2023 in brief, and in no particular order

Made homemade blackberry jam from wild berries. Saw Flaco the owl in the rough. Watched my youngest grow taller than his grandmothers. Attended a bluegrass festival in Vermont. Sampled local ciders. Summoned the fire department by smoking a pork shoulder in our Brooklyn backyard at 5 AM on a September Thursday (sorry, neighbors!). Ate mail order lobster in Vermont. Felt my heart break at the violence in the world. Gave blood. Touched a melting glacier in Norway. Celebrated my Mom’s 80th with joyous music. Endured smoky orange skies in New York. Got misted by waterfalls. Did some puzzles. Lost my phone in a harbor while boarding a boat at night. Made raclette and doughnuts with 10 year olds. Helped organize a free CSA for neighbors. Turned 50 in Paris, and crashed an after school bar scene where there was BYO charcuterie. Took up pickleball. Skied through the woods, both downhill and cross-country. Saw some good art: Louisiana Museum in Denmark, Rothko in Paris, and Judy Chicago, Derek Fordjour, Ruth Asawa, & Henry Taylor in New York City.

Read books: Demon Copperhead, Tom Lake, Roman Stories, and the delicious tiny books of Claire Keegan were just a few. Joie is a beautiful favorite on my coffee table.

Cooked some decent things: miso salmon (will write down that recipe soon), olive oil cakes, Cassie’s cookies, fish tacos, Beef Bourguignon. Pretty pink chicory arrangements that don’t need much more. Simple things, mostly, with good ingredients and layers of flavor piled on slowly or slapdash.

I’ve watched my family—all of them—become great cooks. It’s satisfying. They each excel in a particular domain: my husband at British comfort cooking and grilling, The oldest at clean-the-fridge vegetarian, the middle at pastas & risottos, and the youngest with his signature grilled cheese (his secret: Duke’s mayo, never butter, for frying). Yesterday, at the end of a long holiday break and a no-show snowstorm, we got out and had lunch at Noodle Village on Mott Street. The wonton soup with snips of garlic chives—which reminded me a little of ramps—made me think of Spring and I realized it’s really not that far away, because time goes so quickly now. We almost forgot to eat dinner because we were so full and got collectively absorbed in the Beli app, running through all the places we had eaten over the past year and laughing at the memories attached to those meals. Yes we were on our devices, but actually connected and conversing—imagine that! Food is a unifying force.

All told, the 2023-2024 switch felt like little more than a transition to a new datebook (yes, I still keep paper ones and save the old ones for reference, and then throw them away eventually). The world’s problems are not solved and the news is hard to watch. Sometimes all we can do is be kind to one another, cook together and feed each other…and hope it spreads, just a little.

They're Here

Happy June! I’m fresh back from a week in Virginia, where a strange sound awakened me around 5:30 most mornings. The first day, my brain registered it as someone’s home alarm system going off incessantly in the distance. I cracked open the quarter pie window of my childhood bedroom, and the outside world was loud—filled with a high, ringing roar that kicked up with the first hints of light and pulsated in the background throughout the day. It’s everywhere, most days: in the trees, in your head, all around you. On beautiful, warm mornings after a nighttime rain, the ruckus sounds downright apocalyptic. In the evening, the din morphs into something like a bunch of lazy-sounding weed whackers whizzing up and down the street.

The sound, of course, is the chorus of Brood X cicadas emerging after 17 years underground, all of them trying to get it on before it’s all over for their red-eyed tribe for another 17 years. Everywhere there are ragged holes left in the dirt where the nymphs emerged. Their molted shells, the color of perfectly done fried chicken, adorn every climbable surface, and the adults in their new bodies stumble around unsure of what to do with themselves. Some don’t look quite right after subterranean phase; they weave around drunkenly or beat a hopeless circle on their backs. The air is filled with them, like tiny drones, and each time a squirrel scampers across a tree bough a flock is unleashed into the sky. The sidewalks are littered with a flotsam of wings (the birds, who are pretty psyched right now, apparently spit those out).

If you come upon one emerging from its shell, it’s an eerie and beautiful sight: a diaphanous creature with etched crystal wings and eyes like little rubies. This is the stage when you can capture and eat them, apparently—"tree shrimp,” according to this guide. Within minutes their exoskeletons have hardened and darkened.

Their numbers are astonishing. They’re especially thick around my favorite tree, a huge and magnificently twisty old Japanese maple whose branches were barely large enough to support me and my sister when we were little, and under whose boughs, as teens, we were made to pose awkwardly for a portrait photographer. At the time of that picture (which I hope Cassie and I destroyed all copies of), the generation that would become the 2004 emergers were biding their time silently beneath us.

In cities that are reopening right now—definitely in my neighborhood of Brooklyn—the human population is behaving much like those cicadas. People are flocking out of their homes and into the streets and parks and bars and outdoor restaurant terraces (definitely one of the upsides of covid times). We’re not all getting it right. Some of us are still a little disoriented and dazed, and some have emerged a little damaged from the long stint underground. Others—plenty—are spreading their wings and looking for action.

Are the Brood X cicadas another plague descending upon us? Or are they a symbol of hope and renewal and the tenacity of nature? I’m a Spring optimist these days, so I’m leaning heavily toward the latter view.

Check out this cool Washington Post interactive on the cicadas’ life cycle.

If you’re not into eating bugs, here are some other seasonal cooking ideas (with links to recipes):

Asparagus:

•Throw them in a hot skillet with some butter or olive oil, a little salt. Turn them to brown on all sides; you just need around 5 minutes (a little more if the spears are fat). When they are almost done, scatter a bunch of shredded parm over them and let it crisp at the edges a bit. Squeeze some lemon on and serve.

•Steam and top with ramp butter or miso butter.

