It’s been a rough summer

… but I’m slowly starting to get back my sense of smell. Having learned way more than I ever wanted to know about anosmia, I’m thankful that my doctor’s initial diagnosis – a lingering, low-grade sinus infection left over from an awful cold I had in April and May – appears to have been the right one.

It’s been very little fun being unable to smell – or, really, taste – much of anything. Takes the fun right out of eating and cooking, I tell you; I haven’t even bothered going to the market for the past month.

That said, I do have one just-in-time-for-the-season treat to recommend, courtesy of my friend Lisa, who blogged about it:

Smitten Kitchen’s take on tomato pie

Tomato pie

Since I still can’t cook by taste, as is my habit, I made this last week following the recipe to the letter (well, OK, I used my food processor on the biscuit crust, and I did follow the advice of some of her commenters and drained the tomato slices before putting them in the shell, with a layer of cheese on the bottom to help seal against sogginess).

And then I invited a friend over for dinner, because while I knew there was nothing about this recipe I shouldn’t like, and it certainly looked wonderful, I couldn’t tell if it tasted as good as it looked – although the biscuit crust was wonderfully flaky and crisp.

My dinner companion, however, deemed it “fabulous.” And had seconds.

(Don’t be put off by the mayonnaise – it merges with the tomato-corn mixture and – again, according to my friend – isn’t identifiable beyond “yum!”)

---

During the flavor hiatus, and particularly while on the antibiotics that appear to have killed off the sinus ick, I’ve found myself drinking a lot of Reed’s Extra Ginger Ginger Ale. I’m not much of a soda drinker, but ginger calms my stomach and stimulates my appetite, and Reed’s is pungent enough I could almost taste it.

However, it’s spendy, and the bottles aren’t refundable in Oregon. So I rummaged around my bookmarks and found a recipe for home-made gingerale that I’d been meaning to try.

Since one of the things I like about Reed’s is its citrusy base, I altered the recipe a little and came up with something pretty doggoned tasty, at a fraction of the cost of the bottled stuff. If you’re a ginger fancier, try it out. It’s very refreshing – and it also works as a great base for my favorite warm-weather adult beverage, the Gin Gin Mule.

Home-made Gingerale

Ingredients

• 1 hand ginger, about 4 inches worth, sliced into 1/8″ disks
• Juice of 4 Meyer lemons
• pinch salt
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup brown sugar
• Seltzer water

Combine ginger, lemon juice, salt and water in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, boil for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and strain into a bowl. Stir in sugar until it dissolves; allow to cool. Pour into a glass jar and refrigerate.

When you want ginger ale, mix a standard shotglass of the ginger syrup with 1 cup seltzer; serve over ice.

I was a little short on ginger last time I made this, so I substituted an inch or so of galangal I had in my freezer, sliced. It adds a lovely floral zing to the syrup.

It’s hot …

… and cooking is the last thing on my mind.

Thank heavens for the farmers’ market, and for that magic moment at the height of summer when all the berries converge.

On Saturday, our market still had strawberries – last of the crop, according to the vendor who had sold out by 11. Raspberries were everywhere, the first fat blueberries had arrived, and one vendor even had early Marionberries. Another had ripe, tart red currants, glowing like rubies. I bought some, though I have no idea what to I’ll do with them.

There were also loads of cherries – this seems to be a bumper year for the cherry crop. I bought a bag of those to take to a barbecue, but I saved the berries for myself, and I’ve been eating them by the handful and the bowlful – mostly just as they are, sometimes with a little cream and (in the case of the Marionberries, which haven’t reached their sweet peak yet) a sprinkle of sugar. I did make an easy cobbler with some of the blueberries this morning, heavy on the berries and light on the sugar. That’s breakfast for the next few days.

I’d live on fruit alone right now if I could, but my body has a protein habit. Finding a way to satisfy that with a minimum of kitchen time can be a challenge. Not so this week; the young fisherman who’s been bringing live crab to market also had smoked tuna loins. I threw together a simple rice-and tuna dish that’s a distant cousin to the tuna noodle casseroles I grew up with. You don’t need a recipe for this kind of thing, just a general method.

