, I’m merely spreading the love).

Dark Chocolate Meringue Drops - makes 40 “2-inch” cookies

Ingredients:

• 5 oz. bittersweet chocolate (60-75% cacao), divided
• 2 Tbs. unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process), sifted after measuring if lumpy
• 3 Tbs. cocoa nibs (optional)
• 1/3 c. egg whites (about 3 large), at room temperature
• 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/2 c. sugar, divided (use 1 1/2 tsp. less if cocoa nibs are omitted)
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Position racks in upper and lower thirds of oven; preheat to 350 F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper (and coat the paper with cooking spray if you wish, I didn’t, but it would help getting the cookies off).
2. Coarsely chop 3 oz. chocolate and place it in a small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium for 1 minutes. Stir, then continue heating on medium, stirring every 20 seconds, until mostly melted. Stir until the remaining chocolate melts completely. (Or melt however suits you best.)
3. Chop the remaining 2 oz. chocolate into pieces the size of mini chocolate chips (this really is the key, I think, to how wonderful the cookies are). Combine in a small bowl with cocoa and cocoa nibs (if using - I didn’t have any on hand).
4. Combine egg white and cream of tartar in a clean medium mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low for 30 seconds, then at medium speed until soft peaks start to form.
5. Immediately add about 2 Tbs. sugar; beat for 1 minute. Slowly, about a Tbs. at a time, add the remaining sugar, then vanilla, continuing to beat on medium speed until the mixture is smooth, opaque, glossy and thickened, about 2 minutes longer.
6. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, raise the speed to high, and beat for 30 seconds more.
7. Lightly fold in the chocolate-cocoa mixture and the melted chocolate just until evenly incorporated and no streaks remain; do not overmix.
8. Immediately drop the batter by rounded teaspoonfuls about 1 inch apart onto the prepared baking sheets.
9. Bake the cookies, switching the pans back to front and top to bottom halfway through, until just firm when gently pressed on top, but still soft inside, 8 to 12 minutes.
10. Transfer pans to wire racks and let stand for 1 to 2 minutes. Then slide the paper form the pans to a flat surface and let the cookies cool completely, about 15 minutes. Gently lift the cookies form the parchment paper using a wide-bladed spatula.

It sounds like a lot of steps, and there are some things to keep in mind, but they are very easy cookies to make. This was my first attempt at meringue anything, and though they aren’t perhaps the prettiest example of their kind, but they’re well worth it. I’m sure you’ll do better!

And just for kicks, here the raspberry frozen yogurt before it melted in my warm freezer (covered with fabulous organic fair-trade Dagoba chocolate).