Wicked Tasty Harvest

Mocktails: Nothing to Scoff At

By Genevieve Rajewski

The Sophisticated Lady, one of the mocktails featured in my story for The Boston Globe. It'll trick you into thinking you're drinking something made with Hendrick's Gin. Photo used with permission of Eastern Standard.

Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to some of Boston's most forward-thinking bartenders and other experts about why it's usually so difficult to order a great nonalcoholic drink. They gave me so much good advice to consider, there just wasn't enough room to get it all in my story for The Boston Globe, which ran today.

So here is the beginning of the tasty leftovers, including another fantastic recipe from Journeyman restaurant in Somerville. (Consider it that delicious extra ounce hiding in the bottom of your shaker.) Over the next week, I will also share how mocktail options soon will be radically different at a few local hot spots, as well as give tips on how to improve your odds of getting a good mocktail at bars without a nonalcoholic drink program. But for starters, here's how you might want to think differently about drink ingredients when mixing your own mocktails at home.

Typically, when inventing a nonalcoholic drink recipe, you'll want to combine something "sharp or acidic, such as citrus oil or spices, with some sweetness to offset the tart, and something for body -- such as a juice or sparkling or still water," according to Adam Lantheaume, owner of The Boston Shaker, a cocktail-supply shop in Somerville.

For example, Lantheaume says you might brighten up a sweet apple cider with fresh lemon juice and then lengthen the drink with sparkling water.

Todd Maul, bar director at Clio in Boston, stresses that you can learn a lot from deconstructing things you like to drink. He says that loomi tea -- a brew made from steeping dried black limes -- gives drinks a heavy, dark citrus flavor. "You can probably mimic an amaro with it, a small amount of prune juice, and a little lemon or lime juice."

Both Lantheaume and Cannon recommend a visit to specialty food shops like Formaggio Kitchen and Dave's Fresh Pasta for inspiration. "I've found a beautiful kaffir lime syrup and other things that mix well with soda," says Cannon. "I'll see something like a rose jam made by a Sicilian grandmother and think, ‘Let's see how that mixes in a flip.'"

Looking for more mocktail inspiration? Start with the following often-overlooked ingredients suggested by my story sources.   

Must-Have Ingredients

If you're a fan of St. Germain cocktails, Cannon says the Austrian wine maker Nikolaihof produces an alcohol-free elder flower syrup made from certified bio-dynamic flowers. "It's gorgeous stuff with multi-tones; it can present like pear, lemon or peach."

Nonalcoholic sparkling wines make it easy to create something simple and elegant, notes Cannon. "We have a good one made by Ariel. Every now and then I would slip it into a flight of sparkling wines during a tasting. No one really loves it, but no one hates it either. Just mix that with a flavorful syrup and a little juice." (However, as even alcohol-free wines contain trace amounts of alcohol, be sure you don't serve them to those who must avoid alcohol completely for allergy or sobriety reasons.)

Vinegar is perhaps the most underutilized ingredient in bartenders' arsenal, says Cannon. "It gives a drink the whole umami taste of fermentation without the byproduct of intoxicating alcohol." However, he explains that vinegar allergies are not that uncommon, so be careful handling it in a bar setting and be sure to let people know it's an ingredient as they might not expect someone to make a drink with it.

In colonial times, New England farmers created shrubs -- fruit syrups preserved with vinegar -- to carry the harvest over the winter. Lantheaume sells a line of small-batch shrubs made by Pennsylvania's Tait Farm at The Boston Shaker, including ginger, lemon, apple, lime, raspberry, strawberry and cherry versions. "The vinegar acts different in each one," he says. "The strawberry and cherry shrub bring out its sweet tones, while the sharp taste of the vinegar come across even sharper in the lemon and ginger shrubs."

Orgeat syrup "adds lot of flavor, is easy to make at home and lasts forever," says Maul. "It is basically an almond syrup with a splash of orange blossom water at the end. It adds a citrus element that's sweet but not too sharp." (The Boston Shaker also sells pre-made orgeat syrup.)

