Panna Cotta with Peaches and Lavender Honey
If I were to pick one desert that is universally loved by my dinner guests, it would have to be Panna Cotta. This sumptuous little dish, a specialty of the Piedmont in Italy, is increasingly showing up on restaurant desert menus. Its name is literally “cooked cream.” The pure white desert is all about contrast and flavors. The Panna Cotta itself is a rich, soothing vanilla and almond flavored almost pudding. It is the perfect foil for the color and acidic contrast of fruit. Think of Panna Cotta as a blank canvas for your creativity and have fun!
Panna Cotta hard to mess up, but once again its quality depends on the quality of ingredients used to prepare it. I love it rich and served with really fine fruit.

To make the Panna Cotta:
Eight servings

• Two packages of unflavored gelatin (make sure its fresh, older gelatin doesn’t set as well)


• Two cups of whole milk


• Two cups heavy cream


• One cup of confectioner’s sugar


• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract (use the best quality vanilla you can find. I use Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla)


• ½ teaspoon of pure almond extract

Butter 8 ½ cup ramekins and set in a tray.

Dissolve the gelatin in a small bowl using ¼ cup of the milk. Allow to sit for a few minutes.

Heat the remaining milk, cream and sugar in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Watch carefully or it will foam up and spill over! As soon as it boils, pull it off the heat and add the dissolved gelatin and flavorings and whisk well to ensure that everything is well combined. Pour the mixture into the ramekins, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

To serve:

• Fresh peaches (or your choice of berries or fruit, fresh or cooked into a sauce)


• Lavender (or other strongly flavored) honey


• Almonds for decoration

Loosen the Panna Cotta by running a knife along the edge of the ramekin. Invert and shake it free onto the serving dish. If it is really stuck, heat the bottom of the ramekin in hot water and try again. Cut the peaches into attractive shapes, decorate around the dish, place almonds on top and drizzle with the honey.

Wine Choices: Panna Cotta marries well with many desert wines. I like it with Moscato d”Asti (especially with peaches) or Brachetto d’Aqui (especially with raspberries!) (Italy, Chambers Rutherglen Muscat (Australia), Muscat de Beaumes de Venise or a Sauterne (France) or even a great Canadian Ice wine.

Appleton Farms CSA
As the farm season draws to a close in New England, I face share pick up day with a measure of impending dread. Soon it will be back to the supermarket for trucked and flown-in vegetables. No more picking through bins of freshly picked greens, eggplants, squashes and Brussels sprouts. No more personally harvested tomatillos, bright red chili peppers or fragrant bunches of herbs. I spent the weekend in a cooking frenzy using what I can while I still have it. I feel like the squirrels I see racing across the streets stashing nuts before the first snows.


The impending winter looms bleak, but I’m already looking forward to next year. You see, I’m a member of Appleton Farm’s CSA program and going to the farm is a weekly routine throughout the growing season. What is a CSA program? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture. In a trend that is growing (no pun intended) across America, farms are selling a seasonal share of their produce to consumers. This program creates a reliable market for a local farmer while providing shareholders with a steady stream of truly farm fresh fruits and vegetables. By buying their share at the start of the year, shareholders provide capital and guaranteed income to the farmer. The emphasis is on the word share. In this arrangement, shareholders share both the risks and rewards. If a crop fails, your share is small or no existent. If the season is perfect, there is extra for everyone. Given the vagaries of nature with weather and an assortment of pests, nothing can be taken for granted. But the variety of produce is so large that, no matter what the conditions, something (more likely, many things!) is thriving.


Preserving local farms is a truly worthwhile endeavor with many benefits for all involved. It provides local employment and maintains a natural style of life that is lost in the world of industrial farms. It connects us and our children with the earth and how vegetables are actually grown. Children discover that carrots aren’t naturally cut up in plastic bags and the fresh ones are very sweet and actually taste carrots. Sustainable, organic practices are used, enriching the soil while protecting the environment and our bodies from pesticides and other toxins. And it preserves for future generations land that might otherwise be lost to development.


