A Roasted Tomato Sandwich

It might seem over the top to use the word "thrilling" to describe the end-of-summer arrival of a ripe tomato.

Yet, I would argue that when you reside in a place where clouds and rain are abundant for at least nine months out of the year, the brightness that a tomato imparts to your existence is no small thing.

When the tomato finally goes from green and rock-like to red and giving it's...well, thrilling. 

So, I'm going to eat up as many as I can until they disappear.

One of my favorite ways is to roast them in the oven. Adding heat draws out juices and brings to the fore their full, savory umami-ness -- that fifth taste (along with sweet, salty, sour and bitter of course) first described by a Japanese chemist in 1908 -- umami from the Japanese word for deliciousness, umai .

While this tomato sandwich might seem simple, plain even, its flavors are most definitely delicious. Everything surrounding the thick slab of caramelized, collapsed fruit adds to its umami quality and makes the tomato shine even brighter. 

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Snug and cozy in their pan.

These tomatoes will smell incredible while they are cooking, snugged together and dressed with olive oil, garlic and herbs. The scent of the roasting tomatoes will attract comments of longing by family members and even neighbors, who may be walking past your house. 

Invite said people into the kitchen. Call out, wave them in. There is surely enough to go around.

Let them watch as you assemble the sandwiches.

Use good bread. A crusty roll is best. Let it become saturated with golden juices and olive oil, which only underscore the tomato flavor. Mayo flecked with thyme leaves adds richness. Be generous with it. 

Cut the beauties in half, trying not to squish the tomatoes too much.  

This sandwich is for eating outside. A front or back step is good. And in the sun, people. 

Hand portions to those eager to receive. Eat together in a silence punctuated only by moans of approval as the juices drip down hands, arms and onto bare, sun-warmed knees. 

Summer is at its end. We all know that. 

But sometime during the darkness of winter, you will surely remember this moment, your mouth watering, your heart filled with light.

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Summer perfection: Tomatoes at their peak.

Roasted Tomato Sandwich with Thyme Mayonaise

Serves 4.

Ingredients
4 Medium-to-Large Tomatoes
Olive Oil
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Garlic cloves, sliced
3 to 4 Sprigs of fresh thyme
4 Good-quality, crusty rolls

For the Thyme Mayonaise:
1/2 cup (or more, according to your preference) of mayonaise, store-bought or homemade
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Directions:
Cut large tomatoes into fat slabs. Smaller tomatoes can be simply halved. Snug them into a baking pan.

Give them a generous pour of olive oil then add a few drops of balsamic vinegar.

Sprinkle over the tomatoes hearty pinches of coarse salt and pepper.

Tuck garlic between and under tomatoes. Toss on top a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

To Assemble Sandwiches:
Combine mayonaise and thyme.

Cut roll in half. Generously spread mayonaise on each cut side. Place two (or more) tomato slabs onto the roll. Add additional salt, pepper, olive oil as desired. Place other half of roll on sandwich. 

Enjoy!

P.S. While we are on the subject of the last of summer's ripe tomatoes, it would be negligent of me not to remind you to make April Bloomfield's summer tomato soup. For me, this soup is perfection itself. Don't tell anyone, but I always end up standing by the stove, scraping the bottom of the pot with a rubber spatula and licking the last bits off of it. This is after I've already eaten bowls of the stuff. Yes, it's that good.

Black Currant Ripple

Oh, the delights of a Western Washington summer! Strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, blueberries, black currants, blackberries. 

They are bountiful and often free for the plucking at the edges of backyards, school yards and sides of trails. When spotted, they submit easily to the grabby fingertips of even the smallest berry-wanting hands that quickly smash the soft fruits - red and blue, black and juicy - into their desperate mouths.

But people. Let's not get carried away. Not yet. While we're talking summer around here, we must not forget about that most quintessential warm-weather treat of all: Ice cream.

Everybody has their favorite. Mine happens to be a really good, rich vanilla. The kind made with a yolky, custard base and bourbon vanilla beans. None of that extract business for me.

Now let's get back to the berry.

