Category: Shopping List

97 degrees, 80% humidity.  If I had cleavage, you'd be able to poach an egg in it.  

I thought about buying some Weck jars today -- Winnie was excited about purchasing hers, and as I am totally unoriginal, I thought I would follow suit.  But why is it that all the good stuff worth preserving is only around when the weather is oppressive?  I'm getting heat stroke just thinking about turning the stove on.



This week's Greenmarket purchases:
from left to right: 1 1/3 lbs. of ground pork from Flying Pigs, French breakfast radishes, baby scallions, spinach, black Tuscan kale, cranberry pecan sourdough bread, biscotti, shiitake mushrooms, vanilla yogurt, ricotta cheese, drinkable blueberry yogurt, one pint strawberries, 5/6 lb. sugar snap peas.




Still leftover from last week's Greenmarket run:
2 red onions, 1 cucumber, one ripe, ripe greenhouse tomato, half a dozen Flying Pigs eggs, 1/4 block of Colby cheese, some strawberries, about 1/3 of a loaf of bread, a bunch of dill, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of chives.

Still also have 1/4 of a ball of Tonjes Farms' mozzarella, which I think will be nibbled through by Wednesday.

I did clear out some stuff with today's breakfast of French toast with strawberries.  It's nice to actually save "pain perdu".  I'm using the cucumber, dill, onion and half the tomato for my lunch salad tomorrow.  All in all, I would say that only the cilantro and chives will turn before I have time to use them up.  I'm pretty pleased with how I've done so far.

I also used some leftover tomato and some of the onion and cilantro above to make guac for a party:



My friend Nancy had given me four ripe avocados last Sunday.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat them, so I stuck them in the fridge as soon as I got home.  Refrigeration works quite well if you want to halt the avo ripening process.  A little chopped cilantro, onion, garlic, tomato, and a repurposed cupcake clamshell for transporting the avocados and I had the perfect hors d'oeuvre.  All I had to do was pick up some chips; the hosts of the party already had jalapenos, salt, and limes on hand for my friend Shannon's knockout kiwi-chili margaritas (cribbed from the Modern):


Don't you feel refreshed just looking at that?  Muddled kiwis and seeded jalapenos, Herradura silver, triple sec, lime juice, shaken with lots of ice...I think that's it.  Viva el verano!

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That Lysol in the background of my food pictures is incriminating, isn't it?  It's actually sitting on the window ledge behind the butcher block, far enough away from the food that I'm not going to give myself a health code violation.  Don't judge me!

Related: my friend Julie reminded me today that when I first moved to New York with no job and no money, I used to go hang out in the downstairs dining room at the Wendy's on Broadway and Bleecker.  It smelled like ammonia and cheap frying grease down there, and the company was usually less than savory, but their air conditioning was deliciously Frosty.

I'm back! A trillion thanks to Janet for keeping the seat warm! These last 12 weeks have been rough. But, in the last week, I did manage to meet up with Tanya, an EDOW reader who's a sculptor in Barcelona. (How did I accrue such a cool readership? Only you know the answer to that one, my friends.) We met up to share a bottle of Sauvignon Collio 2005 Ronco dei Tassi, a nice, acidic, full white from Friuli, over a plate of fritto misto. (Enoteca I Trulli -- very civilized for an after-work glass of wine.) Our reason for meeting up? She managed to smuggle a package of jamón ibérico de bellota from Spain for me.

How gorgeous is that? A queen among hams, bellota meat is maroon, dark like bresaola, not heavily streaked with fat. She recommended letting the refrigerated ham sit out for two hours to come to room temp so you can really taste the acorns in the fat, then serving atop slices of good baguette rubbed with ripe tomato, with fat arbequina olives and a glass of rioja or Iberian wine on the side. Obviously we're a long ways away from ripe tomatoes, so I may have to skip that part, but I'm really excited about digging in. I'll let you know how it goes. Apparently, in Spain, you just keep a leg of the jamón covered on your counter and carve thin slices off using the jamonero whenever you get hungry. I've promised to harass Tanya if I ever make it over to Spain. I gotta go to a country whose people know how to keep a pork leg on the counter for a year.

Jamón ibérico de bellota was only recently legalized in the States. If you're not going to make it to Spain anytime soon, you can get on a waiting list at Tienda.com.

It's like this bag was made for me:

Details: a watermelon radish:

Daikon and burdock:

Actually, it was made for me by my very crafty friend Sarah. Inside pocket:

Yes, she's awesome. And no, you can't have it.

UPDATE: Reader Rose says that "roots" is Aussie slang for "f*cks". So sneaky cheeky!