•Rub with olive oil, salt and chili flakes and throw on the grill

Strawberries:

•Try this vintage recipe for strawberry shortcake made with one huge biscuit.

•Buttermilk panna cotta with fresh strawberries

•Strawberry-almond muffins

Pea Shoots:

•Wilt the sturdier ones with miso and Spring garlic

•Use the wispier pea tendrils in this salad with pecorino and almonds

Fig Leaves:

Yes you can use them! Especially the tender new ones. They have a very special flavor. Here’s how:

•Wrap up fish like fresh sardines or branzino and grill.

•This fig leaf and honey ice cream from David Lebovitz will exceed your wildest expectations.

Green Tomatoes:

•Fried green tomatoes are the best!

•Pickle them

Greens, miscellaneous:

•Savory greens and feta tart

•Add some green tops (radish, carrot) to basil in a pesto to stretch it out and eliminate food waste.

If you love farmer’s markets but can’t always catch them, check out Our Harvest for those in NYC, Long Island, and parts of Connecticut. 25% and free delivery off your first order (or use discount code SHALLOT at checkout)!

emerging

On Recipe Keeping

In spite of all the heaviness and uncertainty in the world—or maybe because of it—my thoughts have turned to recipe keeping this week. How do we keep track of recipes? Is there a best way? How has that changed over time? What does this say about us and why does it matter (or does it)?

First, the book project I’ve been working on was inspired by recipe keeping, and I’ve had my head in archives of mid-century recipes—the good old fashioned tin box and jotted notecard variety, which has its charms. At a certain point in time, the inherent value of the recipe is eclipsed by the richness of the actual material the recipe is recorded on. Paper softens and goes to shades of ecru and sepia, ink blurs the slightest bit. Small food spatters that were the results of long-ago meal preparation become part of the paper’s grain. I realize, too, how much handwriting is changing, and how it used to be such an extension of someone’s personality—while in our present day it’s possible never to know the intimate quirks of penmanship in even close friends and coworkers.

One night around dinnertime, in one of my group chats, a lively conversation sprang up about our preferred ways of saving the recipes that are the keepers and the repeaters. I was surprised, among a relatively tech-savvy group, how much paper is still involved. One friend said she prints out the good recipes and puts them in a binder. Another explained her method of tracking beloved recipes in the “Notes” feature of her computer…except for the ones found in the New York Times’s integrated app, which live there in their cloud home. She added: “I print a lot of them, too, and put them in a folder.”

I think some of these systems are indicative of our generation—X—which came of age during a time when people were still fervidly scribbling letters to one another while quickly adopting email. We still love the tactile quality of paper but also, like the generations that came along after us, are basically cyborgs reliant upon the electronic devices attached to our bodies at all times.

I also find it fascinating, and also lovely, how each person’s system is such an individual expression of creativity—even when using a digital interface. Something like Pinterest (which is one friend’s go-to) has the visual appeal of recipe cards and also allows space for notes and an interface built for sharing.

When I started thinking about my own system, I realized with horror that the scattered and noncommittal way I approach the process is reflective of my general psyche. But somehow, it works. I bookmark Instagram posts that look promising. I once used but have now abandoned Pinterest (the sponsored content became overwhelming). I use and pay for the NYTimes cooking app but haven’t gone the extra step of saving the recipes. Often, I do a frantic, last-minute search of the internet or my now-unruly collection of print cookbooks, which is a completely inefficient (but enjoyable) route that leads to distractions and rabbit holes. Aside from baking, I usually cook from memory, anyway. The one thing I do in an organized fashion is working my favorite dishes—original or adapted—into actual recipes, photographing them, and aggregating them here in the Recipe section of this site.

But while it’s tempting to attribute recipe keeping techniques to generational differences, it’s not as simple as that. My kids make use of a combination of paper cookbooks and tricks found on platforms like TikTok (hello baked feta pasta!). My son, who is eight and loves to cook, just proudly followed his first recipe from a cookbook; he made us cream puffs from the Usborne First Cookbook.

My 16-year-old likes to fridge-forage and make her own creations, following her heart and stomach. My 15-year-old bought a Moleskine Recipe Journal a few years ago with some Christmas money and has been recording—and illustrating—her favorites in it ever since.

She makes this every morning

There are so many digital platforms out there, and I have yet to explore them all. Here are some, gleaned from personal recommendations and internet sources (including Kitchn):

New York Times Cooking (app and website): Yes, there’s a paywall! But in exchange you gain access to many decades’ worth of well-tested recipes. Comments section is also helpful in seeing what did and didn’t work for people.

Pinterest: This virtual “pin board” allows the user to organize and share in a visual way. I’m not sure quite what is going on with the “Suggested Content” on my own board, but other people swear by it!

Evernote: Note-taking and organizing app that allows you to arrange recipes by “favorites”, “to try,” or whatever categories work for you.

Google Drive: Yes, good ole-fashioned Google Drive! It’s a great way to integrate links, documents, notes in a way that’s cloud-based and therefore not tied to any individual device or shelf.

Paprika Recipe Manager: Available (and very well rated) on app stores.

Recipe Keeper: Similar to above.

♨︎♨︎♨︎♨︎♨︎♨︎

Please weigh in, if you’re so inclined, on your preferred way of recipe keeping or how you remember your parents/grandparents doing it. I’m really curious, and this is also research for my book. You can comment in the comments section or just hit “reply” if you’re getting this as a newsletter.

