Woods, farms, and, well, a construction site (made us feel right at home). Farewell, Sweet Vermont!
Woods, farms, and, well, a construction site (made us feel right at home). Farewell, Sweet Vermont!
With long days spent outside at the lake or on farms and the steady rhythm of coming home in the late afternoon to cook simple suppers, I have more images than words right now. Can you guess that the pace around here is a bit slower than our usual staccato in New York?
We just missed getting to meet Amy, who blogs over at The Roving Locavore, and her son, Jack, by a days since neither of us realized that we were here in Vermont at the very same time. To help soothe the disappointment, they offered to show you how to make the tart of the season, Vermont-style. When I stumbled upon Amy’s blog the other day while trying to find a well written and well pictured blurb about purple beans to add to my magic purple bean post, I felt like I would like her immediately. Amy grew up in Vermont, has been living in Auburn, Alabama as an academic, and is an advocate of delicious and locally grown food. (What’s not to like?). She’ll be trotting off with her fam to Rome in a bit to spend a year there. Personally, I cannot wait to read all about it, and I certainly hope that she’s the type to chat those Italians up about how exactly they cook their own local food.
Tomato Tart
When it’s high tomato season, but you have an ominously chilly afternoon or morning, it’s time to make tomato tart. I love this recipe because it’s such a shape-shifter, with tomatoes always at the heart. It’s also a great meal to prepare with kids because it’s so hands-on.
Here’s a list of the basic ingredients, with substitutions:
For the Crust:
*1 c. white whole wheat, whole wheat pastry, or semolina flour
*2 big pinches salt
*¼ c. iced water
*¼ c. olive oil
For the Filling:
*4-6 oz. Gruyere, ricotta, or fresh goat cheese
*1 tbs. Dijon mustard
*2 large, ripe tomatoes and an assortment of cherry or grape tomatoes; or 8 plum tomatoes
*herbs de provence or an assortment of fresh herbs in this family
(a handful of caramelized onions, if you’re in the mood—to spread on the bottom instead of Dijon)
Process (easily accommodates one pair of big and one to three pairs of little hands)
Mini-Chef: Mix with hands: flour, salt, water. Then add the olive oil and (with some Big Person help) blend thoroughly. Child, then parent, press the dough into a 9-inch pie plate. Refrigerate while you prepare the filling.
Preheat oven to 400°.
If using Gruyere, use a child-friendly hand-grater to grate the cheese, helping to guide those little fingertips away from the sharp holes.
Big Person: slice tomatoes. Spread mustard around the base of the crust. Mince herbs, if using fresh.
Mini-Chef: sprinkle grated cheese or drop dollops of ricotta around the crust, sprinkle herbs, then arrange tomatoes.
Pop it in the oven for about a half hour, let cool to room temperature, and, Kids, it’s pie!
For a few months during my sophomore year at NYU, I lived with a friend of the family, a single mom at the time who had a very demanding full-time job and was raising a two-year-old, S.. On the weekends and at night, I filled in when S’s nanny went home and her mom needed some time to herself. This little girl astounded me with a voracious appetite for things that most children her age would look askance at and absolutely refuse eating.
For her pre-school lunches, we would pack sandwiches of pan-cooked salmon, layered with mashed potato and broccoli or grilled lamb with thick slices of butter and other such delicacies. The little foodie ate every single bite. Not that I was surprised after seeing the way she woofed down her butternut squash soups, her olive tapenades, and her green salads at home. The sheer, obvious delight she held in her tiny face any time a nice meal was placed before her remains an image that spurs me on.
With Back-to-School season upon us and the ever growing forbiddance of packing nut butters in school lunches, our family pulled together to find something that might please us as much, or almost as much, as our favorite classic PB&J. My children, well, do not exactly look upon salmon in a beatific light. Suggest salmon, and they start running away yelping not-very-complimentary things. Sigh.
This sandwich, though, of gooey brie and strawberries macerated in balsamic vinegar, has a different effect altogether. If you’re making it for a Big Person or a mini-chef with a more experimental palate, you might consider adding a layer of arugula and some very, very thinly sliced red onions. If you are sending this sandwich to school with your Yummy, use those ice packs to keep the brie cool. We were pleasantly surprised to find some fresh wild strawberries at the greenmarket here in Vermont, but if you cannot find them where you are, buy frozen, organic strawberries.
Brie and Balsamic Strawberry Sandwich
serves about 4
*1 pint (2 c.) organic strawberries
*2 t-1 T. balsamic vinegar
*a wedge of brie, sliced.