Grapefruit juice "is both bitter and sweet; has a nice aperitif-like perfume; and tastes kind of fermented," says Cannon.

Maple syrup is a great drink ingredient, according to Lantheaume. But we're not talking Aunt Jemima here. "We live in the Northeast, where there's lot of high-quality syrup available," says Lantheaume. "They are expensive, but you don't need much. Experiment with the many different grades of syrup; they each have a different flavor, thickness and intensity."

At The Boston Shaker, Lantheaume stocks a line of interesting syrups made by Jo Snow of Chicago. Flavors include hibiscus-basil-orange blossom, cardamom-rose water, and fig-vanilla-black pepper.

"Soy sauce has become a standard in a lot of my nonalcoholic drinks," says Meg Grady-Troia, general manager and co-owner of Journeyman. "If you think about good sherry, it has a little bit of salt to it." Her delightful and unexpected recipe for a mocktail featuring both soy sauce and vinegar follows below.

Apple & Soy Soda

Adapted from a recipe by Meg Grady-Troia of Journeyman

In this drink, the apple shrub functions much like citrus juice, which is both acidic and sweet.

3 tablespoons apple shrub*
3 dashes soy sauce
3 teaspoons agave nectar (honey also works well)
6 ounces sparkling water

1. In a rocks glass, stir apple shrub, soy sauce and agave nectar vigorously to combine.
2. Add ice and top with sparkling water.

*You can buy an apple shrub ($10) made by Pennsylvania's Tait Farm at The Boston Shaker, but it's easy to whip up your own.

7 apples, cored and seeded, but not peeled
1/2 cup water
1 cup cider vinegar
2 1/2 cups sugar

1. Puree apples in a food processor.
2. In a small saucepan, combine the apple puree and water; cook over high heat for 5 minutes.
3. Add the cider vinegar, reduce heat and bring to a low simmer.
4. Add the sugar and stir over low heat until the sugar completely dissolves; let cool to room temperature.
5. Pour the puree through a fine strainer and store the strained liquid in the refrigerator.

Open for Photos

 

(A tagged, calm, happy young cow at the Carter and Stevens dairy farm in Barre, Massachusetts.)

 

by Cynthia Graber

I just finished reading today's New York Times op-ed piece by Mark Bittman, called Banned from the Barn. It's not new, nor a surprise to me, that journalists have been increasingly banned from photographing the worst examples of our food system. As Bittman explains, journalists are not only not invited into these operations, but we can be arrested for trespassing. And in some states it's illegal to publish photos or videos.

I'm going to opine a bit here and say that it's a travesty. I think my blood is particularly boiling because - please excuse the lack of journalistic objectivity - I just visited the exact opposite of what Mark Bittman described. This past Saturday, I spent the morning at the Carter and Stevens dairy farm in Barre, Mass., for a story for Edible Boston. I'm in the process of writing three stories about land, the first about land that has stayed in the family for generations, and the youngest generation is now taking over.

I'll let you read the story of these twenty-somethings who've come home to help run the farm and take over from their father when it appears in the magazine. But I can tell you this: they care about the farm, the animals, and the ecosystem. The 200 cows have full access to pasture. I took this photo just standing on their land (the cows had moved onto a different pasture at the time).

And they're so committed to keeping this farm a dairy farm, as it's been since the 1700s, that they've gone ahead and invested in a million-dollar new milking facility and adjacent barn. They desperately needed the new facility, and it should be up and running by early 2012. This is despite the fact that Philip, the dad, told them not to bother, not to even continue with cows, and with running a dairy. It's just too hard to make a living.

They run the type of farm we all imagine farms to be. But they can barely make ends meet. The milk is sold to a bigger company that then sells it on the general market, so they have no control over the price they get. They can only control that price in their general store, where they also sell the most delicious ice cream. That's where they sell meat from their cows, too. And for the fourth summer now, they hold Friday and Saturday evening barbecues, where hundreds of people from the local community, and as far afield as Worcester, can sit outside and enjoy great meat from healthy, well-tended animals.

