eat make read

I hope you had an excellent weekend. A hurricane was suppose to cause chaos in the city, but luckily it just brought a little rain on Saturday. When we woke up Sunday, the sky was bright blue and the sun was shining. That was extra good news for us because we had planned a day trip to the North Fork of Long Island to participate in the North Fork Foodie Tour. This week I’ll be giving you little peeks into some of the farms we visited and things I learned.

The Times had a nice article about corn yesterday. In it, they include this recipe for Brown Butter Cornbread with Farmer Cheese and Thyme. Needless to say I’ll be picking up some corn this weekend.

photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

We had such a great time in boston this past weekend. It’s always a different experience when you visit a city where you know a local and lucky for us our locals know us well. Unfortunately I wasn’t with it enough to photograph each place we went, but I think you’ll get a good view of some really great places in the Boston area.

The first few stops are in Somerville, which is about a 15 minute walk from Cambridge. We started Sunday morning at a delightful coffee shop named Bloc 11. The coffee was really top notch and gave me the kick I needed to get my day going. Along with coffee, they serve a ton of different teas and their pastry area was filled with awesome looking baked goods. The space was really interesting as well. The building was once a bank, so it’s quite an ample space filled with different rooms to sit in, including the vault.

Our next stop was just down the street. It’s a great little Portuguese restaurant called the Neighborhood Restaurant. When it’s warm out, all dining takes place outdoors under grapevines and brightly colored umbrellas. There’s nothing fancy about the place, but the food is undeniably mouthwatering. To start every meal comes with a choice of fruit or cream of wheat and a super tasty orange juice. Our friends recommended the Portuguese Meat Plate, which consisted of two crab cakes and shrimp cakes, potatoes, eggs with all sorts of goodness mixed in and rice and beans. That was one meal. Aaron chose pumpkin pancakes with cinnamon and walnuts, which also came with a side of sausage, eggs and potatoes. Ok, that’s just a little nauseating to read the amount of food that was given to us. I’m happy to say we didn’t eat it all, but it was so, so good. The kind of good that makes you sad that you have to leave some behind.

After brunch, we somehow rolled ourselves home and packed up the car to take a little trip outside the city. On the way out, we stopped at the dreamiest little gourmet shop called Formaggio Kitchen. I’m not quite sure how we were still able to think about food after that brunch, but as soon as I stepped inside, it was like the day was a blank slate and I got lost thinking about all the possibilities. First there’s the cheese, which is the key to my heart. They have two big cases of cheese and helpful staff to answer any questions. We somehow walked away with two lovely choices, a spicy blue and a 3 cream cheese. Yum. After the cheese room you walk into a room filled with chocolate and candy, both homemade and from around the world. The last room was like a visit to the farmers market, with a few extras tossed in. There were baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh flowers, assorted beverages including coffee and beer. I tried to be good inside, I really did, but I still came out with a few bags of goodies.

Finally, we took a short car ride to a park called World’s End in Hingham, MA. The park is actually a little penninsula where you can see great views of the Boston skyline from across Boston Harbor. We set up a blanket, opened up some violet lemonade and blueberries that we picked up at Formaggio, and just relaxed. Cheese, crackers and beer came a little later after our stomachs had forgiven us for the earlier meal.

I actually can’t think of a way the day would have been any better. Great friends, delicious food, the great outdoors and a little relaxation…  I mean come on. That’s the life.

Three day weekends are so dreamy. We took advantage of the extra day by taking a trip to Boston to visit some of our best friends, Ari and Jillian. They led us to some great food that I’ll be sharing later this week. Before we left, I whipped up my first ever batch of caramels. Oh. Boy. Bad news my friends, bad news. Not because they turned out a disaster, but because they were so dang good it was hard to keep my hands off them. I’ve dabbled in caramel sauce before, sometimes it turns out good, other times it takes a wrong turn and turns into a burnt sugar mess; so I was prepared for whatever came my way. But with a little patience, this recipe turned out perfect.

