The past week has been so full of deliciousness I don't even know where to begin. Friday night was Tu Casa with Ron and Diane. Otis and Ron both destroyed enormous Plato Montaneros (steak, rice, beans, plantain, avocado, fried egg) while Diane had some taquitos and I attempted, and failed, to eat an entire burrito. As usual, everything was delicious, cheap, and the hot sauce flowed like water. Mmm.

Sunday was the wedding shower for my dear friend Alysia, at her parents' house in Falmouth. The spread was incredible, with fruit salad, shrimp salad, bagels, cream cheese, and lox, pound cake, pineapple walnut cake, and the two quiches and a strata thing brought by yours truly. The quiche was a big hit-- it's the same recipe my mother has always made, and it's absurdly easy and completely non-authentic (no custard needed!). I'm going to include that recipe below. The strata/baked bread is my mother-in-law Jane's recipe, and it's delish, with lots of cheese and linguica.

Luckily for us, we never lost power during the crazy storm, although the wind was blowing so hard it was hard to hear the dialogue on the James Bond movie we were watching. Oh, the humanity! It was such a nasty day even the dog didn't want to go outside. Which made it perfect for comfort food: roasted garlic mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus, and chicken breast with a black-pepper/balsamic reduction pan sauce. Even though I overcooked the asparagus (bad Marya! Shocking!) it was a delicious and cozy meal to enjoy while the wind howled outside.

On Tuesday we met Ravinder and Katey for burgers at Wild Willy's in South Portland, on a tip that they serve the best burger in town. I wouldn't go that far, but they were tasty and pretty cheap. My main complaint was that my medium-rare was more like medium, which is pretty damn annoying.

And finally, last night Otis prepared mustard-crusted wild salmon, adapted from Mario Batali's wonderful Babbo Cookbook, with scallion quinoa and fennel salad.

We are so spoiled.

I'll try to get it together to include more recipes later. For now, here's my mom's quiche. The fun thing about this recipe is that you can do whatever you want with it, and it's practically impossible to mess up. (Once I forgot to add the eggs. It ened up pretty watery, but still tasted pretty good.) It doesn't rely on a traditional custard base, so it's not going to break. I like it vegetarian, but you could toss in some ham or cooked bacon lardons. Or use a mix of cheddar and monterey jack, use red and green peppers for the vegetables, and add some minced chipotles in adobo.

We were lucky enough to have our first BBQ of the season be glorious. Jenn and Matt invited us over for the Survivor finale and burgers. And oh-- what delicious burgers they were. Juicy, rare, perfectly cooked, with grilled onions, and slabs of blue cheese.

We offered to bring sides, which Otis executed because I was lazily napping away the afternoon in the living room with the windows open and the curtains swaying in the breeze. Zeke was nice enough not to lick me to wake me up, as he was in the kitchen watching anxiously lest any pieces of cabbage or green bean fall to the floor. He takes his responsibility as floor cleaner very seriously.

As Otis takes his BBQ responsibilities very seriously. First he made green bean salad-- a simple enough preparation, green beans roasted with garlic oil & S&P, then chilled with a touch of balsamic.

He also made a fabulous yellow cole slaw, adapted from the book Peace, Love and Barbeque. (If you've never seen this book, check it out. In addition to some amazing recipes, it's a wonderful narrative, full of stories and anecdotes from barbeque culture.)

We've been eating the slaw all this week. It just gets better. Here's the recipe:

1/8 cup pickle juice
3/8 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 T annatto oil (optional. this is what makes it yellow.)
1 t pepper
1 t salt
1 t celery seed
1 t mustard powder
1 t sugar
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 1/4 cup mayo
1 cabbage, shredded (we use our glorious cuisinart. thanks mom!!)
4 carrots, shredded
1 small onion, shredded.

Mix everything together and chill.

Enjoy the spring and summer! We've had a little weather setback here, and it's back down to the 50s during the day, and rainy. I'm sure it will turn around soon. Plus, the rain is good for the garden. Our azalea is getting ready to flower!

Sunday was a glorious day-- fish sandwiches and bloody marys on the deck at the Porthole, then wandering the streets until it started thundering and I felt compelled to hit Hannaford for a week's groceries.

The, while wandering the meat area, "do you like chicken?"

Oh no, I said to myself. Another grocery store crazy person.

"...Yes," I said.

"There's bags of chicken breasts for 99 cents on sale."

Then I realized the woman was just a helpful person understandably excited by a good sale. Turns out they had all natural hormone free purdue chicken in 1.8 lb bags for 99 cents. Really.

I cleared the rest of the inventory. You know you're getting older and weirder when chicken sales become exciting.