The blood boiling? That comes from the fact that, as they told me, they can't compete with farms that contain 2000 cows. The types of farms that Bittman describes here, the ones that provide super cheap milk. The ones that you're not allowed to see.

I hope you'll all go check them out - buy the milk, taste the ice cream, stick around for the barbecue. Because, really, would you rather support milk and meat operations where the operations would seem so shocking that they won't let you take photos, or one that invites you and your kids to visit with a sign like this?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

By Genevieve Rajewski

Although Nate and I spend a lot of time, food-wise, mulling what meat to cook and where to get it, this winter we were all about the veggies--the amazing ones we hoped to grow. For us, dreams of yard farming was the perfect mental getaway from the many feet of snow outside.

We considered two approaches, both involving raised-bed gardening for soil safety’s sake. (We live in a 100-year-old house in an older neighborhood, so we have to assume the soil may be contaminated with the lead paint and leaded gas fumes that were so prevalent once upon a time.)

First, we thought about hiring Green City Growers to come consult on where best to build a raised bed and then to construct it and get the seeds started for us. (I read in Edible Boston, that they can do a starter garden for $500, but somehow we never got the timing of a phone consultation right.)

Next, we thought about buying a raised-bed system like the one our friend Simone just installed. It is gorgeous and--no surprise given Simone’s green thumb--already off to a productive start.

But as grandiose as our garden dreams were, in no scenario did we ever think we’d actually have the time or construction skills necessary to build a raised system ourselves. Yes, I am sure we could slap something together that would technically hold the weight of soil and plants. But would it be polished enough to not trash-ify our front yard? Doubtful, and that's the only part of our yard with enough sunny space left to grow vegetables.

Amusingly, using the front yard was the most contentious part of our farming plans when we mentioned them to family members--not so much for appearances’ sake, but because they (as true, suspicious Massachusetts folk) all assume that passersby will steal the veggies. Is that even a real risk? I’d love to know if that has actually happened to anyone.

(I, on the other hand, was convinced that planting veggies out front might give us an opportunity to chat with neighbors and people walking by as we worked—and even to make a few new friends if we ended up with enough food to give away. Of course, as a true Masshole, I am sure I’d never ask the names of any of those people, even if I liked talking to them everyday. But I digress.)

Ultimately, Nate and I decided that we were perhaps being a little overly ambitious, given that we’d never grown food before. So we decided to start small and to just use our new patio and back stairs for container gardening.

Right outside the kitchen door, we now have a window box full of basil, thyme, oregano and sage; a huge pot of rosemary; and individual pots of mint, parsley and dill. (I have pillaged the parsley so much already that I plan to plant more next year; the dill I’d love recipes for as I love the taste but have too much crop already.)

But I am most excited, if cautiously optimistic, about our vegetable plants: fanfare cucumbers; crookneck summer squashes; and three kinds of tomatoes (including the heirloom varieties Brandywine and Cherokee purple) paired with marigolds.

All this leaves me wondering what are you growing? How’s it going so far? What are you going to do with the results? Has anyone found vegetable gardening to be their next step after joining a CSA?

Colors of Winter

by Cynthia Graber

Who says that winter produce is boring? Look at these radishes!

I bought the watermelon radishes at the Somerville Winter Market. They look boring from the outside - just white and pale green. Until you cut them open. Then the color explodes. I like to eat them sliced thinly, raw, the biting peppery radish-ness a welcome contrast to the snow outside. 

Check out the Somerville Winter Market on Saturdays from 10-2 through the end of March at the Armory at 191 Highland Ave.

Soil

by Cynthia Graber

I’m long long overdue for a post, and this one should have been written months ago. I was reminded of it, however, by a fantastic interview with Dan Barber on the radio program Being (formerly called Speaking of Faith). For those who haven’t yet heard of Dan, he’s an internationally-known chef, famous for his farm-to-table approach, and chef/owner of Blue Hill restaurant in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barn, an hour of out the city. The restaurants are primarily supplied by his related farms in New York and Massachusetts.