All About The Crunch

The Mayflower Inn is a destination of sorts in Washington, Connecticut—in the hills of Litchfield County. It has lately undergone a renovation and re-styling, and its restaurants have been revamped by chef April Bloomfield. Before all that, though, the Mayflower was a quietly upscale, slightly stuffy New England Inn where we would go for the occasional brunch on Mother’s Day or for a birthday dinner. In spring and summer, its best feature was the formal garden you could wander, getting lost in the boxwood mazes and stumbling upon Shakespearean quotes among the flowers. In colder months, a visit was guaranteed maximum coziness thanks to intimate little libraries and sitting rooms where you could take a glass of wine, commandeer your own personal fireplace, play a game of chess with your kid.

When Ben and I were married, many moons ago, a lovely bridesmaids’ luncheon was thrown for me at the Mayflower by my godmother and her daughter, and we most certainly had the Bibb Salad to start, because there was a time when that was the iconic salad at the Mayflower. A bit of a 90’s throwback, the dish was notable for its perfect balance of flavors and crunch: soft lettuce leaves, blue cheese, diced tomatoes, and crispy shallots. That’s it. (A journey into the internet’s memory tells me it was also dressed with truffle oil vinaigrette, but nooooo that can’t be, I’ve already overwritten that part.)

That salad was always, first and foremost, about the crispy shallots, and after receiving a huge order of shallots from OurHarvest recently*, I’ve become re-obsessed with their sweet, sublime crunch. If crunch were a food group, crispy shallots would give bacon bits some stiff competition. They are outstanding on any salad and even more so on Vietnamese noodle dishes, as a mix-in for a sour cream-based dip, a topping for your most decadent mac-n-cheese. A plus is that they are vegan so make a fine substitute for crumbled bacon on many plant-based things.

In the process of re-working this beloved salad recipe I tested out different techniques for making the crispy shallots. I tried the deep-fry method, where you heat the oil to a high temperature first and then let the shallots frizzle in it. It’s fast but also stressful, due to the vigilance needed to keep the shallots from burning. Another method—found on Bon Appétit and other sites—is to cover the shallots with a quantity of oil, adding both to the pan at the same time and cooking in a longer, more controlled manner. I was worried at first this would yield oil-sodden shallots, but my fears were allayed by a batch of perfectly browned and sweet little frizzles, which magically crisp up as they drain on paper towels. This is now my method of choice. Something I highly recommend if you are making this is using a mandoline to slice the shallots. They allow for even thickness, which translates to even cooking (i.e., you won’t have bitter burnt pieces mixed in with undercooked ones). If you’re not using a mandoline, just slice as evenly as you can. Instructions, plus the salad recipe, are below.

The Mayflower Salad lives on

Crispy Shallots

Adapted from Bon Appétit

• 1 cup or a bit more of vegetable oil (grapeseed, canola, refined sunflower all work)

• 3-4 large shallots, peeled, sliced crosswise to the approximate thickness of a dime

• Salt

Set up a tray covered with a couple of layers of paper towels. In a high-sided skillet or saute pan, put shallots covered in oil and turn heat on to medium high. Stir the shallots around with a fork to separate the rings. The shallots will cook slowly and begin to take on a golden color; once they do, watch them carefully and remove once they are golden brown—around 20-25 minutes. Pour the shallots and oil through a strainer with a bowl underneath to catch the oil. Allow to drain for a minute or two, and then spread shallots onto the paper towels and sprinkle with salt. They will crisp up after a few minutes. Store in a sealed container for a couple of days.

Reserve strained oil—which is now toasted shallot oil—for dressings and stir-fries.

Mayflower Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch Boston Lettuce, Bibb Lettuce or Butter Lettuce, washed and patted dry (keep leaves whole)

• 1 medium tomato, diced, excess seeds and goo removed

• Blue Cheese, crumbled (Bleu d’Auvergne or Arethusa Farms Blue both work great)

• Crispy Shallots

• Tarragon vinaigrette (below) or other basic vinaigrette

• Salt and Pepper to Taste

Instructions:

Assemble Salad as you like! Toss greens and tomatoes with a couple of tablespoons of vinaigrette then scatter blue cheese and shallots on top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Tarragon Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

• 1/2 tsp. honey or agave, or a pinch of sugar

• 1 tsp. Dijon mustard

• 2 TBS tarragon vinegar or just white wine vinegar (I make my own tarragon vinegar by inserting a clean bunch of fresh tarragon into a bottle of white wine vinegar and letting it infuse indefinitely).

• 1/4 cup oil: grapeseed oil, olive oil, a mix, or your choice of neutral oil

• Salt and pepper

Instructions:

Whisk together honey, mustard, and vinegar to blend. Slowly whisk in oil until it’s evenly blended. Season with a pinch of salt and a couple cranks of pepper to taste.

🧅🧅🧅

*OurHarvest, the source for the shallots I used, is an online farmer’s market and grocery that delivers to NYC, Long Island, and Southern Connecticut. You can use the code SHALLOT to get 25% off your first order plus free delivery…or just follow this link.

🧅🧅🧅

Why Cast Iron

Some of my earliest and happiest memories take place on the Piankatank River in Virginia. It’s a lesser-known estuary of the Chesapeake Bay and my grandparents had a home there, perched on a bluff, salt grayed and modern for the time when it was built. My Mom’s father, Poppy, traveled the world for the tobacco giant he worked for (back when cigs were health food), but he loved nothing more than getting up before dawn and going fishing with the local watermen. I remember it, because I slept in my grandparents’ room on a cot sometimes when the house was packed, and the shock of an alarm clock ringing out in the dark was real.

Scattered through these memories like punctuation are cast iron skillets, because that was where the bacon crisped in the morning and the fish fried at the end of the day. Sometimes they were fish Poppy brought home in a cooler, sometimes dinner was a small spot or perch I reeled out of the water myself, proudly, after sweaty hours swinging my legs off the side of the dock with no see’ums stealth bombing my sunburnt shoulders. After I lovingly swaddled my catch in a dish towel (my Nana tolerated this ritual and always managed to coax the fish away from me) Poppy would clean it on the long dock, tossing the guts into the water and then hosing away the scales. Before dinner he would go out to the garage, where an entire wall by the tool bench was hung with iron skillets of various sizes; there, he would select the appropriate one and then stride into the kitchen twirling that skillet in his hand like a boss.

