It’s just a short walk from Green Bean Casserole to St Helena Soup.
The key ingredients are the same: Ground Beef, Green Beans, Tomatoes.

Once upon a time, Carol and I were in St. Helena in the heart of the Napa Valley and needed lunch. This was years ago, shortly after we arrived in California, say 1993. We were walking up and down the street, perusing bookstores—there were two or three at that time, and it may have been the time we bought Madhur Jaffrey’s A Taste of the Far East (published in 1993)—and stopped into a lunch place. I ordered the soup of the day. It was so good, that I shared a bite with Carol. When we got home, we agreed on the ingredients, and C made a recipe. It appeared in the second volume of Eats4One (Eats4One i).
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From Farm to Freezer

It’s almost exactly 100 miles from my house to Mariquita Farm, just outside Hollister CA, and it takes almost exactly 2 hours to get there for the U-pick Tomatoes day. Take 101 through Gilroy and turn left on 25 toward Hollister. Turn left onto Shore Road and left onto San Felipe Road. The farm is on the left; if you cross the creek, you’ve gone too far.

We go almost every year in September and pick enough Early Girl and San Marzano tomatoes to make enough sauce to last a year, two flats. The first year we went, we picked four flats, too much good stuff.

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A Cook’s Weekend

                          

I am a football fan. On Saturdays from now until January there are college games all over the TV, up to 12 on a given Saturday. There are few college games I feel I need to watch, but it’s nice to be able click around and get a sense of what’s going on. My metabolism won’t let me sit in front of the TV from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m., so I can have games on in the kitchen and cook. In the past, with “rabbit ears” TV, we got FOX and ABC fine, CBS was wavy and the sound came and went, and we didn’t get NBC at all, and of course none of the cable channels. Now, with Cable in the kitchen, I can get anything anytime. Hooray!

On this Saturday I made a pound of Rancho Gordo Ojo de Cabra (Goat’s Eye) beans for dinner to serve with Black Cod and a Greek Salad. That was done to the tune of my Buckeyes whupping up on Penn State. I put the beans in to soak about 10.
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As you know by now, I have a penchant for peeling.

tomatoes, tuna tartare, Italian potato salad

Since I made my post on peeling back in January, I’ve learned a thing or two. The breakthrough came in a recipe that included pearl onions in Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Cookbook. Keller said to put the onions in a small container, pour boiling water over them and pour it off after ten seconds or so. Hallelujah Lord, I see the light! I had been used to boiling a big pot of water—which takes forever—and then dumping the pearl onions in, only to take them out after ten seconds or so. This way, I can put the onions in a bowl of a size to fit, boil an appropriate amount of water—a cup or so, which takes no time—pour it over the pearl onions, wait ten seconds, dump the onions into a strainer and go about the peeling.

This works for garlic, as well.

For a weekend lunch, I had some leftover Tuna Tartare and I thought it would be swell to put it on fresh tomato slices.

Well, I wanted to peel three, small Early Girl tomatoes, and not go through the process of boiling a whole pot of water. I put about an inch of water in a saucepan, brought it to a boil in about a minute, put in the three tomatoes and swirled them around for about ten seconds, and lifted them out onto the cutting board with a slotted spoon. I had them cored and peeled in no time! Viola! Later, I did a large Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato the same way. Viola again!

Thank you Thomas Keller, again. I know that Kelly has the Bouchon Cookbook. For you others, buy it. It’s one of the best cookbooks ever.

some baby turnips and a potato

When I go to the Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, I rarely have meals in mind, I just want to see what looks good and what looks good to me on that day. If I’ve been doing recipe research, I might look for specific things, but that’s not usually the case.

For example, at the Shogun Fish Company stand, the scallops looked just beautiful. We hadn’t had scallops in a good while, so I bought a pack of four, about 1/2 pound, perfect for two. At the Iacopi Farms stand, the Romano beans looked great and I still had fresh English peas, another of their specialties, from the previous week. And so on.

As a result, last week we cooked a number of “no brainer” meals. For me, those are the ones where I just go to the kitchen, get out the stuff and get it on. Sometimes there are recipes involved, but when there are, they are so adapted as to be only cue cards to the preparation.
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The Evolution of an Appetizer

Back in the day, there was Adults Hour. That was at 6pm in Roanoke, after the kids had been fed. Adults, that would be Carol and me, were not to be disturbed while they had their cocktails and appetizer before their dinner.

In Newton, once the kids were of a certain age, Eric and Brian would eat later with us, but the six o’clock hour was still sacred.
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