(Stop reading here, and go spend an hour listening to the interview. Do so as you putter around the kitchen, or download it from iTunes and listen to it on an mp3 player as you slog through the snow.)

Okay, welcome back. Dan talks a lot about the importance of farming, and how farming techniques and soil quality influence the flavor of vegetables and crops. And, perhaps, the nutritional content of those crops as well. He specifically talked about how his carrots are exponentially sweeter on a chemical scale than organic ones from Whole Foods.

I’m going to perhaps torture you right now, if you live anywhere on the eastern seaboard, where snow is piling up in foot-high mounds. Do you remember the summer? The burning heat, the endless sun? That helped produce bumper crops of tomatoes and watermelons.

One week, I bought a tasty red watermelon. Then the next week, I bought a yellow watermelon at the Drumlin Farm stand in Union Square. The flavor exploded, intensely sweet. Each time I dipped a fork in, I felt as if I were cheating and dipping into a candy stash. I slurped up every last revelatory drop.

This reminded me that food tastes different even from local farm to local farm, so I called Matt Celona, crops manager at the farm (which is part of Mass Audubon), to learn a bit about his agricultural magic. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.

Why were your watermelons so much better than other ones I’d tasted?  

It was a spectacular year, it’s not like our watermelons taste like this every year. I think it’s the heat - it was an incredibly hot summer. And the lack of water. That really concentrates flavor in watermelons and tomatoes.

Also, we don’t irrigate. And a lot of farms grow melons on black plastic mulch, to heat up the soil and suppress seeds. We don’t do that. That black might have absorbed heat, it might have gotten too hot for the melons.

And our soil has a good amount of organic matter in it, because of the rotation we practice here. We have about 15 acres, and we treat each acre separately, on a seven-year rotation. There are five years growing and two years resting. I think a lot of farms are kind of maxed out in terms of wanting to use all the space all the time.

If you don’t use irrigation, how can you get through summers like the one we had?

It has to do with what kind of soil you have. If you have a really sandy soil, you’re not going to make it [without irrigating]. We have soil that has a fair amount of clay [which retains water]. And the organic matter in the soil is like a reservoir for water, like a sponge. If you have soil with organic matter, if holds the moisture.

In addition to that rotation, we’re able to spread beautiful compost [from animals on the farm]. We pick and choose which fields we think are in need of compost applications; we test them every year with labs at the University of Massachusetts. And you can also just tell by the productivity of the field.

If you take care of the soil and aren’t treating is as a growing medium, but as a living organism in and of itself, it can take care of you, if you take care of it.

Do you choose seeds for specific qualities?

Oh yeah, the varieties, like of the watermelons - the yellow one, New Orchid, that’s amazing. It’s an expensive seed. It’s worth it!

Anything else that’s exciting?

On the crop side, we have a winter share, and we distribute beautiful carrots and beets and winter squash from our root cellar. And the sweet potatoes [from this past fall] were amazing! What happened with watermelon and tomatoes also happened with sweet potatoes, because of the heat. We don’t usually get North Carolina heat. These southern crops this year were just awesome.

photo courtesy of Drumlin Farm

[Author’s note: I tasted the sweet potatoes. They were, in fact, awesome.]

 

 

Have a heart

 By Genevieve Rajewski

Yesterday, The Boston Globe published a short piece by me on an event I’m really excited to be attending tomorrow: a screening of two documentaries about Peruvian food. While Peruvian food sounds off-topic for a blog about local eating, I have long meant to write about one Peruvian dish here because of the role it has played in my (albeit limited) nose-to-tail eating at home.

 

I had hoped joining the meat CSA would encourage Nate and I to eat more than just the popular parts of animals you find everywhere. But so far our offal adventures are off to an awful start. Or rather a non-start: While we’ve been known to eat brain, cockscomb, feet and other offal when it’s prepared by a talented chef, we just haven’t invested much time in learning how to prepare those parts at home. (Bad carnivores, I know.)

