Summer

Our garden gets a little more ambitious every year.

Last summer, we had three cherry tomato plants, a bunch of cucumbers, hot peppers that weren't even close to being hot, lots of herbs, and a crop of long beans that yielded a serving for Margy and me about three times.

This time around, we've got one grape tomato and one beefsteak tomato plant, more cukes, jalapeños that might actually hold a little heat (if they'd just mature already), oodles of pole beans (green, yellow, and purple), arugula and mixed baby greens (wonderful but now succumbing to the burgeoning summer sizzle), and again many different herbs.

And beets. Some of which are now ready. The leaves and stalks have been gorgeous -- that deep red-purple color that there's no point in calling anything else but beet red. Once the bulbs poked out of the soil and showed themselves as relatively plump and ready to be eaten, it was time to go.

Of course, one of these plants (we have three) offers only a few small beets, so that's all I had to work with today. Using a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, I cubed the beets and roasted them with olive oil and salt and pepper until they just began to caramelize. As I removed them from the oven, I popped a piece in my mouth. Sweet and earthy. Ready to become a salad. I dressed them with oil, vinegar, and fennel seeds and let them steep awhile.

Margy shaved some farmers'-market fennel ("What do you do with the tops?" said the woman who sold me the fennel, just as I was wondering myself) on the mandoline, almost shaving her palm along with it. What is it about that device? Me, I basically refuse to touch it, even though I'd love to put it to use. It terrifies me.

Bottom line: Beets plus fennel in three forms -- bulb, fronds, seeds -- equals deliciousness. Just be sure to eat a sweet salad like this along with something salty or sour, or else you'll think you've skipped dinner and gone right for (an admittedly very healthy) dessert.

Margy's Beijing Journal: Chou Dofu

...or, as it is more commonly known, "stinky tofu" -- tofu that's been marinated in a brine of fermented vegetables.

It's the yummy-looking fried stuff on the plate at left. How innocent it seems -- golden cubes of crispy deep-fried food. Fried anything is good -- how strange could this be?

According to Margy, pretty strange.

A few days ago, after correctly pegging Margy as an adventurous eater, one of her hosts started chatting her up about stinky tofu, asking whether she'd ever had it and beginning to prime her for the experience. Was this a test? After all, Margy had two hosts, and the other one didn't want to have anything to do with the stuff. But Margy was game.

She said she took two bites and knew that fermented tofu wasn't the dish of her dreams (okay, she knew this after the first bite, but she wanted to be sure). The smell and flavor were superstrong and a bit too jarring to be enjoyable. The other American at the table plugged ahead a little longer than Margy before he too gave up.

Luckily there were other, more familiar foods going around, like a whole fish with chili sauce. Margy had lots of whole fish in Beijing, and what could be better? Anyway, the only real reason to object to eating whole fish is that dealing with bones can be a drag, and in general Chinese don't mind dealing with bones. Margy's companions used their chopsticks to make quick work of the task.

While the Beijing gang sipped plum wine and noshed on stinky tofu, I was at Rudy's on 9th Avenue having "rehearsal" with my band, which consisted of drinking beer and eating a lousy but free hot dog, which, now that I think of it, might have also been fermented...

Margy Goes to China!

Please forgive my absence. I've been eating bad takeout in New Jersey while Margy's been off frolicking in Beijing.

Okay, I exaggerate. She wasn't only frolicking; she was working very hard too. Alas, it just wouldn't have been practical for me to join her on this tightly packed business trip, so I held things down at home and wished for her quick return.

Margy's first taste of Beijing's many culinary delights was in the courtyard of the Huajia Yiyuan Restaurant, after she'd endured a full day of traveling and didn't know which end was up. (Though conveniently, with Beijing being twelve hours ahead, she didn't have to change her watch.)