So on Sunday night I made chicken for dinner.

I've long been a fan of charmoula, a classic Moroccan sauce which is kind of like an African pesto, made with lemon zest, parsley, and garlic. Sometimes, though, the raw garlic can be a little much. So I decided to cook the sauce lightly. It turned out delicious.

Chicken with Charmoula

4 large boneless chicken breasts
Flour
Salt & pepper

1 bunch parsley
6 cloves garlic
Zest and juice of 3-4 lemons
Salt & pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Heat olive oil in large skillet.
3. Season flour and coat chicken breasts.
4. Brown outside of chicken, transfer to ovenproof dish, and move to oven.
5. In food processor, combine other ingredients and processes until finely chopped.
6. Remove chicken when just cooked through.
7. Add a small amount of flour to original pan (just enough to bind the sauce) and add parsley mixture.
8. Sautee for 1 minute.
9. Add chicken and sautee for 30 seconds.
10. Serve with lemon wedges.

I served this over tri-color couscous, and it was very darn tasty.

In other news, we finally received our first CSA share! The sad part is, we're leaving on Friday for a week in San Francisco. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course-- but we won't really have time to eat our veggies!

We'll be giving most of the veg for this week and all of the veg for next week to our friend Ravinder, who is cat-sitting for us while we're away, so I'll try to get a couple of recipes out of him. He's a fantastic cook.

Regardless, here's the list for this week:

1 head Chinese cabbage
1 head green lettuce
1 head red lettuce
1/4 lb mesclun
1/4 arugula (Wold Pine grows the best arugula. I am so sad not to be able to eat every last bit!)
1 bunch cilantro
1 fresh garlic plant (this looks like a leek, sort of. It's new to me, so I will definitely report back.)

Thanks to Wolf Pine for including this blog in the share newsletter. I promise to all the visitors from the farm that I'll be posting recipes from share contents as soon as we get back from vacation.

Along with reports from the fabulous restaurants we'll be eating in next week!

After a fabulous week in Montreal (why we didn't make it to San Francisco is a long story), full of good food and lots of walking, we returned for a crazy week of BBQ and work.

The CSA for the fourth included lots of yummy vegetables, many of which are our favorites.

1 head romaine
1/4 lb mixed greens
1/4 lb lettuce mix
1 bunch parsley
.3 lb sugarsnap peas
2 kohlrabi (yum! more on that later)
10 garlic scapes (also yum!)
1 head Chinese cabbage
1 bunch swiss chard

Last night I made some egg rolls with this week and last week's Chinese cabbage. They're a great way to use a lot of Chinese cabbage and make a few meals.

Egg Rolls

1.5 lb ground pork (I used boneless pork loin and ground it myself)
2 heads Chinese cabbage
1 bunch scallions
3 cloves garlic
1/3 lb sugarsnap peas
1 T cornstarch
Water
1 egg
Soy sauce
Rice wine vinegar
Sesame oil
1 package egg roll skins
Oil

1. Thinly chop the cabbage and sugarsnaps
2. Mince the scallions and garlic
3. In a wok, saute the scallion, garlic, and sugarsnaps until slightly soft
4. Add the ground pork and saute until white
5. Add the cabbage, about 1/4 cup soy sauce, a splash of rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil to taste
6. Mix the cornstarch with a splash of water and add to the mixture
7. Cook on high until the cabbage is soft
8. Remove from heat and add 1 egg, beaten
9. Let cool
10. Follow the directions on the egg roll skins for rolling
11. Fry in oil until brown (I used about 1 inch of oil and flipped, but you could easily deep fry for extra yumminess.)

Serve! I made a nice dipping sauce with soy sauce, hoisin sauce, chili paste, sesame oil, and rice wine vin. Otis likes hot mustard and duck sauce, but we didn't have any, so he lost out.

We've also been eating a lot of salad, of course. So, current veg status is as follows:

1 head romaine
1/4 lb mixed greens
1/4 lb lettuce mix
1 bunch parsley
.3 lb sugarsnap peas
2 kohlrabi (yum! more on that later)
10 garlic scapes (also yum!)
1 head Chinese cabbage
1 bunch swiss chard

More on garlic scapes in the next entry! I think we'll see the return of charmoula, and possibly some kohlrabi chicken salad.

The past week has been a whirlwind of work-busy, life-busy, and general overwhelmed-ness. That hasn't kept us from some delicious meals, of course.

Otis whipped up an incredible salad that we ate Tuesday and Wednesday, with raw shaved kohlrabi, grilled chicken, pan-seared garlic scapes, and a mustard dressing. I'm in the process of bugging him to get the recipe to post here.