 

The exception to this has been cow heart, which Nate and I snatch up any time we happen to find it. That’s because cow heart is the star ingredient in an amazingly tasty Peruvian dish called anticuchos, in which the beef is marinated and grilled as kebabs.

 

The first time I tried anticuchos, Nate and I were with his family, celebrating his mom’s birthday at Los Andes, a restaurant in Providence. Anticuchos were the appetizer special, and even Nate’s mom (born in Bolivia, the next-door neighbor to where the dish originates) had not heard of them. We ordered a plate to sample but all agreed not to tell my sister-in-law—who does not eat beef and was in a queasy phase of pregnancy to boot—what the rest of us were snacking on, as we had ordered it while she was away from the table. (Of course, the radio later seemed hell-bent on eliciting some sort of “Tell Tale Heart” confessional outburst—playing a song in which the singer warbled about his corazon over and over again, as we all chewed our beef in increasingly awkward silence.)

 

That said, the snack was tasty (if occasionally chewy) and now anticuchos are always top of my list to order at places like Machu Picchu in Somerville’s Union Square. Eventually, Nate and I craved anticuchos so much that we wanted to make the dish at home.

 

Using a cow heart we bought for a dollar from the Chestnut Farms parts bin last winter, Nate followed a recipe he found online, pounding the heart with a meat tenderizer for 15 minutes and marinating the pieces overnight just to make sure the meat was tender through and through. He used aji pepper (about 2 teaspoons) instead of chili pepper and skipped the veggies entirely; the skewers were gobbled up at a family gathering by even the least-adventurous eaters.

 

Should you want to make anticuchos at home (and you should, because they are so wicked cheap and tasty), you can order cow heart from Stillman’s for pickup at a farmers’ market or at a winter Meat Meet, as well as from Concord Prime & Fish with a week’s notice. (As a non-local last resort, try a supermarket with a more diverse customer base, such as Tropical Foods in Roxbury or some area Market Baskets).

 

As you prepare anticuchos, I suggest listening to “Rill Rill” by Sleigh Bells. The song has a chorus of “Have a heart, have a heart, have a heart” and, like anticuchos, is a poppy treat from a seemingly edgy source.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Got your goat

 

 

By Genevieve Rajewski

 

My story on goat meat (plus an absolutely delicious recipe from Highland Kitchen) are out in The Boston Globe today. This piece actually took quite a bit of work, but I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. Here are the leftovers.

 