I still relish the sound and smell of butter foaming and popping in an iron skillet, because butter foams and pops in an iron skillet in a very distinctive way, if you listen—more vigorously, more decisively. And when freshly caught fish, dredged lightly in cornmeal, is laid into foaming butter in an iron skillet it crisps in a way it can’t crisp in any other kind of pan. That’s not a scientifically proven statement but I stand by it.

During college, I pilfered a 9-inch cast iron skillet from my parents’ garage while I was home on a break. It seemed abandoned, so I claimed it. It already had a perfect, smooth black season to it and quickly became my favorite pan, following me to New York City and remaining my preferred vessel for making frittatas, skillet cornbread, and our current weeknight hack, an absurdly lazy version of Deb Perelman’s pizza beans.

That little skillet was joined by a larger, hefty 12-inch beast, which I bought in my 20’s while working as a professional cook. I seasoned it myself—a process that took a little patience but not as much as you might think—and it went from gunmetal gray to deep black and only improved with time. Sometimes I would even lug it along with me on jobs if I wasn’t sure about the client’s cookware situation; it felt like a security blanket. In the present day, it is my preferred place to sear steaks and make a big batch of bacon, or crisp brussels sprouts. All the meals we’ve cooked in those skillets have somehow left their imprints which will enhance now and future meals.

Saveur, in their most recent Top 100 issue, listed “The Great American Cast Iron Revival” as #24—but cast iron never actually went away. It was just joined, over the decades, by countless other products and their marketing clamor. I cook with many types of pans and love them all for different reasons. Copper I admire for its quick heating and conductivity—and if I’m honest, its prettiness. Stainless steel is plain but dependable, and I cherish my All-Clad collection, amassed mostly as wedding gifts. I have a small stable of Le Creuset pots, their colorful enamels somewhat dulled with the patina of cooking. Nothing is better for a languid braise. Nonstick pans? I mostly avoid them except for making omelets. But my cast iron skillets are the real workhorses, the Budweiser Clydesdales of the bunch: kind of clunky but handsome, solid, and all-American.

There are several reasons, nostalgia aside, why cast iron so good. Number one is browning and crisping power: steaks and fish and chicken skins get a really terrific sear in a cast iron skillet, and I would swear that they also pick up some undefinable boost in flavor. The thicker material of cast iron pans takes a little bit longer to heat up (unlike copper), but the heat inhabits the pan for longer, making them practical (and charming) for stove-to-table. Also: it sounds nerdy, but I find that the Lodge skillets I own (which may actually qualify as antiques by now) have a really ideal bottom-to-side ratio, which means they have enough depth for making fried chicken or cornbread but aren’t so high-sided that food begins to steam in their depths. The pan’s material can actually give your food an extra dose of iron, too, especially when the food cooked within it has some measure of acidity. And then there’s the surface. Once you get the pan seasoned and start using it regularly, its cooking surface is smooth and darn near non-stick. More on that below.

The options for cast iron cookware are varied these days, and most companies now offer pre-seasoned pots and pans. Lodge, the company that’s been at it since 1896, still makes the old-fashioned footed camp stove that allows you to cook directly over a fire—plus more streamlined configurations for the modern stovetop. Some other, newer, brands include F. Smithey Ironware Co., and Butter Pat, out of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Try your luck at a local thrift store or antiques store, too—you may strike black gold.

What is seasoning? Simply: seasoning is the process of coating the metal with a protective seal made of hardened oils. Bare cast iron has a natural topography of microscopic gullies and hillocks, and you want to fill all of that in and create a smooth plain so food can release during cooking. For the initial seasoning (which you may never need to do thanks to pre-seasoned products on the market today), cookware must be coated with oil and baked in the oven for an hour or so; Lodge has a nifty guide to this. The best oils, according to food scientist Harold McGee, are soy oil and corn oil because they are conducive to “polymerizing”. I use grapeseed oil for maintenance, since it also fits the bill, and is also a neutral oil that withstands high heat. You should never use oil with a low smoke point, such as extra virgin olive oil. Oils high in saturated fat, such as animal fats and coconut oil, are also not so great for seasoning or maintenance (but are totally fine for cooking).

Maintaining your cast iron automatically becomes easier the more frequently you use your cookware. This is because it won’t sit there and become rusty from neglect, and also because you are adding to its seasoning layer by cooking. Do not be afraid to wash it, either. My basic rule of thumb is to use the gentlest degree of cleaning needed but exert a little more force as the cleanup requires. Sometimes you can get away with simply wiping out the pan. Most often, I use gentle dish liquid like Seventh Generation (which I use at all times anyway) and a soft, natural-bristled brush rather than metal scouring pads. If you get stuck-on food particles in the pan, rubbing in some kosher salt is also a safe way to remove the gunk, but you can also use a metal scrubber if the job calls for it. Beware of leaving your pan soaking in the sink—the resulting rust rings are not fun. After cooking and cleaning, I heat up my pan on the stove and then rub a thin layer of oil (usually grapeseed but the others mentioned above work) on the surface and allow it to cool before putting it away. You can get away with not doing this every time, but definitely do it if you’ve cooked something acidic or have put your pan through a vigorous scrubbing.

