up on the roof

Deborah

Despite what most would think, summer in the city is pretty great. Especially New York City where free out-door concerts, plays and street fairs can be found nearly every day. AND the city really empties out so reservations at those exclusive restaurants or that sold out play suddenly become available. The beaches that can be reached by subway are pretty great too. Who needs a rental in the Hamptons?
The last wonderful days of summer are here and quiet pleasures can be found on rooftops and front stoops. A recent invitation to share a rooftop dinner in Red Hook, Brooklyn afforded beautiful sunset views of the Hudson River and glimpses into the side street life of this tucked away community.

Keep the livin' easy with a make-ahead savory tart using some of those luscious tomatoes now flooding the farmers markets. The dough can be made days ahead and the tart is perfect served room temperature.

Tomato Goat Cheese Tart
-adapted from a recipe on Epicurious


Crust:
4 tablespoons (or more) ice water
3/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 1 tablespoon chilled unsalted butter

Crust:
Combine 4 tablespoons ice water and cider vinegar in small bowl. Blend flour and salt in processor. Add butter and cut in using on/off turns until mixture resembles coarse meal. With machine running, slowly add water-vinegar mixture, processing until moist clumps form. If dough seems dry, add ice water by teaspoonfuls.

Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 2 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Keep refrigerated. Allow dough to soften slightly at room temperature before rolling out.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Roll dough out on lightly floured work surface to 12-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter tart pan with removable bottom. Press dough onto bottom and up sides. Fold in overhang and press to extend dough 1/2 inch above sides of pan. Line pan with foil and dried beans or pie weights. Bake until dough looks dry and set, about 30 minutes. Remove foil and beans and continue to bake until crust is pale golden, 20 to 25 minutes longer. Remove from oven and cool while preparing filling. 

Filling:
3 large tomatoes, sliced

4 oz Goat Cheese 

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil

basil leaves for garnish

Lay tomato slices in overlapping rings over the tart crust, dot all over with the goat cheese, sprinkle with salt and drizzle with the olive oil. Bake an additional 30 minutes, garnish with basil. Serve warm or room temp.

Amanda
Seems simple enough! I'll have to give it a go. It looks beautiful. One question - what is on top of the tart (not the cheese) that is white and kind of looks like sliced garlic? The tart looks delicious! I'll have to be sure to buy plenty of tomatoes this weekend at the farmer's market.

Ahhh - goat cheese and a white wine from the Loire Valley in France. What a classic combination! Makes my thoughts on wine so easy for this dish. Sauvignon Blanc would just make such an incredible pairing. Grassy, herbal with great minerality. I love a crisp Sancerre! This would make for a wonderful Sunday afternoon brunch!

Yet, while my first choice would be a glass of Sancerre, a second interesting option might be a Chenin Blanc from the Loire. Anjou is a great sub-region within the Loire to look for a dry Chenin Blanc, specifically the AOC Savennieres (Chenin Blanc is also used to make sweet wines, but Savennieres will typically be dry). Because the grapes are grown in a relatively cool climate, they have high acidity. Whereas Sancerre is crisp and lean, Savennieres will tend to be more powerful. The wines are complex, and are actually not that easy to come by. If you happen to come across one during your next wine store excursion - do yourself a favor and try one.

In the meantime, if you are planning to make Deb's recipe and wish to find something right away that will offer a spectacular food and wine experience - ask your neighborhood retailer to point you towards a terrific bottle of Sancerre!

a beginning in the garden

Deborah
They say that nothing worth having comes easily. Or something like that. I spent the blistering hot day with my son, hauling 60 pound bags of stones and mulch from Home Depot to my little backyard for some much needed landscaping. The only way to get to the yard is through the house. 15 bags of stones, 6 bags of mulch, much sweat and aching muscles resulted in this:

It may not look like much to you but, I am so proud! I don't really have much of a green thumb, just a very green heart and that passion translates into a willingness to put some muscle into the task of taming my garden. I have ordered some plants including heirloom tomato seedlings from farmer Pam, MD at Hook Mountain Growers which will go into the ground in a few weeks.

Generally I like to keep my cooking simple, but there are certain recipes well worth the extra steps. One that comes to mind is a goat cheese galette that my uptown sister loves to make, including the one she presented to our buffet table this Easter. She got the recipe from cookbook writer and chef Joanne Weir. It is ridiculously good. Swoon worthy in fact. Not the quickest thing to make, as it requires four cheeses and a pastry from scratch. But the time is well spent on this rich, satisfying treat. Enjoy!