But the best reward is the most selfish. It’s the food! The quality, variety and freshness of the produce are unmatched. Since everything is local and shares are picked up on the spot, the farm has the luxury of picking when things are perfectly ripe and of using heirloom varieties of produce (another preservation of the past benefit!) that are grown for taste rather than their ability to withstand cross-country shipment and days if not weeks of storage. Supermarket produce doesn’t even come close. Since the produce is seasonal, you find yourself adjusting your diet to incorporate what is at its peak at a given moment. In June, you eat strawberries, peas, lettuces, assorted greens, radishes and salad turnips. By August, you are on eggplants, tomatoes, sweet corn and melons. Now, you are roasting root vegetables and squashes while finishing up cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and broccoli. Many of the recipes that have and will appear in the blog are inspired by these wonderful choices.


I’ve been a shareholder for four years now (since Appleton Farms started its CSA program) and each year brings its own surprises. I love going to the farm each week to pick up my share and to walk in the fields for the “pick your own” produce. I’m endlessly fascinated on how each variety of produce has “vintages” and how those vintages are different for each type of fruit and vegetable. For example, the dryness of this summer was tough on spinach and held back sizes and yields for some crops, yet the melons were spectacularly flavorful, as are the winter squashes. The tomato harvest seemed a touch smaller and shorter than previous seasons (but still abundant in the way that only tomatoes and zucchini can be!) But the flavor was strong and the cherry tomatoes were the sweetest yet. Garlic was spectacular the first year, a little disappointing in years two and three, and is again near its peak. If I was the Robert Parker of garlic (now that is one scary thought), I’d rate the garlic vintages 95+, 78, 84, and 90 respectively, and rave about the dedication of Jenny and Bruce and their team of garlic growing artisans.


About Appleton Farms
One of the properties preserved by The Trustees of the Reservations in Massachusetts, Appleton Farms is one of the oldest continuously operating farms in the United States. Located at the border of Hamilton and Ipswich, it was established in 1638 as a land grant to Samuel Appleton and donated to the Trustees by the Appleton family in parcels from 1970 to 1998. A goal of the Trustees has been to keep the property operating as a working farm. The CSA program was established in 2002 and has been growing steadily, supporting about 400 shareholders this year as well as donating produce to local food banks. A crew of dedicated farmers (Jenny and Bruce!), interns and volunteers keep the production going, working the fields and running the distribution barn. A separate dairy operation was started over the past couple of years and plans include also raising some beef cattle (a return to a historical offering from Appleton Farms). Some day, a share may also include farm made cheese and beef!

Joining a CSA Program
If you are lucky enough to live near Appleton Farms, you can apply to join its CSA program. Contact Jenny through the Trustees' web site. If not, don’t despair; there may be a CSA near you. You can search the web for “community sponsored agriculture” or “community supported agriculture” (both names are used) or go to the nifty Alternative Farming Systems Information Site, which is sponsored in part by the USDA. A share price is typically comparable to buying the same quantity of food from a supermarket, but the quality difference is incomparable!

Italian Wines
Wine is one of my passions. I’ve been joyfully drinking and studying wines for many years. To me, wine is the perfect beverage for sharing pleasure with friends. It’s a conversation piece backed by history, geography, weather and dedicated artisans. You can talk about its smell (nose), taste, color, locale, vintage and on and on. Even the size of a bottle encourages splitting. But best of all, you can match it with foods. Thus, it becomes one of the many colors in the palate of flavors that make up a wonderful meal and a great social occasion.

Over the years, I’ve explored wine regions around the world, and I’ve found many a wine to love. Some were short flings (Australian wines), others long-time friends that that you enjoy on the special occasions where your paths cross (classified Bordeaux). Many added to a special dish, while most others, unless matched with the prefect food, were better on their own. But the wines from one country always seemed to be the first I grab whenever I’m looking for something to accompany a meal. Those wines are from Italy.

Italian wines are made to accompany food. Both they and the food are better for the match. A powerful California Cabernet is wonderful on its own, but it goes with very narrow range of foods. Compared to fruit forward, heavy body and tannic intensity of a Cab, many (but certainly not all) Italian wines taste lighter and acidic. This sourness may make the wine seem less attractive when tasted along with the Cab, but that very characteristic helps the wine work with a broad spectrum of foods. Also, many Italian reds benefit from breathing before drinking. You’ll note the wine keeps improving in your glass as the night goes on. I like to decant my Italian reds for 1 to 2 hours when possible to give them a chance to open up.