But if Margy's body and mind had no idea what was going on, her appetite knew exactly what to do, and she had a great first meal, which was ordered by her two gracious and knowledgeable hosts and washed down with Chinese beer. Just look at those greens! As I imagine what they tasted like, I kind of feel like a fool for not finding a way to share this exotic trip with my beloved world traveler. Sigh. In the foreground is a plate of tofu on top of mushrooms, and at right is another assortment of mushrooms (or so Margy guesses). She loved it all, and then came the Peking duck. Sigh.

Choke Char

I am something of a suggestible shopper. Place Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in my path, and I'm bringing them home. And, somebody, please stop putting Kinder displays right next to the register. They're working too well.

Luckily, my willingness to depart from my list doesn't apply only to candy. The other day, ShopRite had a big display of baby artichokes set prominently in the vegetable section: rows of shrink-wrapped packages, each holding nine neatly arranged little artichokes. I was powerless to resist.

I'm hardly an expert choke wrangler. I'd worked with full-size artichokes a few times, but it had been years. Margy, who's known to make an awesome whole fish with artichokes, has had a little more experience. But let's just say my purchase meant this was a special occasion -- we had spiky green guests in the house, and I was on my best behavior.

I tore open the package and dumped the little guys on the table. They rolled around a bit, orbiting out in random directions. I collected them and began to whittle. A few long minutes later I was looking at a huge pile of stiff green leaves and nine puny yellow-green cylinders. These were obviously not so-young-you-barely-have-to-peel-them baby artichokes, but among the wreckage I had enough to make an ample side dish to go with grilled sausages.

I steamed the suckers for about ten minutes, let them cool, and tossed them in a few tablespoons of lemon vinaigrette (lemon juice, olive oil, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper). Then they followed the sausages on the grill, to take on a bit of char. When they were done I dressed them in more vinaigrette. They were fun to eat, pleasantly al dente, with their natural tanginess highlighted by the lemony dressing. Given all the work they required -- the peeling, the slicing, the steaming -- I think baby artichokes will remain infrequent guests, but we'll definitely look forward to their next visit.

Homeward Bound

As I tried to avoid the tractor-beam pull of the latest Lindsay Lohan movie and keep my nose in the book I'd never started reading on my trip, I heard the flight attendants coming up the aisle with meal service.

"Beef-chicken-vegetarian? Beef-chicken-vegetarian? Beef-chicken-vegetarian?"

Vegetarian?

I thought that one was reserved for people who call ahead. I was intrigued. My row -- all to myself, I might add (Margy still had a few days of work left in Paris) -- was in the back, so I knew one of those choices would be eliminated by popular demand by the time it was my turn. But which one would it be?

"Chicken-or-vegetarian?"

The beef ran out! Without even asking what the hell it was, I threw caution to the wind and asked for veg. Anything to avoid the funky chicken.

And wouldn't you know that on my afternoon flight out of Paris on Continental Airlines my lunch was... black-eyed peas masala.

It wasn't good -- I won't go that far -- but you know, it was the best meal I've had on a plane in a long time, maybe ever.

Cel-Ray

I bought a bunch of celery at the farmers' market on Sunday, to use when I boiled the chicken. And when I say a bunch, I mean a bunch.

It was organic, and for, I think, $3.50 (easily the most I've paid for celery) I got a lot of it. I tried using as much as I could at every opportunity, but the thing wouldn't dwindle. And it was unlike any other celery I've seen -- the stalks were really thin, very dark, and superdense. It was impossible to crunch on a raw piece without chewing for five minutes afterward. Not only that, but the base of the bunch was caked with dirt and mud... and pretty well crawling with insects. A beetle sauntered out onto my kitchen table as I pulled away a few stalks, and later I found a slug, alive and well and, presumably, well fed.

But oh, the flavor of this celery!

When I told Enzo about the giant green tree that was taking over our fridge, he suggested I use any leftovers to make soup. And so, after scrub, scrub, scrubbing the hell out of each and every little piece with a stiff brush -- Margy doesn't like slugs in her soup -- I boiled the celery in chicken stock along with carrot and onion, and later I added some celery root and a potato. Once the celery became tender (which took a long time), I poured everything into a blender and pureed it. Exciting things were starting to happen.

