September 2011

I've told you before of my longstanding devotion to Aesop, the Australian skin- and body-care company, and FINALLY they have arrived in New York. They put so much thought and creativity into everything they do—from their all-natural, socially-conscious products to their creative store design—that it's a pleasure to support the brand. First they opened a kiosk in Grand Central Station, and now their 40th stand-alone location has opened in Nolita, with University Place and Bleecker Street outposts slated for later this year. The unifying design theme, from local architect Jeremy Barbour, is the use of repurposed editions of The New York Times. It creates a soft, faintly industrial look that's a fine, neutral backdrop for the products. Run, don't walk, to stock up on their wonderful Geranium Body Scrub, Fabulous Face Oil and Vetiver Deodorant. They've also launched Thirty Views of New York, a month-long series of recommendations from a diverse roster of cultural luminaries. Every day through October 11th, a different contributor shares a favorite location in New York. It's all part of Aesop's "passionate engagement with the cultural landscape," and is of a piece with their excellent newsletter, which pulls together an international listing of interesting and timely things to do, eat, watch, read, etc.On my way to Tribeca the other day, another new store on West Broadway caught my eye, and I stopped in for a quick look. Turns out it was Treasure & Bond, new from Nordstrom but disguised as a downtown hipster boutique.
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I subscribe to quite a few cooking magazines—Bon Appétit (successfully revamped to assuage fans of the now-defunct Gourmet); Saveur; Food & Wine; Diner Journal—and also regularly read Food52, assorted cooking blogs and random publications like the Edibles and PutAEggOnIt , so at any given time I have a gazillion recipes rolling around in my head. Lately, I've been seeing many references to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, a Columbus, Ohio, legend founded by Jenni Britton Bauer (how can you not love a women whose first business was called Scream?!), probably because she has a new cookbook out. What caught my eye, aside from interesting flavors (Toasted rice with coconut and black tea! Goat cheese with roasted cherries! Influenza sorbet with lemon, honey and bourbon!), was the fact that she doesn't use any eggs, but instead incorporates cream cheese, gelatin, cornstarch and/or a little corn syrup to create a smooth and creamy texture. Not that I have anything against the classic custard base, but I was itching to try what were described as some of the best frozen treats around. Food & Wine published a recipe for her lemon-blueberry frozen yogurt, and I gave it a go. I ended up replacing her blueberry sauce with a passion fruit curd (and another time with nectarine puree) and, I kid you not, it was one of the creamiest, silkiest most satisfyingly delicious things I have ever eaten. Do everybody a favor and make some of this immediately!
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Are you up to your ears in tomatoes? Is the glorious love apple gracing your table at least once a day? You should be gorging on them now, the one time of year we can actually get the real deal: perfectly ripe, sweetly fragrant tomatoes dripping with juice. None of those pink, mealy things we'll avoid like the plague between October and August. The season for tomatoes is so short! If you don't can, then at least consider freezing. You can take Romas, slice off one end, squeeze out the seeds and, just like that, pop them into a ziploc bag. Or make big batches of sauce and freeze that. You'll love yourself for this come January, trust me. Right now, gazpacho's the thing. This classic cold soup hails from Andalucía and there are various kinds, one made with garlic and grapes, one with fava beans and of course the red tomato version. They all include bread, olive oil and vinegar—three key ingredients that really set this apart from V8. It's almost as if you took the classic Italian bread-&-tomato salad, panzanella, and put it in the blender. Almost.

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More maitake madness! The second hen-of-the-woods mushroom I found was even fresher and more delicate than the first. Having already eaten them sauteed in butter and spooned over toast, and then over gnocchi, I decided to follow my Japanese friend Tomo's advice and try my hand at maitake tempura. It was kind of a bold move, since I've never made tempura before, but I've grown much more comfortable with frying these days. Aside from being a bit messy, it's just not such a big deal. And the rewards, well, I don't have to tell you how wonderful it is to eat something hot and crispy and virtually greaseless. It's a taste and texture revelation. It turns out that tempura is a fantastic way to eat hen-of-the-woods. The crackling exterior perfectly complements the firm, meaty mushroom, which remains sweet and juicy. The flavor is mellow but very savory. While I was at it, I also fried up some zucchini and shishito peppers from our garden, and a few pieces of sweet Vidalia onion.