As I write this entry, I’m sipping the last of a 1997 Prunaio Chianti that I had with a dinner of herbed roasted chicken (marinated overnight with the Simon and Garfunkel mix – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme!) and oven roasted porcini mushrooms. Along with black cherry flavors, the Prunaio has a “woodsy-ness” that complements the mushrooms and enough acidity to counterbalance the richness of the sauce (a chicken stock reduction).

Chiantis may be among the best known Italian reds, but there are a multitude of other choices to match the need of the moment. I’m particularly high on Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. These wines are the ultimate price performers. You can get very reasonably priced quaffers or spend a little more and get a wine of surprising richness, substance and quality for far less than you expect. Drink this wine with pizza (it is the best pizza wine by far!), any Italian red sauce or even with spicy foods (it goes very well with chili flavors for some reason). Here are some recent favorite Montepulciano d'Abruzzo wines:

Castello di Salle – Riserva – 1999 (a real favorite)
Masciarelli – 2001 (simple, but a great price performer)
Masciarelli - Marina Cvetic – 1999 (a much richer, higher end version)
Valle Reale – 2001 (reliable, mid-priced)
Lepore -Re – 2000 (a solid performer)

Enjoy!

Who Says Food Can't be Fun?
Here is my self portrait as an eggplant. It is totally natural; I've doctored nothing to get the profile. Believe it or not, I found this perfect specimen mixed within a big bin of fellow (but plainer) eggplants. Despite a large number of people picking through the bin, no one wanted him! No imagination!

I love picking up the odd looking carrots, squashes, potatoes and other assorted characters. They're funny and it's nice to know all food doesn't have to look as if it was mass produced.

Pimentón de la Vera

Clothide at Chocolate and Zucchini beat me to this topic. How could she? It’s my secret! Me and how many million Spaniards! Pimentón is a Spanish version of paprika. But comparing it to the supermarket paprika most of us are familiar with is a bit like comparing processed American cheese to an artisan-made aged goat cheese. They are both cheeses, but the resemblance stops there. Aside from using superior quality pimentos, Pimentón is smoked over an oakwood fire before it is ground. The result is an intoxicatingly addictive spice that adds a magic touch to almost any savory dish. It comes in three “flavors” – sweet (dulce), bittersweet (agridulce) and hot (picante).

Clothide does a good job of explaining its history and methods of production so I won’t repeat them here, but I’ll talk a little about how I use Pimentón to garner rave reviews with my dishes. Since it is a Spanish spice, using it in Spanish dishes is obvious. It is a key ingredient in Chorizo, imparting the red color and a delicious spiciness. Once you taste it, you’ll find endless uses for it. The trick is subtlety. A little goes a long way, and it works best when you add just enough to suggest the flavor, but not enough to make it totally identifiable. I put a pinch in stews, lightly dust roasting vegetables, and use a little to kick up bland white fish. I often use it as a component of rubs and marinades for food to be grilled. Its smokiness enhances the effect of the grill. When broiling in the winter, it provides memories of wood fires and summer barbeques. I mix a little with sour cream to use as a condiment with highly flavored meats. It lifts an ordinary dish into extraordinary every time. I can’t tell you how many times guests have asked me why my version of whatever dish always tastes better than theirs. Before I could just smile mysteriously, but now the secret is out of the bag! And the answer is all too easy.

Get all three. Use the sweet when you want a little color and smokiness, the hot when you want some kick (it can be quite hot in quantity), and the bittersweet to add some dark flavor complexities. I’ve used both the La Chinata and Santo Domingo brands. I get them from La Tienda www.latienda.com, a wonderful source for all types of true Spanish foods. Try their chorizo sausages too! I’m a big fan of their Palacios Hot version.

Tomatoes Three Ways
It’s getting to the end of tomato season here in New England, which means only a little while before the return to the flavorless “boxcar” versions that plague stores the rest of the year. But we can take advantage of the local tomatoes that are still here! Plus, two of the recipes below can add flavor to the otherwise tasteless ones we’ll have to use shortly. First, let’s start with the fresh version…

Number 1: Cherry Tomatoes and Pasta
To me, this recipe is one of the brightest spots of late summer and early fall. It doesn’t get much easier, but when made with superlative ingredients, it makes a stunning meal. Only the pasta is cooked, and everything else can be completed before the pasta water even boils!