The recipe calls for fleur de sel, which is a fancy salt that may take a little looking to find. I haven’t done a taste test or anything, but something tells me that the caramels would still be delicious if you substituted sea salt for the other. Beyond that, there are only 5 other ingredients, heavy cream, butter, sugar, corn syrup and water. It always amazes me that something so deliciously good is so simple. As I mentioned before, patience is key to this recipe. You need to be able to stand over the stove top and wait for the syrup mixture to turn golden, then for the cream and syrup to hit the right temperature and finally for the whole thing to harden. So give yourself some time and get ready for a decadent treat.

fleur de sel caramels
via design sponge via gourmet
makes about 40 candies

1 cup heavy cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water

1
Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly oil parchment.
2
Bring cream, butter, and fleur de sel to a boil in a small saucepan, then remove from heat and set aside.
3
Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.
4
Carefully stir in cream mixture (mixture will bubble up) and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248°F on thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes.*
5
Pour into baking pan and cool at least 2 hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, twisting 2 ends to close.

*This actually took me about 25-30 minutes for some reason, so it seems to vary a bit.

- explore farms on long island during the north fork foodie tour

- exercise my drinking skills to prepare for ny craft beer week 

- begin a dinner club because this makes me jealous

I’ve been meaning to do a post about a handful of vintage cookbooks I picked up on our midwest adventure last month. I just love old cookbooks, especially when they’re filled with fun illustrations like a few of these are, plus they often have some wacky recipes inside.

The first one is made by Cutco Knives and is filled super cute illustrations like that chicken with a beret above the “French Fried Chicken”. Awesome. Another one I picked up is called “Cooking Round the World and At Home”. I think it’s the precursor to Martha Stewart. Not really, but not only does it have recipes from round the world, it also gives helpful hints on how to avoid lumps in gravy (add salt) and how to wipe walls easily (wrap a broom in flannel). I actually don’t know if ever wiped my walls… oops.

My favorite of the bunch is Betty Crocker’s Cooking Calendar. The recipes are broken down into seasonal categories, so for instance, May is filled with recipes that include asparagus and rhubarb, because that’s what’s in season that month. Sound familiar? It’s the locavore movement before it had to be a movement and it was just a way of life.

Each book is delightful to look at and provides inspiration as both a designer and an eater.

I’m really intrigued by figs lately. I just love the way they look, plus they’re the perfect pairing with cheese. We all know any excuse I can find to bring a little cheese into my life is an excuse I’ll be using. There’s a recipe in my new cookbook, “How To Eat Supper” for figs with rosemary and honey that made my mouth water the second I saw it.

I didn’t follow the recipe to the T because I didn’t have fresh rosemary, but I did have my favorite crackers, Carr’s Rosemary Crackers. Time out for a second. Have you ever tasted these crackers? They are so, so delicious. I think it’s in your best interest to get a box the next time you’re at the store. Ok, back to the recipe. It’s super simple and only takes a few minutes to prepare this super lovely treat. I simply cut the figs in half, placed a half on a cracker, topped it off with a little goat cheese and drizzled honey over top. I mean, could it get any easier? Your tastebuds will go through a little journey of crispy, savory cracker to grainy fig to creamy cheese to sweet honey. Yum.

Rosemary Figs with Honeyed Fresh Cheese

8-10 oz ripe dark figs
4-5 ounces fresh goat, sheep or cow’s milk cheese
3-4 Tablespoons honey
1 box Carr’s rosemary crackers OR 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary leaves

1
Halve the figs from top to bottom.
2
Smear each half gently with about a teaspoon of cheese.
3
Either place the figs on a rosemary cracker or arrange on a platter.
4
Drizzle with honey.

I kind of fell in love with Lynne Rossetto Kasper on our Midwest trip. If you’re not familiar, visit The Splendid Table or iTunes and subscribe to her podcasts, they’re a great treat. She talks about food in a holistic way, so there are recipes, interviews with chefs and farmers and producers, tips on utensils, restaurant recommendations and lots more.

