Panzanella

This might be my favorite summer lunch ever.

Tomatoes from the farmer's market. Leftover crusty bread. Really good balsamic vinegar and some olive oil. So. damn. good.

Yeah, it's peasant food. It's a way to use up stale bread bits that you might not use otherwise. It's also how you use up all those tomatoes from your garden. And basil, if you happen to grow it. And maybe a cucumber if you are going all out.

The quality of your balsamic matters here. Splurge on the good stuff, and skip the crap that has flavor and color added that you buy at the grocery store.  Bonus: the good stuff is ridiculous drizzled on your summer strawberries.

Summer Panzanella

Ingredients:
maybe half a loaf of some leftover crusty bread (ciabatta, baguette, sourdough, whatever)
a couple of ripe tomatoes (heirlooms are my favorite, but even little cherry tomatoes will work)
a shallot (or maybe 1/4 onion)
a small cucumber (optional)
a few basil leaves (optional)
a few TBSPs olive oil
a generous drizzle of balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper to taste

NOTE: Your bread may be very dry, or not so much. Your tomatoes will be super juicy, or not. These factors will determine how much olive oil and vinegar you need. Start with a little. Add more if needed. Don't drown your salad in oil. Just add enough to moisten the bread.

1. Cube bread and place in a medium bowl. My cubes are maybe 1" or 1.5" around.
2. Cut up tomatoes (and cucumbers, if using) into pieces a little smaller than your bread cubes. Add to bowl.
3. Slice or finely dice your shallot/onion, depending on how much raw shallot you can tolerate in each bite. Add to bowl.
4. Roughly chop basil and add to bowl. Or chiffonade if you are feeling fancy.
5. Add olive oil and balsamic, and S&P to taste. Toss and set aside to absorb liquid, 10-15 minutes. Toss again and serve.

Easter Eggs

My 6th grade science fair project, which won a blue ribbon thank you very much, involved dyeing bits of fabric with food. As in beets, cabbage, blueberries, onion skins, and coffee. I think my investigation was two-fold: which plants gave the strongest dyes, and how to set the dye so I didn't wind up with only vague stains on my fabric.

It turns out the same plants can also turn my Easter Eggs lovely colors. Beets and blueberries give the girliest colors, of course, but coffee gives a nice brown, and saffron turns the eggs a very spring-like pastel yellow.

Chickens can turn their eggs lovely colors, too. Not by will, of course. Or by eating beets. Different breeds produce eggs in different colors. Yep, that whole 'brown eggs are healthier than white eggs' thing is irrelevant. The two simply come from different chicken breeds.

Riverdog's arrangement (L) and mine.

 Several years ago, I stumbled across blue Araucana eggs at the Berkeley farmers' market. Actually, I stumbled across them in Martha Stewart-- she just so happens to keep like 20 different breeds of chicken at her eensy little estate. Er, estates-- and therefore recognized them at the market. But the vendor I bought them from was elderly and frail, so I had a feeling he wouldn't be there this year. I was right. Riverdog Farm, though, had these very pretty dozens for sale, so I looked through several cartons to find just the right mix. (They probably hate that, but for six dollars a dozen, I feel entitled to pick The Perfect Eggs.)

These are almost too pretty to dye. In fact, egg producers often raise Araucanas mainly for their novelty at Easter. But I think the combination of natural shell color and plant dye makes for some striking eggs in my Easter basket.

Last year's attempt

This year, I decided to pull a few dye tricks out of my 6th grade hat, since I wasn't thrilled with my results from last year. Red onion skins, which my local grocery store gave me for free, spinach, and turmeric were added to my blueberry-and-beet-and-coffee repertoire, with some unexpected results. For one, onion skins create a seemingly intense reddish-brown dye, but their impact on my eggs was not so intense. For another, spinach made an unimpressive dye. I was disappointed. For a third, dry blueberry dye that I put on a brown egg rubbed off when I rinsed the egg, leaving not a pale blue color but a pale brown color. As in, paler than the egg originally started, as if some of the natural brown color rubbed off, too. And fourthly, two years in a row beets have left my eggs speckled pink, not pink all over.

Blue and brown eggs, before and after a blueberry bath (and naked again)

 (Upper) Brown egg in coffee bath. (Lower) Coffee egg 2nd from left in back row.

Spinach dye (blah...)

Speckled beet egg

 (L, top to bottom) 1. Naked blueberry 2. Blueberry 3. Turmeric and blueberry 4. Spinach 5. Turmeric
(R, top to bottom) 1. Onion skin 2. Coffee 3. Beet 4. Onion skin 5. White egg boiled in beet bath

One of the things I love about these dyes is how not uniform and sometimes bizarre the results are. They look nothing like the food coloring-dyed eggs of my childhood, but don't quite look they way they did last year, either. I'm not sure that what I wound up with is prettier than what I started with, but either way, these eggs look lovely at the Easter table.

Bolinas Blackberry Pie

My mother used to read Blueberries for Sal to me before bed when I was small.  It was one of my favorite books, in part because eating my way through a bush of blueberries as Sal does seemed like a brilliant idea, and in part because the mother-child mix-up that happens is classic.


This Labor Day weekend, I drove out to rural Marin County to see my dad, and relieve him of some blackberries which grow [a little too] wild in his yard. He hacked at the brambles with a machete while my dog ran amok and I got lost (practically) picking berries. I imagine blackberry bushes are a little more violent than blueberry bushes, since Sal's hands and legs didn't look like mine when she, the bears, and her mom were done picking. Bear claws, though, are pretty near the top of the Potentially Damaging hierarchy.

Since I didn't have to compete with bears, I gathered about nine cups of blackberries. That doesn't include all the ones I ate as I picked, or the ones I dropped as my skin snagged on a thorn and I cursed the entire universe. I gave about a cup to my dad-- I wasn't being stingy. He didn't want more -- and took the rest home to bake in a pie.