But... the stuff was way too fibrous, so Margy got out her Foley food mill, and we passed the soup through it to smooth out the texture. This took some time, but it needed to happen. And I had planned to add some cream to the final product, but the soup was so lush and rich that I didn't bother. It was like having all the savory flavor of celery concentrated into something far more satisfying and substantial than celery itself.

Next stop, cauliflower.

Bumper Crop

These cherry tomatoes that we've been growing are tiny wonders, and they're coming hard and fast now.

The trick is to barely cook them and let them keep their tangy flavor and plump juiciness, so for this pasta sauce, just like the last one, I threw them in at the very end. First I crisped up some pancetta in a tiny bit of olive oil. Then I removed the pancetta to drain, adding a little more oil and some garlic and herbs. All the while I was cooking the pasta, and when it was almost done, back into the oil went the pancetta, and then I threw in the tomatoes to let them get hot.

Wow, growing your own food. Ecco il contadino!

Ode to Summer Vegetables

I was a guest of the Maccadonaldi West and had a nice dinner of hot dogs and burgers, plus signature Maccdonaldo (West) baked beans and this fine summer medley of roasted green beans and cherry tomatoes. Half the table was age eleven or under, and our skilled hostess said she knew she could at least count on me to make a dent in the vegetables. She was right.

Before dinner I got treated to an impromptu keyboard concert based around a single composition, that enduring little ditty "Ode to Joy." One kid would start to play it -- with either one or both hands, depending on her piano-lessons status -- and before she was able to cycle once through the melody she would be pushed away so one of her sisters could show off her talent. And on it went. They did a nice job. Little did I suspect it at the time, but this concert was actually more exciting than the one the McD brothers and I attended after dinner, a middle-of-the-road jam-band affair that was long on uninspired I'm-playing-scales soloing and short on decent songs and pleasant surprises. Perhaps a little "Ode to Joy" jam would have helped.

Hello, Beans

The noteworthy thing about tonight's turkey keema, besides the fact that we ate it with warm tortillas, which is pretty damn fun, is that the meal marked the emergence of our crop of long beans. That's right -- I was able to harvest five whole beans, and since those suckers really are very long (18 inches, I'd say), five was just about enough to get us our vegetables. They were so fresh that they only needed to be boiled for about a minute, and they stayed bright and crisp. As with our tomatoes, we were struck by the beans' clear, delicious flavor.

I can't stop fantasizing about having a huge vegetable garden. Maybe someday.

Shrimp Share the Spotlight

I used to use stir-frying as an excuse to throw everything I had into the pan -- meat, shrimp, four kinds of vegetables.

But I began to notice that good Chinese restaurants keep it much more simple, and I started paring down the ingredients in order to focus on one or two main items. For the most part I would relegate the green vegetables to a separate pot.

I get lazy, though. And I want to experiment. So tonight I just par-boiled lots of string beans and threw them right in with the shrimp in black bean sauce. It wasn't a disaster, but the crunchy beans dominated; if the dish were on a menu it would be called string beans with shrimp and not the other way around.

None of this, of course, was lost on Margy, who ate well enough but suggested I cook the beans separately next time. She knows her stuff. It shall be done.

Cauliflower Variations

Necessity is the mother of invention, and I had a head of cauliflower and a single ripe tomato that I needed to use. I thought, What would Mom do?

Of course Mom would make an utterly delicious pasta sauce.

I came close, but I didn't quite cook the cauliflower long enough, so it was a little too firm. We don't want mush, but we want those florets to be cooked through. I'm glad I didn't have any real Italians at the table -- they like to cook vegetables to death and probably wouldn't appreciate a bit of snap.

