Shooting with the new Foodie pack for Hipstamatic.

Wiping down the last straggling crumbs from a six-week long Kitchen Boss season two, recipe test. I’ve been stuffed to the gills with tasty eats since the end of October – oof. Take a gander at that beautiful pie – look Ma, no wood burning or high-end oven at Pizzeria Heidi. One doesn’t need  pricey equipment to get the job done – solid technique and ingredients combined with practice, practice, practice with the equipment you have will assure kitchen successes.

Off to New York to wrap the job – ready and enthusiastic to connect with the colleagues I’ve been working with from remote.

Happy, peaceful and healthy holidays to you and yours.

- Heidi

Special thanks to Jessica Jerome for her invaluable kitchen assisting.

All I want is a yurt somewhere. Perched up high in the cold night air. With one enormous chair, oh! Wouldn’t  it be loverly?

The August vegetable explosion is on! Tomatoes are ripe and richly flavored, squash is thin-skinned and tender. All are available in peak abundance at local farmer’s markets. This “soup” of vegetables simply stewed in their own juices cooks, as if by magic, with a simple layering of the ingredients in a pot. I culled this one from my mom’s recipe box – one I remember thinking was completely crazy – cooking lettuce – that’s salad! A crunchy head of Romaine is a key component as ninety five percent of the lettuce’s own bulk weight is water which supplements much of the broth. A dish that won’t whack you over the head with aggressive flavors, but will enchant you spoonful by spoonful with a colorful tangle of vegetables and a co-mingling of naturally sweet juices enhanced by a grace of salt.

Layered Vegetable Soup
(ever so very slightly) Adapted from Nika Hazelton’s Garden Vegetable Soup
Serves: 6

Ingredients:

2 cups sliced ripe tomatoes  - enough to cover the bottom of a 5-6 quart pot

2 cups onions thinly sliced

4 plump cloves garlic thinly sliced

2 cups small zucchini or yellow squash sliced 1/4″ thick

1 cup Romaine lettuce finely shredded

10 oz. package frozen peas (or two lbs. fresh shelled)

1 cup Italian parsley, chopped

1/4 cup torn fresh basil leaves

10 oz. package frozen lima beans (or 2 lbs. fresh, shelled)

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil (plus extra for finishing)

Salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

Chunk parmesan for grating (optional)

Spread tomatoes over the bottom of a 5-6 quart pot. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Top the tomatoes with the onions, then garlic and sprinkle lightly with salt. Add the zucchini and lightly salt. Top the zucchini with the lettuce followed by the peas. Sprinkle half of the parsley and all of the basil over the peas and sprinkle lightly with salt. Add the lima beans and the remaining 1/2 cup of parsley, lightly salt and drizzle the olive oil over the top. Cook, covered, over medium-low heat for twenty minutes, or until the vegetables start releasing their liquid (take care to moderate the heat level so the tomatoes do not scorch). Do not remove the cover at all for the first ten minutes.

Remove the cover and mix the vegetables well. Taste a slice of squash and determine if it is done enough for your liking. At peak season, the skin is tender and the squash cooks through quickly – same with the tomatoes. If the soup is done to your liking then you can stop here. If not, continue to cook, covered and low for another ten minutes or so until the vegetables are done enough for your taste.

Correct salt seasoning and grind in some fresh black pepper.

Serve hot, warm or at room temperature (my preference is for the two latter) with a drizzle of olive oil and a grating of parmesan.

This dish is best served on the first day, but subsequent second and third day rewarmings are tasty enough, too.

Summer is fleeting and peaches are ripe for the picking and eating. Out of hand, over the sink with sweet juices running down my chin and arm, sliced and steeped in a quenching peachy lemonade, or pureed and churned into cold ice cream. These are a few of the ways I’ve been indulging in the peaches I purchase at the farmer’s market from Woolf Farms. Last Sunday I was lucky to wrestle politely grab the last order of rosy Red Havens. Sweet, but not cloying with a welcome acid balance – perfect for roasting as to coax out the stone fruit’s natural sugars.