  

Rustic in appearance and insanely loaded with flavor.

Goat Cheese and Green Onion Galette-by Joanne Weir
A galette is a fancy way of saying “a thin pie.” This one has a crunchy dough, rich with butter, that is a perfect casing for creamy ricotta, crème fraîche, mozzarella, fresh green onions, and Parmigiano. You’ll see why this has been one of my all-time favorites for years. 

These are my sister's notes on the recipe:

I do the pastry in the food processor. Form it into a disk and chill before rolling.  I also experimented this time with the vodka secret that America's Test Kitchen recommends, adding vodka to the pie dough so you can work with a wetter dough, and then the extra liquid alcohol evaporate out.  I ended up using 4 T water and 2 T vodka, which made a dough that was very easy to work with.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 1 tablespoon butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled in the freezer for 1 hour
1/3 to 1/2 cup ice water
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 bunches green onions, white and green parts, thinly sliced
5 ounces goat cheese
4 ounces ricotta cheese
3/4 cup coarsely grated mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup crème fraîche
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Put the flour in a bowl and chill in the freezer for 1 hour. Place the flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt on a cold work surface. With a pastry scraper, cut the frozen butter into the flour until half of the butter clumps are the size of peas and the rest are a little larger. Make a well in the center and add half of the ice water. Push together with your fingertips and set aside any dough that holds together. Add the rest of the water and repeat. Form the mixture into a rough ball.

Alternately, this can be made by judiciously pulsing the ingredients in a food processor, using the same technique, until half is the size of peas and the other half a little larger. Pour the mixture out onto your work surface and add the water as above. Do not add it into the food processor. Form the mixture into a rough ball. Or this can be made in an electric mixer using the same technique.

On a well-floured surface, roll out the dough into a 14-inch circle and trim the edges. Place on a large baking sheet and refrigerate.

Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the green onions and cook until soft, 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Mix together the green onions, goat cheese, ricotta, mozzarella, crème fraîche, and Parmigiano. Mix well and season with salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Remove the pastry from the refrigerator. Spread the cheese mixture over the pastry, leaving a 21/2-inch border around the edge uncovered. Fold the uncovered edge of the pastry over the cheese, pleating it to make it fit. The filling will be exposed in the center of the galette.

Bake the galette in the oven until golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes, then slide the galette off the pan and onto a serving plate. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

Serves 6

Amanda

Don't know how you do it, Deb. But you always seem to provide the perfect recipe at the perfect time. Next Friday I will be going to a friend's son's Communion. Guess what I will be bringing to the celebration afterwards? While the recipe does sound a little time consuming, it does seem pretty straight forward. Interesting tip about the vodka. Never heard of that before.

Definitely a wine from the Loire Valley in France seems entirely appropriate here. For simplicity sake, you can get a basic Sancerre or Pouilly Fume (both made from Sauvignon Blanc). Or, you can do what I would do - veer off the beaten path of wine and be a little experimental. Also located in the Loire Valley region are two great appellations called Saumur, and Saumur Champigny.

The reds are light and fruity and come from Saumur Champigny. A wine from this appellation, made from Cabernet Franc, is a great match for this goat cheese galette. In the Saumur appellation, the wines are typically light, crisp and lively with bright acidity. They must be at least 80% Chenin Blanc, the remainder being Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. Both these reds and whites are terrific with goat cheese. The red can even be served slightly chilled, perfect for a warm Spring day!

Saumur Champigny is a favorite bistro wine in Paris, thought it is not very well known here in the U.S. One producer whom I am very fond of is Domaine Lavigne. It is a family-run operation and they are serious about their wine-making.  Their Saumur and Saumur Champigny are two of my favorite warm-weather wines, and they are very affordable at $14.99 and $16.99 respectively. Try to find the Saumur and taste the pear, peach, lemon flavors for yourself! I'm sure you'll agree it's a great choice for the galette!

Last Chance

Deborah
This time of year cooking is all about abundance. The harvest is in and we must use it or lose it. This is when preserving methods come in to play. After harvesting my garden herbs I make logs of herb butter to freeze and use all winter. If I am lucky to get my hands on them I will make batches of stewed tomatoes to use in soups, stews and sauces to last me through the growing drought.  I have already cut up the last great peaches I came across and have them in my freezer.