*rolls or french bread (preferably some sort of crusty whole-grain bread), cut in half
Wash the strawberries with your Yummy and let them drain a bit.
Big Person: Slice the strawberries. Place them in a little bowl.
Measure out the vinegar to taste, starting with the 2 teaspoons and adjusting the acidity depending on the sweetness of the fruit and to the taste of your mini-chef. Let them sit (officially called “macerating”) for at least 5 minutes.
Assemble: Using about 1/4 of the ingredients for each sandwich, nestle the brie with the strawberries on top into the bread or rolls. For sending to school, wrap with plastic wrap and pack with an ice pack. At home, try grilling this sandwich like a panino, letting the brie get super gooey and fabulous.
This is our first real vacation, right here at Summer’s end. With my husband’s new business beginning officially and the work traveling we have been doing as a family this summer, we decided that we should take a real break from the grind. We’ve stationed ourselves in the most relaxing place we know, Vermont.
In keeping with Vermont’s chilled out pace, we shopped Londonderry Farmer’s market on Saturday, wandering around sniffing tomatoes, petting roosters (something, sadly, our New York City markets are lacking), and discovering that coming North for a spell has big advantages. We found blackberries. For the second time this summer.
Blackberries alone are very good, but my all time favorite mixture of any two fruits is peach and blackberry. My mother makes peach-blackberry pies that I crave, that I positively long for. Peaches seem to be absent up here, but luckily we had some New Jersey peaches ripening in our fridge in New York that I had packed right up and brought with us. When we found the treasured blackberries, I immediately pictured those peaches sitting in waiting for their little friends.
Now, let me tell you about this cobbler. It is a tradional Southern cobbler of the laziest sort: few ingredients and little work for the cook. I saw Virginia Willis make this cobbler on Martha last year, I thought right away how beautifully it would adapt to a brown sugar cobbler and how easy it would be to include the mini-chefs in the making. For an entire season, we cranked out these cobblers without me ever having to look at the recipe again. Here is our Vermont version of Willis’s Meme’s Blackberry Cobbler.
It is just the sort of thing that you can toss together with what you have. Do not feel at all limited to the fruits we have used here. Use whatever you have available or that inspires you. Frozen berries, too, would work beautifully. And if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of not having real Vermont maple syrup on hand, subtitute a tablespoon of sugar or 2 teaspoons of agave and use a heavier hand with the vanilla.
Brown Sugar Cobbler with Peaches and Blackberries and Vermont Maple Whipped Cream
For the Cobbler:
*1 stick of unsalted butter
*1 pint of blackberries
*2 1/2 c. yellow peaches, washed and sliced into quarter-inch slices
*1 teaspoon of real maple syrup
*1 c. milk, room temperature
*2 t. vanilla
*1 c. whole wheat pastry flour
*1/2 c. brown sugar, packed slightly
*2 t. baking powder
*1 t. cinnamon
*2 pinches of salt
For the Whipped Cream:
*One Pint of Heavy Cream
*1 T. real maple syrup
*1 t. vanilla
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. If you have an cast iron-skillet (8, 9, 0r 10-inch will work nicely), place the butter in it, and slide the pan into the oven. If you do not own a cast-iron pan, then use whatever you do have-a deep dish pie plate, a glass baking pan, etc.
With your mini-chef, rinse the blackberries very well and set them aside to drain while you make the batter.
In a large bowl, measure out and whisk the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Measure out the milk and the vanilla into a liquid measuring cup and have your mini-chef pour the milk/vanilla mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir the mixture a bit.
Big Person: Take your pan out of the oven and pour the melted butter right into your batter. Make sure that you keep a bit of butter out of the batter to coat the bottom and sides of your pan.
Together Again: Stir the melted butter into the batter.
Using your hands, mix together the peaches and the drained blackberries with the teaspoon of maple syrup in a large bowl.
Big Person: Being careful around the hot pan, pour the batter in. Heap the fruit in the center if you’re using a circular pan and in wide middle row if using a square or rectangular baking dish.
Bake until the edges are browned and the middle is bubbling, 40-55 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the cream with your Yummy. With an electric mixture, whip the cream in a very cold bowl (you can place the bowl in your freezer while you’re making the cobbler). When it begins to set a bit, add the maple syrup and the vanilla. Whip till thick but not too thick.
Serve your cobbler warm with the cold maple whipped cream on top.