Kitchen Garden Journal

What better way to use that last primo tomato of the season than on a final summertime B.L.T.? All B.L.T.’s are not created equal, and this one had to be perfect. 

Care must be taken to select the best bacon, the proper bread, and the right condiments.

Tomato: Kitchen Garden Cuostralee (heavy red late season heirloom) 

Lettuce: Kitchen Garden green butterhead

Bacon: Niman Ranch Maple Smoked

Bread: Whole Foods baguette rolls, toasted whole for a warm and crusty exterior and a moist, soft interior

Mayo: Cains

Chips: Laurel Hill Sea Salt

Pickles: Clausen Kosher Dills, minis

Beverage: Coca Cola Classic, on ice, in a glass

Discuss.

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It's one of the ironies of our farming life that at a certain point in the season we have to leave the farm behind and drive far away in order to relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Of course we crammed as many veggies into a cooler as possible before heading off to Maine this weekend and the tomato tart pictured here is at the top of our priority list when we meet up with our friends on Isle au Haut.

Enjoy your week. We fully intend to...

P.S. Many many thanks to our fabulous crew for keeping the show going while we're gone!

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Why is it that the moment for canning and preserving always falls on really really hot days? Everyone with childhood memories of canning remembers two things: the smell and the heat. For many, sadly, the trauma of the heat curtails nostalgic longing for the intoxicating aromas of jam and tomatoes.

Lately, the humidity has been awful and, of course, I seized my opportunity for canning on a particularly disgusting evening. I set out to repeat the most delicious product of last year’s repeated bouts of sweaty, tomato-vapored kitchen delirium: sugo.

Sugo means “sauce” in Italian. Jars of pre-made tomato sauce like Prego are called sugo pronto, ready sauce. My sugo isn’t really a heat-and-serve thing that you just dump on boiled spaghetti, but it does save a lot of time later when making richly flavored sauces.

Sugo is basically tomato puree that also includes onions, carrots, red peppers, celery and herbs.  It’s like tomato puree and vegetable stock all rolled into one. I usually add it to meat sauces for pasta, but it’s great for other things like vegetable soups, dried beans, beef stew, and Spanish rice. It has a distinct sweetness from the onions and peppers and aromatic depth from the carrots and celery. You can feel all the warmth of summer on those cold winter nights.

And, most importantly perhaps, it’s a great way to use up some of the piles of partially rotting but perfectly usable tomatoes, onions and peppers that inevitably accumulate around the farm this time of year.

The method is very similar to my recipe for tomato puree. Basically, what you do is coarsely chunk up all the tomatoes and toss them in a big pot and bring it to a boil. Then, toss in coarsely chopped pieces of all the other vegetables and stew them in the tomato liquid until they’re soft. I also threw in a big bundle of basil and celery leaves that I took out before pureeing . (I also removed the celery so it wouldn’t make the sauce a yucky color: never puree red and green together, it looks like puke. If you have very light colored celery hearts, go ahead and puree them, too.)

So, for Christmas I asked for a mechanized solution to making this and here’s the verdict: the Kitchen Aid food mill attachment is really messy. I have never made such a mess of my clothes while canning; it even shot hot tomato water in my eye. (WTF!) Will I go back to the hand crank method? Hard to say. It was quicker and less physically exhausting, but not by much.

Anyway, if you want to make this—and I encourage you to do so—you can follow the procedure for tomato puree. You’ll find all the little tips and tricks I’ve learned in that post from last year. 

So happy canning, and please, take a shower.

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This is a very special year for tomatoes. After two very wet cool summers we are finally discovering the taste of good tomatoes again, only possible with the intense heat and dryness that has defined this summer so far. This year's tomatoes are beautiful, bountiful and so exquisitely flavored that they make your heart sing. One of our favorites, Cherokee Green, is pictured above.

We somehow found the time this week to make our favorite heirloom tomato tart (recipe posted last week) and we were reminded just how much more amazing and concentrated the flavor is when you roast these tomatoes, especially the plum types. The darker colored tomato in the tart is Purple Russian, which has rich, sweet and puckery flavor.