Want to watch people get squinty and possessive? Serve up Truffle Tremor, Cypress Grove's latest and greatest cheese hit. Wasn't enough that they gave us the ever popular Humboldt Fog. This one's not a thinky cheese, it's more of a sexy crowd-pleaser -- snowy, crumbly goat curd is shot through with musky bits of black truffle, enveloped in a thin, melty layer and encased in a soft white rind. The half pound hunk I got was gone in a flash, the hind rind practically licked down for oozy goodness. I'm sure they weren't thinking of earthquakes when they came up with the name -- this is the kind of cheese you could seduce someone with. Throw in some oysters and a bottle of champs and you'll have to beat them off (with a stick).

Truffle Tremor is $22.99/lb. at Murray's.

I don't know a ton about how to cook offal, so I've been experimenting with chicken livers lately. Raw livers have a really gelatinous, delicate texture which would probably really freak out those puritans who don't like to touch raw meat. (As I ran my fingers through the bowl of livers, I thought, Maybe the only people who know what this feels like are cooks who like offal and surgeons.) I don't have a whole lot of chicken liver recipes in my cookbook collection. But I did find one curious recipe in Madeleine Kamman's massive tome, The New Making of a Cook, for a Mousse of Blond Livers and Figs. The notes say, "Any good butcher can order the pale-colored livers for you."

While going through my pound of Bell and Evans chicken livers, I noticed that some of the livers were a pale, blondish color and some of them were a darker maroon. This wasn't the case with the tub of chicken livers I had bought from Flying Pigs Farm at the Greenmarket. None of their chicken livers were blond.

Today, I asked Jennifer of Flying Pigs what the color difference meant. She wasn't sure, but she said she'd look into it and let me know. I did a little googling and found that yellow livers are fattier (sounds good to me) and, according to Jacques Pepin, "they tend to have a mellower, richer flavor than deep-red ones."

Jennifer said she'd been chucking the paler livers. I asked her if she'd pack the blond livers and sell me the first tub. Flying Pigs Farm sells 1/2 pint tubs of chicken livers for $4. Note: Bell and Evans livers from Whole Foods were cheaper, but Flying Pigs' livers were a lot cleaner.

This chicken liver paté was a huge hit at my birthday soiree. I served it with olive oiled crostini, cornichons and red wine onion confit. To serve as a civilized lunch or light dinner, add a bit of bittersweet salad like frisee vinaigrette or puntarelle with anchovy lemon dressing. It's easy to make, improves if made ahead of time, and it looks impressive even though it's pretty cheap. I adapted this Epicurious recipe and added elements I liked from a bunch of other recipes; I also adapted a Saveur recipe for the onion confit. For the crostini, I recommend the not-too-holey peasant loaf from Bread Alone's Greenmarket stand.

Chicken Liver Paté

1 lb. chicken livers
1 cup milk
1/3 brick of French butter
2 shallots
1 clove garlic
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. dried marjoram
1/4 tsp. dried sage
pinch of allspice
a good glug of madeira
2 tbsp. creme fraiche
salt and pepper
fresh parsley and sage to decorate
another 1/3 brick of French butter

Clean the livers well, trimming away fat, membranes, veins and green bits (which could be bitter from bile). Soak them in the milk and set aside.

In the meantime, finely mince your shallots and garlic. Melt the first 1/3 brick of butter in a saute pan. Saute the shallots and garlic over medium-low heat til soft but not brown. Add herbs and allspice to the pan. Drain the milk off the livers and add them into the saute pan. Cook over medium heat til livers are browned but still pinkish inside, about 7 minutes. Add your generous glug of madeira and cook 2 minutes more. Remove from heat.

Let the livers cool for five minutes. Put the pan contents into a food processor and pulse til pureed but not too smooth. Add creme fraiche. Season aggressively with salt and pepper, tasting to make sure you have enough seasoning. Use rubber spatula to scrape mixture into a terrine. Smooth the top very well. Melt down your second 1/3 brick of butter. Skim the foam. Lay whole sprigs of parsley and whole leaf sage over the top of the paté in the most artistic manner you can muster. Pour the clarified butter over the top of the paté til you've sealed it in. Refrigerate at least one day before you serve it. According to the Epicurious recipe, it keeps for two weeks, sealed in butter

Note: if the clarified butter top scares you, you could also make an aspic glaze as described by Jacques Pepin here.

Red Wine Onion Confit

Melt a generous chunk of butter and olive oil in a pan. Add 3 thinly sliced onions, a tsp. of sugar and some salt & pepper. Sweat down til the onions are translucent and silky soft but not brown, 40 minutes. Add 3/4 c. cabernet or other heavy red wine. Reduce til most of the liquid is gone, 40 minutes. Add another tsp. of sugar if the onions are too tart. Finish with another hunk of butter at the end. Serve warm with paté.