What should you cook with your cast iron? Anything! Some people say to avoid cooking acidic foods in there, but it’s ok once you have built up a good surface—just make sure you rub some oil onto the clean, warm pan after cooking, say, tomatoes or lemony chicken in it. Also, a tip if you’re using the skillet in the oven: invest in a silicone handle cover. I can’t tell you how many times I have grabbed a searing hot handle with my bare hands without thinking beforehand—ouch!

Here are some cast iron recipe ideas from around the internet:

Edna Lewis skillet cornbread (note: I use my 9-inch skillet with this. The recipe says 10-inch. Either is fine)

Shakshuka

Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza

Breakfast Hash

Extra-Billowy Dutch Baby

Skillet Berry Crisp

Cast-Iron Chocolate Chip Cookie

…And here is our beloved pizza bean recipe—it’s brutally simple, it’s vegetarian, and we usually plunk down the skillet onto the table along with lots of garlic bread, and then just dive in.

Cheese pull for the win

Lazy Pizza Beans

Ingredients:

• 2 cans large white beans (such as cannellini or gigante beans), drained

• 1 jar Rao’s marinara or tomato basil sauce (other brands work, Rao’s is just our favorite! Not sponsored!)

• Pinch of salt

• 8-oz fresh mozzarella or more as needed, thinly sliced (we use around half of one of those big balls of mozz found everywhere in NYC)

• Optional: fresh basil for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Put beans into a 9-inch or 10-inch skillet. Pour in half a bottle of Rao’s sauce and add more as needed—you want the tops of the beans to still be visible. Stir in just a pinch of salt. Put in oven and bake for about 15 minutes, then cover the top with mozzarella and put on the top shelf of the oven and cook until it’s bubbling and the mozzarella has begun to brown. Scatter torn or sliced basil over the top, if using.

Garlic Bread:

People have their opinions, but here’s mine: Melt some butter and crush a bunch of garlic cloves (I use a microplane zester)—around 4 garlic cloves per 4 tablespoons butter. Stir and season with a pinch of salt. Now slice a baguette or long Italian loaf into 4-inch or so segments, then slice these in half lengthwise. Spread the cut sides liberally with garlic butter then toast in the oven while the pizza beans are cooking.

Poppy’s skillets - the O.G.s

Citrus is Good Medicine

Happy 2021! My office is currently doubling as a (very loud) 2nd grade classroom. More broadly, the new year so far seems like a bad sequel to the weird movie that was 2020.

Zoom Life (James) by Kamila Zmrzla @topbunartist

So let’s escape, for a moment, into all things citrus. It’s something I do in an ordinary January, but as this winter calls for an especially deep dive, I thought I would share some of my resources, ideas, and recipes for the juicy, puckery citrus fruits that are coming at us. In normal times my relationship with citrus has bordered on obsessive, as was revealed a few years back when I smuggled a dozen giant lemons and citrons back from Italy, only to narrowly wriggle my way out of a scrape with customs agents (ask my kids about this). The lemons made it home to my kitchen, but I don’t recommend making children your citrus mules.

First, if you’ve been underwhelmed by the citrus on offer at your local supermarket, here are some sources that bring fresh fruit to your door:

I recently discovered that Etsy—yes Etsy! is a treasure trove of fresh citrus fruits, shipped straight from someone’s sunny orchard in California or Florida. In fact, you can find all manner of exotic produce, seeds, and saplings—technically sold under “gifts”—on Etsy. 🤯 I recently ordered a box of pretty pink cara cara oranges from this shop and a box of blood oranges and unwaxed meyer lemons from here. It’s an interesting way to shop, since even with travel distance the supply chain is more direct.

As I was sitting down to begin this post, Mark Bittman’s newsletter slid into my emails. It’s devoted to all things citrus and he’s offering a box of mail order oranges, lemons, limes, etc. from California, along with some of his always excellent ideas and recipes.

Got a green thumb and a sunny window? You can order your own lil’ key lime, Meyer lemon, or Australian finger lime tree to keep you company (and bear fruit) through the winter months. Via Citrus and Four Winds Growers both ship to most states.

Frog Hollow Farm is also a solid source for great quality, seasonal citrus and other fruits.

Natoora, which aggregates produce from small growers, has many specialty varieties of citrus that you don’t see in stores available for delivery this time of year.

Recipe ideas:

Do you need a drink? If I had to pick just one cocktail, it would be the puckery and spicy tequila potion my sister Cassie regularly concocts, which has taken hold in my own household. Hey! We’re just warding off scurvy. The “recipe” is this: Squeeze together mixed varieties of citrus, serve the juice over ice with a splash of soda and as much tequila as you want or need. I don’t sweeten it, but you can put in a bit of agave, simple syrup, or sweetener of choice. Scatter in some jalapeño slices to spice it up. Taste and trust yourself!

I usually keep loads of lemons on hand, since a squeeze of the juice is a nifty way to bring up flavors and even reduce the amount of salt you need. One of our favorite weeknight dinners is a one-pan chicken with lemons, caperberries, and potatoes. Also on the savory side is this Citrus, fennel, and green olive salad. There’s plenty of sweet stuff on my site, too, including recipes for meyer lemon ginger curd, which is like silky sunshine spread on toasted croissants in the morning, and a lemon-quark snacking cake, which never sticks around very long after I make it. To satisfy a craving for both chocolate and citrus, try these Chocolate-Orange Pots de Crème—they are adult grade pudding cups.

Also, you should know about Andy Baraghani’s whole lemon-sesame sauce at Bon Appétit. It was the first thing I made with those contraband Amalfi Coast lemons, and it’s stellar with salmon.

Here’s a basic recipe for making preserved lemons, which are an essential pantry item in this house. I’m fond of slicing them very thinly (you eat them rind and all) and laying them atop sardines on toast, and I also make a tahini sauce that’s loaded up with preserved lemons and a little garlic.

