When done with sweet tomatoes, these taste like candy, and are great as a dessert, or part of one. They work great with homemade vanilla ice cream or as part of a tart. I usually use plum tomatoes, but others will work as well. If the tomato is big, quarter it. This is less a recipe than a technique to follow. As you do this a couple times, you learn to adapt to the size of the tomatoes and the sweetness, or not, of them as well. You can change the herbs, play with oils, and even use different sugars such as a vanilla or lavender sugar.
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An all-vegetable and grain stuffing makes this lighter than the usual version with ground beef stuffing. This is a great way to use up left-over grains such as farro, bulgur, rice, or quinoa.
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This dressing is about the tomato, so only do this when you have tomatoes with plenty of flavor. This is also a pretty dressing, especially when you have different colors of tomatoes. This dressing has a nice combination of fruitiness, acid, and sweetness, and is great on fish, grilled shrimp, chicken, or mixed with arugula and tossed onto grilled slabs of chewy bread. It is good on salads, too.
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This dish is so simple, there is nowhere for inferior ingredients to hide. The dressing goes really well with grilled or sautéed swordfish, halibut, tuna, or other meaty textured fish with a clean sea taste. This treatment works well with grilled shrimp, scallops, and with chicken breasts also.
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Farro is an ancient, unhybridized form of wheat that is also known as emmer wheat. It has recently become popular, as has spelt. Although some recipes say they are the same, they are not. Spelt (Triticum aestivum spelta) is a grain that takes longer to cook, and can use a soaking before cooking, where farro (Triticum dicoccum) cooks quicker. Farro is also sweeter tasting that spelt.
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When we bought our new property in North Monterey County a few years ago, we already had the perfect tractor for working the sandy slopes with—our 1953 D4 Caterpillar Crawler. Crawlers, which have tank-like treads instead of rubber tires, are commonly used in our area for the purpose of primary tillage (disking, chiseling and ripping). They have much more tractive power for their size than wheel tractors do, and because they have such a large “footprint”, they cause less soil compaction. Where wheel tractors commonly get bogged down and experience what is called “power-hop” on sandy ground, our wide track D4 virtually skates over it.
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This is a very traditional teriyaki sauce from my sushi bar days. We used it for a while, and then of course had to modify it. This is also the sauce that you find on “yakitori” in Japanese restaurants.
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This could be eaten as a side dish, used to bed grilled steak or chicken, or serve on rafts of grilled toast as a tapa. As a tapa, have some olives, cubes of cheese, and chilled sherry, white wine, or beer handy. For this dish, use a milder Spanish for French style olive oil for best results.
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While chicken teriyaki applies to any cut of chicken cooked with the sauce, yakitori refers specifically to small bits of chicken that have been threaded onto skewers and grilled. Typically there are pieces of scallion as well, and chicken liver skewers would come with on a separate skewer. The sansho mentioned as garnish is worth seeking out. It has a lovely bright citrusy flavor with a scent to match. It is a perfect foil to soy based sauces, and is great on omelets and grilled fish.
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One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that this profession really rewards those who are able to think and plan well in advance. Strawberries are a good example of this. To help control soilborne diseases, we grow our strawberries on a five year rotation, meaning that they won’t be planted in the same place again for five seasons.
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This version of pesto hails from Trapani in Sicily. It features almonds and, more unusual, tomatoes. There are many versions of this recipe-some use cherry tomatoes, some call for plum tomatoes, peeled, or not. Mortar and pestle versus food processor versus blender. 1 clove garlic versus 4. Cheese, or not. Well, here is another version- with regular sized tomatoes given a quick turn on the grill to add flavor and to ease peeling. If you don’t feel like heating the grill, see Chef’s Notes for an alternative to this. If you have nice sweet cherry tomatoes with tender skins, just use those instead, and skip the grilling, or blister them in a skillet filmed with a little oil. Use this pesto as you would with pasta, or try it on grilled vegetables such as peppers or with steamed or roasted cauliflower. Also great as a sandwich smear.
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This is a dish to be served as an appetizer or tapa would be, before the meal or as part of a series of small plates. It goes well with sherry, wines, or ice cold beer. Remember, since it is the sort of dish that can scatter easily, toast the bread so it is still soft and doesn’t crack and fall apart at the first bite. If you have leftovers, try them on a sandwich with fresh mozzarella and tomato.
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A quick dish to put together once the pesto is made, and that goes pretty quickly as well. Be sure to save a couple cups of pasta cooking water for the sauce before draining the noodles. Try to find linguini rigati (ridged linguini) for this dish as the ridges help hold a little more sauce.
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Serve this as a side dish, or use it to top pizza. It could be tossed with romaine lettuce for a salad or the leaves could be left whole and filled with, or use this to top bruschetta or crostini. If using for anything but pizza, try the Quickles option. The cool crunch and the bracing tartness of the vinegar is a wonderful foil to the plush textures and oil rich flavors of the pesto and peppers.
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We’re opening up our strawberry patch for u-pick for the next three weekends. The berry patch is behind our farmstand this year, so we can give you a wide range of hours and days to come do your picking. Here’s how it works:
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This is a celebration of Spanish products, and is great with big flavors such as the tuna in this salad. Try this dressing with grilled fish, poached chicken, shrimp, or vegetables like cauliflower or broccoli. If you do not have the confit garlic, you can leave it out or use a small amount of fresh garlic.
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This is a dish where a vegetable replaces a typical sauce of a highly seasoned liquid bound or thickened in some manner. Here, the chopped broccoli is braised in garlic oil until meltingly soft, so it is mildly sweet and a little nutty, then it is tossed with confit garlic cloves for richness and a smooth garlic flavor (minus the garlic “heat”), and then roasted almonds are added for crunch and to amplify the nuttiness of the broccoli. This makes a perfect foil to the briny sweetness of fresh halibut. Or any other firm fleshed fish you care to try, such as salmon, cod, etc. Also, it is a great way to use vegetables in a role other than just a side.
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Another iteration of “Honey Lacquered Cauliflower”. This one is quite easy and gives a subtler variation to pan cooking it. It also yields a beautiful golden color, which orange cauliflower could accentuate. Marinating time is important to the success of this dish, so plan a little ahead so there is at least a half hour for marinating.
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Confit refers to both a dish as well as a method of cooking. To confit means to cook slowly in very low temperature fat or oil (usually) until meltingly tender. With garlic, the process makes it meltingly tender and mild, leaving flavor without heat. This makes it ideal for adding to salad dressing, mashed potatoes, mayonnaise, or smearing on toast. The other point to making confit garlic is the oil itself that you cook the garlic in. It becomes suffused with a lovely garlic flavor that is mild without being hot. You can use this oil as a base for cooking or as part of a salad dressing. It is also the base for slow-cooked broccoli or cauliflower. Use fresh garlic rather than the stuff that comes in plastic tubs.* See Chef’s Note’s for a tip about getting the garlic smell off your hands.
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This recipe produces a smooth textured broccoli that is a bit sweet and nutty tasting, with a lovely garlic perfume without the heat that garlic usually has. The secret is in the use of the garlic confit and the oil from that to slow poach the broccoli. This dish is a great base for a “sauce” for roasted fish such as halibut or salmon. This recipe can be used on cauliflower as well. One of the key elements to this dish is using low temperatures to avoid the swampy smell brassicas can emit.
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This summer we have been involved on two levels with the Monterey Bay Aquarium programs in science and conservation. Our youngest daughter went to their Young Women in Science camp, and had a blast kayaking, boogie boarding, and scuba diving, as well as meeting women scientists, monitoring sand crabs, and making toys for the aquarium’s otters.
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