• Amy Cook, the goat farmer in my story, works as a veterinarian part-time and is experimenting with breeding a new type of meat goat. She said: “I started with Boer goat, which is the classic meat goat in this country. It’s an African breed and a very heavyset, muscular goat. Because they are from Africa, Boer goats are an arid-climate animal and have traits that aren’t that conducive to this region. They require a lot of grain, which isn’t sustainable from a financial or an environmental perspective. I’m looking for more of a range goat to pasture-graze. I’m moving more toward the Kiko goat. It is an Australian breed--basically a feral goat they pulled off the mountainside. The breed doesn’t grow quite as fast or have the same heavyset, muscular body type as a Boer goat. But they are able to maintain themselves on less feed by going out and eating lots of grass and weeds. I’m trying to find the ideal mix of the two, and I think I will end up with a herd that’s 75 percent Kiko and 25 percent Boer.” Although the Copley Square and Brookline farmers’ markets will wrap up for the season soon, rumor has it that Cook's Farm Orchard, which carries the meat at its stand, may participate in one or more of the winter markets.)
• Although his quotes did not make it into the final piece, Tony Maws, chef and owner of Craigie on Main, frequently features goat on his menu and had some smart things to say: “People may only expect to find goat in Caribbean stews and things like that, but in no way is that the only way to cook goat. It’s an incredibly delicate meat, and I love it. The obvious connection people might try to make is to lamb. But it is not lamb. It’s really its own animal—pun intended. Yes, they eat grass and you spot goats and lambs close by each other on a farm, but they were put on the earth for different purposes. The structure of the meat is very different. Lamb also has a lot of natural fat, while goat is much leaner. The flavor of goat meat is awesome, but it can be a little less forgiving to cook. It can come out tough or dry if you don’t know how to cook it well. Goat meat definitely benefits from brines, marinades and curing, as well as longer cooking times at lower temperatures—anything that helps break down the proteins in the meat to make it more tender.”
• I first encountered Well Foods Plus a few years ago when I wrote about the Union Square ethnic market tour for Boston Magazine. I remembered seeing whole goats somewhere and contacted Rachel Strutt from Somerville Arts Council to help jog my memory. This didn’t make it into my piece, but I found it fascinating. She wrote: “Definitely visit Halal Market/Well Foods Plus and speak to Rokeya or her husband, Jahinger. They sell loads of goats! I learned some new info about their goat source recently. It's a farm in Western Mass. All goats are slaughtered according to Halal law: Goats are given last meal and an Iman blesses the goat. At some farms, they only play a tape recording (!) of blessing, but this farm has an actual Iman.”
• I was originally inspired to write the piece by our former meat CSA farm, Chestnut Farms. On open barn day, Nate and I were surprised to see goats frolicking on the rocky part of one field. Kim, the farm’s owner, told us how most male kids basically end up as garbage after being born to dairy goats and that she was taking some in to give them a good life until they reached adulthood—when goat meat would be periodically available for purchase by CSA members. I tried many times to reach Kim for my story, but was unsuccessful (the farm’s general inaccessibility being a big part of why we eventually left that CSA for Stillman’s, for all that we thought the product was very good and really liked the busy owners and appreciated how they raise their animals). She is featured in a great video guide by The Atlantic Monthly, which was passed on to me by Nadine Nelson after I had filed my piece.
• There are some pretty serious nutritional claims made about goat meat and most of them are true. However, I didn’t want to just re-quote a lot of the unsubstantiated information I found floating around there, so I turned to my mother-in-law—a nutritionist—for help. She clued me in to the USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory’s National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference: a great place for running all manners of food comparisons. I took my best shot at comparing cooked goat meat versus cooked chicken breast tenders, fresh cooked pork (composite of trimmed retail cuts, separated for lean only) and cooked beef chuck steaks (lean only trimmed to 0” fat) and made a conservative statement backed by that. Feel free to compare other cuts.
• Nadine Nelson highly recommended the goat sausage from Locust Knoll Farm in Sterling, Mass.  She also reports that Topical Foods in Roxbury carries a soup starter packet ($2.39) for Mannish water. It’s by Spicy Hill Farms and features noodles, onion, garlic, Scotch bonnet pepper, salt, celery, ginger and allspice.
• Although most goat meat is local, I did find frozen goat meat from Australia at Fairway Beef in Worcester while reporting my butcher story for the winter 2010 issue of Edible Boston (long after my Globe story was filed...crikey).
• At Well Foods Plus, I ordered a whole bone-in goat leg, which the butchers cut up for me on a power saw—all the while, incredulously and repeatedly asking me if I really wanted the whole thing. My general shyness, compounded by a bit of a language barrier, made me insist that I did (?!), even though it came out to close to 10 pounds. When they handed me two heavy bags of meat and a slip with a terrifyingly high total, I tried to hide my mistake from Nate by telling him to go wait outside while I interviewed the owner. Of course, as soon as I met him after the interview, he called me out. (“I can’t believe you just spent $50 on $$%%% goat!”) I guess I’m not as slick as I think. Fortunately, we froze half the meat and both loved the stew (try it at home; you will thank me, I promise), so now it’s something to look forward to and not just a costly tax write-off.

 

Tomato Sauce

by Cynthia Graber

(first, I should say that this photo is *not* of the ugly tomatoes described below. These tomatoes are beautiful. Those are ugly. But I forgot to take a picture. Plus, they're, well, ugly. With that explanation, read on.)

I'm never going to win any awards as a cookbook writer. Hell, I'm never even going to get a *contract* to write a cookbook in the first place.