Last night, after the coastal breezes blew the heat away, I cooked up a pot of brown Basmati rice and put it in the fridge overnight. This evening, I mixed it with some finely diced onion, fresh peas, and about half of the tuna, shredded with my fingers. To boost the smokey flavor, I crumbled up an ounce or so of Rogue Creamery’s Smokey Blue cheese, mixed that in with the tuna and rice. The zest and juice of half a lemon and a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise to keep everything moist, a sprinkle of parmesan and half an hour in a 350 oven and I’ve got dinner (and a couple of days worth of lunch).

These are the kinds of dishes summer calls for: things you can throw together quickly, filling but not heavy, and full of flavor. Not to mention endlessly adaptable. No peas? Dice up some summer squash, or broccoli, or whatever you find at the market. No rice? Use pasta. Trying to watch the fat content? Moisten the casserole with stock instead of mayonnaise.

And then have berries for dessert.

“The season of bounty …

… is here.” That’s how one of the vendors at the Albany Farmers’ Market put it this morning, grinning as she tucked my purchase into my backpack for me. Looking around at stalls brimming with variety, I couldn’t argue: Snap peas and sugar peas, lettuce and leeks on one table, flats of berries and cherries on another; late asparagus over there, jams and jellies and honey over here, fresh-baked bread nearby. We’ve finally reached the season of more food than flowers – not that I have anything against flowers, but they aren’t why I go to the market.

Never mind that the weather is still cloudy and cool (the farmers don’t). It’s summer. Just look at the calendar: Solstice falls tomorrow, and while we in North America tend to call it the first day of summer, I like the older traditions of people who marked the start of summer and planting season in May, and thought of the solstice as mid-summer. Which makes tonight Mid-Summer’s Eve, a night to frolic and feast and enjoy the longest day of the year.

Which seems as good an excuse as any to do something special but easy with the gorgeous cherries I brought home from the market today, in a mixed flat with strawberries and raspberries (which will probably get eaten plain, by the handful, if my berry-red fingertips are any indication.)

Really good fruit doesn’t need much help. A simple preparation that focuses on the flavor (and doesn’t tie you to the kitchen on a summer’s day) is just the thing. I thought about cherry pie, with the ruby-red fruit bubbling up in the interstices of a latticed crust, but that takes work, and who am I out to impress today, anyway? Still: Cherries … pie crust … hmmm… ooh, ooh – cherry galette!

A galette is just an easy, rustic pie. Instead of laying the crust in a pie pan and fiddling with a top crust, you center it on a baking sheet, mound the fruit in the center and pull up the dough to partly cover the top. The filling needs less liquid than you might use in a pie – otherwise it tends to leak out before it sets. Bake and serve as you would any old pie.

This recipe makes a small galette – big servings for two, or small ones for four. The almonds and kirshwasser are chosen to punch the pure cherry flavor, and that they do!

Mid-Summer Cherry Galette

Ingredients

• Crust for a single-layer pie. Make your own, or buy it in the refrigerator case
• 2 pints ripe local cherries, pitted and halved. (A cherry pitter makes this a snap!)
• 2 tsp kirschwasser (cherry eau de vie) or lemon juice
• 1/4 cup + 1 tsp sugar, more or less, depending on the sweetness of your cherries. I like to taste fruit, not just sugar.
• 1/4 cup almond meal. I use Bob’s Red Mill, but it’s easy enough to grind up a handful of raw almonds in the food processor.

Method:

Preheat oven to 375F.

Roll out pie crust on a baking sheet (I used a tart pan because it was handy).

Toss cherries with 1 tsp of the kirsch (or lemon juice, if your cherries are especially sweet).

Mix 1/4 c sugar and almond meal; toss that with the cherries. I chose almond meal as a binder for the juicy cherries because almond and cherry are well-matched flavors – and because typical fruit pie thickeners – corn starch, tapioca – can result in a gluey filling. Besides, I had almond meal in the pantry.