This was our spread at Saturday's Greenfield Farmers Market. It doesn't get much better than this.

Chez Albert in Amherst will be featuring our tomatoes in all their glory at a special Tomato Dinner on Wednesday, August 18. The menu will showcase Kitchen Garden ingredients and offer an opportunity to sample many of our heirloom varieties. Call (413) 253-3811 for reservations.

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Inspired by "Chez Panisse Fruit" by Alice Waters

• 2lbs ripe peaches, peeled and sliced in 1/4 inch wedges
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• 2-4 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 1 recipe Galette Dough (recipe below)
• 1/4 cup "moondust" (recipe below)

Galette Dough

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 12 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and diced
• 7 Tbsp ice water

Combine flour, sugar and salt in food processor. Pulse in 4 Tbsp of butter until flour mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Pulse in the rest of the butter, until butter pieces are pea-sized or even a little larger. Drizzle in water while processing until dough just starts to come together. Divide in two balls and place each on a sheet of cling wrap. Using the plastic to handle the dough, press each ball into a disk, wrap and chill for at least an hour.

"Moondust"

• 1/4 cup ground almonds
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup amaretti cookies, pulverized (optional)

This stuff absorbs the fruit's juices and keeps the crust crisp. This makes four times what you need for one tart, but it's good to have on hand.

To Assemble:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. (We just got a pizza stone so I got that heating too, and when I put the baking sheet right on it the bottom of my galette dough crisped up beautifully.) Roll out the dough disks between parchment paper, rolling one slightly larger than the other. Chill again for 30 minutes. Place the large piece of dough with its bottom parchment lining on a baking sheet or pizza tray. Sprinkle 1/4 moondust on the center of the disk leaving 1 1/2 inches empty space around the edge. Arrange the peaches in a slightly overlapping ring, and continue with progressively smaller concentric circles, so that the center is completely covered. Toss blueberries over peaches and sprinkle some more moondust and half the sugar over the fruit. Using a pastry brush, brush the melted butter over the border edge and lay the smaller disk of dough over the top. Fold the bottom edge of dough up over the tart edge, crimp and rotate 1 inch and fold again, continuing until the entire galette is sealed. Cut out a few small vent holes, brush the remaining butter over the top and crimped edge and sprinkle with remaining sugar. Bake 1 hour, or until fruit is bubbling out and crust is golden brown. Don't forget vanilla ice cream.

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Every year, about halfway into tomato season, a melancholy—not unlike the dread of “Back to School”—starts to set in. Tomatoes sitting on the counter start to attract fruit flies, and the cruel arithmetic of this brief, sweet time starts to sink in. Every day that passes not spent slurping up a tomato sandwich, the juice running down your fingers and staining the plate red, seems a day utterly wasted.

Indeed, there are more ways to enjoy the bounty of tomatoes—joys that can only be tasted with tomatoes warm from the field—than there are days left in this fleeting season.

This knowledge, I believe, makes the tomatoes taste better. With each bite you can taste the longing of wintertime. That you are soon to be deprived of this sublime pleasure that just arrived makes each tomato that much more precious and beautiful and blessed. The next time you turn around, they’ll be gone. Each one is a gift.

Photos by Candace Hope

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This recipe has been a favorite of ours for years, adapted from Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook.

• For the Basil-Garlic Crust
• 1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 medium garlic clove
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 8 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut in 8 pieces
• 4-5 Tbsp cold water

Place basil and garlic in the bowl of the Cuisinart fitted with the normal blade. Process until finely chopped, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add flour and salt and pulse to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse a few times until the mixture is the size of peas. Drizzle in the water and pulse until the dough comes together into a ball. Remove and flatten into a disc wrapped in plastic wrap. Chill at least 1 hour.

• For the Tart
• 8 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced thin
• 2 large, ripe tomatoes (about 1 lb), sliced thin
• salt and pepper
• 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Fit the dough into a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Preheat the oven to 375. Line the bottom of the tart shell with mozzarella slices covering it completely. Arrange tomato slices over the cheese in an overlapping ring starting along the outside edge and another on the inside to cover the entire shell. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with the oil. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the cheese has golden blisters, about 35-40 minutes. Cool at least 5 minutes before slicing, or serve at room temperature.

