The last few weeks haven't been the best in my kitchen; a week of vacation was followed by a week of post-vacation stress and a giant hurricane. Of course, in preparation for said hurricane, I cranked up the temperature in my fridge and freezer in the hopes that if we lost power, things would stay cool for longer. I didn't anticipate the fact that this would freeze everything in my refrigerator, turning a pound of crisp, gorgeous green beans and juicy red peppers into limp, icy garbage. Sad trombone!

I do have some odds and ends to show you, though.

First up... the inaugural edition of Kathryn Brings Lunch to Work!


This is an heirloom tomato salad with mozzarella, a few slices of salami and some quick pickled onions, which are so great on salad. (Or hot dogs. Or anything, really.) To quick pickle onions, I use David Lebovitz's recipe as a guide and whatever seasonings I have on hand. This time I added bay leaf, peppercorns and some red pepper flakes. Yum!

Next up on the decks we have a carrot soup with greek yogurt and bacon-sea salt croutons from Bien Cuit.


I didn't really follow a recipe for this, which ultimately was a mistake. The soup came out thin and not very flavorful. I'd boiled a bunch of carrots in what was probably too much chicken broth with half an onion and a few cloves of garlic, then pureed it and swirled in greek yogurt. Not such a success. Next time, I'll follow an actual recipe, and I'll probably add a stronger flavor like ginger to give the soup some punch. The carrot-crouton combination, though, is a keeper. (And man, are those croutons good!)


Hurricane preparation kit, Cooking Inside the Box style. Netflix, bottled water... and a delicious swiss chard and wheatberry salad. I've been obsessed with wheatberries lately - they're one of the tastiest whole grains out there, chewy and nutty and great warm or cold - and I thought this salad would be hearty enough to stand up to a few hours sans refrigeration. Even though our power never went out, it was still a good hearty dinner for a rainy evening.

For this particular salad, I cooked down a bunch of swiss chard with a bit of onion and some olive oil, then added in two cups of cooked wheatberries, a handful of toasted pine nuts, nearly a cup of golden raisins, more olive oil, balsamic and salt and pepper. I also made another wheatberry salad last week with sauteed baby zucchini, walnuts, mint and goat cheese. Both salads were definitely keepers!


For dinner tonight, I made this corn spoonbread with my four (!!!) ears of CSA corn. I followed this recipe from Real Simple, which turned out good, but not exactly what I'd expected. I think I was looking for something a little bit sweeter - I might add a little bit of sugar next time, and leave out the thyme. It was pretty good anyway, especially alongside roasted chicken with homemade gravy and an easy salad of grape tomatoes and balsamic vinegar.

Finally, my most successful chocolate cake to date:


Two of my closest friends, B. of Sparrows & Spatulas and her husband Matt, are moving across the country, so a few of our friends decided to throw them a going away party. We did it potluck-style, all the better to show off the culinary stylings of some of our very, very talented friends. (Homemade spanakopita? Corn and basil salad? The best jerk chicken I've ever had outside of Peppa's? Yes please!) My contribution was this cake - devil's food cake soaked with salted caramel, layered with whipped chocolate ganache and frosted with a classic French buttercream.

Baking doesn't come naturally to me, but I really love my sweets, and I'd like to get to a point in my life where I make most of my own sugary treats. (Face it, as much as I love to cook, I'm less inclined to whip up a batch of cupcakes on a Wednesday night than I am to just run to the bodega for some Hostess ones.) The dangerous part of learning how to make, of course, is having the delicious results of one's lessons sitting around in one's refrigerator, tempting one out of bed in the middle of the night for just-one-more-sliver. So a party was a perfect excuse to drag out the massive Baking by James Peterson and make something rich, chocolatey and lovely. (NB to anyone using this cookbook: the professional buttercream recipe calls for 1 1/4 lbs. of butter, then tells you that this amounts to 1 1/2 cups of butter. That is not true. The recipe requires 1 1/4 pounds of butter, though if you - like me - err on the side of less butter and only add 1 1/2 cups, your frosting will be runny but fine.)

So we all gathered on our colleague's beautiful penthouse terrace, and we ate each other's food and we had a little wine, and we watched the children play and we watched the setting sun, and we said goodbye to our amazing, wonderful friends. Of course, it isn't really goodbye - it's really more like, in the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, "smell ya later." We know they'll be back to visit! How do I know?