Mound filling in the center of the crust; pull up the edges, pleating and pinching as you go, to mostly cover the fruit. Don’t worry if it isn’t symmetrical – galettes are supposed to look rustic!

Brush crust with remaining kirsch or lemon juice; sprinkle with remaining tsp sugar.

Bake 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Some juice will invariably leak out.

Serve warm or cool. Top with ice cream – or creme fraiche!

Happy Solstice!

In the best of all possible worlds …

I’d be reveling in that brief, magical season when tomatoes, sweet corn and peaches are all ripe, abundant and cheap.

But this isn’t that year, it seems, at least in this part of the Willamette Valley.

The peach crop has been sparse, thanks to bad weather when the trees were in bloom. Some varieties haven’t been seen at the market at all; others are small, buggy or expensive.

Sweet corn is around, but not by the usual truckloads, and not at the usual prices. I’m seeing corn priced at 5 ears for a dollar, double what it was last summer.

And tomatoes? Sloooooooow to ripen, both in back-yard gardens and, evidently, on the farms. The six tomato plants in my own garden, all different heirloom varieties, are loaded with fruit, but only one of them – a Black Plum – has produced any ripe tomatoes yet. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping they’ll ripen in the next couple of weeks, before the rain starts up or the nights get frosty.

But woudn’t you know it: today’s Albany market finally had a great selection of tomatoes, including lots of big, ripe heirloom varieties – and I was in no position to buy, because I’m heading out of town for a nine-day vacation in Seattle. Now’s the time to eat the produce on hand, not stock up on more.

Besides, a friend whose wife has better gardening prowess than I do dropped off a bag of mixed cherry tomatoes last night, and they need to be eaten before I leave town on Monday.

At this time of year I crave tomato sandwiches. Bread, tomatoes, mayonnaise, maybe a little black pepper or a bit of minced basil = heaven. As much as I like a good cherry tomato, you can’t make a decent sandwich from them, because the little suckers keep squirting out from between the slices of bread.

So I settled for the next-best thing: A BLT salad.

I don’t know why you’d need a recipe for this, but here’s one, anyway.

BLT Salad

Per serving:

• 1 thick slice of slightly stale artisan bread, cut or torn into bite-sized pieces. (I used a some leftover roasted garlic bread from Big River restaurant in Corvallis that a friend had brought to my Labor Day barbecue.)*
• Olive oil
• Lettuce, torn in bite-sized pieces*
• Cherry tomatoes. Small ones can stay whole; if they’re more than a mouthful, slice them in half.*
• 2 slices of bacon, fried and crumbled*
• Real mayonnaise. Helman’s/Best Foods is canonical. Make your own if you’re feeling adventurous
• 3-4 leaves of fresh basil, minced*
• Black pepper

Toss the bread in a little olive oil. Wrap it in foil and put it in a 350F oven while you cook the bacon (10-15 minutes).

On a plate, layer lettuce, toasted bread, tomatoes and bacon. Top with a spoonful of mayonnaise, scatter basil over the top and finish with a generous grinding of black pepper.

* Locally grown or made ingredients

Substantial summer salads

Tuscan Bread Salad

Wouldn’t you know it: The mood for salad struck this week, just as the hot spell finally broke and we got some rain? Where were my salad cravings when it was 100 degrees in my kitchen? As wilted as the greens in my refrigerator, I guess.

No matter. The salads I’m interested in this week are more than just greens-and-crunchy-stuff, they’re salad-as-a-meal, complex and flavorful but not the least bit difficult to make. And they use a lot of the same ingredients, but with quite different results. One brings back memories of my daughter-of-a-Southern-mother childhood; the other is a tradition from an entirely different part of the world. They’re both delicious – and they both benefit from an overnight stay in the refrigerator to let the flavors meld.

