We are lucky to be celebrating a series of social events denied us last year. After being locked down for so long, there is an embarrassment of riches laid out before us this weekend: Juneteenth (our newest federal holiday), Father’s Day, and the Summer Solstice. Let the summer games begin!

Here is the latest update from the Spy Container Garden 2021: we have tomatoes. And a few of them are turning red. I listened to latest episode of The Splendid Table podcast while Luke the wonder dog and I were working on our 10,000 steps the other day. It is delightful episode about June in three regions of the United States: https://www.splendidtable.org/episode/2021/06/11/3-junes One of the guests interviewed was Chef-Farmer Matthew Raiford, who farms and cooks in Coastal Georgia. He said there are three essentials that must to be ripe by the Fourth of July: corn, tomatoes and watermelon. The Spy on track for the tomatoes, with one is ripening on the vine, and another is pinking up on the kitchen windowsill.

Tomorrow is Juneteenth. Juneteenth commemorates the day when the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston learned they were free. Red is a powerful color, and red foods are important to Juneteenth celebrations: red beans and rice, strawberry soda, watermelon, red velvet cake, barbecued meats, and, of course, tomatoes. https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/a36479941/juneteenth-food-traditions/

Fresh tomato tarts are perfect to bring to your Juneteenth celebration. They aren’t fancy, but they are beautiful, and they are deelish. I found a few tomato tart recipes which showcased the beauty of tomatoes. The tarts are simple to put together and can be brought to potlucks and picnics all tomato season long. They are divine warm, or at room temp. You can use store-bought tomatoes if you must, but it is smugly satisfying to use the ones grown in your own back yard. Save the store-bought card for the pie crust.

I adapted this recipe from the New York Times:
Pie dough
1 ½ pounds ripe tomatoes (about 4 medium)
¼ cup pesto*
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella (I used some left-over mozz from last week’s Friday Night Pizza, and added another handful of ground Parmesan cheese)
1 tablespoon torn fresh basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3 large eggs
⅓ cup heavy cream
½ teaspoon Maldon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

*For the pesto I tossed a fistful of basil leaves (we have basil growing in abundance on the Spy Container Farm this year!), a clove of garlic and about 1/4 cup of olive oil into the blender and blended it until it was a bright emerald green liquid. Then I spread it with a pastry brush on the browned pie crust.

• Heat oven to 350°F. Fit the rolled-out dough into a 9-inch tart pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork.
• Bake for 15 minutes, until beginning to brown at the edges. Increase the oven temperature to 375 degrees.
• Meanwhile, cut the tomatoes into 1/2-inch slices. Place in a colander to drain excess tomato liquid for 20 minutes.
• Spread pesto in an even layer over the pie crust. Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella and Parmesan over the pesto. Scatter the fresh, torn basil and oregano over the cheese.
• In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream, salt and pepper.
• Neatly place the sliced tomatoes evenly over the cheese and herbs in overlapping concentric circles. I found this process strangely soothing, although I heard Julia Child’s voice in my head: “It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate — you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.”
• Pour the custard evenly over the tomato slices. Bake until the filling is set and won’t jiggle when shaken, about 35 minutes.
• Remove from the oven and let cool slightly before serving warm. This tart can also be served at room temperature. It is also delicious cold, eaten out of the fridge for lunch, when you are suddenly ravenous and can’t be bothered to make a delicious tomato sandwich from the bounty on the windowsill.

This tart was lighter than a frittata or quiche.

There usually is a paywall challenge with New York Times articles, but here is a link to the recipe, just in case: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021252-heirloom-tomato-tart?

Variations:

Easy: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/never-fail-tomato-tart

Fancy: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/annas-tomato-tart-3756210

Very involved: https://www.davidlebovitz.com/tomato-tart-recipe-fresh-herbs/

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
— Toni Morrison

Once upon a time, long ago in the golden age of travel and visiting folks, we stopped to see friends who live outside of Philadelphia. Our Mr. Smith is a fabulous cook, and the meals he prepares are the stuff of legend. He made an impressive Dorie Greenspan chicken recipe for our dinner. His version of Dorie’s “Chicken in a Pot: The Garlic and Lemon Version” was a show stopper. (The dish is the cover photo for her book “Around My French Table” https://www.eatlivetravelwrite.com/2015/05/french-fridays-with-dorie-chicken-in-a-pot-the-garlic-and-lemon-version-the-final-recipe/)

Mr. Smith brought a large Dutch oven to the table, its lid was sealed with brown, baked dough crust. Dramatically, with a sturdy screwdriver, he broke the dough seal, and a billow of fragrant steam puffed out. The pope had been elected. This the first time I had ever seen that cooking technique. (https://www.meilleurduchef.com/en/recipe/flour-dough-sealing.html) After the applauding the special effects, we were delighted to hungrily fall on the wondrous garlic-y chicken casserole, while talking a mile a minute. And we resolved to replicate this dining experience at home.

The first couple of times Mr. Sanders attempted Mr. Smith’s chicken there were hits, and there were misses. He was fooled by the cover photo of the newly acquired cookbook, which shows a whole chicken inside the Dutch oven, instead of a more accurate and true-to-the recipe, cut-up chicken. It was pretty tricky trying to brown a whole bird, which he attempted, before re-reading the recipe. Which then necessitated buying a boning knife, so he could cut a whole chicken into pieces. (I would have bought chicken pieces, pre-cut, but I am a journeyman cook…) And then the seal that the dough was supposed to provide was not as tight as was required. So we bought a fancier Dutch oven, with a better fitting lid. It was slightly smaller than the previous pot. Which brought more complications to the process.