Because, come on. No one can resist another slice of this cake!

A Pie for Mikey

This week, my fellow food blogger Jennifer Perillo's beloved husband, Mikey, died of a sudden heart attack. Word of her tragedy quickly spread throughout the food-blogosphere as her friends and fellow bloggers rushed to try to help, to sign up for a homemade food delivery rotation, to ask what they could do to help. Jennie answered that question with this blog post, saying, "For those asking what they can do to help my healing process, make a peanut butter pie this Friday and share it with someone you love. Then hug them like there's no tomorrow because today is the only guarantee we can count on."


I don't know Jennifer or her family, but - like hundreds of other people who have heard her story in the last few days - I wanted to join in the chorus of people making peanut butter pies for Mikey. Jennie's request reminds me of the Raymond Carver story, A Small Good Thing. That story has always been a sure-fire tear-jerker for me: I cry not just for the devastated, angry parents of a child who has passed away, but also for the lonely, furious baker - childless, never married, apparently without friends or loved ones of his own. He bakes the cakes for other people's celebrations - the children's birthdays he will never celebrate, the anniversaries and graduations and weddings. And though I have always known how incredibly surrounded by love and wonderful friends and family I have always been... in my loneliest and most self-pitying moments, I have felt like I was the baker. That I was somehow destined to bake the wedding cakes for other people, but never for myself.

In the end of Raymond Carver's story, they come together - the lonely baker, the grieving parents - and in a crescendo of love and forgiveness, the baker serves the couple their first meal since the death of their son. He feeds them hot sweet rolls and coffee, and he says to them, "You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this."

How very true that is. And so I make this pie in hopes that it will be a small, good thing for Jennifer and her daughters. I hope that she will find comfort in its making, and in its sharing, and in the hundreds of bloggers who are coming together today to make a peanut butter pie for Mikey.


And I will share it with my Steady Eddie, a man who not only loves a good peanut butter dessert, but has managed to transform a lonely baker into a woman who believes in love with every bit of her cynical little heart.

Edited to add: Bloggers Without Borders has established #afundforJennie - a place where you can make contributions directly to Jennie Perillo, if you wish to do so. Go to http://glutenfreegirl.com/a-fund-for-jennie/ for more information and to make a donation.

Three summer salads

My appetite, like most people's, is dictated by the seasons. In the winter, I crave thick, warming stews, big chunks of meat and bowls of creamy soup. In the summer, though, I'm dreaming of salads. These three salads are all relatively quick and simple, and they make use of the season's most gorgeous produce.

#1

Every year, I look forward to corn and tomato salad. When corn comes into season, it's every bit as juicy and sweet as a ripe tomato, and when you combine them with each other... spectacular! It's like everything that's good about August - backyard barbecues, swimming pools and fireflies at dusk... even if you're sitting in your apartment in the middle of the city. This salad can take a lot of creativity, so feel free to change it up. Use different herbs, subtract the bacon, add some cheese, throw some other veggies in... with a base this good, it's pretty hard to mess it up.

Corn and Tomato Salad
serves two

2 ears of corn on the cob, shucked
one large tomato (or two or three smaller ones)
two or three slices of bacon (I like three, cause, you know... baaacon)
fresh oregano
fresh basil
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

Fry bacon strips until crispy. While the bacon is cookin', bring a large pot of water to a boil and boil corn until it's done. (Four or five minutes.) Remove corn and let it cool off. While you're waiting for the corn to cool off, chop the tomato into small chunks and chiffonade the herbs. Then go ahead and cut the kernels of corn off the cob. Whisk up a quick vinaigrette in a large bowl; I go a little heavy on the vinegar for this salad, so probably a 2:1 ratio of balsamic to olive oil. Mix everything together, season with salt and pepper and voila. You made corn and tomato salad!