It was a perfect example of CSA cooking-- maximizing the fortuitous combination of vegetables.

Another perfect example of my personal approach to CSA cooking was our Thursday night meal, when I worked late and then served 365 Organic frozen pizza from Whole Foods along with a glorious salad. Sometimes convenience foods are just required.

In that vein, I'm currently reading Plenty for a slow food book group, and it's fascinating so far. It's about a couple who commit to eating only foods that come from within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver BC.

It's truly frightening how a local diet has become so difficult in the age of agribusiness. We're awfully lucky here to have Wolf Pine, the farmer's market, and so many incredible local purveyors. Of course, during the wintertime it's really necessary to have store put by, which the people in the book didn't do (they started their experiment on the 1st day of spring). One thing Otis and I have done, which makes an enormous difference, is install an additional freestanding freezer, which can hold more pureed tomatoes and kale soup than any two people could need! Actually, we process a lot of the CSA veg, since it's usually a little much for the two of us. There's also nothing like eating tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes you pureed yourself during the depths of winter-- it's like a little taste of summer laid by.

Saturday afternoon we attended an event at Vignola, which featured Allagash Brewing's Hugh Malone beer and Silvery Moon Creamery cheese. The event was organized superlatively by Katey Szum of Allagash (hi Katey!) and was raising funds for MOFGA (it was $10 per person to attend). Allagash also donates $1 for each bottle of the Hugh Malone sold to MOFGA. It's a delicious beer, and pairs well with the Silvery Moon cheeses, all of which were incredible. The Camembert was particularly delicious, and was, to my palate, comparable to or better than any similar cheese imported from France. The cheese folks also were offering tastings of a cheese-on-development, which they called No. 9. It was dry, tangy, and really outstanding as well.

Then, Saturday night, our friends Jenn and Matt grilled some halibut to perfection, served with charmoula (everyone loves charmoula. all the cool kids are eating it) and Israeli couscous. We brought (guess what?) a salad. We also enjoyed a few mojitos made with mint grown by their neighbors, and met their newest pug, a cute chubby little thing named Helga.

Mint has been growing quite well all over southern Maine, as far as I can tell. Our friend Pearl also provided a couple of bunches, which I am going to cook into a simple syrup for future cocktails.

Anyway. I'll post Otis's recipe as soon as I can make him write it down. In the meantime, this past week's CSA contained:

2 heads lettuce -- used in salad
0.3 lb. mesclun
Kale
¾ lb. sugarsnap peas
1 bulb fennel
1 bunch baby turnips -- we've used about half of these in salads and will probably finish them tonight
1 bunch carrots -- same as the baby turnips. these are the sweetest little tasty carrots, they're just incredibly carroty.
10 garlic scapes
1 bunch scallions

And, here's the status of last week:

1 head romaine-- used in salad
1/4 lb mixed greens-- used in salad
1/4 lb lettuce mix-- used in salad
1 bunch parsley
.3 lb sugarsnap peas-- used in egg rolls
2 kohlrabi-- used in Otis's chicken salad
10 garlic scapes-- used in Otis's chicken salad
1 head Chinese cabbage-- used in eggrolls
1 bunch swiss chard

I can't believe I haven't posted anything for almost a month. Time has been just zipping by; I've been working like a dog at USM, freelancing, and getting ready to start school on Tuesday.

We also had a fabulous long weekend in Wellfleet earlier this month, visiting Otis's parents and brother, complete with a fish fry, bbq, a day at the flea market, delicious crab dip, and lobster. And, of course, drinks at the Bomb Shelter.

Whenever we go to Wellfleet we make sure to pick up a tub or two of the crab dip they sell at Hatch's, along with our fish or lobsters or whatever. Ironically, the dip is produced downeast somewhere, and so it theoretically available in Maine; but it is so decadent and delicious, it's probably better for our waistlines and cholesterol levels that it stay a special-occasion food. I don't have a tub here (thank goodness; otherwise I'd be eating it for breakfast), but I think the ingredients include mayo, crab, ketchup, french onion soup mix, and other seemingly random ingredients that, when combined, end up as delicious, addictive, ambrosia.

Our other Wellfleet summer visit tradition is to pick up boiled lobsters from Hatch's and eat them at Jane and Walter's house, along with fresh corn, bread, and the onions in vinegar that Jane's dad used to make.