This Blood Orange Bundt Cake with Bitters, from Eyeswoon, is truly magical. If you’re looking for a vegan version there’s a gorgeous one over on Fare Isle.

If you’re still here I’m sharing a totally unrelated link for this extraordinary story by Ann Patchett that has really stuck with me since a friend forwarded it along. It speaks of human connection and the mysteries of life, and yes the silver linings of Covid. It’s a lengthy one, so grab a slice of lemon cake or a tequila-citrus cocktail and find a comfortable spot.

The Cooks Who Came Before Us

Today would have been my Dad’s 78th birthday. I miss him all the time, especially when there’s something funny or exciting I really want to tell him about, and I have that split second impulse to shoot him an email or pick up the phone…and then I realize with a pit in my stomach that I can’t. If he were still alive I would tell him about an article that I just had published, which happens to be about his own mother—my Mimi—who was a food writer from 1946-1976. It’s also about all the women who came before, who helped build food writing back when it was seen as “just women’s work.” Please have a read. I’m thrilled to be featured in Comestible Journal and am a fierce advocate for small, independent publications.

Also: Dad was a huge influence on my love for food, cooking, and writing about it. He was always a great supporter and teacher. In honor of his birthday I’m including a version of a piece that I wrote in 2017 for The Virginia Sportsman magazine.

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Hunter, Fisherman, and Chef

Fall 2017

This May marked the passing of my father, Andy Williams, who was a longtime reader of this magazine; he also served as an inspiration and a tremendous resource for the recipes and stories I’ve put down here. Many who knew him would agree that he was not only passionate about hunting and fishing—as he was about his many chosen pursuits—but he was also an accomplished cook of wild-caught foods. He was generous with his talents and over the years came to be known as the chef-in-residence during the many hunting and fishing expeditions he enjoyed with friends. In many respects, these occasions became happenings around food, as well as celebrations of the bounty that nature had provided.

Back when I was a young child, I cringed at the bundles of bird carcasses he hauled home along with muddy boots and bloodied hunting gear, and I’m sure I pleaded with him tearfully to stop killing the creatures I saw as friends. I hadn’t yet made the connection between the hamburgers and chicken nuggets I enjoyed and the animals they had previously been, nor did I think about the quality of those animals’ lives. What I eventually learned, by watching his rituals, was a natural completeness and circularity of tracking and taking wild animals, preparing them, using every possible part of them, and crafting a beautiful meal that could be shared among friends. This knowledge was a gift—so many children now are disconnected from the origins of their food, and I got to understand and appreciate this ancient cycle from an early age.

I also got to learn a trick or two, as Dad was constantly refining his repertoire of recipes and adding new ones to it—whether taking courses at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, or experimenting with a new-to-him ingredient such as harissa or quatres épices, or tinkering with a recipe he had somehow cajoled a famous restaurant chef into sharing with him.

One constant was his stock-making routine, which took place every year once the air became crisp, and he’d amassed enough game bird frames and cast-off bits to fill the basement freezer. Then, he lugged down his tallest stockpot, which took its place on the rear right quadrant of the stove, beside the small wooden barrel into which he poured leftover wine to make his own vinegar. The first day, the pot sat tranquilly as delicate currents circulated around the jumble of bones, vegetables, and bundled herbs inside. Once the liquid went to gold and had drunk all the essence of the solids, he ran the whole mess through a fine, cone-shaped strainer into a smaller pot, where the clear stock concentrated further, overnight and into the next day, darkening from wheat-colored to ochre, and finally deepening to a rich umber emulsion through which bubbles rose thickly. You could chart the progress of the stock’s reduction by the strata of skin deposited around the inside of the pot, ruffling in the rising steam.

My love of cooking was born and grew in that kitchen, as I assisted or sometimes just watched, listened, and smelled. Even during the vegetarian years of my teens, I was attuned to what was going on at the stove and had a solid respect (if not appetite) for hunting and the reverence and resourcefulness that can and should go along with it. Later, with genuine interest, I spent many afternoons beside him at the counter, learning the components of classic cuisine, as well as how to clean and prepare wild birds and fish. By the time I was enrolled in cooking school in my 20’s, I was already conversant in the vocabulary of the kitchen and comfortable with the more visceral aspects of working with food.

Dad and I cooked many meals together over the years and enjoyed even more that we didn’t prepare; food was one thing we could always agree on and look forward to during visits. I will miss those times with him in the kitchen or at the table, and I treasure the recipes he so enthusiastically shared with me, usually in the form of rambling emails with meandering asides and silly puns. Below are two of his beloved fall classics, in time for dove season—one of his favorite times of year.

Andy’s Grilled Dove in Red Wine Marinade

Serves four as an appetizer, or as part of a dinner buffet

Ingredients:

• 1 cup red wine

• 1 shot of gin

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 3 TBS. soy sauce

• 3 TBS. balsamic vinegar

• 1 dried bay leaf

• 2 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 TBS dried thyme)

• 1 tsp. ground black pepper

• 1 tsp. salt

• 8 whole dove breasts, split, on the bone (16 halves)

Directions:

1. Whisk together all ingredients except dove breasts. Lay breasts in a casserole dish or in a zip-lok bag, and pour marinade over them. Marinate for approximately two hours, making sure the meat is uniformly covered with the marinade.

2. Preheat grill to medium-high flame. When the grill is hot, lightly oil grates and grill dove 3-4 minutes each side, or until medium rare. Do not overcook. Dove breasts can be eaten straight off the grill or served with collard greens, or with sautéed cabbage and caraway seeds.

