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By feral, on August 17th, 2010%
A scary tropical monsoon poured down on Canaan today. All of a sudden lights were flickering, and there was a real Donnerwetter with loud thunder, lightening, and chickpea-sized hail. I wailed preemptively for my poor tomatoes. But luckily, the hail lasted for only a few minutes and caused almost no damage.
chilled cucumber soup, presentation by James
 The torrential storm arrived almost simultaneously with Richard and Fran who were stopping by to see us for lunch on their way from Boston to NYC. Thanks to said lunch, I now have photos of the chilled cucumber, mint and yogurt soup (on the left) and I also tried my first Alice Waters’ zucchini recipe from Chez Panisse Vegetables — the zucchini fritters (on the right).
I diverged a little from Chez Panisse recipe. I definitely used more than a pound of grated zucchini, and the zest of only 1 lemon (instead of . . . CONTINUE READING → lunch update
By feral, on August 14th, 2010%
We arrived in Canaan around 11pm last night, so I had to wait until the morning to inspect the garden. After an understandably restless night, I was out in the field at 7am. Well, after the 2 weeks of my absence the garden is now officially feral. Or, according to James: “This garden has gone rogue. It’s a maverick garden.” In an amazing kind of way though.
 There are tomatoes everywhere, and they’re getting ripe by the hour! The zucchini are the size and the shape of bomb shells. Plus, I found 8 overgrown cucumbers. They haven’t turned yellow yet but some of them have already developed a pretty thick skin and need to be peeled. So, peel them I did.
For lunch I improvised a quick chilled soup: 2 large (peeled) cucumbers, about 16 oz. yogurt, 3 small cloves of young garlic, fresh dill, about 10 fresh mint leaves, juice of a half lime, 5-6 walnut halves, salt, and a pinch of cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper — blended in a food processor and served immediately.
Both preparation and consumption happened so quickly that . . . CONTINUE READING → chilled cucumber & yogurt soup
By feral, on August 5th, 2010%
 Let’s begin with some borscht ABCs. Do you like it hot or cold? If you answered “both,” don’t worry: you are not necessarily bipolar. Hot and cold borschts (I couldn’t resist using the plural here just to see an 8-letter word that has only one vowel) are two entirely different entities. Their only common ingredient is beets — but if you were to refer to every Russian dish made with beets as borscht, you’d be in big trouble. –> skip the intro –>
As a matter of fact, growing up in Minsk, I knew the cold beet soup not as borscht but as холодник — kholodnik (from Russian kholod — cold). And there were 2 kinds of kholodnik: a red and a green one. If you happen to patronize any of the Russian dining establishments in Brighton Beach, you might have met the green incarnation, traditionally made with sorrel (or щавель [shchavel] in Russian — hence the name Schav, a cold soup in a jar that you occasionally see next to gefilte fish and matzo balls in the “Manischewitz” section of your supermarket).
. . . CONTINUE READING → what’s in your borscht?
By feral, on July 8th, 2010%
Once you learn how to spell “gazpacho,” the rest is easy. And if you don’t want to keep getting corrected by search engines each time you try to find a recipe, you can invent your own. This is my super-lazy version that I prepared for lunch today in 10 minutes (or less). I kinda just made it up from what I remember from following (or intending to follow) various recipes in the past.
 Here’s what I used :
a blender 15oz or so tomato juice 1 kirby cucumber 1/3 green bell pepper 1/6 red onion 2 tbsp sherry vinegar ca. 1/2 – 1 tsp sea salt ca. 2-3 tbsp olive oil 1 fairly large tomato (not humongous but larger than medium) 1 small slice of old bread, soaked quickly in a little bit of hot water ca. 1/4 – 1/3 cup blanched almonds (if you don’t have the almonds, use a larger piece of old bread) 1 clove raw garlic (use a small one or a half if you don’t like it to be too garlicky) a pinch of ground coriander seeds, paprika, cayenne pepper, a tiny . . . CONTINUE READING → gazpacho, with a Z
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