SALAD DAYS

Clockwise from top left: (1) Romaine spears, pears, mozzarella curds, salted, lemon juice, ground black peppers; (2) Baby arugula with Spanish onions, cucumber tree vinegar (homemade), olive oil, salt; (3) Purple and green lettuce shoots, walla walla onions, hibiscus vinaigrette; and, (4) Pickled kale and red onions, butter lettuce, lime juice, salt and pepper, and a little infused olive chili oil on top.   

I was watching a PBS show about a Norwegian chef and his use of wild alpine flowers and coastal herbs of Scandinavia, assembling his salads like a courtyard pond. Manhattan is not Bergen, Norway, where he's from, where scenic inlets just outside the city are estuaries so clear they could be Theodore Roethke's lines. The water was ankle-deep around the inter-tidal rocks and he was harvesting, by hand, fan-shelled scallops and oysters so luscious like they fed off milkweed plants. Like the song, "these are my salad days" to come...

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I WILL CALL THIS DISH, BRAZIL!

For obvious reason. But less obvious is the technique to make her better. I'm making a "stew" pasta, specifically using artisan spaghetti noodles with the above. Here's how. Once the pasta's cooked and set aside to drain thoroughly, using homemade vegetable and fruit stock (end trims of plantains, red onions, stems of mint, pasta water, etc.), quickly frying the yellow cherry tomatoes with fresh oregano leaves in olive oil in high heat until their skin is charred first, I then added the stock (about 3 cups) and let the soup boil, covered; and after 8 minutes or so the cherries should be tender to break whole with a large metal spoon so to infuse the liquid, lower heat and break them all and stir a few times; then as final touch, add about a couple of tablespoons of chili (olive) oil and rock salt and ground black peppers to taste - the "soup" should be decadently sweet and tart and moderately spicy - and as such, turn off heat and set aside to cool. 

The idea is both the pasta and the stew sauce, as they are cooling down, should be mixed together at about room temperature (you don't want to overcook the spaghetti, of course), and once the sauce is coated through, add your fresh tarragon leaves (about half a cup) and shaved pecorino romano in the mix - and celebrate your win! It's summer, it's hot, the pasta is refreshingly good, and there's no shame in that.  

Anime-se! (That's cheer up in Portuguese.)

    

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LIME-JUNIPER COMPOTE PEAR CAKE

The organic yellow Williams' bon chrétien (or the shapely Bartlett ) pears at Agata and Valentina (in Greenwich) are the sweetest vivants this time of year - like chilled, seedless, juicy watermelons, grainy and syrupy. Since making jugs of hibiscus tea lately, the infused coins of limes and lemons floating around cannot be wasted, meaning thrown away, thus I turned them into a marmalade/compote as essential for the moisture ingredient of this cake. What's lovely about it is that the raw citrus have been deeply macerated in the "cherry-ness" of the tea, adding a special nuance to the taste, think of a rum and fruit - and a couple of juniper berries in the compote gave it added spice and clove. The result: Like a warm sorbet pie. (Please refer to my previous cake blogs for exact recipe and measurements. The cake-base is pretty consistent - the moisture component is what can be varied.)
Update: Just had dinner and this was our dessert. The layers of cocktail-bitter marmalade and the caramalized pears have poached and marbled together exquisitely, I think. Though uncharacteristic for summer, I made hot black tea to complement my cake. Why? Because the moon is out on the East River.       

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PLANTAIN-TION AND POPSICLE TEA

At the Essex Market in the Lower East Side, at Delancey, banana plantains are sold 2 for 1. (That place is a "plantation" - I love it!) Also at the same mishmash of specialty foods store are dried sorrels (in common parlance, hibiscus flowers tea) for only 3 bucks a bag. Thus constitute my summer siesta snack: grilled plantains with agave syrup and fresh ricotta, and my homemade popsicle-in-a-glass punch tea. The "cherryness" of this icy treat (both its achieved color and taste) is largely due to the bleeding of the hibiscus and a few essential components I added in the process, like some whole cloves, some sour kamias (from my previous blog; the fruit also known as bilimbi, or cucumber tree, or again, belonging to the family of tree sorrels) altogether cold infused with cut-up coins of limes and fresh whole sprigs of peppermint herbs, with sugar and agave syrup to taste (the cherry), left in the fridge overnight in a punch bowl. Because I have stocks of ice in glasses in the freezer, making my popsicle tea is ready the next day. Get the ripest plantains from the market, and using your panini machine, simply butter the bananas and press until charred marked stripes and the fruit almost honeying soft. Transfer to a plate and drizzle some agave syrup, and on the side some "shaving cream" Alleva Dairy's ricotta, whose store is just a few blocks away from Essex in Little Italy. I mentioned siesta, right? Well, it's that time.              

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KABBALAH MOMENT: SCOTTISH SALMON LOIN BAGEL

This is the real thing - the surreal New Yorker manna. I've been breakfasting this bagel for straight three weeks now and as a "testament" I say: Its miracle is as old as it is new, with the fish on it. At Russ and Daughter's I have multiplied my basket with a dozen assorted bagels, a tub of cream cheese and chives, a jar of capers, and the almighty half- pound luscious orange blub bellies.

The mysticism of eating could be an exaggeration, but to me it reaches the higher powers of life. Consider the egg on this bagel. Amen! And talk about a heavy breakfast - but the categories of flavor: the olive saltiness of capers over the hard-cooked chunks of yolk and white crumbling simultaneously with the toasted warm bread milky creamed and spiced subduing to the loin the summer of onions and the flowers of the sesame seeds - literally: eat your heart out, spoken-word poetry!    

Swallow (like the bird) your moment of silence.

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