I'm fine with that. I know that I'll never be able to provide you with the exact measurements for just what spices will perk up that dish. I'll never be able to list just how many minutes you should saute those onions. I'm simply not that exact when it comes to my own improvised recipes - and those exact measurements are just what people expect in a published recipe.

But here's what I can offer you: the ability to relax. Experiment. Toss things in a pot. Cooking can be crazy easy. In fact, it's so easy that unless you accidentally dump a jar of salt, you're not going to mess up this next dish. You almost can't mess it up. And it will still taste gloriously delicious.

Let me share a tale of tomato sauce.

I went to the farmers market last week, and shockingly, there were some late fall tomatoes. Deep red, soft in spots, bruised in others. Some were a bit hard. But those tomatoes called to me, begging to be cooked down. And then I saw some arugula. Mmmm. Tomatoes. Arugula.

I brought them home. Normally I'd never refrigerate tomatoes, because that can change the texture and the flavor. But those tomatoes were close to the end of their lives, and I didn't want them to succumb to mold. A little cold wouldn't kill them. So into the fridge they went.

A couple of days later, I retrieved them and contemplated sauce. You'll see all kinds of tomato sauce recipes, and they often involve complicated instructions, such as dropping them in boiling water to easily remove the skins, and squeezing them to discard the seeds. Psssst - want to know a secret? You can ignore all that. If you don't mind a rustic feel to your sauce (or if you want to toss it in a blender), all you have to do is chop. Ignore anything fussy.

I cored the tomatoes, maybe seven of them, and chopped them roughly, then dropped them in a sauce pot with a generous amount of olive oil. Then I chopped, who knows, maybe six cloves of garlic and tossed them in. I peered into the fridge and saw a nearly-empty tube of anchovy paste, and a tube of tomato paste. I squeezed out the last of the anchovy paste for some umami depth, and I also squeezed in some tomato paste to intensify the flavor. 

Honestly, it would have been also been fine without either one.

I found a chile pepper nearing the end of its life, and I chopped it and threw it in - but you can ignore this, too.

I added salt. The whole mess turned soupy and watery, the water steaming off as it simmered. While it bubbled, I cooked some whole wheat pasta and lifted it out to drain. I also tore the arugula into bite-sized pieces, some of which I dropped briefly into the pasta water to cook, others later I steamed briefly in the microwave. 

The sauce was still a little watery, but I was ready to eat. I layered the greens in a bowl, added pasta and tomato sauce. I poured another glug of peppery olive oil, and grated parmesan on top. (Don't ignore the extra oil! It makes everything taste better.)

The dish transported me to Tuscany, reminiscent of a post I wrote last year on ribollita, a Tuscsan stew. But much simpler. After I ate the pasta and greens, I still had some watery tomato soup left. It was warm and lovely.

I'll write up the sauce recipe below. But feel free to do nothing but cook late season, ugly tomatoes with olive oil and salt. I promise, it'll still taste great.

A rough approximation of this week's tomato sauce

• Late fall tomatoes, blemished, bruised, and still full of flavor
• As many garlic cloves as you feel like chopping
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Anchovy paste - you won't taste it, but it'll add to the flavor (or not)
• Tomato paste (or not)
• Chile pepper or chile flakes (or not)

Core and roughly chop the tomatoes. Toss into a pot. Add olive oil. Add chopped garlic. Bring to a boil, then simmer. Add a pinch of salt. Taste. Add a squeeze or two of anchovy paste, stir to dissolve. Taste. Add a couple squeezes of tomato paste, taste. Add more of whatever you like. Add some hot pepper. Stir the whole thing around.

When the tomatoes break down, it'll look super watery. Let it cook, as long as you have patience. Maybe twenty minutes? If it's watery, once you add it to pasta and greens, it'll be like a stew. If it's more concentrated, it'll look more like sauce. Either way, it works.

Some Like It Spicy

by Cynthia Graber

My palate loves a kick. I own seven or eight different kinds of chile powder or flakes, another two or three different whole dried chiles. There's a bottle of spicy sesame oil in the fridge.