For 2 servings:

Ingredients:
30 or so fresh cherry tomatoes (mixing red and orange varieties adds to the visual appeal)
Fresh herbs (Good choices are oregano, marjoram or basil).
Olive oil (use the best one you have)
Salt and pepper taste
Parmesan cheese for grating (the real stuff!)
8 oz of dried pasta (spaghetti works well as do bow ties)

Put on a pot of salt water for cooking your pasta. While it is heating, rinse your cherry tomatoes. Either (depending on your personal style), cut them simply in half and drop in a serving bowl, or drop them in whole and squash them with your hands. The goal is to get them to release some juice for flavoring. Chop and add your fresh herbs. I particularly like oregano mixed with marjoram, fresh oregano mixed with dried oregano (a trick I learned from Jacques Pepin that provides contrasts in flavor and texture) or just basil leaves. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix well, then add a good coasting of olive oil and mix again. Set aside, while you cook the pasta (al dente!). Drain the pasta, put in a nice serving bowl, add the cherry tomato mixture and toss well. Serve with a good sprinkling of fresh parmesan cheese.

Variations: I sometimes add a little balsamic vinegar, or in a nod to Calabrese salads, I cut up fresh mozzarella into cherry tomato-sized pieces and add to the tomatoes along with basil and balsamic vinegar.



Number 2: Oven-dried Tomatoes
This method is good for preserving some of the extra tomatoes that inevitably accumulate this time of year. In the off season, it concentrates the flavors of otherwise bland “boxcar” versions.

Ingredients
Tomatoes –Italian or paste-style tomatoes are less juicy and work better than slicing tomatoes. Use as many as you want to dry (or as your oven capacity allows, I use about a dozen per baking sheet and normally dry a couple of sheets at a time.)
Flavorings - salt, pepper, sugar, garlic powder, pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika)
Olive oil

Method:
Heat oven to 150 degrees
Wash and cut the tomatoes in half. Remove the stem, scoop out seeds and cut away the inner membranes. I use a melon baller for this task, but a teaspoon works too. Put the cleaned tomatoes into a large bowl and coat with olive oil. Only a light coating is necessary. Add flavorings. I sprinkle a little salt, a good number of grinds of black pepper, a couple of teaspoons of sugar (for glazing and to cut the acid a little), a light sprinkling of garlic powder (one on the few times I use this stuff!), and finally the secret ingredient, about a teaspoon of pimenton (more on this wonderful ingredient in a future entry). Toss well. Place on baking sheets (I line them with foil for easy clean-up) set in the oven and leave overnight. Store in the refrigerator in a sealable container; separate layers of tomatoes with waxed paper.

Uses: too many to list! Use in salads, cut up and sauté with zucchini or other vegetables, stirfry with a little garlic, olive oil and herbs for a pasta topping, use as a pizza topping and on and on. One favorite starter – two or three tomatoes per plate topped with some fresh goat cheese, slivered almonds, and a little great olive oil.



Number 3: Oven-concentrated Tomatoes
This method is similar to the one above, but faster and has different uses. This recipe doesn’t dry out the tomatoes, but rather slow cooks them, removing excess water and concentrating flavors. It really helps get flavor out of off-season tomatoes. I’ve adapted my version from a Todd English recipe.

Ingredients: As above for oven dried tomatoes, but juicer tomatoes will work well in this recipe. These tomatoes don’t last for more than a week, so I make them in smaller quantities than the other version.

Method:
Heat the oven to 250 degrees. Wash, but leave the tomatoes whole. Place in a bowl, coat the olive oil and season as described above. Adjust your seasonings based on planned use. You may wish to leave out the powdered garlic and/or the pimenton, if for example, you were going to use the tomatoes in an Indian curry base. Place the tomatoes on the tray and cook for about 3 hours. Allow to cool. At this stage, they can be refrigerated until needed. Or peeled, chopped and seeded to use in a sauce. I use them for any recipe that calls for adding and cooking down fresh tomatoes (such as stews), make sauces from them, and even add them when I’m making stocks.