Recently, I was reading Nigel Slater's, Ripe, which features a number of beautiful frozen treats, some of which do not require an ice cream maker at all. If you haven't taken a look at this book, you absolutely should. His writing has a gracefulness that I appreciate and his approach to cookery (as the British say it) is both intuitive and filled with good sense.

One of the berry types that he highlights in this volume is the black currant. When I acquired some from Sumas River Farm, I went home immediately to see what Slater had to say about it.

I was immediately struck by his use of the word "strident." 

These berries, which I had only seen before in the form of jelly, were dark and covered with a slight bloom. Their appearance reminded me of a smaller, rounder purple grape. 

Interesting, I thought. Surely strident was an extreme way to describe a berry. Didn't that word usually go along with controversial political topics which pundits shouted angrily about on TV?

I decided to taste a few berries in raw form (even after Slater's warning that black currants must be cooked). They were, uh, well, let's just say highly opinionated might be a bit of an understatement, as would mouth puckering.

Unsure of how to proceed, I yanked them off their stems (yank being the correct word, as they were quite stubborn in their position of non-cooperation during the entire procedure even as my fingertips became stained with what I can only describe as the color black). I threw them into a small saucepan, along with a couple tablespoons each of water and sugar. 

It only took a minute or two for the berries to burst. I removed them from the stove and pushed the entire amount through a sieve to remove skin and as many seeds as possible. I poured the black-purple sauce into a jar and plunked it onto a shelf in the fridge.

I went on with the business of my day.

A week passed before I suddenly remembered the puree. I had to do something with it! Calmly, I decided to follow Slater's advice. I stirred a few spoonfuls into a just-churned vanilla ice cream to make a ripple.

For those of you unfamiliar with ripples, they are a British concoction made of vanilla-based ice cream with some fruit puree simply mixed in. The traditional version contains raspberry and I understand the pink-swirled sweet is well-loved by many a Briton, child or adult.

Here's a version featuring that stubborn, strident fruit. Yes, the black currant. Let's just say it's a berry with a strong personality, which makes it a perfect partner to sweet, creamy vanilla.

When streaked through with the super-tart, almost-astringent flavor of the black currant, the vanilla ice cream is elevated into a better, multi-dimensional version of itself. The whole thing pops and cartwheels off your palate. 

Let us use the appropriate word to describe the Black Currant Ripple. If heavenly doesn't suit you, maybe the better choice would be...Divine?

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Sweet meets strident = perfection!

Black Currant Ripple

Ingredients
For the vanilla base:
1 vanilla bean
2 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar

For the fruit puree:
1/2 pint black currants, removed from their stems
1-2 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons sugar 

Instructions
To make the fruit puree:
Give your fruit a good rinse. Place berries in a small saucepan. Add water and sugar. Over medium heat, cook just until the berries burst. Remove from heat. Pour mixture through a sieve and push through to remove skin and seeds. Set puree aside. Puree can be made up to a week ahead.

To make the vanilla base:
With a sharp paring knife, split the vanilla bean in half and scrape out the seeds into a medium saucepan. Add the vanilla pod, milk and cream. Over medium heat, bring mixture to a boil and turn off and remove from heat immediately. Cover and allow flavors to infuse for at least 30 minutes.

After the flavors have infused, return the saucepan to the stove. Over medium heat, rewarm the mixture. Turn off heat as soon as it comes to boil.

Prepare an ice bath in a large bowl.

Whisk egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl. Whisk a couple of tablespoons of the cream mixture into the egg yolks and sugar. Slowly add a few more tablespoons, whisking constantly. At this point you can add the remaining cream mixture in a slow, steady stream as you continue to whisk. Pour the mixture back into the pot and return it to the stove.

Over medium heat, cook the custard mixture for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Make sure you scrape the bottom and the sides of the pan. The custard will thicken and when it is done it will just coast the back of your wooden spoon/spatula. Strain the mixture into a bowl that is smaller than your ice bath. Place your bowl of custard into the ice bath to cool, stirring the mixture. 