Tuscan Bread Salad

Ingredients

• 2 cups hearty bread*, cut or torn into bite-sided cubes. You want bread of substance for this, and you want it a little stale; I used the heel end of a round sourdough loaf I bought at the farmers’ market last weekend; whole-grain bread is also wonderful.
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 small cucumber, or a couple of lemon cucumbers*, scrubbed, peeled (if the peel is tough, otherwise don’t bother) and cut in chunks
• 2 medium ripe tomatoes*, cut in chunks, or several little tomatoes, halved. I used small BlackPlums from my garden
• 1/2 small onion, chopped*
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/8 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp capers (optional)
• 2-3 Tbsp fresh basil*, coarsely chopped and then rubbed between your hands to release the aromas
• salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• Fresh greens*
• Pecorino romano cheese

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F. Toss the bread with 1 Tbsp olive oil, lay it out in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, turning once, until the bread is toasty brown and fairly hard. Cool.

In a medium bowl, combine the bread, tomatoes, cucumbers and onion. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, capers and basil. Pour over the bread mixture and toss well to coat. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight to let the bread soak most of the liquid.

Before serving, correct seasoning if necessary. Dress plates with a bed of washed, torn greens, top with a generous portion of bread salad and use a vegetable peeler to shave a few curls of Pecorino romano cheese on top.

Serves two, generously (or one, with plenty left for the next day’s lunch). If you’re the sort of person who insists on protein at every meal, this is also very good with drained albacore tuna mixed in just before serving.

Black-eyed Pea Salad

Black-Eyed Pea Salad with Roast Pork

I know, I know: People who didn’t grow up with black-eyed peas sometimes find them a little off-putting. An ex of mine once sampled my traditional mom’s-recipe New Year’s Eve black-eyed peas, grimaced and muttered, “Tastes like dirt.” I can’t argue with that – but to my mouth, that’s “earthy,” and it’s a great flavor, especially when the beans are cooked from scratch instead of dumped out of a can. Now, normally, I automatically throw a chunk of salt pork or (when I can find it) ham hock in with black-eyed peas. This salad is so flavorful, though, it can do without (vegetarians take note). And while I’m having it as a dinner side dish tonight, I plan to eat it again for lunch tomorrow, all by itself, and quite possibly dinner tomorrow night, too. It’s that good.

Ingredients

• 4 cups cooked black-eyed peas (or 2 cans, if you must, or an equivalent amount of frozen black-eyed peas.)
• 2 large tomatoes* (or an equivalent in smaller ones), chopped
• 1 large cucumber* (or 2-3 lemon cucumbers), peeled if necessary and chopped
• 1/2 medium onion*, finely chopped
• A fistful of fresh Italian parsley*, coarsely chopped
• 2 Tbsp fresh basil*, finely chopped
• 1 tsp fresh thyme*, chopped
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1-2 small hot peppers*, seeded and diced (I dipped into my endless supply of little red chiles of unknown provenance, provided by a friend who grows them in vast quantities)
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Cool and drain the cooked beans; if you’re using canned ones, rinse them to get rid of the liquid from the can, which is kind of nasty. If frozen, thaw them in the microwave, rinse and cool.

In a large bowl, combine the beans, tomatoes, cucumber and onions. Add the herbs and toss thoroughly to mix.

In a small bowl, combine garlic, peppers, olive oil, vinegar and sugar and whisk well to blend. Pour over the bean mixture, and toss until the beans are well-coated with dressing. Taste; add salt and pepper if necessary. Cover and chill for several hours or overnight. Serve with cornbread for a complete-protein vegetarian meal, or as an accompaniment to roasted pork tenderloin (rub a small, lean tenderloin with olive oil, pat on a mixture of paprika, dry mustard powder, cayenne and a little salt, and roast at 450F for about 20 minutes, until a meat thermometer registers 150 degrees. Remove from oven, cover with foil and let sit for 10 minutes or so to firm up before slicing on the diagonal into medallion.)

Makes 4-6 servings, and it’s a great potluck dish, too!

* Local ingredients, from the Albany farmers’ market or my garden

Summer stir-fry

Shrimp, globe zucchini, green beans

Stir-fry is a fall-back meal for many Americans: Slice up some vegetables and maybe some meat, throw it in a wok or skillet, douse it with “stir-fry sauce” (sometimes from a bottle) and, hey, instant food.