This may now be my favorite peach dessert. Ginger and peaches have a natural affinity for each other, and what doesn’t taste better with butter? A bit of salt elevates and intensifies the peach flavor, dark speckles of vanilla seeds add a deeper layer of nuance. I love basil with peaches, and the licorice-spiciness of this just-picked, tender leafed variety from Birdsong Farm holds its own beautifully with the zingy bathing of ginger. A cooling, creamy counterpoint is welcome, and I like mine in the form of a tangy cultured creme fraiche or Greek yogurt. A bit of texture and crunch comes from crushed amaretti cookies – almond being another magnetic attraction for peaches. No amaretti? Sliced or chopped toasted almonds are a superb option.

One single spoonful of this balance of flavors, temperatures and textures is guaranteed to send your mouth into a warming tizzy of late summer harvest madness, and compelling enough to ensure that the bowl will be licked clean. Mine was. Both of them.

Hot Buttered Ginger Peaches

Serves 4-6
Ingredients:

4 smallish firm-ripe, freestone peaches, pitted and cut into quarters

1/4  cup Ginger Syrup (see recipe below)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Good pinch of salt

1/2 moist vanilla bean, seeds scraped

Creme fraiche or Greek yogurt  - enough for dolloping

Fresh basil leaves

Crushed amaretti cookies or toasted almonds

Preheat the oven to 400. In an 8″ skillet, stovetop, heat the ginger syrup, butter, salt and vanilla seeds over a low flame, just until the butter is melted and all is swirled together. Arrange the peach quarters, one cut side down, on top of the syrup mixture.

Roast the peaches, center rack for twenty minutes. You can now opt to flip the peaches onto their opposite cut sides (which I do since I like to fiddle), or just baste and continue to roast another ten minutes. The peach skin should be a bit shriveled and the peaches softened, but not to a mushy texture. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for ten minutes before serving.

Spoon the warm peaches with puddles of pan juices into serving bowls. Top with dollops of yogurt, creme fraiche or sour creme. Add a few small leaves of torn fresh basil to each portion as well as a scattering of the crushed amaretti.

Ginger Syrup

This will make more than what you will need for the roasted peaches, which is wonderful. This syrup has become one of my kitchen staples. Think ginger lemonade, Moscow mules, as a glaze for pork or duck…

To juice the ginger, I take a quantity of fresh, unpeeled ginger, scrub it well in cold water, and trim free of any dried gnarly ends. Cut the ginger into chunks and press through a juicer.

The syrup ratio is one part ginger juice to two parts cane sugar. For the sake of a recipe:

1 cup fresh ginger juice

2 cups cane sugar

Combine in a jar and shake until the sugar is dissolved.

I’ve had several people ask if there is way to make ginger syrup in the absence of a juicer – yes. I’m providing the link to another recipe, one which has you simmer sliced ginger with sugar and water for a while, then straining out the ginger pieces. I’m sure the syrup is wonderful, albeit a bit tempered in taste from the fresh hot assertiveness of fresh ginger juice in the first recipe. Either way, the peaches in the buttery ginger syrup will taste amazing.

This year, if work does not interfere with my fun, I aspire to make it to one of the best events of the year – Veggie U’s Food & Wine Celebration. Veggie U supports The Chef’s Garden’s educational program dedicated to teaching elementary students where their food comes from and improving their eating habits.

In search of a hot summer’s eve spent cavorting with chef’s, farmers, friendly people, food and wine? Get thee to the Veggie U celebration – a *Do Not Miss* spectacular blast event which supports a fantastic effort. The rollicking event is held July 16th – (ticket info found here).

A little bit sweet, a little bit tart and alluringly aromatic is this pan of oven-roasted *rhubarb, (Mr. Frye’s rhubarb, to be exact). I enjoyed the hot pink compote chilled and served over thick, plain yogurt over the course of several breakfasts. This rhubarb is straight from The Chef’s Garden and was gifted to attendees of the last Earth to Table dinner at The Culinary Vegetable Institute.

The Chef’s Garden. Veggi U. The Culinary Vegetable Institute. I  know, it can be  a bit confusing, but for me it’s just all about a bigger community existing under the umbrella of founding father, Farmer Lee Jones,and his gracious wife, Mary. Such warm and welcoming folk who are so clearly and honestly devoted to spreading the love and word of their cause. Let the vegetables do the talking – they speak for themselves.

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Actually, allow Farmer Lee Jones do some of the talking about Mr. Frye’s rhubarb – it’s special.

