Tomato Sauce, 3 Ways

We didn't grow tomatoes this year, and still we ended up with a wide variety from family and neighbors -- enough to make three small batches of tomato sauce. Despite the cold summer and their late debut, the fruit turned out juicy and flavorful, always reminding me of being a child in my grandparents' dense August gardens, making my way along aromatic gravel paths with a basket or a wagon for collection. With many years of eating tomatoes in many places, this is the memory that always returns.

For the first batch, I gently roasted a mixture of varieties, just dousing them with olive oil and adding a foil packet of garden-grown garlic. Once roasted for an hour at 400 F, I blended the tomatoes and garlic in the food processor for a basic and versatile sauce. For the next batch, I picked out some medium-sized, deep red orbs for deep roasting -- 400 F for several hours, like 4 or 5, until they were well-wrinkled and caramelized. Some of these were blended into a concentrated tomato paste, while others remained solid for smooshing onto turkey sandwiches. And for the third batch, I made a simple pasta sauce, with olive oil and butter, onion, garlic, tomatoes, Parmesan, basil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. For someone who seems to plan two dinners ahead, maximum, it felt good to be all stocked up.

Peachy

The soil and sun of Eastern Washington create the best peaches in the country, hands down. At the risk of sounding like that friend of Forrest Gump who goes on about shrimp, I've made a few peach cobblers, an open-faced peach pie with a vanilla bean custard base, peach milkshakes, and a fun salad that was inspired by a citrus version served at Tilth:

Slice a perfectly ripe peach; no need to peel. Spread it attractively in a line on a white plate. Use sugar and a blow torch to caramelize the peaches. Accompany this bruleed sweetness with a little pile of dressed arugula from the farmers market (real arugula -- not that baby stuff from the supermarket), sheeps milk cheese and toasted pistachios. Proscuitto is optional. 

Creamy Morel Bucatini

When our friends Brett and Bobby visited, we all got busy and made a gorgeous dinner to go with the gorgeous wines they brought. Our typical "nice filet of salmon" on the grill, a zucchini gratin, a morel pasta dish, and Rainier cherry ice cream. I was in charge of the pasta. I used fresh, chubby bucatini, and made a sauce as follows:

Sweat some finely chopped Walla Walla sweets or other sweet onions in a pan with equal parts butter and olive oil. Add minced garlic and saute until the onions begin to caramelize. Remove onions and garlic from the pan and set aside. Heat more olive oil and butter; add morels and brown them, working in batches as necessary. Once they're all browned, remove them from the pan and set aside. Deglaze the pan with some marsala, and then add some more. Let the alcohol cook off, and turn the heat down to low. Whisk in some half and half to make a creamy sauce. Add sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Return the onions, garlic and morels to the pan, along with some minced fresh thyme, marjoram and parsley. Whisk in some grated Parmesan cheese to thicken the sauce. Stir in the cooked bucatini and a bit of the pasta water. Eat a forkfull from the pan and exclaim, "Ain't nothing wrong with that!" Serve with a dusty, leathery, awesome Pinot Noir.
  

Cherry-Lavender Soda

So dreary outside! But it's a sunny party in our kitchen with these sodas, made with fresh and local cherries. I also wanted an excuse to use these pink and white paper straws -- aren't they cute?

First, at least a day before you want to make the soda, make some lavender syrup. This is handy to have around for cocktails and lemonade, too. Bring 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Transfer this to a charming glass jar and add a bunch of backyard French lavender blossoms -- as many as possible. Seal the jar and let those fragrant flowers infuse the syrup.

Pit and puree the cherries, and simmer the puree on the stove until it reduces by half. Let it cool. Into a tall glass goes about 1/4 cup cherry reduction. Top with club soda, and add strained lavender syrup to taste. Then a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream for that nostaglic, creamy, bubbly A&W/Dairy Queen-style sensation.   

Picnic in Discovery Park

Early Sunday evening we took a picnic to Discovery Park. Dara the husband, Calvin the baby, Chloe the dog and I hiked out to the big meadow, where we smooshed down some long grass with a blanket and watched the sun set over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. We packed a hearty salad of fresh vegetables from the farmers market -- shaved asparagus and radishes, and little shelled peas, dressed in lemon Parmesan vinaigrette. On the side, some crusty bread and sliced yellow tomatoes.

Then we assembled strawberry shortcakes -- with local berries, warm buttermilk biscuits and vanilla ice cream topped with crispy bacon and maple syrup. It finally started to feel like summer. Especially when I started sneezing uncontrollably and my eyes swelled shut! The secret ingredient for next time is Claritin. It was still a romantic picnic, though, :-)

Last of the Fiddleheads

Fiddlehead ferns were another fun find this week at the Ballard farmers market. They must have a later season here in the Northwest, or perhaps it's cold this year...I feel like they were an early May item back in Chicago. I first tasted them as part of a New Zealand wine dinner and associate them with the other super-springy items served that night, like roasted wild boar with a savory rhubarb and ramp sauce.

Tightly coiled and tasting a bit like asparagus and okra, fiddleheads are lovely paired with brown butter and a citrusy Chenin Blanc. In this case, I sauteed some Campagne-style sausage from Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon Island...it's a pork sausage with flavors of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, mace and maple. Then I sauteed the fiddleheads in the same pan, tossing them with some chicken stock, fettuccine and shaved Parmesan. Yummy Monday night dinner.

Weird But Good: Grilled, Bacon-Wrapped Beef Spleen with Steamed Sea Beans

 

Ah, the adventures we have at the Ballard farmers market...as evidenced by this meal. First we came across foraged sea beans, also known as samphires or sea pickles, which we remembered from the "Top Chef" episode in which contestant Richard Blais paired them with corn puree and seared bone marrow. Sea beans grow along the coast and are tender and crisp like green beans, but salty like the ocean. I steamed them just for a few minutes to brighten their color and flavor, and tossed them with some olive oil...no need for salt. And the perfect pairing? A beef spleen, which we bought as an amusing experiment, thinking that for $3, we could feed it to Chloe the dog if it was terrible. Turns out it tastes like liver but has a firmer texture. I happen to like the flavor of liver but not the mushy texture. I unfurled the spleen and laid strips of bacon on it, then rolled it back up like a cinnamon roll, pierced it with a metal skewer, and grilled it for quite a long time, like a half hour, until it had a good seared crust and both it and the bacon were cooked through. A local IPA, some crusty bread and coarse mustard were the finishing touches for a rustic early summer meal.