I wound up tossing out about a cup of berries this morning, since some were just past their peak. Apparently, blackberries' peak lasts about 3 seconds. Others just got crushed from the weight of the other eight cups stacked on top of them. I froze about a cup to use in smoothies later, so used about six cups of berries in the pie.  I didn't have an official blackberry pie recipe to use, so I combined elements from a few different pie and fruit tart sources, and created what just might become an annual tradition.

For the crust, I used a recipe from Vegetarian Times I'd cut out ages ago but hadn't used yet. The ingredients are simple and the method is easy-- basically, everything is thrown in the food processor and pulsed until the dough comes together. I've already written an ode to the Food Processor (Wo)Man for this very thing; it turns out a perfect crust every time. My lattice was a little gangly and uneven, but for my first attempt, it was Not Bad At All.

For the filling, I started with brown sugar, and lots of it.  My dad and I both noticed that the berries were not as sweet as they've been in years past, which my dad attributes to the lack of warm sunny days this summer. I think it may also be that the brambles are being choked by the two other invasive vines spewing over from other people's yards. (Several blackberry species have also been deemed invasive here in California. Eh, potayto, potahto...) Property lines and semantics aside, I added a little cornstarch to thicken the soupy mess the berries were becoming, and a little lemon juice to brighten up the whole thing.  This is also what goes into the filling for the Rustic Fruit Tart I wrote about. Except with blackberries. Not plums.

I blind-baked the crust to prevent it from getting soggy from berry juice. The problem with this method is that the top edges of the crust brown long before all the rest of it, and sometimes even burn before the pie is ready. The logical solution would be to blind-bake it for less time, but then the bottom wouldn't be baked enough to stay, well, crusty. I might try covering the edges with extra parchment paper next time, with some kind of clamping or folding trick to make the paper stay in place over the edge.  

All things considered, the pie is perfect for the end of summer. It even has tan lines.   

Fine. I admit it. The crust recipe didn't make enough dough for crust AND lattice.

I know! I was a little worried about the whole machete/dog/me combination, too! But I made it out alive. And so did the dog.

 

Bolinas Blackberry Pie

*If you choose to create a lattice (or any other) design on top, you will need to a) make 1.25 times this amount of dough (use extra water instead of 1/4 egg); b) set aside a small quantity of the dough as you begin Step 5a.  This way, you will create extra dough for the lattice, and still have the original quantity for the crust. 
** Pre-bake times have been adjusted to account for my mistakes. You may need to add another minute or two onto your time.

For the crust

1 1/2 C all-purpose flour

1 TBSP sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 stick (1/2 C) cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks

1 egg yolk

1/4 C ice water

1. Pulse flour, sugar, and salt in food processor a few times to combine. Add butter, and pulse 5-6 times, or until mixture resembles coarse sand. 

2. Beat egg yolk and ice water in small bowl with fork. Add to flour mixture in food processor. Pulse just until dough comes together. 

3. Transfer dough to piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap. Press into a flat disk. Wrap tightly and refrigerate at least one hour (or overnight). 

4. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

5a. On a well-floured surface, roll out dough into a circle approximately 1/4" thick and 14" in diameter for a 9" pie plate. Lay crust over pie plate, pressing lightly into bottom and sides. Create a fluted design, if you wish, around the edges by lightly pinching the overhang. 

5b. Also roll out dough reserved for lattice into rectangular shape, 1/4" thick and 11" wide. Cut rectangle into long strips. Set aside.

6. Place parchment paper over the crust (you can cut a circle to fit the bottom, or you can lay strips across the crust that overlap) and weigh down the paper with dried beans. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove beans and parchment paper and bake for another 5 minutes. Top of crust should be just beginning to brown.

7. Reduce heat to 350 degrees.

For the filling

6 C ripe blackberries, washed 

3 TBSP cornstarch

2/3 C brown or granulated sugar (adjust slightly according to sweetness of berries)

1 TBSP lemon juice

1/2 tsp grated lemon zest (optional)

1. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Stir gently to combine, coating berries well.

2. Pour berry mixture into pre-baked pie crust. Arrange lattice strips on top.

3. Bake for 30 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. 

4. Cool on wire rack for as long as you can wait. 

5. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Localvore

About a month ago, a friend handed me a bag with 4 unripe avocados in it.  I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them.  We were going to Santa Cruz with her family, so I wondered if I would be forced to eat hard green avocados on the beach, Filipina-style.  I doubt that's really Filipina-style, but whatever.

It turns out they were from one of the avocado trees in her backyard, which her husband planted and tends lovingly.  I waited patiently for the avocados to ripen, and gave one to my dad since I knew a) he'd like it; b) all four would ripen at once and I'd be avocadoed out. I put one in a bag to speed it along, but heeded the advice of my friend's husband: "If you think it's ready, wait one more day."  When it was finally ripe-plus-one-day, I cut open the freshest, perfectest, most deliciousest avocado I've ever had.

I stood in the kitchen, tasting small bites of the fruit, while trying to decide what to make with it.  I considered making guacamole, but figured that was just so expected.  I thought about adding it to burritos, but didn't feel like preparing all the ingredients.  I remembered the salads we had several nights a week with dinner when I was a kid, and how I'd always steal pieces of avocado off the top while my parents put the finishing touches on the rest of the meal.  But I wasn't really in the mood for salad this night.

By the time I contemplated and rejected several dinner options, I had only a quarter of an avocado left.  It was clear that there was only one thing left to do: polish off the rest!



Leilani and Gary, I can't wait for more avocados!

Oh, and it turns out that Filipina-style avocado eating involves cutting up the avocado and adding sugar and milk.  Hmmm...