Lately I’ve been reminded that authentic Chinese or Japanese stir-fry, while not much more complex than that, uses specific cooking techniques that can result in amazingly fresh-tasting dishes that retain the flavors of each ingredient while marrying them with just the slightest amount of subtle, savory sauce.

The stir-fry I made tonight is not my own; I owe it directly to Steamy Kitchen, a terrific “modern Asian” foodblog. The techniques she uses are classic, the flavors bright and fresh, and the presentation downright gorgeous.

Shrimp and Zucchini Stirfry with Crispy Basil

I won’t repeat the recipe here, except to say that I used my wok for the whole thing, flash-frying the basil in a couple of inches of peanut oil, then turning the burner off and letting it cool down before draining most of the oil (now pale green and scented with basil) into a container for later use. I also had some green beans I wanted to use up, so I cut them in two-inch lengths, steamed them in the microwave (in a Pyrex dish with a few drops of water, covered with plastic wrap) till crisp-tender, then tossed them with a little hoisin sauce, and added them to the stir fry at the same time the shrimp was returned to the pan.

Two things about that recipe that bear noting: The shrimp, marinated in the slightest amount of cornstarch, sesame oil and salt, are cooked briefly first on one side, then the other, rather than tossed around in the wok as many stir-fry ingredients are.  Second, the sauce – soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar – is also made in a very small quantity. Less really is more here; dumping in lots of sauce results in a dish that’s steamed and soupy, while using less than a tablespoon, as in this recipe, coats the shrimp and vegetables with just a gloss of flavor, and leaves them crisp and fresh.

Globe zucchini, chiles, and green beans came from the farmers’ market; basil and garlic came from my own garden.

Growing your own

Early harvest: Tomatoes, basil, mint, garlic

Tonight’s dinner is as simple as can be: Three plum tomatoes, sliced, tossed with minced basil and garlic and dressed with a gloss of olive oil and the slightest sprinkling of salt. A piece of locally baked (Great Harvest) whole-grain bread with good Tillamook butter. A glass of crisp, honey-scented pinot gris from Elk Cove winery, just up the valley in Gaston.

A light meal, but one of great significance, because those tomatoes are the very first ones to ripen in this year’s garden.

I’ve been eating from the garden for over a month now, mostly raspberries and container-grown strawberries that just won’t quit bearing. The herbs, planted in an assortment of containers, are going like gangbusters this season, too. I’ve just finished drying the garlic I planted last fall.

But it’s the tomatoes that make me feel like a Real Gardener, even though my habits are less than diligent and my ambitions modest. After a disappointing season last summer, this year’s tomatoes – six plants, each a different heirloom variety – are starting to produce what looks like it could be a bumper crop. Helped, no doubt, by the fact that my neighbor let me remove a limb from his big-leaf maple that had gradually turned my full-sun raised bed into a morning-sun-only spot.

Now that the sun is back, the tomatoes are going nuts. I’m already eyeballing the beefsteak-style varieties, green though they still are, with visions of tomato sandwiches dancing in my head.

Zucchini: Threat or menace?

Still life with summer squash

I knew I shouldn’t have bought zucchini at the market last weekend. Because once the zucchini harvest begins, buying it seems redundant. Zucchini grows like a weed around here; people whose tomato crops fail, whose lettuce and peas get decimated by slugs, who proclaim themselves to be possessed of Black Thumbs – everyone grows zucchini. While its season lasts, I hardly dare leave the house for risk of coming home to find I’ve been the victim of a drive-by zucchini drop-off.

Sure enough, my friend Sandy, whose garden never fails to produce an overabundance of everything, stopped by the office this afternoon to bring me some zucchini.

To her credit, she called ahead. More to her credit, she’s growing my favorite cultivar: globe zucchini, aka “Eight-ball” or “Cannonball” zucchini.

Spherical, rather than elongated, globe zucchini have much to recommend them. The flesh tends to be a little more firm and a little less watery when cooked – and while they can be cut up and used like any other summer squash, they also lend themselves beautifully to stuffing. Just slice a bit off the stem and blossom ends to stabilize them, slice them in half, scoop out the seedy part and then fill with whatever pre-cooked filling you like. Pop it in the oven for half an hour and you have a tasty, light supper in an edible bowl. Yum.