Otherwise, I will make this dish again. All I did was brown some pancetta (it's a full-blown addiction at this point) and render its fat, then remove the crispy bits from the pan. I added chopped onion to the fat, then in a few minutes some sliced garlic and a chopped chile. Parsley would've been nice, but I didn't have any. I dropped my tomato in the water that was boiling for pasta, and then removed the skin and chopped the flesh, tossing it into the pan along with the cauliflower and a splash of white wine. Then I began to cook the pasta (I should have given the cauliflower five minutes of cooking time first). When the sauce got a bit dry, I added some pasta water to it. Near the end I threw most of the browned pancetta into the pan to heat up, saving a little to sprinkle over our bowls. I love a meaty garnish.

Oh, and a word on the biscuit in the background. It's called a freselle (not to be confused with guitarist Bill Frisell), and its only ingredients are flour, water, yeast, lard, lots of black pepper, and salt. My sisters, parents, and I picked up a few bags when we were in New Haven two weeks ago. You can get freselles in other areas, but to our family New Haven is the only place to find the real deal. They're crumbly, peppery, and irresistible. Dunk them in coffee or soup or tomato sauce, spread them with peanut butter, eat them plain -- it all works.

Hit by the Zucchini Thunderbolt

Making fried chicken, I'm out of my element. Give me a box of pasta and some bacon, and I'm right at home. Add a nice fat leek and some bright-green baby zucchini, and we're gonna have ourselves a good ol' time.

I'm not really the biggest fan of the zucchini. I mean, fry up some flowers in Rome and I'm there, but I don't usually buy zukes at ShopRite. This time the little guys were so adorable that I had to bring them home and eat them. Good thing I did, because I can imagine Margy and me enjoying variations on this dish all summer. It was one of those meals that taste better with each bite until they're gone. I'm not trying to brag; Margy said she noticed the same thing.

Vivono gli zucchinini!

Sprouting Up

Tonight I thought I'd give Margy one of her favorite treats. Chocolate cake, you ask? A sundae? Nope -- Brussels sprouts!

The tiny cabbages are gaining serious ground lately, even though my mom still hates them. I understand the appeal, but I was surprised to see so many positive comments when Frank Bruni, the New York Times' restaurant critic and aspiring waiter, wrote about them recently on his blog. Now might be the time to open a joint called Sprout.

This time I served the sprouts with grilled burgers. I sliced them and cooked them in butter and olive oil, taking a tip from one of Bruni's meals and adding a dash of balsamic vinegar at the end. My dash wasn't very dashing, because it didn't make much of a difference, but now I'm primed for sprout experimentation. However, when hamburgers are on the menu, old habits die hard; I would have preferred a salad. Margy, though, was delighted.

Tamarind Dreams

Weddings are wonderful, but it was time to get back in the kitchen.

I was planning to whip up a large batch of ground turkey keema to feed Margy and me during the week, and I needed a side dish. Lucky for us I had a head of cauliflower, that most Indian of vegetables, in the fridge. It gave me the perfect reason to use my newish cookbook, Mangoes & Curry Leaves, a huge, colorful volume that explores the food of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It was a Christmas gift from my mom and I had yet to try one of its recipes.

This one, cauliflower dum, was a winner. It's a tomato curry made rich by lots of grated onion. (I have to say that as thickeners go, you can't really beat grated onion.) Traditionally the pot is sealed tightly with a strip of dough and submerged in coals or ashes, but tin foil and an oven make things easier, if a bit less fun. When the pot came out, the cauliflower had become very tender, but it wasn't mushy, and it kept its color in the face of all that tomato and turmeric.

I also made a tamarind sauce from the same book. I had made thin brown tamarind chutney before, and it was much like the condiment used in most Indian restaurants. But this one was different. It was thicker and lighter in color, and it really highlighted tamarind's sour fruity flavor, sweetening it just a bit with sugar but also spicing it up with ground fennel and a strong hit of cayenne. Margy and I couldn't get enough. We poured it on the keema, the cauliflower, the rice -- and we may just have it on a hamburger later this week.