Eating

Ten years ago, I made the journey upstate to Sullivan County for the first time. I was visiting my good friend Scott at his beautiful off-the-grid cabin. I had just moved back from Los Angeles, still shell-shocked from the death of my husband, and the area had a profound effect on me. The winding mountain roads and tall pines reconnected me to my childhood in Santa Cruz, and the sights and sounds of nature soothed me. Scott, an absurdly talented stylist and designer, with a uniquely rich and eclectic sensibility, had opened a little roadside boutique where he was selling exactly what you would want in your country cabin: linen blankets, cedar-scented candles, fresh peach pie, local goat cheese, striped hammocks, handmade spoons. So, naturally, I went shopping, and the beautiful spoons and tongs I picked up then have literally served me well.
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Inspired by this lovely post and remembering my own successful version from years past, I decided that a dozen small, fragrant yellow peaches gently poached in white wine with Thai basil would be the perfect finish to a meal of this grilled chicken. Nothing could be simpler. Or more coolly satisfying on a sweltering summer night. Or more seductive, slipping down your throat with a little sweet syrup. Drop in a few fresh raspberries and top with a dollop of whipped cream, though this comes dangerously close to gilding the lily.
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It's Friday and I promised you a cocktail. But in rebooting my computer, my last two weeks' worth of photos somehow disappeared, so I can't tell you about the wildberry gin I have been infusing. Long exhale. Mopping of brow. It's too hot to despair. The perfect solution? Exhorting you to make one of my all-time favorite summer cocktails: the Lovage You Long Time. You can do it! You can do it!

Don't got no lovage? Try infusing the simple syrup with a combination of celery leaves and stalks instead. The rest is just fresh lemon juice, Hendrick's gin, celery bitters and plenty of ice. A couple of these and the living will, indeed, be easy.
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Last year, we took some wild garlic plants from a friend's land and planted them in our garden. They emerged, thrived and grew tall this season, producing those elegant, winding scapes that are the flower stalks of hardneck garlic plants. Instead of actually producing flowers, they eventually form small bulblets that can be planted to grow more garlic—or eaten as is, or used to infuse vinegar. That's what I did today, tossing a generous handful into a jar of organic white vinegar. I'll let it cool its heels in the pantry for a few weeks, then strain out and discard the garlic and use the vinegar for salad dressing. No vampires in this house.
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I love eating out because creative chefs often inspire me to try new things at home. I think most home cooks feel the same way as you can see  by a feature of Melissa Clark's column on the Times' blog called Restaurant Takeaway, and something similar in Bon Appétit, known as The Takeaway. Who doesn't want to recreate those bold, compelling dishes that haunt us after we've dined out somewhere special? And when it's a relatively simple technique or combination of flavors you can copy, so much the better. That's the case with this mouthwatering fresh salad that pops up as a special at ABC Kitchen in Manhattan, where chef Dan Kruger is known for healthy seasonal cooking that drives people wild.

Don't worry about having to slavishly copy every last detail of a recipe. Here, it's the combination of fresh herbs, toasted pistachios and savory green olives in the dressing that makes this salad so addictive. At the restaurant, they lavish this mix on a whole gorgeous head of butter lettuce, but anything crisp and green will do.
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The home pickling, brewing, baking and preserving rage that has swept the country (or at least Brooklyn) in recent years has brought a new appreciation for kimchi, a spicy tangle of fermented vegetables that appears on the table at every meal in Korea, where kimchi is almost a religion. Its complex pungency comes from a colorful mix of garlic, chile, salted shrimp, fish sauce, ginger and scallions—and from an aging process that leaves the components tender yet crunchy. Brined and then fermented, the vegetables' sugars convert into lactic and acetic acids and carbon dioxide. The result is magical and, ultimately, can be as stinky and rich as a ripe cheese.

To learn more about the process of fermentation, I highly recommend one (or both) of Sandor Katz's books: The Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation. To learn more about the age-old art of making kimchi, read on.
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Growing up in Northern California, picnics in the redwoods were a frequent occurence and a tradition on July 4th. We might have barbecued or fried chicken, or my dad might grill burgers and hotdogs, but some things never varied: my mother's potato salad and the fresh peach and boysenberry ice cream we cranked by hand.

Cut to 2013, when G and I will take our own picnic to Forestburgh tomorrow. I have a chicken brining in buttermilk, all set to be fried in the morning, and the potato salad is chilling in the fridge. Instead of ice cream, I made these sour cherry popsicles, which I hope will hold up in the cooler. We'll take the canoe out on the lake and row over to the waterfall. After all this rain, it's sure to be a surging monster.

We'll taste freedom and celebrate our independence—as a nation, as a family, as individuals. For all its many flaws (and I shudder to think of some), I still love our country. It remains a place of great beauty, optimism and possibility.
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Here's what you do:

Find a lovely hillside or meadow where the air is clean and the water is pure and look for the tall stalks of the milkweed plant sticking up amidst the long grasses and wildflowers. Go now, before the beautiful, beaded pale green clusters bloom into wonderfully fragrant mauve flowers. Take a cotton tote or a plastic bag and pinch off the buds, being careful not to disturb any Monarch butterfly cocoons. Make sure not to denude any stalks and to leave plenty of buds behind.

Milkweed tends to grow in great patches, so it shouldn't be hard to forage sustainably. Your fingers will become sticky from the white latex that oozes from this plant wherever you break it. Thistles and nettles may grow nearby. Dragonflies will dart around you, glistening in the sunlight. Take what you need for dinner and move along. 

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I promised you a recipe for kimchi this week but I'm saving that for another time and offering you this cocktail recipe instead. Because you need it for the weekend! In fact, I'm going to see if I can come up with a new cocktail recipe for you every Friday. Not a drinker? Since most of my cocktails are based on seasonal fruits, vegetables and herbs, you can make them virgin with just a few tweaks here and there. With or without booze, they are a great way to celebrate the season's bounty, and a signal to kick back and relax, alone or with friends. 

Refreshing rains have moved through here again, bashing the delicate ferns and denuding the last downy petals from the peonies. The enormous jasmine bush that leans over the neighbor's fence has bloomed, filling the air with a sultry sweet fragrance that wafts through our cottage and makes me swoon. There is no hissing of summer lawns here, just the chirps, caws and warbles of our avian choir.
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Eight years ago, I went to visit a good friend who was living in Singapore and we traveled together to Thailand and Laos. We ogled temples, wandered through markets, rode in boats and rickshaws and on an elephant, and ate like nobody's business. At the Conrad in Bangkok, there was a mind-boggling breakfast buffet that lured us on a tour of global gluttony first thing in the morning—from delicate Chinese dim sum and Japanese tofu to Italian gelato in brioche and Indonesian waffles to buttery French croissants and cream-laden Bircher muesli (masquerading as a healthy option), not to mention every fruit imaginable and some heretofore unknown. It was the sort of start to the day that automatically predicted a nap in our future. But we also stayed in some modest little places, including along the river in Luang Prabang, where said boat trip led us into a lush forest with a waterfall and turquoise swimming hole that was a playground for local kids. Nearby, a couple of women pounded green papaya in big stone mortars to make a traditional Laotian salad, tam som, which they sold in small plastic to-go bags.
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