Place the custard in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours but overnight is best as it will allow your ice cream to achieve the creamiest consistency. Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

After removing ice cream from machine, place half in a freezer-proof container. Place a few spoonfuls of puree over the vanilla and then swirl it through. Place the remaining half of the vanilla ice cream over the first layer. Scoop remaining puree over the vanilla and swirl through that layer. 

Place in freezer for a few hours before enjoying. 

Makes 1 quart.

p.s. Don't forget to wash off your vanilla bean pods and let them dry completely before tossing them into your jar of sugar. You'll have vanilla sugar in no time, which you can use for your next batch of ice cream!

Recipe adapted from Suzanne Goin and David Liebovitz. And, of course inspired by Nigel Slater.

End Point: Root to Leaf Eating and a Vegetable Stock

What is at the end point of one, two hours or more of cooking?

A chaotic if loving dinnertime with young children banging their BPA-free mini-utensils on the table as they wait to be served? Supper for two people who slurp from their soup spoons, few words passing between them after years of eating together on a daily basis?

We ought to take a moment, in the midst of our simple - or complicated - cooking efforts to consider where we arrive when we come to the end, by which I mean the beginning.

Some guidance may come from the carrots and young turnips we are chopping, to the head of fresh garlic we are about to wrap up in a square of foil. To the now naked tomato stems from which we have just plucked globes of red, ripe fruit.

Take a look at them. Really look.

These are the tops and tails. The endings and beginnings.

They are beautiful.

Once, they were parts of plants whose roots reached down into the rich mystery in which they grew searching for water and nutrients, tended by a farmer or a home gardener. They are easy to miss as we cut, tear and yank them off, transforming them from sum to parts for our best use, tossing them without much thought into a heap or bowl to be carried out to the compost bin outside. 

Stems, tops, peels, roots. Not much good are they for our dinners or lunches. Not much good are they for anything other than the compost. That's the general thought, isn’t it?

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Young turnips...with tops and tails.

The other day, I was going through our CSA produce box, prepping all the vegetables I could for the coming week. My son was with me, sitting on the kitchen stool, watching (as he often does) as I worked on the vegetables. I had just hacked off and tossed aside the green leaves of a bunch of salad turnips leaving only the stubby tops.

As I began trimming the pale green stubs off the white orbs, Kingston reached toward the heap of unwanted stubs. On each, a piece of turnip was still attached. Each one looked like a little embellished cap. He piled up these pieces then began separating them again. 

Good, he's keeping busy, I thought, as I continued cutting. 

Then I heard his small voice. Mama, look.

I paused and glanced over at his handiwork then at him, his face shiny with pride in himself and at what he had created. He had lined the white-and-green tops up in a most orderly fashion at the end of the large butcher block.  

As much grief as they may cause us each day (let’s be honest) due to flare-ups of independence and verve, two-and-three-quarter-year-olds have a unique talent for reminding us of the wonderment of little things. Ants. Pushing a button, any button, on the dishwasher and delighting at the sound it makes when it turns on. The way toy trains link together when their magical, magnetic ends touch. 

At that moment, though, the turnip tops standing at attention before us were that very thing of wonderment. They were beautiful, exuberant, with a certain sculptural confidence, standing tall even after being brutally removed from their prior whole selves.

Now, they practically shouted at me, reminding me of their worth, of the worth of all vegetable tops and even their roots and peels, not to mention their very leaves.

Do something with me! Don’t let me be wasted, they cried.

To which I now respond: Let us honor the entire vegetable, the person who farmed it, the soil that fed it, the water that nurtured it, the sun that coaxed it to grow by not merely taking of it only that which we believe to be good.

Let us use all of it. Let us find goodness in the slippery skin of a fresh garlic bulb, the feathery ends of a fennel bulb that do their gentle dance when the wind blows through them. Let us use as many parts as possible, if not all.

I would go even further to suggest this: That it is imperative for us to use everything that is offered to us by a farmer, a gardener and the earth. Everything, from root to leaf.

By harnessing the full potential of a beet, a carrot, or even a turnip - we are undertaking a civilized activity requiring thought and reflection. That in turn enables us to arrive at the beginning of living more honestly and completely as human beings.

There is no doubt in my mind that in the end, that is the very point.

