Kitchen Garden Journal

• 1 pint Mixed Cherry Tomatoes
• 3 heads Red Russian Garlic
• 1 bunch Cilantro
• 1 bunch Bull's Blood Beets
• 1 quart Romano Beans
• 1 bulb Fennel
• 1/2 lb. Baby Mixed Greens
• 6 ears Sweet Corn (Warner Farm)
• 1 lb. peaches (Czajkowski Farm)

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This time of year is insanely abundant.  The amount and variety of vegetables that we're harvesting now is vast and overwhelming. At the farmers' market, we don't even have enough space to present everything. 
This time of year is bittersweet for us.  In this abundance, we confront the great paradox of vegetable farming by people who love to cook and eat: there is simply no possible way to make proper use of the bounty with the limited free time and energy we have after hauling it all in. 
That's where you all come in, I suppose.  This time of year, we have to live vicariously, so please feel free to post comments to this newsletter and tell us all of the yummy things you have been cooking with our vegetables.

While I'm standing at the farmers' market, propped up by a mixture of caffeine and adrenaline, my mind often wanders to all of the different meals I could make, all of the possible combinations and permutations before me, of different ethnic preparations utilizing different herbs... of all of the afternoon barbeques I have no time to throw, parties for people I haven't seen in months that I won't host, and the fabulous spreads that they would feature. 
So with that thought I raise my glass to you.  You know your mission.  Go forth, invite your friends over, cook, eat, enjoy.  And think of us eating our pizza and Chinese takeout, again, after a long day in the fields or standing on hot pavement at the farmers' market.

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 After a restless night listening to the pounding rain, we awoke Friday morning to the most flooded field we had ever seen.  We rubbed our eyes and stared.  Yep, it was real.  The middle section of our field was completely submerged.  Plants that we had set out on Monday were totally invisible under 2 inches of water.

Luckily it stopped raining by 6am when we began our usual Friday harvest.  But the sheer amount of moisture created some interesting situations: sinking up to our ankles in the mud, harvest buckets floating away, and the muddiest carrots I've ever seen.  Carrots whose tops snapped off could be retrieved simply by reaching down into the liquid soil. 
At this point, the rain is so bizzare that it's hard to think rationally about what it means.  But basically every single crop that we are growing will not tolerate much more of this, and if we don't get some sun to dry us out, we may start to experience significant losses.  We are seeing evidence of neighboring farms plowing under entire crops of tobacco, squash, tomatoes and potatoes that have been infected with a deadly fungus.  For now, we remain hopeful, and frankly, astonished and thankful for the fabulous crops we've been able to harvest despite the ridiculous weather situation.    

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• 1 pint cherry tomatoes (or 2 slicing tomatoes)
• 1 sweet onion
• 1 clove garlic
• Hot chilies, to taste
• 1/2 bunch cilantro
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 Tbsp sugar, optional
• 1 Tbsp vinegar, optional

Chop everything to a fine dice and toss with the liquids. Allow to sit for 1/2 hour to meld the flavors. Eat with tortilla chips or quesadillas, enchiladas, burritos, etc.

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• 1 lb. spaghetti, linguine, or cappellini
• 2 lbs. steamer clams, or 24 littlenecks
• 1-2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 head garlic
• 1/2 glass white wine
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• fresh basil and/or parsley, chopped
• salt & pepper

Scrub the clams and soak them in cold water for an hour or so to reduce the sandiness. Put up some water for the pasta.  Meanwhile slice or chop the garlic as desired and sauté gently in the olive oil in a large pan with a tight fitting lid. When the garlic is not yet brown but starting to get sticky, toss in the clams, tomatoes, and herbs. Put on the lid and cook over high just until the clams open, shaking everything around from time to time. Remove from heat and discard any unopened clams.  Sprinkle with pepper and taste for salt.  Now, at this point you have two options*: you can fish out the clams and scrape their bodies back into the sauce (makes it less messy and time consuming to eat) or you can simply toss your al dente pasta right in the pan and serve it up, steaming, brothy, shells and all.  Almost as good as being at the Cape! (Better yet, take your veggies with you and make it out there!)
*If using steamers, you’ll need to shell and de-”sock” them before returning them to the sauce.

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• 1 quart Green & Yellow Beans
• 1 lb. Fingerling Potatoes
• 1 lb. Zucchini
• 1 bunch Broccoli Rabe
• 1 lb. Multicolor Carrots
• 1 bunch Spring Onions
• 1 head Green Leaf Lettuce
• 1 bunch Rosemary
• 1 pint Blueberries (Czajkowski Farm)

Broccoli Rabe pasta is one of our favorite one-dish meals, but these full-flavored greens are also great as a side dish: just blanch in salted boiling water and saute with garlic and hot chilies in good olive oil. The best sweet onions for our bean salad recipe are either yellow Walla Walla, red Tropea or mild white spring onions. For other salad dressing ideas don't forget to check the Baby Mixed Greens page.

