Susan

Good Day, Sungold

And good-bye, Sungold. I’ve been picking nearly a pint a day from my Sungold cherry tomato plant for the past couple weeks. I’ve frozen them like little marbles to pop into soups and sauces this winter. I’ve oven-dried them for hours, creating raisiny, orange bursts of sugar that take up less room in the freezer…

KOB salad

No, not Cobb Salad. K•O•B Salad. As in, Kale•Orange•Beet. Inspired by the Roasted Beet Salad at Barbuzzo, where chef Marcie Turney loads chiffonade of raw kale with beets, ruby red grapefruit segments, pistachio pesto, and chèvre, a couple years ago I started playing around with kale, beets, citrus, nuts, and cheese. I’ve swapped around oranges,…

Churn, Baby, Churn: Real Peach Ice Cream

Which came first, the chicken or the egg-rich ice cream? When your tiny, Fibber McGee’s freezer is full of put-up fruits and veggies—and three picked-over chickens—the chicken has to come first. Meaning, it has to come out first. With those bulky birdframes reduced to two jars of very concentrated stock, there was finally room for…

Plum-Topped Olive Oil Cake

Saw it in the Times this morning; 90 minutes later, it was cooling on the counter. Happy birthday, Brian and Megan.

Groundcherry-Phyllo Bundles

Swaddled in their own rustic gift paper, groundcherries are actually relatives of tomatillos—not the tree-grown stone fruit they’re named for—and they share some of the citrusy, tropical tang we associate with that green, husked staple of Mexican cuisine. When the CSA shares arrived yesterday, I couldn’t resist tasting a couple straight from the box. Sure…

Swap-Box Hero: Gimme a Beet

When I was a kid, beets were sweet and syrupy and neon magenta. Gramma C called them “Harvard Beets.” They probably came out of a can. I never knew there was any other kind. And I loved them. I’m told that’s unusual – that beets are a taste acquired in adulthood, and that most young…

Khaleesi Beans

Dragon’s tongues? Just when I was suffering green-bean fatigue (big bags, three weeks in a row), these variegated beauties showed up in my sharebox yesterday. Purple dapples on a yellow base, they taste more like wax beans than classic haricots verts—and when you cook them, the purple fades away (mostly), revealing bleached, pearlescent pods. Holy…

Pesto alla Trapanese

Thanks, Zeppoli. Until dinner there one night last week, I’d forgotten how much I like Trapanese, the Sicilian pesto that subs almonds for the pine nuts in its ubiquitous, basil-laden Genovese cousin. Such a brilliant, simple, fresh dish. I’ve seen lots of variations – in proportions, in peppers (some use vinegar-cured pepperoncini, some use the…

You say tomato smoothie, I say gazpacho

Sure, you could go formal (here’s the classic—Hemingway’s favorite—from Casa Botin). But when the tomatoes are softening on the counter before your very eyes, why not take a couple of the ugly ones and turn them into something beautiful? Lunch. In less than 10 minutes. Single-serving gazpacho 2 small, ripe tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped…

Butterfly effect: Pickled carrots

Today, I swapped a ginormous eggplant (I’m sure it wasn’t, but it seemed as big as my head) for an extra bunch of gorgeous carrots, precisely so I could pickle them once I got home. I knew I had a couple robust dill plants that had volunteered their way from my balcony last year into…