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Gorgeous carrots and their tops. Use it all!

Guidance for Making Vegetable Stock

There are as many possible types of vegetable stocks to be made as you can imagine. It's important to consider what vegetable flavors and herbs go well together. Onion skins, cabbage, turnip tops, broccoli, and red beets are to be avoided. Beets mostly for the obvious reason. (Unless you purposefully desire a red stock!) You'll want to keep away from strongly-flavored herbs as well as they can be overpowering.

If you want to make use of most of your vegetable and it happens to be, say, a turnip (on the to-avoid list), a soup using the tops in addition to the roots is a good alternative. Peel a few medium-sized turnips or one bunch of salad turnips and thinly slice them. Slice a few small boiling potatoes. Slice the white parts of two leeks and mince a clove of garlic.

Cook these all together in a generous pat of melted butter. Toss in several sprigs of fresh thyme. Add a couple of good pinches of salt and pepper, 6 cups of water, and let it simmer on low until the vegetables soften. This is the time to add a good pour of cream or milk, about half a cup, and then puree the soup to the texture of your liking. Taste for salt and adjust.

Then, chop the turnip tops and sautee them or simmer them until they wilt. Add them to your whole-turnip soup and you're done. This is soothing and delicious, especially when served with toast and cheese or croutons.

But I digress. We were talking about stock, weren't we? 

A good, basic stock can always include potato pairings, carrots, carrot tops, thyme, bay leaf, parsley (including stems), chard stems and beet greens, celery parts including root skins, lettuce, scallions, onions, leeks, and mushrooms.

Deborah Madison (Vegetable Literacy, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) helpfully suggests using two quarts of water, which will give you 6 cups of finished stock. She also adds a tablespoon of nutritional yeast to her basic vegetable stock for depth. She also tells us to please avoid celery seeds, which will lend bitterness to a stock.

This is as basic as basic guidelines go, but if you do try combining some of your odds and ends to make stock, you will see that there are many vegetables (including their parings and tops) who enjoy spending time together, some of whom you never thought could actually be friends in the first place.

I keep stocks of all types in the freezer, defrosting and using them as needed. I urge you to do the same. You'll never need to buy a packaged stock again. Not the veggie kind, anyway, and you - and your cooking - will be the better for it. 

Jennifer Lawrence's Banana Coconut Oat Chip Cookies

First things first.

Sorry, movie star-Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence. This cookie isn't named after you.

This cookie is for my dear friend and our son's godmother who just happens to have the same name.

The two Jennifers do have some things in common. Most obviously and superficially, they are both blonde, attractive and some might say, quirky.

Although I loved Actress-Jennifer as Roslyn in American Hustle last year, our Jennifer is special to us in a way that cannot be compared. If regular folks could win Oscars for being themselves, she'd have plenty of those golden statues.

I met Jennifer twelve years ago when I walked into the first class of our Master's-level clinical psychology program at Antioch University. I don't quite remember if I sat down next to her or if she sat next to me but we ended up alongside one another for the remainder of our program as our cohort moved through courses and out into the community toward clinical training, eventually completing our preparation to become therapists.

Training to be a clinician is, not to mince words, grueling. There are things you have to look at inside yourself that you might rather ignore. The coursework isn't always easy. The three-thousand hours of supervision by a licensed clinician before you can even sit for the first of the two exams you need to pass in order to become licensed can seem endless.

Most cases do not match up to those we might have read about in school. They seem more difficult, extreme or ungraspable. If you have someone you can lean on like I did with Jen, it's that much easier.

Both Jennifer and I have now been on the other side of all that for a while now. Though we've taken different paths, with her continuing on as an amazingly empathetic and attuned therapist, I've gone another route which allows me to sit here writing this now. 

Life sometimes serves up problems that can seem insurmountable, moments that taste so bitter or otherwise unpalatable that we try to spit them out as soon as we get a taste. 

If you cook, as I do, you know that it is all about balancing sweet and sour, salty and bitter (and yes, let's not forget umami), with it being not merely cooking or food, but life itself. 