Sage makes a really tasty herb butter, so good on roasted squashes.

Bell peppers are on my mind right now and it is all about roasting. What better way to bring out the flavor and extend their shelf life? I keep all types and colors of roasted peppers topped with olive oil in the fridge and use them in so many dishes like frittatas, salads and pilafs.

Roasting methods are pretty basic, either on top of the stove directly on the burner, or in the oven on a sheet pan or on the grill. Oven baking at 400 F takes about 25 minutes. I have used all these roasting techniques interchangeably, depending on what I am doing in the kitchen. I try not to turn on the oven to roast a few small peppers if I am not cooking anything else in there. In those cases I will use the stove top method, which is a bit messier because you  have to clean up the juices that inevitably escape from the pepper onto the cook top, and well, I don't really like cleaning up as much as I like cooking. If I have peppers on hand when I am grilling outdoors I try to remember to throw them on the grill even if I am not serving them at that meal because they keep so well and they taste so good.

In all cases the roasting process is simple. Cook the whole pepper, turning them a few times to get all sides of the skin softened and blistered. Once cooked, remove from heat and cover the peppers to allow them to steam at room temperature. Sometimes I just put a bowl over them or throw a dish towel on top to do that job. I hate to waste a large clean zip-lock baggie for that task as I so often see being instructed in cookbook recipes and in cooking demos. It doesn't have to be an airtight seal, you just want to trap some of the steamy heat coming off the pepper to help remove the skin. Leave them to steam until they are cool enough to handle and the skin should slide right off. This is an easy task, but not necessarily a neat one. Remove the seeds too and you will be left with a deep glossy flesh. I will then cut the peppers into strips and store in a small container covered with olive oil to keep in the fridge for as long as they last. Usually not long.

A very yummy treat is a roasted pepper and feta cheese dip that tastes great with crudite or chips. I made some this weekend and slathered it on top of sandwiches. It stores well and tastes even better the next day.  It makes a really elegant dip that would be nice with a great wine to start a meal. Any ideas about that Amanda?

Roasted Pepper and Feta Dip
2 roasted red peppers, skin and seeds removed
8 oz feta cheese
1 garlic clove peeled
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 teas. paprika
1/4 teas. cayenne pepper
1/2 teas. salt
1 Tbs. lemon juice

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend till smooth. Store in a container. Serve with crudite or pita chips. Make the night before to allow flavors to develop (but it tastes good immediately  after making too!).

Amanda
Yum Yum! This sounds terrific and rather straightforward. Before getting to my wine comments, I wanted to mention the delicious cauliflower soup that I made from your recipe yesterday. Though I had every intention of making it last week, it actually came to fruition only yesterday. There's never a shortage of interruptions in my household! The soup was easy to prepare,  which is great if your time is limited. I added some carrots I had on hand and wanted to use up, as well as some onion. As mentioned, I also bought some kale to include as well. Love to get those dark leafy greens in anyway I can. It was great. Perfectly comforting! I will enjoy it all week for lunch. Thanks for sharing it!

Hmmm. Roasted red pepper and feta dip. Sauvignon Blanc. Look for Sancerre, which is located in the Loire Valley region of France. It is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and has wonderful acidity and minerality. Think crisp green apple flavors. Pascal Jolivet produces wonderful Sancerre. His wines should be pretty easy to find as well. But if you want to be adventurous and try something new, you could also consider Feta's Greek routes and stick within that "theme". Moschifilero is a white grape which produces highly aromatic, fresh and floral wines. Flavors of melon and citrus abound. It is grown in the AOC region of Mantinia, in the Peloponnese. A well-known producer of Greek wines is Boutari, and they make a terrific premium white made from 100% Moschifilero grapes. With all of the holidays coming up, this would be a perfect combination to bring to a get-together. And fun, too! Especially if the crowd includes wine lovers. Why not bring a bowl of this dip, some pita for dipping, and a bottle of Moschifilero!

A Blooming good time

Deborah
Happiness for me can easily be defined by a trip to a wonderful farmer's market. Amanda had one in mind when we met this weekend to catch up on business. The Blooming Hill Farm is easy to miss, especially on a rainy day when you are having an argument with your husband in the car about whether the GPS is all right or all wrong. He was right, I was wrong. The GPS was right too. The farm had a small chalk board sign marking the entrance and no name, just a WE ARE OPEN. A person could miss it.
It was worth the 1.5 hour drive from Queens in torrential rain to spend a few hours enjoying this lovely setting. The sun peaked out a bit now and then and the rain settled in to an occasional mist.