Dove Breasts with Jalapeños and Bacon

Serves 4 as an appetizer

Ingredients:

• 8 whole dove breasts, split, on the bone (16 halves)

• 8 small jalapeño peppers, halved and seeded or 16 rounds of jarred jalapeño slices

• 8 slices bacon, cut in half

• toothpicks or small bamboo skewers

Instructions:

1. Preheat grill to medium-high. Lightly oil grates. Lay dove breasts bone side up on a flat surface, and place a piece of jalapeño in the center of each piece. Wrap a piece of bacon snugly around each breast, crossing ends on top of jalapeño, and secure with a toothpick or skewer.

2. Grill breasts 4-5 minutes on each side, or until dove meat is medium rare and bacon is crisp. Enjoy!

Seeds of Change

Dan Barber and the Rise of the Honeynut Squash

Dan Barber has a thing for seeds. He was nerding out about them on a recent Saturday at the Food Tank Summit, a conference aimed at bringing together some of the biggest leaders in food to discuss the problems and possible solutions of today’s troubled food system. Barber sat down onstage with journalist Jeff Gordinier as among the last but surely most anticipated speakers at the summit.

The Chef

Dan Barber made his name as a chef—first at Blue Hill restaurant in New York City, then presiding over the kitchen and fields at the idyllic Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, NY. His restaurants collectively hold three Michelin stars and he appears in the hit Netflix series Chef’s Table, but he’s also passionate about agriculture, biodiversity, and breeding more flavorful crops. That’s what led him to urge Michael Mazourek to develop the pint-sized, big-flavored honeynut squash—the vegetable that kicked off the conversation at his Food Tank panel.

The Breeder

Mazourek, a vegetable breeder at Cornell university, was visiting the kitchen at Stone Barns in 2009 when Barber challenged him: “why don’t you breed a butternut that tastes good?” His gripe was that the butternut, that voluptuous, khaki-colored staple of supermarket shelves, was watery and disappointingly bland. Flash forward to 2015. Working with Barber, Mazourek had developed and brought to market the honeynut: a shrunken-down, concentrated version of the butternut. The honeynut’s tan skin conceals a brilliant orange flesh so sweet and flavorful it needs no embellishment in the roasting—plus it’s lighter in water and richer in beta carotene than butternut squash.

A Tasty New Variety

The honeynut’s rise has been precipitous. They’ve carved out a presence at Whole Foods and Costco. On a recent Wednesday at Union Square farmers market, nearly every squash-growing farm displayed the cute cucurbits. According to Barber at Food Tank, Blue Apron this year purchased 2.3 million pounds of them for its meal kits—up from 1.89 pounds in 2017.

Subversion Through Seeds

But it’s not just about the taste, it’s political too. Out of the honeynut’s success Barber, Mazourek, and seedsman Matthew Goldfarb launched the company Row 7 last year. Their website’s homepage announces “A Seed Company Dedicated to Deliciousness,” but as Barber explained at the conference, it’s also dedicated to disrupting the status quo. Today, consumers and chefs have access to far fewer varieties than in the past, and those that dominate the market have been mostly bred for efficiency in yield and transportability—not actual flavor. Barber further explained that seed companies are incentivized to breed weak plants that need lots of inputs to thrive—not so great on the gustatory or environmental fronts. Mega corporations in large part control what gets to consumers, and according to Barber, “Big seed and big chemical are the same thing.” It’s all part of the industrialization of our food.

By nurturing collaborations between seed growers and chefs, Barber stated that his goal is to “upend the idea that [big agribusiness] can dictate and own the seeds.”

Gordinier chimed in: “Seeds are punk rock.”

Roasted Honeynut Squash with Mascarpone-Maple Cream and Brown Butter Toasted Seeds

Interview with Michèle Kim of La Petite Occasion

Michèle Kim’s station wagon trunk is crammed, crate on crate, with macoun apples. Macouns, she tells me, are her crisp go-to for caramel apples, which she is in the thick of producing for her company, La Petite Occasion—also a purveyor of caramel candies, toffees, and other confections. We meet in the parking lot of Arethusa al Mano, a café in Bantam, CT whose flagship dairy is across the street. Michèle has just picked up her haul of apples from the orchard and intends to sample Arethusa’s dairy products as potential ingredients for her candies. In between errands, we sit down for coffee and talk grilled cheese, bodybuilding, CBD, and of course candy-making.

Hey Michèle, what’s in season now?

Right now, apples are in season, so we make a wonderful apple cider caramel that uses reduced cider from an orchard called Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard in North Salem, New York. We also, for the farmers’ markets and the orchard, make caramel apples…300-400 caramel apples a week for this particular orchard.

What is your earliest food memory?

Probably the open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches that my mother used to make with gruyère cheese. Sounds totally mainstream now, but I grew up outside of Detroit, so gruyère cheese was not mainstream at the time. However, I’m half Swiss, so my mother remembered the wonderful nutty flavors of gruyère. I was probably one of the most popular kids in the area because it was something new and different. Kids in the mid-70’s didn’t usually have (that).

How do your early food memories and experiences inform your company and what you make now?

I have a very European sensibility. The whole small batch, small producer, small product is just kind of ingrained in me. Even though we went to grocery stores and did the mainstream stuff, our small batch products are definitely created from my memories as a kid.

Where did you learn the art of confection?

The very first step was definitely in culinary school. I went to the Institute of Culinary Education—which started as Peter Kump’s. I remember making truffles, and the pastry chef was incensed because I was always covered in chocolate, and as we know the art of confection is supposed to be very neat and exact. I was diving in! Chocolate, all the way.

And then professionally?

I continued to expand my knowledge of confections when I worked at Eleven Madison Park for chef Nicole Kaplan in 2000 until the beginning of 2001, and I worked in pastry, so I made toffee, and I helped her with ganache, and we made caramels and just everything. I personally found at the time that I just was more interested—and I have to say better—at doing candy than dealing with gluten. Gluten and I don’t get along, we are just not friends, we don’t work together well. But me and sugar, well that’s a completely different thing. I always had a sweet tooth.