#2

I had some CSA beets to use last week and I wanted to make them into a salad slightly more interesting than the classic beet-and-goat-cheese one. Using my awesome Googling powers, I came across a bunch of recipes for beet and avocado salads. Sounds good, I thought, and scurried to the grocery store to pick up an avocado. I started slicing things up for the salad on my butcher block right next to the bowl of nectarines I'd just picked up at the farmer's market, and inspiration struck. Thus, I give you:

Avocado, Beet and Nectarine Salad
serves two

two or three large beets, or an equivalent amount of smaller ones, roasted
one avocado
two nectarines
lettuce or salad greens
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 T olive oil
1 t honey
salt

First, roast those beets in a 375-degree oven for about an hour. Then, in a medium sized bowl, combine balsamic, olive oil and honey and whisk until combined. Mix the salad greens with the balsamic vinaigrette and salt in the bowl, then distribute them to your plates. Top with sliced beets, nectarines and half an avocado. Dinner is done. This could also use some goat cheese, if that's how you roll.

#3

And finally, the kind of salad that I always see in those fancy pants farm-to-table sorts of Brooklyn restaurants and always want to order despite knowing I could make it myself at home for like, five dollars. Sorry, Franny's, I love you dearly but... tonight I make my own small plates!

Golden Beet and Green Bean Salad
hazelnut, whipped ricotta, fried zucchini blossom
serves two

two or three large golden beets
half a pound of green beans, trimmed and cut into 2" lengths
ricotta cheese
toasted hazelnuts (you can toast them in the microwave by zapping a handful on high for a minute at a time until them smell awesome, usually less than 2 minutes total)
balsamic vinaigrette, as above
zucchini blossoms
flour
seltzer
oil for frying (vegetable oil works best, though olive oil will do... just be careful, because it gets smoky)

Roast the beets wrapped in foil at 375 degrees for about an hour. When they're done, it's time to get going - cut the beets up into chunks, then steam the green beans for five minutes or so. Mix the green beans and the beet chunks with the vinaigrette, then distribute to their respective plates. Top with a scoop of ricotta and some hazelnuts, which you should probably chop up pretty well. To fry the zucchini blossoms: heat about 1/2" of oil in a frying pan over medium to medium high heat. Then - combine about 1 c. of flour with a roughly equal amount of seltzer and mix well. You want the batter to be the consistency of pancake syrup - thick but definitely liquid. Dip the blossoms in the batter, coating well, then drop into the hot oil and fry those puppies til they're done. Drain them on a paper towel and salt them well, then arrange them on the plate with the salad. Gorgeous! Take that, $14 appetizer!

Tonight's dinner: brought to you by puff pastry

With each CSA vegetable we receive, there's always a certain point where you've gotten so much of it, you feel like it's just coming out of your ears and you have no idea what to do with it anymore. That's how I felt about summer squash - until I found this recipe for a summer squash tart on a puff pastry base. Sold! I changed it up a little bit, though - adding hazelnuts and thyme, subtracting feta cheese - so I'll post my adapted recipe below. It ended up being really good - though, of course, it's pretty hard for anything on top of buttery, flaky puff pastry to be actually bad.


We ate this for dinner tonight along with a chilled yogurt and cucumber soup with shrimp from Ina Garten via Sparrows and Spatulas. Ed thought it tasted like tzatziki sauce; I thought it was more like something I'd expect to find at an IKEA summer smorgasbord. We both liked it a lot, though - it's exactly the kind of cool, refreshing supper you want to have in the sweltering evenings of July and August.


And then, dessert. I'd bought a bunch of plums at the market this morning, intending to bake them into a moist, rich almond cake. But once I got home and started looking around for recipes, I couldn't seem to find one that I was really excited about. Plum and almond tarts, on the other hand...


These couldn't be easier to make, and they taste almost as good as any fancy bakery tart I've ever had. The plums are tart and juicy, the frangipane rich and sweet and the pastry crisp and tender. A little sprinkling of powdered sugar provides the literal icing on the cake. These will be perfect for breakfast in the morning - if they survive the night, that is.

Summer Squash Tart
serves four hungry people or six people of normal appetite

1 sheet of frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 c. ricotta cheese
1 egg
1 small bunch of parsley
1 medium onion, sliced
2 or 3 medium sized zucchini or summer squash (I used a mix of yellow zucchini and squash)
olive oil
1 small bunch of thyme
1/4 c. hazelnuts, toasted

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together the ricotta, egg and parsley. Add salt (generously) and pepper to taste; set aside. Thinly slice the onion and cook with a splash of olive oil over medium high heat until caramelized - about eight to ten minutes. Slice squash into thin rounds. (I used the largest setting on my mandoline; slices should be less than 1/4" thick.)