And, of course, hot sauce.

I bought my latest fire-truck red offering at the Ferry Market in San Francisco, from a farm that specializes in beans and chiles. It has serious zing. But I took a look at the ingredient list: basically chile, vinegar, and salt.

Chile, vinegar, and salt? That's all? Shouldn't I be able to concoct something that has only three ingredients?

I was pondering that existential question when the New York Times' Melissa Clark came to my rescue. Lately I feel as if we're food soul-mates, as if she's been reading my mind, or my refrigerator. (See my previous post on tomatoes, and her delectable tomato/yoghurt soup.)

Melissa - we're on a first name basis, right? - suggested adding red peppers to give the sauce a touch of sweetness. She also suggested four red chile peppers. I bought a half-pint container at the market that contained more than a dozen sunburst ones. They were small, so I threw in six instead of four.

I chopped the peppers and the garlic up roughly, added the vinegar, and let the pot simmer, covered. She suggested avoiding the fumes, as they'd sting. I didn't find them particularly unpleasant, though, as long as I didn't stick my face in and take a deep yoga breath.

Here's one mistake I did make, which I suggest you avoid: let the mixture cool before you pour it into the blender. If it's hot, you'll have to remove the little plastic piece in the top to let air escape, so the blender doesn't explode. The sauce will turn the towel you place over top bright red. If the mixture's cool, there's no need to sully a towel.

When I finished, the sauce was thick with peppers and garlic, like the sriracha sauce that inspired her. And remember how I threw in a couple of extra peppers? I should have listened to the expert. This hot sauce slams a wallop.

I still had plenty of peppers left, so I figured another batch of hot sauce was in order. This time, though, I was out of garlic. I cooked it anyway. The resulting sauce was thinner, more like my traditional hot sauce.

They're both great. And now I've answered that epic question of burning important. Can I make hot sauce at home? Why yes, I can.

 

Melissa Clark's Hot Sauce, with an optional modification

• 4 hot red chile peppers
• 2 sweet red peppers
• 5 garlic cloves
• 3/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Many people say to wear gloves while chopping chiles. I didn't have any, so I just chopped them. If you do that, wash your hands carefully, and be careful not to touch your eyes. In general, roughly chop the chiles, the red peppers, and the garlic, and toss it into a small sauce pan. Add the vinegar and the salt. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the peppers and the garlic are soft.

Cool the mixture, then puree it in a blender. Add it to a jar, tighten the lid, and let it sit in the fridge for a few days for the flavors to blend. Or, if you're like me, use it right away.

And if you have extra peppers and no garlic, you can make the exact same sauce without the garlic. It'll be a little thinner, but still snappy, bright, and burning. Perfect to kick up any dish.

A sweet surprise

 By Genevieve Rajewski

Despite April’s wonderful report on all the ways the InterContinental hotel uses honey in its restaurant, Miel, it is hardly the place I’d expect to find a rooftop apiary. But the hotel is having such great success with its new honeybees that it plans to add two more hives next year (and, fingers crossed, a new rooftop vegetable garden around them).

Below are a few (albeit poor) pictures from the reporting trip for my Boston Globe story, which came out today. And as September is National Honey Month, be(e) sure to read April’s great post on Carlisle Honey and to share any tips on your favorite local honeys.

(I’m partial to the honey from E&T Farms on Cape Cod, which is created by cranberry-pollinating bees and was available at the Wayland Winter Market, and honey from Olde Nourse Farm, which I have become addicted to visiting on my way home from my new writing job at Tufts’ Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.)

Miel’s sous chef, Cyrille Couet, and Steve Juscen, the hotel’s food and beverage director, check on the bees on the InterContinental’s fifth-floor rooftop.

 

Miel’s sous chef, Cyrille Couet, who manages the apiary and has a very charming French accent that doesn’t come across in print.

 

This is the bee cam, which provides a live feed to a flat-screen television in Miel’s dining room.

 

 A honey bee on the Greenway.