You spoke earlier about seeking out local ingredients. How has your relationship with your suppliers evolved over the life of your business?

In culinary school (in 2000) we were introduced to the Slow Food movement. Back to my childhood, it reminded me of when I would go to Switzerland to visit my father, how he would have a little shop for everything. He would get dairy one place, he would get beef another place, he had a relationship with all these small shops, he knew the owners. My great-aunt actually owned her own restaurant in a little town called Colombier, in Switzerland. So all of that adds together to form this desire to become more locally connected with small-batch producers in Westchester, Dutchess County, Putnam County. When we moved up (from New York City to Mahopac) it was great, and immediately it just kind of clicked together. Probably my closest relationship with a dairy producer is with Hudson Valley Fresh, a co-op of 10 farms in the Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley area. Literally the cows are milked, it’s pasteurized and homogenized, put on the truck, the truck delivers it to the main facility, it’s bottled, then put on the delivery trucks and then we get it, so it’s a really fast process, and it’s just extremely fresh. I love that. I love the fact that every single batch we make is a little different based on what the cow’s been eating that day. I call myself a candy farmer because I believe that we literally use so many local farm ingredients that we kind of farm our candy! 

What has it been like selling at farmers’ markets?

In the fall and the winter especially, we sell our caramels at a different farmers’ market each weekend. And because we’re not at the same spot more than once a month, our sales do really well. Because we’ve developed a following, they’re waiting for us. And we have a wonderful relationship with the other vendors at the market. We trade caramels for cheese, and greens, and produce, and amazing bread like Wave Hill Bread in Connecticut. It works really nicely.

Part of your identity is small batch. Do you ever think of scaling up?

I would like to continue being small batch but scale up, which sounds crazy, but I think that one issue that a lot of people like myself have is that when they start getting bigger they lose a little bit of that personality in their product. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve stayed small, because I refuse to do that. One thing is that our caramels have no stabilizers in them at all. I’ve always wanted to have a caramel that is literally a five-ingredient base, and we’ve been able to do that. However, once you get into distribution and you’re starting to ship West Coast, or even mid-country, it gets tricky, so my goal right now is just permeate New York State. Right now, I just want to make sure that whatever we do, we can maintain the integrity of our product. 

Just for example, today, I am shipping a care package to a body builder! A female body builder in Gilbert, Arizona. People who are really into fitness, they want clean ingredients, they want something that’s simple, they want something that’s five ingredients. So it’ll be interesting to see how that package holds up shipping to a state where it’s 90 degrees right now.

How did you link up to a bodybuilder in Arizona?

Harvest Moon Orchard, who provides us with the apples (and) apple cider…the sister of the manager is a fitness nut, and she started to get into bodybuilding. After her first competition I sent her a little care package. Well, she took this great photo in her bikini, onstage, eating a caramel and it was awesome, so all these people started to follow us that were in that fitness world, so that’s how that started. It’s really strange how all these things are interconnected.

On another wellness note, can you describe a bit about the new product that you’re developing?

Well, right now, we’re testing only; we’re working with a local hemp oil manufacturer that is based upstate. I’m not putting out their name because they haven’t launched yet. We’re testing an organic, vegan caramel. We’ve had a couple people test it, and so far it’s going well. Right now, New York State is very strict; you are not allowed to sell CBD (cannabidiol) food products and that’s actually an FDA thing, so once the FDA gets everything all set up, then we’ll be ready to go. Right now, we’re just preparing, we have no idea when this is going to be—it could be in a year, or it could be five. But a lot of states, especially Kentucky, are really pushing to get FDA approval for edibles—and that is hemp edibles, not cannabis. It’s different! Hemp does not have THC, or it has extremely small quantities.

Food production tends to be repetitive, and at times monotonous. Do you have any tricks to get through a big order?

I actually prefer the bigger batches, because it’s easier to focus when you have a large order. Normally each batch that we produce is about seven pounds. A couple years ago, we had a tasting box company use our caramels. This is the largest we’ve ever done: approximately 8000 pieces. That takes about a week to do. So we hire extra people to help cut and wrap. The production itself I don’t mind, but to actually pack it up, that’s the monotonous, horrible part. I hate packaging! I am very lucky because I have a woman who works with me who is very into that, and she literally produces the same amount as like two people, and she’s English and so she’s always got some funny, salty comment, so it’s great, it keeps everything interesting.

Any playlists or podcasts you use during production?

There are very few people who can talk and work at the same time. When (I) get music involved it’s basically my way of saying “shut up and focus,” but in a nice way. Keeps the energy going and most people like that.

How do you get new ideas and inspiration for your products?

I’m married to a copywriter who runs a small ad agency, so he’s throwing stuff out there all the time, so it’s not very difficult to get new ideas. It’s more of me picking from his giant list of ideas what I think is going to be appropriate.

How do you maintain the same enthusiasm you had when you first started La Petite Occasion?

I just really enjoy what I do, and I think one thing that I realized about myself, I am a perpetual tweaker, so I’m constantly trying to perfect the recipe, I’m always trying to change it. We now have a small distributor, so we have our products out there, which is a great thing for me, because it’s like oh good, now I get to tweak it, again, so it has the appropriate shelf life, because now we’ve got it going on trucks and stuff. I love to constantly update the product and try and make it better and more sustainable all the time. It can be exhausting, but that’s what I enjoy doing. So as long as I can do that I’m great, I’m happy.

Find Michèle online and order her products at lapetiteoccasion.com

Instagram: @lapetiteoccasion; Facebook: La Petite Occasion; Twitter: @Chefmlkim