A word about Hatch's. Otis and Nick (his brother) both worked there, starting at about age 13, for many summers-- about 8 in Otis's case, I believe. The place is fabulous, and Rob, the owner, is a very funny guy who simultaneously takes his job very seriously and not at all. Otis has a host of wonderful stories about providing fish to various demanding New Yorkers-- many of whom were and are eminences of some note. My favorite story is of the day when Diana Trilling first came in, and requested lobsters, "split entirely in half," live o
of course. (There's more to the story, and I am probably mangling it, but the gist is there. Otis is still sleeping so I can't verify.)

Anyway, back to the lobsters. Normally, we get small lobsters, about 1-1 1/2 lbs, one for each person. This trip, however, for some reason smaller lobsters were not available, so we each had half of a 4-ish pounder. During dinner, I realized that this was the largest lobster I had ever eaten! I think that's what comes of growing up in Maine, where they tend to be on the small side.

The flavor and texture was actually a little bit different. Normally, the claw meat is my favorite, but in the larger bugs it evidently tends to get slightly overcooked, so it's not as tender. This time, the tail was outstanding, and better than in the smaller ones, I thought. (I also appreciated the lobster being pre-split, so I didn't have to wrestle with it, or ask Otis or Nick to do so. Yes, I am lame.)

Regardless, it was really a delicious meal, and a wonderful visit, as usual. Otis brought a jar of his dilly beans, which were a big hit. The recipe is from Putting Food By, the classic food-preservation tome. I'm going to include the ingredients but not the recipe because I really recommend you buy the book if you're planning on doing food preservation. (He modified the recipe somewhat-- I don't think the original includes Thai chiles.)

Dilly Beans

Brine:
5 cups vinegar
5 cups water
1/2 cupl + 1 T pickling salt

For each jar:
2 dried thai chiles
A goodly amount of dill
1 clove garlic
1 T mustard seed
1/2 T peppercorns
1/4 T dill seed

Before I go start my homework (yay!) I shoudl give a shout-out to Margaret Hathaway Schatz, author of Year of the Goat...you may remember her from such entries as Passover Eating. Her book just came out, and we had the pleasure of attending the release party: Goatstravaganza! It was great to see such a huge crowd come to celebrate Margaret, and of course, all things goaty. (You can see the back of Otis's head in the top photo on the left.)

The party was held at Rabelais Books, a really wonderful bookstore on Middle Street, and featured a tasty spread from Aurora Provisions, and photos by the talented Karl Schatz (Margaret's husband). And, yours truly won the door prize, an adorable t-shirt.

Good luck on your book tour, Margaret!

(Note, I haven't started the book yet, but it's on the top of my pile. I just finished Heat by Bill Buford, for the Slow Food book group meeting this month.)

I suppose that's all for now. If I can pull it together I'll post my recipe for Law School Ramen Noodles. They'll blow you away!

Oh yeah, vegetables. Well, suffice to say they are delicious. I'm making quiche for dinner tonight, but you already have that recipe, so that's that. Seriously, I haven't been doing that much cooking, since I've been working on The Website that Must Not be Named, and it's always so hard to extract recipes from Otis.

I did make some Artichoke basil pesto, actually, with some of the CSA basil and some from Jane's overflowing planters. So here you go.

Artichoke Basil Pesto

Enough basil to fill a 14-cup cuisinart
A large jar of marinated artichoke hearts, drained
1/2- 3/4 cup grated parmesan
4 cloves garlic, minced, sauteed very quickly, and splashed with wine (I don't like the really strong raw garlic flavor)
EVOO as needed
S&P to taste

Put all ingredients in Cuisinart and whir until chopped and very slightly chunky.

No nuts! The artichokes provide that nutty unctuous mouth-feel.

The 'Grill Wok' is a beauteous invention. It allows your vegetables to get the great flavors that grilling over charcoal imparts, without losing the vegetables between the holes in the grate.

In our house, Otis is the grillmaster, and he has developed this recipe for making vegetables that is simply phenomenal. The other day he made fennel in this style (to accompany grilled monkfish...mmm) and the two of us alone ate two entire bulbs of fennel.

If you want a grill wok they have them at Hannaford for 15 or 20 dollars. Totally worth it!

Ingredients
1 1/2 lb green beans or other vegetables, washed and trimmed (and chopped if necessary)
2 T olive or peanut oil
1/2 T salt (kosher)
1/2 T sugar
1 or 2 T malt vinegar (or rice vinegar if you want an Asian flair)
1/4 t black pepper
3 cloves or garlic, pressed or minced very fine

1.Place the veggies in a large bowl and toss with oil, salt, and sugar to coat
2. Place in 'grill wok' and grill, tossing frequently, until cooked
3. Remove from heat and return to bowl
4. Add vinegar, black pepper, and garlic, and toss to coat
5. Cover bowl tightly with saran wrap and let sit for 5 minutes
6. Serve!