Jennifer's been going through some big transitions and facing challenges that might seem more on the bitter and sour end of things. So, I wanted to make her these cookies to remind her that better, sweeter times lay just ahead. 

There is no wheat gluten in this cookie since Jennifer is gluten-sensitive. It is sweetened only by super-ripe bananas and the addition of chocolate chips. The cookie is free of eggs and is bound together by a bit of coconut flour. Oats and finely shredded, unsweetened coconut give the cookie texture, especially when the ragged edges turn golden. 

The chocolate here has a back story. Last year when my 23-year-old nephew, Matt, flew here for Thanksgiving from Antwerp, his hometown, his suitcase was empty except for chocolate. Which is to say, it was completely full, packed to bursting with chocolate of all sorts - dark and bittersweet, white and milk, milk chocolate with hazelnuts.

Then there was the bag of Callebaut dark chocolate chips in that suitcase. Forget how much it weighed. Let me just say, no wonder there was no room for any clothes. Yes, someone hauling that much chocolate to you from an ocean and continent away is what you call love.

Well, I used some of that Callebaut here. It makes this cookie extra-special, I think. Delicious, just sweet enough, and rich with the little nibbles of chocolate goodness.

Jen, I hope you like these.

Here's to sweeter times ahead. xxoo

Jennifer Lawrence's Banana Oat Chip Cookies

3 large, very ripe bananas, well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 Tablespoons coconut oil, just warmed so it’s not solid
2 cups rolled oats*
¼ cup coconut flour
1/3 cup coconut, shredded & unsweetened
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, placing racks in the top third of oven. Place parchment paper or Silpat liners on cookie sheets.

In a large bowl, mix together the bananas, vanilla extract, and coconut oil. Set aside. In a separate bowl whisk together the oats, coconut flour, shredded coconut, cinnamon, salt and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

You will notice that this dough is a bit looser than most cookie doughs. Squeeze 1-2 teaspoons of dough at a time between your hands and place on a cookie sheet an inch apart. These cookies are best on the smaller side. Alternatively, drop dollops (1-2 teaspoons) of the doughan inch apart, onto your cookie sheets. Bake for about 14 - 18 minutes. I bake these as long as possible to have golden-brown bottoms and tops. In my oven that is about 18 minutes.

Makes about 3 dozen bite-sized cookies.

*Note: Use rolled oats labeled 'gluten-free' to ensure that they have not been processed in a plant that also processes gluten-containing products.

Recipe adapted from 101cookbooks.com.

Smoked Salmon Croquetas

The other day, I was listening to an old podcast of Evan Kleiman’s show, Good Food on KCRW. I love this show – it’s thoughtful and smart and gives me a window into what’s going on back home in Southern California, where I am from.

I especially enjoy hearing their report from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, which explores what’s in season and looks at the shopping choices of local chefs. Kumquats. Cherimoya. Surinam Cherries. All are exotic products that I no longer have easy access to and which thus do not play a part in my cooking or eating here in the Pacific Northwest.

Living vicariously, I suppose, is what I do by listening to the show, especially the Market Report.

So the particular podcast on was a show from around the holidays. Evan was talking to Mark Bittman about deep frying. They were having a nice conversation about how he has ended up using his pressure cooker as a deep fryer because it is narrower than many of his other pots, which means he can use less oil.

Not only did he talk about the kinds of things he likes to deep fry (Beets! Potatoes!) but also the types of oils he uses. Including…olive oil.

For me, the smell of olive oil, no, the very thought of olive oil immediately elicits memories of the year I lived in Spain straight out of college. Back when I barely had an inkling of who I was.

Across from my apartment in Nicasio Gallego near the new train station, there was a shop where each day I would see housewives enter with their large plastic jugs and bottles, ready for another fill up of the magical golden liquid. I would watch wondering how much oil they actually used in their cooking (or did they just drink it?) if they were going in for what seemed a near-daily replenishment.

Then there was the busy older part of town with its dusty, narrow streets. I would ride through them on my bike, the one purchased at the Sunday flea market. It was the same bike which was eventually stolen from me, reappearing at the Sunday flea market soon thereafter, which I then repurchased probably for more than what I'd originally paid (What can I say; I was attached to that bike).