This is the time of year when I do my best to stay away from the kitchen and the heat of the oven. This is when I enjoy Mr. Sanders and his penchant for grilling outside on the back porch. We sit out there, tossing the ball for Luke the wonder dog, watching as fireflies begin to appear in the darkening hydrangeas. We enjoy the dissipation of the heat of the day, while he flips burgers, rolls foil-wrapped ears of corn, times the salmon, adjusts the chicken breasts. He is the grill master. Imagine my surprise last weekend when we spent an entire afternoon in the kitchen, almost following a Dorie Greenspan recipe for roasted chicken.

Mr. Sanders had originally intended to replicate Mr. Smith’s chicken-in-a-pot dish, as a Sunday dinner showpiece. We stopped by the farmers’ market on Saturday and picked up a chicken from our favorite poultry farmers, choosing a 4.5-pound bird. On Sunday, upon re-reading the original recipe, Mr. Sanders decided to opt for something new. He had flipped through the Greenspan cookbook and landed on “Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux”. Les Paresseux are lazy people. Certainly lazy people would never have attempted this dish, which required yet another trip to the fancy grocery store. We have a pot of rosemary on the porch, but no sprigs of fresh thyme or oregano, because the dried stuff would certainly never do. Nor did we have baby potatoes or four shallots, or French bread to line the bottom of the pot, absorbing juicy goodness while the chicken was cooking.

Les Paresseux chicken does not not need to be cut up, so it looks quite pretty. But our fat bird filled the fancy Dutch oven, snugly. There wasn’t enough room to add the newly acquired herbs, vegetables, garlic and French bread. Instead, he lined a baking sheet with parchment paper, drizzled them with oil, and roasted them separately. The chicken cooked by itself in the fancy new Dutch oven, without a top, without veggies, and without a dough seal.

This was the intended recipe: https://www.food.com/recipe/roast-chicken-for-les-paresseux-500592 Instead we had a simpler, improvised roast chicken, with a side of roasted veggies, and plates of bread and butter. https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/simplest-roast-chicken-8-ways with sheet pan vegetables. https://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/sheet-pan-roasted-vegetables Simplicity. And it took all of a Sunday afternoon.

“One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.”
–Laurie Colwin

Education doesn’t stop for vacations. You should learn something new every day, and often it can be surprising. Over the Memorial Day weekend we visited a vast farmers’ market in another city, and as we roamed the many booths and displays we were overwhelmed by the abundance of colorful items for sale: cut flowers, bedding plants, fruits and vegetables, smocked infant dresses, driftwood sculptures, honey, and baked goods.

There were huge displays of tomatoes: conventional red, slicing tomatoes, plum tomatoes, jewel-like multi-colored cherry and grape tomatoes. The bulbous and irregularly-shaped heirloom tomatoes glowed purple, yellow, orange and crimson. Grocery store stacks of trucked-in produce cannot compete with the wide array of glorious produce at a local farmers’ market. My mind raced while considering the permutations and possibilities of so many delicious choices – unlike the weekly confrontation with flavorless, hot house tomatoes and bland, boring lettuces.

One booth we visited had Kirby cucumbers, salad cucumbers, cabbages, kale, grape tomatoes, and shiny, red onions that were still attached to their leafy green headdresses. We saw a battered pickup truck whose entire bed was filled to the brim with sweet potatoes. Next to it was a display with freshly dug red potatoes, gleaming tomatoes, human head-sized cabbages, baskets and boxes of blueberries, many, many containers of strawberries, and watermelons galore.

We staggered around, awe-struck by the vast harvest spread out before us. And then we saw them: weird, alien creatures with green, pointy heads. It was our first encounter with pointed head cabbages. How had we never seen pointy cabbages before? Ignorance comes from rarely coloring outside the lines of the chain grocery store. Bring your mask and head outdoors to a farmers’ market or a farm stand this weekend, and see what you have been missing. You are sure to get an education and an appreciation for all the hard work involved in setting food down on your table.

I have since learned that pointed head cabbage (which is also called sweetheart cabbage) is softer and sweeter than the white and red cabbages I grew up on. I am planning on some innovative new coleslaws and stir fries this summer. I brought home a couple of pointed head cabbages, which should keep nicely in the fridge, while I do my research.

Classic coleslaw: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/coleslaw/

Pointed cabbage coleslaw: (There is a kitchen sink hidden in here, I am sure. As well as some whopping typos, still the cook’s enthusiasm is infectious.) https://myfattyassets.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/pointed-cabbage-coleslaw/

This is quick and easy and deelish – three of our favorite recipe qualities: https://schoolofwok.co.uk/tips-and-recipes/flash-fried-sweetheart-cabbage-with-dried-chillies-and-sweetened-soy

Here is a charming, and short, video on stir frying sweetheart cabbage:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg2_ZuyS3Tw&t=1s

“I said I ‘liked’ being half-educated; you were so much more ‘surprised’ at everything when you were ignorant.”
― Gerald Durrell