Lay the puff pastry on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and cover with ricotta mixture, leaving a 1/2" border for a crust. Add sliced squash and make a pretty pattern. Now step back and admire your work for a moment. Aww, that looks lovely! Okay, keep moving - pour a bit of olive oil into a bowl and brush it over the top of the tart until each slice of squash is just glistening. Top with stripped thyme leaves and pop it into the oven until the squash is tender and the edges of the pastry are golden-brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and top with toasted hazelnuts. Let cool slightly before serving.

The first BLT of summer...

Two slices of lightly toasted Bread Alone peasant bread. A handful of lettuce leaves from the CSA. Three slices of salty bacon, cooked crisp. A lavish swipe of mayo. And finally, the star of the show, one ugly, gnarled, oddly colored heirloom tomato, sliced thin and sprinkled with salt.

Assemble into a sandwich, cut diagonally, take a bite and go to sandwich heaven.

Repeat daily.

Cherry bomb!

It was cherry season, and then it wasn't anymore.

Of course, instead of living in the now of the farmer's market, I spent the first few weeks of cherry season mourning the end of strawberry season and dwelling on all of the pints of strawberry jam I didn't get to can, and strawberry cakes I didn't get to bake, and so on and so forth until last week when I made those two awesome cherry jams. And then I was like, "wait a minute.... I love cherries!"

I spent the week plotting out the bazillions of things I would do with the tons and tons of cherries I would buy at this week's market: cherry pie, cherry ice cream, chocolate cherry preserves... and more! I would frolic in fields full of cherry trees and swim in rivers of pure red cherry juice! It would be cherry flavored heaven! So Saturday morning, I grabbed my largest bag, a ridiculous sum of money and skipped over to the farmer's market to find.....

Blueberries.

Crap.

After inquiring at all of the regular stands, I learned that cherry season was over. Finito. No mas. Oh, well, off to Whole Foods, then, where at least the sour cherries they sell are from Red Jacket Orchards - though they are crazy expensive, which swiftly squashed my dreams of cherry-flavored grandeur. Don't worry, though - I picked up enough of them for a scaled down version of Cherrypalooza 2011, starting with sour cherry sorbet!


This might be the first time that my ice cream maker actually made a frozen dessert that I would happily share with my friends. (Previous attempts have been too shamefully crappy to even discuss in public.) The sorbet was great, though. I used the proportions from Thomas Keller's Bouchon, a beautiful coffee-table cookbook full of perfectly executed bistro classics. Two pounds of fruit, one and a quarter cups of sugar and two tablespoons of lime juice, whirled in the blender, chilled and then frozen in the ice cream maker. So simple and so good. The resulting sorbet is a vibrant magenta color, fairly well-balanced if a touch too sweet, and lusciously textured. If I do this over, I think I'd reduce the sugar to a cup - though I have more of a sweet tooth than most, I crave tart more than sugary in the dog days of summer.

My next project was maraschino cherries. Though I completely adore the awful, neon-red, corn-syrup soaked maraschino cherries one finds in jars, on sundaes and at the bottom of whiskey sours, I can reluctantly agree that red dye is probably not the best thing for me to be putting into my body. (And certainly not as frequently as whiskey sours are consumed in the Cooking Inside the Box household!) So I decided to make my own, with this recipe from the New York Times.


I settled down in front of a Bridezillas marathon (heaven!) with my cherry pitter and got to work. Once I had a pound or so of pitted sour cherries collected in a half-gallon mason jar, I boiled up a cup of Luxardo maraschino liqueur and poured it over the cherries. Three days later, I had perfect cherries for a perfect cocktail.


I'd seen other recipes that called for sugar syrup, almond extract or other types of alcohol - amaretto or brandy or cherry heering - but decided to start with the classic preparation. I totally dig it! The cherries are sweet and boozy, though not cloying at all. I see a lot of extra-delicious whiskey sours in my future.

I also started a cherry bounce, following this recipe from the Runaway Spoon. Bourbon, sugar and sweet cherries - I can't wait to try it! Sadly, though, I've got to wait til Thanksgiving or so - cherry bounce apparently takes a long time to properly infuse. It'll be so cool, though, to open this stuff up in November and be able to taste the summer all over again. And with bourbon, too!

