figs and shallots

What I love, love , love:
when at the farmers market, I find piles of fresh shallots from Dirty Girl farms.meaning, now.
when my fig tree in the backyard delivers its bounty of luscious figs.(I had to harvest them just in time before the couple of squirrels got to them(.... I supply them with bread and cheese crusts, pine nuts etc to fill them up)

Shallots are the base of many French delicacies.raw in kicky vinaigrettes( without the bite or tears from onions, or the sharpness and lasting bad breath of garlic), sauteed in butter as the start of many unique sauces:, sauce gribiche, or bearnaise.... or for a beurre blanc, my favorite where the shallots are reduced with a little vinegar before the addition of butter, that emulsify into a unctuous,out of this world...cloud of deliciousness.

Fall salad for 2:
2 little gems lettuce ( or heart of romaine)
1 anjou pear peeled and sliced
1 small pomegranate ( cut a quarter of it and remove seeds)
fresh goat cheese
1 shallot ( I use 1 teaspoon of minced shallot)
sherry vinegar
olive oil
salt and pepper
dijon mustard


make your vinaigrette by sprinkling your salt and vinegar in your bowl, add a tablespoon of sherry vinegar and toss, it will help dissolve the salt, add minced shallot and 3 TBsp of olive oil and a dash of mustard.whisk.
add your other elements and top with the goat cheese with a dash of freshly ground pepper.

ratatouille

A great aunt who spent some girlhood years in Greece and Turkey taught my mom to make an incredible "Imam baiili" a sort of eggplant and tomato stew, rich, melty and fragrant of hot summers. But my mother had another summery recipe in her repertoire and it was the famous ratatouille of Provence.A medley of the few vegetables found around the local farm gardens.The real trick of the successful ratatouille is to cook each vegetable separately, since they soften at different times, and to finish it off by blending it all in one glorious ode to the South. I have to say that she mastered that dish and not only it tasted heavenly but it looked beautiful, since each vegetable had retained its original color.But it also took a long time to make.
So, for the sake of my love of roasted eggplants( reminiscence of the Baiili) and my summery devotion to a few ratatouilles each year, I decided to cut corners and roast the "rata" as it is called casually around the tables of France.
First I cubed the eggplant and sprinkled it with oregano, salt and olive oil.in it went in a 425o oven.then, I transferred the eggplant into a bowl and filled the gratin dish with layers of olive oil, tomato sauce , the roasted eggplant , the cubed zucchinis,diced garlic,chopped basil and topped it with slices of early girls tomatoes.a little salt ,pepper, pepper flakes and Parmesan and in it went for 30 minutes.No as pretty as my mom's rata was but so deep in flavors, just as meltingly rich as I could hope for.

feeling raw

In less than two months, I have worked on different recipes that included raw beets. The first one was a root vegetable salad, using parsnips, turnips,celery root,beets etc all finely julienned into a revelation of sweet, crunchy, colorful twist on some winter, more uncommon vegetables.
This time, it was a simpler translation of just carrots and red beets ( for the other recipe, I had used 3 kind of beets, which made it kinetic looking with the hot pink concentric lined chiogga ).
Make a simple vinaigrette of orange juice, salt pepper, minced ginger and olive oil.mix each vegetable separately.plate side by side, sprinkle some fresh scissored mint.So healthy and tasty....

comal

At a cooking class in Oaxaca, I discovered and bought my" simple" comal. It lingered below the oven for a while stuck between tart pans and pie shells.What do to with this comal? how different from my cooking pans ? wrong ! I have started using it like mad, and it is wonderful. I love mexican food, and my hand made tortillas ( form Primavera), get all blistery and a tad smoky when warmed on the comal. My pimentos del padron, or baby poblanos get a nice tinge of fire( after having been rubbed with olive oil) and get very tasty when sprinkled with kosher salt.

summer apps

for a July 4th alfresco dinner on a friend's terrace overlooking the Berkeley hills that looked like an Italian village at sunset ( all siennas, muddied yellows and ocres, pink tile roofs and cypress borders), I served( I am always the one to bring appetizers...): a brochette of armenian cucumber, watermelon, mint sprig, and marinated feta in mint olive oil, fennel seeds, pink peppercorns and oregano. more of that tuscan flavored oil to pour before eating.
Ode to a French summer:the pissaladiere of Nice on the French Riviera.I saw it made as many different ways as you can spot a French bakery in France, where the pissalladieres were usually sold.The dough varied from a foccacia like to a pate brisee,to a thin pizza crsut or a puff pastry square.
I made a rosemary pizza dough,I very slowly sauteed 2 huge onions in olive oil ( 45 minutes on low until they turned golden and marmelady),added thyme,cut up olives and anchovies.drizzled some olive oil to make it extra juicy and sweet.Voila !

vinaigrette

It is time to talk about vinaigrettes. You would be hard pressed to find a bottle of salad dressing if you were shopping in France.Why ? because it is something that everyone makes fresh, in a couple of minutes,from scratch. The "convenience" factor of the bottled dressing always stopped me in my track: how could it taste still good after sitting in a bottle for months ? the ingredients sound weird,and complicated .new and often crazy flavors keep crowding more shelf space, all that when a good vinaigrette takes no time to prepare...
All you need are some basic pantry items and you are good to go.What I like is the myriad combinations that I can come up with just with my spices, herbs, vinegars and oils.And that is crucial: always adapt your dressing to the salad you are making, and allow yourself to play with what you happen to have in your fridge.
basic pantry:
sea salt, white pepper, black pepper, mustard, mayonnaise,sherry vinegar, balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar,lemons, limes, olive oil, canola oil,garlic, shallots,herbs ( dry like thyme and oregano, fresh like parsley, cilantro and mint).

first shake your salt and grind your pepper,then add you acidic component ( vinegar, or lemon),it will help dissolve your salt. Then add your oil.olive oil most times, but for the occasional potato or beet salad , canola oil mixed with shallots and mustard will make your salad shine bright.Then, depending on the type of lettuces or vegetables involved, you may think broadly and include cilantro, cumin and garlic if you main dish is Mexican or Indian, or it can be mustard and shallots if the salad is heartier , or lemon and parsley and green garlic if the lettuces are spring tender( picture above).

basic vinaigrette:
1/2 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of freshly ground pepper
1 tsp of vinegar
1/2 tsp of dijon mustard
2 tbsp of olive oil

strawberry compote with thyme

Last week end at the farmer's market, I stopped in front of the strawberries and they looked so red and ripe that I plunged for 2 baskets thinking of smoothies, waffles,yogurt etc....I managed so far to use a basket but, the remaining ones were languishing in their tupperware and losing their patience.some were even getting a little sick.
June had stopped by, bringing a warm- from- the- stove jar of delicious rhubarb with ginger conserve and this morning it got me inspired to turn my strawberries into a compote with fresh lime-thyme. It brought me back to the first time that I used thyme with fruit: we were in the paradise land of the Luberon in Provence, and the property was dotted with figs and abricots trees, the meadows around made of thyme carpeting. The abricots were ripe and went into a tart, the thyme was plucked from underfoot and scattered with sugar on the abricots before baking. The herbal citrusy pine like flavor of thyme is divine with the sugary juices of fruit.

strawberry compote with lime thyme

2 cups of strawberries
1 cup sugar
1 tsp of fresh lime thyme

mix all.let it sit for 10 mn to absorb flavors
cook it on low heat for 12 mn


cool, and jar.
serve with home made greek yogurt (use Strauss organic 0% fat, line a sieve with cheese cloth and let the yogurt drip its water content, 2hrs to 4 depending on amount)