In the afternoons, Sevilla seemed almost completely deserted. Only a foreigner would be pedaling around on a creaky stolen-then-not-stolen bike at that time, just as lunch was being cooked and enjoyed, soon to be followed by a long siesta.

But for me, that was precisely the best time to wander about alone. The town was mine. Its streets were so still. The best part was the smell of olive oil, which perfumed the air. People had their windows open. They were frying and sauteeing and doing everything else a person might do with a warm pan of olive oil at lunchtime.

It has been a while since I have been anywhere in Spain, including Sevilla, which I came to love so much that for a long time after I returned home, I felt a distinct ache inside whenever I thought of it. Even now, each time I smell olive oil cooking, bite into a briny little olive or taste a sliver of meltingly rich jamon I am transported yet again.

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A crisp croqueta is a friend indeed.

Can a memory take the form of a deep-fried morsel? If the answer is yes, then this croqueta is it. I remember eating croquetas filled with warm béchamel and jamon serrano and coated with crunchy breadcrumbs on the outside.

A memory can alter over time. In this case, I’ve changed it slightly by making a classic croqueta and including a local (and distinctly Pacific Northwest) ingredient – hot-smoked pink reefnet salmon from Lummi Island Wild.  Its dense saltiness is the perfect foil for the creamy béchamel.

If you want to add anything additional to the bechamel and salmon, a bit of green is nice. Say, half a jalapeno or some chopped parsley.

You can also follow in the steps of the venerable Edna Lewis (whose cookbooks I have been reading lately) and put a slice of ham into your frying medium of choice (she liked to use pastured lard) to give your final product additional flavor. And speaking of frying, no need to fear a heavy, oily croqueta if you follow this tip: Heat your oil/fat to 350 degrees (use a thermometer) before cooking and all will be well. 

A croqueta is just a croqueta. Or is it? When I was twenty-one, I didn't fully comprehend the way time shifts and slides and never stops dancing forward. It's important for us to continually summon our most vivid memories if we are to never forget who we are. If that summoning means taking the time to pat some breadcrumbs around a mound of cold bechamel and salmon and gently slide it into some hot olive oil, then so be it.

Food memories mean the most when we can make them into something our own, into the here and now using the best products we have around us in the place we currently call home. 

Buen apetito!

Smoked Salmon Croquetas

Ingredients
For the bechamel filling:
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
¼ cup all-purpose flour
½ an onion or leek, minced
1 cup whole milk
Generous pinch of paprika
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup diced hot-smoked salmon*

For the coating:
2 eggs
2 ½ cups of bread crumbs (I used homemade, with bread from The Breadfarm)

Olive oil for frying, or fat/oil of your choice (lard, grapeseed oil, ghee, etc.)

Instructions
Heat the butter in a saucepan and sauté minced onions until transparent. Stir in the flour and cook it briefly then slowly whisk in the milk a bit at a time until all of it is incorporated. Cook, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens. Season with salt, pepper and paprika. Stir in the smoked salmon and spread the mixture into a dish. Refrigerate until it stiffens and is almost solid.

Lightly beat eggs with a tablespoon or two of water in one dish. Place the bread crumbs in another dish. With moistened hands, form the chilled mixture into balls or cylinders using a tablespoon or so for larger croquetas and less for smaller ones. Dip each croqueta first in bread crumbs, then in the beaten egg, then in bread crumbs again, taking care that they are well covered.

The croquetas will soften slightly while you work with them, so handle them gently. Chill breaded croquetas in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or put them in the freezer like I do for 10 minutes or so. This works well enough.

Heat enough olive oil in a small vessel (preferably taller/narrower than wide a la Mark Bittman, to use less oil) to generously cover the croquetas. Fry the croquetas a few at a time, until golden, about 3-4 minutes.

Makes approximately 15 larger appetizer-size (5-6 bites each) croquetas or 18 smaller tapas-size ones.

*Note: Hot-smoked salmon, which is fully cooked is a different product than cold-smoked salmon or lox. This recipe uses the hot-smoked variety.

Recipe slightly adapted from latienda.com.