Finally, the final few sweet cherries went into a fruit crisp with those blueberries I picked up this weekend. (Despite my disappointment about the cherries, I still managed to stock up on the berry du jour.) It's deeply purple, soft and sweet, warm and comforting. I try to temper the fruity part of fruit crisp with lemon juice and only a small sprinking of sugar but I really go to town with the crispy topping: gobs of butter, showers of sugar and oats and cinnamon. This stuff is good warm out of the oven but even better the next morning on unsweetened Greek yogurt. Crisp for breakfast? Why not? It's, uh... it's local, right? So it must be healthy!


That's right. Support your local farmer - eat dessert for breakfast.

Last week's CSA bounty included a single zucchini, which I'd intended to make into Marcella Hazan's zucchini and bacon sauce for pasta. But while I was researching upstate New York restaurant menus - and dreaming of opening my own little farm to table cafe somewhere along the Hudson River - I came across a grilled zucchini, goat cheese and balsamic vinegar crostini that sounded just fantastic. It was perfect timing, too, since I'd just picked up a small bottle of really good balsamic from an Italian imports store in Providence, Rhode Island, and I was itching to try it out.


After a long day of brunching, Smorgasburg-ing and walking around Williamsburg with Emily, I came home with just enough energy left to pan fry the zucchini, smear a bit of goat cheese on a baguette and drizzle some balsamic on top of everything. Finito!

Speaking of Emily, check out this duo of cherry jams that I made! The first, balsamic cherry preserves, is a recipe that I first saw on Emily's blog. She is a jam-maker and canner extraordinaire, and as soon as I saw this, I was like, "Droooool... I have to make this!" And oh, man, am I glad I did! This jam comes out fabulous - deeply flavored and sweet with a bit of a mellow balsamic tang. And as good as it is on jam, I think this would be amazing as a sandwich spread with some savory ingredients - duck breast, maybe, or smoked turkey or a salty, smoky piece of ham.


The brighter jam on the bottom is made with the sour cherries that I'd picked up at the Smorgasburg farmer's market. (Along with this awesome cherry pitter from the Brooklyn Kitchen, which I really couldn't recommend more. It makes the tedious chore of pitting cherries into something approximating fun. Or at the very least, not un-fun.) I also got a little bit cocky and decided to follow David Lebovitz's no-recipe recipe for cherry jam. It worked out perfectly, right down to the tell-tale hot jam on a frozen plate nudge-and-wrinkle to indicate that the jelly had jelled. It is crazy good jam, too, packed full of that bright, tart cherry flavor you get in a really good country diner's cherry pie. (In fact, it was so great that I think I might just make myself a cherry pie this weekend, while cherries are still in the market!)

Finally, check it out: I managed to use my kohlrabi this time! AND my garlic scapes! I feel like I should get some kind of award or something. Kohlrabi are tough, man. Last year, at one of the early CSA pickups, Ed looked at one of those bright purple alien spaceship-looking vegetables and said, "What the hell do you do with this?"

"Mostly I throw them out, " Matt replied. I sheepishly nodded my head in agreement.

But not this time! I'd read a couple of recipes for P.F. Chang-style "Asian" chicken wraps before making my own, and a bunch of those recipes called for water chestnuts. I like the crunch and mild flavor of water chestnuts, but I didn't really want to go buy a whole can of them just to get a half cup of so to mix with the chicken. That's when it hit me - kohlrabi! It has the texture of a water chestnut with a slightly stronger - though still not dominating - flavor... it would be the perfect substitute! And sure enough, it was.


None of the recipes I'd read really called to me, so I kind of improvised my own - I sauteed the kohlrabi and a sliced garlic scape with a bit of oil, then added a pound of ground chicken and broke it up with a wooden spoon as it cooked. After the chicken was fully cooked, I added half a cup of so of a sauce that was basically equal parts rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil and sriracha with a ton of fresh grated ginger and black pepper. I let the chicken mixture bubble for another few moments, then took it off the heat and served it with romaine lettuce leaves, a little more sauce for dipping and a quick-pickled cucumber salad - made with a CSA cucumber, no less! - with rice wine vinegar, sugar, salt and water.


Yum! This was spicy and refreshing at the same time, full of ginger and sweet, cool cucumber. It does take a bit of preparation time and some toiling over a hot stove time, too, but it's still an awesome summer weeknight dinner.