I'm really more of a center cut girl, but this is genius -- every piece is a corner piece. Looks like a good pan for baking Thanksgiving stuffing, or a crispy potato galette, or maybe a nice, crunchy mac and cheese.

Quince are coming into the Greenmarket! Raw, they're dry. They're rock hard. They're covered in gray lint. The astringency sucks the moisture right off your tongue. But cooked -- genius! That dry, grainy flesh, so sweetly perfumed, soaks up the white wine and vanilla in this sweet-tart, syrupy quince butter. Though the green ones have more pectin, choose ripe, yellow fruit for this recipe. I've riffed on the ingredients in a Claudia Fleming recipe my friend Julie recited to me once. The result is a rosy, speckled compote just sweet enough to spread on a piece of warm toast with salted butter. It's also excellent spooned over a little bed of ricotta cheese. I can't stop eating it.

Note: Vanilla beans can become an expensive habit, but there's no substitute. I got mine from Penzey's in the Grand Central food market -- 3 big, moist Madagascar pods come in a resealable test tube for $6.89. I hear SOS Chefs on Ave. B has great vanilla.

Quince-pear butter

5 large, ripe quince
white wine
water
1 vanilla bean
3/4 c. packed brown sugar (more or less to taste)
1 bosc pear

Peel, core and roughly chop the quince. Put quince in a saucepan with enough wine and water to cover (1 part wine to 2 parts water). Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean. Add beans and pod to quince. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until the quince is soft. Mash the quince with a fork til the fruit is spreadable. Add the brown sugar. Peel, core and thinly slice the pear. Add to the quince butter. Simmer for 15-20 minutes longer til pear is tender. (It'll be thick and lava-like. Scrape the bottom of the pot regularly with a rubber spatula so it doesn't burn.) Cool and refrigerate. Makes about 4 cups. Keeps for about 1 1/2 weeks (but I don't expect this batch to last me for more than five days).

We tried a fab, affordable white at Jadis this week -- Henry Brochard "Les Carisannes" Sauvignon Blanc 2006 from Loire. Light and crisp, it has a nice passion fruit aroma to it. Very summery. Would be great with a light, ladylike lunch of salad, bread and cheese. Or maybe with a Brazilian fish mouqeca and rice. Yum.

My friend Francis said it tasted like Umbungo, a fruit drink popular in England in the 80s. I couldn't tell if he thought that was a good thing or not.

I bought some Ricera rice yogurt to try the other night. I don't know about the other flavors, but the peach one tasted like peach cough syrup. Peach cough syrup flavored khaki goop. I think it's those "natural flavors". Why does peach flavoring taste nothing like peaches? I should just stick to real peaches while I can. I also got vanilla -- I'll let you know how it goes. If you must try it, it's $1.29 per cup at Whole Foods.

My favorite part of our annual Hudson weekend was getting to drop cash on a case of vino at Hudson Wine Merchants. We had to add a few $11 bottles of the delicious, medium-bodied Kaiken cabernet from Argentina after our wine seller described it as having a refreshing "hint of mint". We also loved the big cherry flavor of the 2003 Zaccagnini Montepulciano d'Abruzzo which, while apparently not as chocolaty as its preceding vintages, still had nice inky body. I tossed a jiggerful in with some sliced local Italian sugar plums for an impromptu midnight tart that we munched on after watching Singin' In the Rain. (See it again if it's been a while — Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds are total dreamboats.)

Midnight Plum Tart

It's midnight. Don't mess with the measuring spoons and cups. Use your eyeballs to measure and your tongue to taste.

Lots (2 lbs.?) of plums, any kind as long as they're local
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of sugar, depending on how sweet your plums are
Gentle sprinkle of cornstarch
A big splash of red wine leftover from dinner
1 generous splash of vanilla
2 dashes of cinnamon
1 pinch of cloves
1 ready-made pie crust (yeah, yeah, I know how to make pie crust, but sometimes you want pie, not process)

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Slice up the plums, skin on. Toss with the rest of the ingredients (except for the crust). Unroll the crust onto a baking sheet, a pizza pan, or whatever ovenproof dish is handy. Arrange your plum slices, skin side down, in a pretty or a haphazard way, depending on how much of that red wine you have already had to drink. Roll the edges of the pie crust towards the middle, making a little lip to catch any of the juices. Pour the remaining juice from the plum bowl on top of the plums. Bake for 10-15 minutes til the pie crust is golden brown. Serves 8-12, more or less. Would be great with vanilla ice cream if you've got any hiding in the freezer.

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By the way, I tweaked this recipe yet again. We ran out of berries this morning, so I used 1/2 cup of hot water-soaked golden raisins, zest of a lemon, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tsp. ground cardamom, and 1/2 inch piece of microplaned ginger instead. Topped with a little crunchy granola. Still awesome.