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"We'll be there in four hours.  Make some space in your fridge."

When we visit friends during the summer months, we come bearing gifts.  Fridgefuls of fennel.  Basketfuls of beans.  Garlic to line your walls with.  Sometimes we get a little carried away, especially since our hosts tend to be as food-obsessed as we are.  This weekend we went to the fair city of Portland, Maine to visit our friends Peter and Natalie.  Peter is a Hampshire friend of mine, now a food writer at large in Vacationland.  About a year and a half ago, he wrote a couple of stories about a new trend in coastal New England: CSF's: Community Supported Fisheries, or Fish Shares.  Now he belongs to one.  Little did we know that our carload of vegetables would be competing for refrigerated real estate with a 6 pound pollock, a 4 pound cod and a monkfish tail.  At 9:00 am on a foggy morning we pulled up alongside a little box truck in a nearly abandoned parking lot at the Portland Fish Pier.  A cheerful, if a little forgetful, fisherman comes out of the cab to meet us.  He apologizes for his fogginess: he gets up at 2 am and works til 5 or 6 in the evening.  Inside the box are stacks of fish tubs filled with the day's catch: cod, hake, pollock, grey sole.  "Those you probably want to cook up whole," he says.  Filleting sole is not a job for beginners.
It quickly became clear that being a member of this fledgling fish share is not for the weak-hearted.  Peter gets 12 lbs of fish a week: heads, tails, and eyeballs included.  His kitchen smells like fish guts.  (He's now resolved to do the gutting and scaling in his driveway.)
After an impromptu filleting demonstration on a serviceable scrap of plywood, off we go with a big bag of fillets and an even bigger bag of carcasses.  Will it leak in the car?  Better triple bag it.  We mine the bones for a mid-morning snack.  Turns out there are two smaller fillets on the belly of every fish that normally would be discarded.  Too much work.  We fry them up and serve them with a mixture of Sriracha and mayonnaise.  So what if we reek like fishmongers?
Dinner takes all day to make, but the meeting of land (our farm) and sea (and a wine haul from the New Hampshire state liquor store) makes for some fine fish stew. Find our version of Bouillabaisse in the recipe section below. Visit Mediterranean cuisine expert Clifford A. Wright's website for some excellent history and information about this classic French soup.

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This recipe is adapted from Clifford A. Wright, an expert on Mediterranean cuisine.

• Fish Carcasses
• Olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 quarts water
• 1 cup white wine

Make a fish stock by sauteing the onion in the oil until translucent.  Add water, fish carcasses and white wine and bring to a boil.  Simmer for 2 hours.  Strain and reserve the stock.

• Fish fillets (preferably a mix of oily fish, such as moonkfish, tuna or mackerel, and white fish, like cod, haddock, pollock)
• 3 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• another onion, thinly sliced
• 1 large bulb fennel, thinly sliced
• 1 can whole peeled tomatoes
• Salt & pepper

While the stock bubbles away, marinate the fillets in some minced garlic and olive oil.  Saute the onions and fennel in olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes.  Add tomatoes, stock, salt & pepper, and bring to a ferocious boil.  Add fish fillets, cut into large pieces, one variety at a time, starting with the oily fish, which take longer to cook.  Let the stock come back to a boil before adding the net type of fish.  After all the fish is in, boil for another 10 minutes or so, until the fish is cooked but not falling apart.  Taste for seasoning and serve immediately, topped with toasted bread slices smeared with garlic sauce.

• 4 slices of baguette for each diner
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg yolk

Toast the bread slices until crispy and set aside.  In the food processor or blender, add the garlic, oil and salt and whip together to form an emulsion.  Add lemon juice and egg yolk and continue to blend until it looks smooth.  Smear some of this sauce on a toast slice to garnish each bowl of stew.  Serve the remaining toasts and sauce at the table.

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This recipe is good not only for broccoli rabe, but is capable of transforming any of the coarser leafy greens (kale, collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, escarole) into something utterly sinful.

• 1 lb. short, thick pasta (orecchiette, fusilli or cavatappi)
• 1 bunch broccoli rabe, chopped
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 heads of garlic, sliced
• 1/4 tsp. chili flakes, or to taste (or a fresh chili, sliced with scissors right into the oil)
• 1 tin anchovy filets, drained and  coarsely chopped
• Pecorino Romano, grated

Put a large pot of water on to boil, and in the meantime wash and chop the greens. Salt the water generously when it boils and add the pasta. When the pasta is half done, toss the greens right in the water with them. 

Separately, in a small pan, saute the garlic and chili gently in the oil. Before the garlic browns, turn down the flame to low and add the anchovies, stirring until they dissolve. (Do not be afraid, we have served this to staunchly anti-anchovy people and they were instantly converted). When the pasta is al dente drain it and toss with the garlic sauce. Serve with the grated Pecorino.  Buon appetito!

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