Lucky for me, now you can not only can you listen to the show, but Lynne and her producer Sally Swift just came out with a book called “How to Eat Supper“. It’s not your ordinary cookbook, oh no. In fact, the description of content reads “Recipes, Stories and Opinions”. I’ve just done my first skim through the book and with every page turn it gets better. The book concentrates on dishes that are easy, use fresh ingredients and are doable after a hard days work. In between recipes, there are interesting stories about how to season a wok or the man who had synesthesia. On top of that, it’s a really beautiful book. The design is well thought out and easy to read with lovely photographs to accompany each recipe.

Basically it’s a dreamy, dreamy book. In fact, I’ve decided to that I’m going to cook a recipe a week from it for the next month, so be on the look out for some tasty dishes coming your way.

Brooklyn Based just posted a good article on what to do with all those heirloom tomatoes that are showing up at the greenmarket. I’m so glad they did because I go every weekend and want to buy them because they’re so dang beautiful, but I don’t know what to do with them except maybe make tomato sauce, and that just seems a little boring. So here you go, I hope you enjoy the article as much as I did.

photo from Brooklyn Based

This weekend I did something super exciting… I pulled out all the fruit I’ve been hoarding over the summer and made jam. And oh did I make jam. Lucky for me my friend Erin came over to join in the undertaking of turning apricots, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and cherries into five different kinds of jam.

A while ago I got super inspired by this article written by Molly Wizenberg in Bon Appetit. The recipe that goes along with the story sounded pretty basic, but still allowed for some experimentation. We went ahead and came up with some of our own fruit combinations, but stuck with her directions on canning since neither of us had done it before. Making the jam is pretty simple, you basically mix the fruit up, add a little sweetner (sugar or honey) and a little citrus and let it sit for a few hours. We ended up with Strawberry, Strawberry & Raspberry, Raspberry with cayenne pepper, Blueberry & Sweet Cherry and Apricot & Raspberry. Whew, that’s a lot of jam. While the fruit was hanging out, we started the sterilization process, which takes a lot of time. I didn’t buy any special equipment for this, I just used my stockpot that has a strainer insert and it worked pretty dang good. There are special canning pots and gadgets that you can pick up, but unless you’re planning on doing a lot of canning, I think my way works pretty well.

Once the cans were sterile, we put the fruit on the stovetop and brought it to a boil. That’s when things started getting good. Scent is one of my favorite aspects of cooking and it came out with a bang when the fruit started boiling. Oh the sweet, sweet smell of fresh strawberries, then came the raspberries and the blueberries… I mean is there anything better? It actually took quite a bit longer than the directions called for to get the fruit to a more jam-like place, but we just rolled with it. After we filled the jam jars, we sealed them by boiling them one last time.

I tried out the strawberry jam Sunday morning and it just made me happy. You can just taste the freshness in it and it’s kind of perfect. There are many more jars to be opened, some of which will go to friends, but some will be saved for those cold winter months when thoughts of fresh fruit can be savored with a little piece of toast with some fresh jam spread over top.

All recipes follow the directions of this recipe for
Mixed Berry Jam

Below are my fruit variations:

Strawberry Jam
4.5 cups fresh strawberries
2 cups sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Strawberry-Raspberry Jam
2.5 cups Strawberries
2 cups Raspberries
1 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon sugar

Blueberry Cherry
4 cups Blueberries
2 cups Sweet Cherries
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 Tablespoon lime juice
2 Tablespoon honey
1 cup sugar

Spicy Raspberry
4 cups Raspberry
1 Tablespoon Cayenne (we actually used 2 and it was tooooo spicy, but taste to your liking)
2 Tablespoons orange juice

Apricot Raspberry
this one produced more jars due to the extra fruit
8 cups Apricots, cut into 1/4″ pieces
2 cups Raspberry
1 cup sugar
1 cup vanilla sugar (i’ll be posting this recipe later this week, but basically sugar flavored with a vanilla bean)
2 Tablespoons Lemon juice