*Oven roasted rhubarb: 300 oven, cut rhubarb, split and scraped vanilla bean pod, couple star anise, zest and juice of one organic orange, splash rose´, handful cane sugar, or to taste. Cook uncovered, 15-25 minutes, or until your desired degree of doneness.

A New Old Fashioned

Inspired by Florence Fabricant’s November piece on Armenian preserved walnuts, this little bit o’ sweet and a little bit o’ nutty in my bourbon was the kindliest conclusion to a long week of recipe testing and development. Conceptualizing, shopping, prepping, cooking, cleaning and transcribing 120 recipes – give or take – for a new TLC cooking show is what’s been keeping me out of trouble since the beginning of November. It’s been interesting and wonderfully challenging collaborating with the production in New York while working out of my Cleveland base for this particular project, however, I’m missing the energy, the pace and mostly, the crew.

Delicious food  in quantity flows forth in a continuous stream from my modest kitchen, which I have now dubbed, “The Little Kitchen That Could”. I’ve been overjoyed to supply friends, neighbors, and heck, anybody who’s hungry, with the efforts.

It’s cold, it’s snowing, it’s time for bourbon. To your health.

A New Old Fashioned

Serves 1

Despite the addition of maraschino cherry and preserved walnut, this cocktail was not overly sweet. Next time, I’ll try one without the cherry. I’m loving how the soft, chewable slices of walnut become perfumed and infused with the orange oils and whisky.

1 sugar cube

Few dashes bitters

1 wide piece organic orange zest

2 oz. favorite bourbon whisky (I’m currently favoring the 3 B’s: Bulleit, Buffalo Trace and Basil Hayden)

1 Armenian preserved walnut, sliced

1 maraschino cherry

In an Old Fashioned glass: place the orange zest and sugar cube. Splash the bitters onto the cube to saturate. Using a muddler or bottom of the handle of a wooden spoon, muddle the sugar cube and orange zest well to extract essential oils. In a separate glass, chill the bourbon with a few ice cubes. Strain the bourbon into the muddled mixture, stir. If desired, add an ice cube to the cocktail.

Some people swap out their closets with the change of seasons.

I swap my hangings.

There will be home-cured pancetta for the Thanksgiving stuffing.

Pork belly from New Creation Farm.

As much as I’ve loved living and working in New York as part of the kitchen crew of Mad Hungry with Lucinda Scala Quinn (if you have not yet tuned in – you must!), I’ve loved less that my temporary digs are without a kitchen that’s useful for much more than boiling water for coffee or an egg. Meals eaten in are of the cheese or something spread on cracker variety – nothing close to resembling homemade – and I realize how much my hands and soul crave those simple, routine acts of cooking to make me feel whole.

I’ve returned to my better-equipped home kitchen in Cleveland for a couple of months. The first thing on the agenda after dropping my suitcase was to dash off to the grocery gathering fixings necessary for simmering up a pot of chicken stock –  my home needed to smell like  SOUP. Having six quarts of rich, golden elixir in the fridge and freezer makes me feel ready to take on anything – sounds silly, perhaps, but that’s how I’m wired. The stock is an anchor, a comfort, and nourishment.

In lieu of Halloween festivities Saturday night – choosing instead to stay in with my cats, bare feet and pajamas – I addressed the contents of the bags loaded with local bounty from the mornings farmer’s market shop. I began curing pork belly for pancetta, pickling little multi-hued turnips, fermenting sriracha, baking Indian pudding. Home.

To the madly skilled and wildly wonderful kitchen crew of Mad Hungry – Greg Lofts, Michelli Knauer, Matt Depante, Calder Quinn: I am deeply grateful for you all. Miss you, love you, mean it.

I’m thrilled that Ohio Authority (with a special nod to editors Ivan Sheehan and Sarah Sphar), Ohio’s premier online magazine, has taken me on board to pen The Spice Trade, a new monthly column. With contributions stemming from a multi-talented community of informed writers, Ohio Authority keeps a knowing finger pressed to the pulse of what’s happening right NOW in Ohio –  I’m feeling both honored and grateful to be included in this fine effort.

I  invite you to make a voyage over to The Spice Trade. This month we’ll explore  Chinese ingredients in the Asian markets accompanied by a simply delicious recipe. A recipe, yes, always a recipe…it’s my life, of course.

Twitter follow:

Ohio Authority: @ohioauthority

Heidi Robb: @heidi_robb