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We are in high summer now. Most years, lettuce and salad greens are tough to grow this time of year. But the high highs of this year’s record breaking heat wave have made it close to impossible, so our lettuce and greens are taking a break for a few weeks.

The good news is that there are many other salads to make from the vegetables that love the heat. Last week we gave you our favorite tomato-cucumber-onion salads. There are so many tomatoes to try and a great way to sample them is in a caprese salad: fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, basil leaves, olive oil, salt & pepper. We had that and some fresh bread from the market and nothing else for dinner the other night and no one felt that anything was lacking.

Something else that’s been inspiring me is one of our other mainstays, pico de gallo. This salsa-like concoction is great scooped with chips or folded into a burrito, but it’s really a salad at heart, and I’ve been treating it as such all season, using whatever vegetables are around instead or in addition to the usual suspects: hakurei turnips, radishes and carrots have found their way in there, with positive results. Another hint: use lots and lots of cilantro. It’s really about the onion-cilantro-chili-lime flavor combination, so any other vegetable is really just along for the ride.

Root vegetables also lend themselves into infinite variations of summer salads to be served cold or a room temp. Beets, carrots and potatoes all delight in a dip in the vinegar, especially when accompanied by sweet onions, which are also in season now. Check out the recipe below for a spicy-citrusy Moroccan carrot salad. Chocolate & Zucchini has a lovely recipe for a grated raw carrot and beet salad with lots of variations. Another vegetable that loves its citrus is fennel, which should be sliced thin or shaved crosswise on a mandoline. (Don’t have one of these? You cook vegetables on a regular basis? YOU NEED ONE!)

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• 1 pound zucchini or other summer squash
• vegetable oil to come ½ inch up the side of a skillet
• 1 pound fusilli (or any short, stubby pasta)
• 3 Tbsp butter
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp flour, dissolved in 1/3 cup milk
• salt
• 2/3 cup roughly chopped basil
• 1 egg yolk, beaten lightly with a fork
• ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
• ¼ cup freshly grated Romano cheese

First, put a large pot of water up to boil. When the pasta water comes to a boil, add 2 Tbsp salt and stir in the pasta and allow to cook while you prepare the sauce. Slice zucchini into sticks 2 inches long and 1/8 inch thick (about the size of the pasta). Heat the oil and fry the zucchini sticks in batches, without crowding the pan, until they are light brown, turning occasionally. As each batch is done, transfer to paper towels to drain.  Melt half the butter and all the oil in a skillet. When the butter foams, turn the heat down and stir in the flour-and-milk mixture, a little at a time, stirring constntly for 30 seconds. Add the fried zucchini sticks, ¼ tsp salt and the basil and stir gently. Off the heat, swirl in the remaining butter, egg yolk and grated cheese. Strain the pasta when it is al dente and toss it with the sauce in a large serving bowl and serve immediately.

Note: I made this recipe recently with a simpler method: fry the zucchini all at once (in only about 4-5 tablespoons of olive oil)--if you have a large enough pan, then just push it to the sides and finish the sauce in the center of the pan with the butter, milk flour, etc. I also added some garlic for extra flavor about halfway through the zucchini frying stage.  Either way this is an absolute classic early summer dish.

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Summer came and went in about 2 weeks this year. If it hadn't been so dreadfully humid, we might not have even noticed.

At the end of summer, you can tell what summer was like by looking at the heat-loving crops. This year, it's enough to make you go into a deep back-to-school depression.  The tomatoes are done for. The peppers are weak and diseased. The eggplant is virtually non-existent. And the poor okra--it never really got a chance and it's barely hanging on.

Looking at the devastation, it's not hard to tell that we had an abysmal summer, weather-wise. It never warmed up, we got dumped on all season, diseases went rampant. We made the best of it, and we still managed to eat well. But our summer yields were a fraction of what we'd reasonably hope for in a normal year, if such a thing exists anymore.  All the more reason to grasp for the last sweet handfuls of the summer fruits, while we still can.  

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