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And they say lightning doesn't strike twice. Either it's beginner's luck or I am some sort of idiot savant of mushroom foraging, but just two days after finding the enormous chicken mushroom, I came across this extraordinary hen-of-the-woods! Once again, I was driving, this time coming back from my weekly shopping trip to the farm. I simply glanced out the window and there, recessed in the woods, at the base of a large, rotting oak stump and illuminated by a single shaft of dappled sunlight, with this gorgeous, ruffled mound. Surely not, I thought to myself. And then screeched to the side of the road and plunged into the forest. I was cackling like a madwoman as I brought this into the house, as drunk with victory as a conquering Roman. And then, this morning, up for my constitutional at 7am, I came across yet another hen-of-the woods! Not as big as the first one, but still 5 gloriously fresh pounds of it! And some chanterelles, to boot!
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Seek and ye shall find. Friends and fellow foragers, I am beside myself!! Driving to yoga, a flash of orange in the woods caught my eye and I mentally bookmarked it for the ride home. And there it was upon my return—yes, in all its flamboyant and fiery glory—an enormous wild chicken mushroom!! A large-and-in-charge specimen of Laetiporus sulphureus, also known as the Sulfur Shelf mushroom. It's considered a good entry-level wild edible, because it's quite distinctive and really can't be confused with anything remotely poisonous. There were a good 10 pounds of it growing atop a fallen tree trunk, and I took home about half of that, much of it fresh, pliant and begging to be eaten. After a good trimming, a soak in salty water (to clear out any bugs) and a thorough drying, I stashed my haul under a paper towel until dinner time. Sautéed in butter, with a little garlic, thyme, stock and a splash of cream, and served over toast, it was the supper of my dreams: wild, free and spectacularly seasonal.
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More rain. Lots more. Enough that thoughts begin to turn away from corn salsas and tomato salads and toward cozier soups and stews. So the tomatoes and eggplant that have finally started trickling in from our late-producing garden inspired me to make a dish I'd never before eaten, much less cooked: moussaka. This Mediterranean eggplant-based casserole, eaten as far afield as the Balkans and the Middle East, comes in a few different versions, usually with ground lamb and tomato sauce, and sometimes with a topping of béchamel or custard (á la Elizabeth David, the seminal British cook). I've never been the hugest fan of shepherd's pie, but I thought this might be a slightly lighter and tastier variation on that general idea. I found a recipe online at Saveur, but it called for a layer of potatoes, which seemed a bit excessive (plus I didn't have any on hand), so I simply left them out. I also didn't have currants (I used raisins) or bell peppers (ick, in general), but the dish didn't suffer from the lack of either. Although the recipe does look like a lot of steps, it's actually a pretty simple process of making three distinct layers: fried eggplant; a garlicky lamb-&-tomato sauce with piquant spicing; and a rich, creamy topping. With a green salad, it makes a relatively easy and quite delicious weeknight dinner.
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I've caught the bug. My latest obsession is foraging for wild mushrooms. At this point, it's really not about eating them. I need to know much more about these fascinating fungi before I bring them to the dinner table. For starters, there are thousands upon thousands of different varieties! And you have to learn all the finer points of identification to be truly certain before popping one in your mouth. As the saying goes, "When in doubt, throw it out!" But with all the rain we've been having, the woods are fairly teeming with shrooms of all shapes and sizes and, after a recent gift of wild black trumpet mushrooms foraged by my friend Tomo in the woods near her house, I am hell-bent on finding my own mother lode of something, somewhere, sometime. In the meantime, let me just share with you a few of the gorgeous specimens I collected after (and during) the recent downpours.
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Welcome back, dear readers! How I have missed you! True to form, the month of August flew past in a frenzy of gardening, entertaining, hurricanes and, sadly, poison ivy. I never sat in the hammock, did not put even one dent into the promised coding of recipes and went on precious few hikes, but I did make some delicious frozen yogurt and popsicles, perfected my gazpacho recipe and reorganized both my freezers. One highlight was definitely the Outstanding in the Field dinner we attended in Chester, New York. You may remember we went to one in Roscoe last year. It was held at Blooming Hill Farm, where more than 200 varieties of organic produce are grown on this unbelievable black soil. This area of Orange Country is actually known as the "Black Dirt Region" because of the dark, extremely fertile soil left over from an ancient glacial lake bottom and augmented by decades of past flooding of the Wallkill River. (They found wooly mammoth remains when they were planting the farm!) It was long considered wasteland, but when Eastern European immigrants arrived in the mid-19th century, they recognized this type of land and knew how to dig trenches to drain it so it could be farmed. I've never seen anything so rich and black and loamy; it looks like devil's food cake.
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