The farm has it's own cafe that takes rustic charm to new heights. We ordered a few things for lunch, all prepared from scratch with the farms own ingredients. Delicious! The pizza crust was thin and crispy with a hint of smoky flavor from the wood burning grill. The spinach and ricotta panini was filling and tasty. A spinach lovers treat.


I shopped until I dropped, filling my bag with lettuces, green beans, blue potatoes, a bouquet of pink zinnias, and yes, even some heirloom tomatoes. Once home and beginning to unpack I admired the patty pan squashes I purchased. Stuffed with quinoa and fresh herbs they make a really pretty summer meal.



Quinoa Stuffed Patty Pan Squashes
-this versatile dish can be prepared with any number of different herbs and cheeses. I use what I have on hand and make it with a slightly different twist each time.


4 patty pan squashes
1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onions
1 clove garlic minced
1/2 cup chopped herbs (such as parsley, basil, dill, mint, tarragon, sage, singlely or any combination)
1 cup cooked Quinoa
1/2 cup shredded cheese (such as cheddar, ricotta, fontina, feta)
s & p to taste

Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Trim off top third of squashes and set aside.
With a spoon, scoop out the flesh of each squash so you have created a cup. Chop up the scooped out squash flesh and set aside. Heat oil in pan and cook onions till they soften and begin to turn translucent. Add garlic and chopped squash and continue to cook for 10 more minutes until most of the moisture is evaporated and the squash begins to turn a light golden color. Add the chopped herbs and remove pan from heat. Mix in the quinoa and the cheese. S & P the mixture to taste. Fill each squash cup with the quinoa mixture, piling it up so the filling mounds up out of the top. Place filled squash and the reserved tops into a lightly oiled baking dish and cook 35 minutes till golden brown. Serve squashs with there tops arranged at a jaunty angle.
serves four.


Some classic cheese and herb combinations I like:
Feta and Dill
Cheddar and Sage
Goat and Tarragon
Ricotta and Basil
Fontina and Thyme
Have fun experimenting with different combos!

Amanda
Blooming Hill Farm is truly a special place. I used to visit it every Saturday and Sunday when I lived up in Monroe, NY. In the summer after my son was born, it was the only place I could go with him and actually relax and find peace and quiet. When he was a toddler, he along with several other toddlers donned in water shoes or rain boots, would wade through the stream finding tadpoles, turtles and bugs and tossing stones. I was indeed grateful for this wonderful spot so full of serenity. Now, I am more than happy driving an hour to enjoy the farm and the abundant organic produce they offer - not to mention their menu that is prepared to perfection. I, like Deborah, indulged in their offerings. But, the big difference between Deborah and I is that she gets inspired and lets her heart guide her, instinctively knowing the creations she will concoct. I, on the other hand, get inspired, buy a bunch of stuff, and don't know what to do with it. I have decent cooking skills, probably better than average, but I need to be given suggestions. I lack the inherent creativity of a true chef. So, after reading Deb's recipe on the quinoa stuffed patty pans, I now have a new recipe to try! It sounds delicious. My favorite thing about Deb's recipes is they combine simplicity with elegance. I would pair different wines with this dish, depending on the cheese used. One tip about pairing wine and cheese: wines from specific regions have a particular affinity for cheeses from the same regions. So, as an example: Let's say you were using goat cheese and chose Crottin de Chavignol, which is made in the Loire Valley of France. Sancerre, from the same region would be a great match. Sancerre is made from 100% Sauvignon Blanc, and has wonderful acidity, crispness and minerality. Lots of green apple and citrus fruit flavors as well. A Vouvray would work well to, which is made from Chenin Blanc. Substitute ricotta, and a new world of opportunities unfolds! For this, I would choose an Italian Rose, and I would even go for red. Sangiovese would be the first to come to mind, such as a Chianti. But remember, this "wine from a region paired with a cheese from that region" tip is only a guide, and need not be steadfast. Nothing ever matters as much as your personal tastes and preferences! Can't wait to make this dish! But before I do, Deb, I have a question: Can you eat the entire squash when it's done, or just the filling?
-eat it all!
Deborah