Harvest!

We harvested our first wave of tomatoes from the garden today. Not a bad haul for only two plants of red heirloom tomatoes and one unstaked yellow plum tomato plant. The basket holds some basil, which we've been harvesting for a while.

There is a single bull-nose bell pepper and a single Anaheim pepper on their plants looking pretty close to ready to remove. I'm optimistic the flowers on the upper part of those two will produce another round. It's probably not going to come to fruition, but I can hope.


It's been a bad year for tomatoes in this region. Many farmers and backyard gardeners are losing their plants and fruit to the Late Blight fungus. Evidently, it's the same pathogen that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840's. One of my plants doesn't looks so healthy, but the fruit are looking fine so far. After pulling these today, there are only a handful of immature tomatoes on each. I'm crossing my fingers and will wait and see.

I made insalata caprese tonight with the tomatoes and basil (with mozzarella, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar) as an appetizer Bethany could eat as soon as she got home from teaching her yoga class. I also made a big bowl of pico de gallo to adorn our dinner of nachos with chicken, refried beans, red pepper, and cheese. There are still more than 10 good-sized tomatoes left to make vodka sauce for tomorrow night's dinner.

Cream-braised fennel

I was inspired by a post on the Kitchn blog to buy and cook fennel for the first time. I've used fennel seed before, but never the bulb (is that what the bottom part is called?). It turned out really tasty. The strong nature of the plant receded with cooking, leaving a very warm and earthy flavor. The link above has the full recipe, but here's the quick visual run-through.

But first, I want point out how pretty it is in cross-section.


Trim and quarter the bulbs and brown both cut sides in butter and olive oil.


Add some water, put on the lid, and cook slowly for something like 20 minutes.


At the end, add some heavy cream and simmer until it thickens, at which point, I squeezed half a lemon into the skillet and mixed it gently.


...and enjoy!

I like this last picture. The little whisp of steam trailing off the back edge seems to have directed itself into Bethany's nose.

Chicken in milk

Yes, it sounds sort of disgusting, but I was intrigued by an article on Apartment Therapy describing their success with this dish, as laid out by Jamie Oliver. I would not have thought that slow cooking the chicken in milk, lemon zest, garlic, sage, and cinnamon would turn out so nice (sorry to the vegetarians and vegans). It cooked while Bethany was teaching a yoga class. I used a lower heat setting because she was to be gone 2 1/2 hours and the recipe called for 1 1/2 hour bake time. It worked out really well. The meat was super tender and very flavorful. As the two sites above mentioned, the milk did make a nice custardy sauce during cooking and was a good sauce for the mashed potatoes.

Don't make fun of my lack of sophisticated presentation in the picture below. We're pretty practical in this house and don't generally go all out to serve our family dinners with any fanfare. Good, organic ingredients and lots of love in the cooking constitute the bulk of our goal. Oh yeah, and maybe a fancy plate to nibble on while we're waiting for everyone to be seated so we can start eating...

Chicken paprikash

I bought a nice Hungarian paprika recently for a recipe. Then I realized that I really didn't understand how to use paprika as a spice and what it really tastes like when it's the dominant flavor. I have tended to use it casually because it's there.

I was flitting around the cooking blogs I read looking for some sort of large, slow-cooked meal I could make and have leftovers for lunches for the week when I came across a description of chicken paprikash. I took the liberty of making my own hybrid of several recipes I found on the internet. The attempt is documented above. I used chicken thighs with bones, but I removed the skins. Aesthetically, I think I should have mixed the sour cream in prior to serving, but it tasted just fine anyway. The Wikipedia article mentions an interesting alternative for a vegetarian version using mushrooms. I'll try that or perhaps use tempeh next time. The sum total of all organic ingredients (except the Hungarian paprika, sadly), was about $12 for enough for two dinners and four lunches. Very tasty and filling for about $2 a meal!