Unfortunately, globe zucchini are hard to find in the markets, and almost never seen in supermarkets. If you happen onto some, give them a try. Or grow your own – just don’t plant too many. I’ve found that a single plant, well fertilized and watered, can produce enough zucchini that I, too, have resorted to drive-bys.

Stuffed globe zucchini, Italian style

Serves 2

• 2 small-to-medium-sized globe zucchini*. Choose squash with tender skins.
• Bulk Italian sausage*, cooked and crumbled, about 1/2 cup
• Olive oil
• 1 tsp minced fresh oregano*
• 1 tbsp. minced fresh basil*
• A thick slice of sweet onion, minced*
• 2 cloves garlic, minced*
• 1-2 Tbsp bread crumbs (I toasted a slice of multi-grain bread and tore it losely into crumbs)
• A half dozen good-sized shiitake mushrooms*, chopped
• Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

* Indicates local ingredients, either from the farmers’ market, from my garden or from a friend’s

Baked zucchini with extra stuffing

Preheat oven to 350F. Wash the zucchini. Remove a thin slice from the blossom and stem ends so the squash will sit flat in the baking dish. Cut in half and use a spoon to scoopy out the seedy middle, being careful not to break through the bottom. Place the zucchini halves in a baking dish and rub cut edges with olive oil.

In a small skillet, cook the sausage; remove it from the pan, drain off all but a small amount of fat and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Throw in the onions, garlic, mushrooms and herbs, and cook until soft.

Remove from heat. Stir in the bread crumbs. Taste and season with salt and pepper if necessary (it shouldn’t be).

Spoon filling into the halved zucchini, mounding slightly. If there’s some left, add it to the baking dish. Sprinkle parmesan on top.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until the zucchini is fork-tender and the cheese is browned. Serve hot.

You could easily make this a vegetarian dish by omitting the sausage and increasing the mushrooms, or using one of those vegetarian sausage substitutes, if you like that sort of thing.

For that matter, you can substitute almost any filling you like, as long as it’s pre-cooked (the perfect cooking time for the squash is too short for most fillings) and not too wet (because you don’t want the whole thing to collapse into a sodden lump). Thanksgiving-style stuffings are great, as are the sorts of rice-based stuffings normally used to fill cabbages or grape-leaves.

Please note: As much as I love this dish, I don’t need any more zucchini. Really.

Off my feed

Mmmm, blueberries

It happens every summer, and at the most inconvenient time: When we hit the prolonged hot weather, I lose my appetite. Or at least my appetite for anything resembling cooking and eating actual meals.

That doesn’t mean I’m slacking on the Eat Local Challenge, though. Not now, when the variety of good things at market and farmstands increases almost by the day. It just means I buy things that can be eaten as is, or very simply prepared.

So far this week, for instance, I’ve had the following “meals,” all tasty and satisfying, but hardly worth photographing or writing down:

• Scrambled duck eggs with red chard, smoked Oregon chinook and paper-thin slices of leek
• More chard, coarsely chopped, steamed, and dressed with a dab of butter and a splash of sherry vinegar
• Blueberries, just rinsed and eaten by the handful for breakfast or snacks.
• A big salad of red leaf lettuce, still more chard (what can I say? I love chard, and I bought a big bunch of it at the market last Saturday), and baby spinach from a neighbor’s garden, tossed with a simple vinaigrette that included what are probably the last of the raspberries from my garden and a little home-grown basil.
• A sort of rudimentary blueberry cobbler: Squares of poundcake (from Kristen’s bakery stand at the farmers market) tossed with blueberries and a teaspoon of sugar mixed with cinnamon, warmed in the oven just until the sugar began to caramelize, and topped with a scoop of Tillamook vanilla ice cream. As dinner, not dessert.
• A Safeway bagel, topped with leaf lettuce, more of that smoked salmon, a little onion and Rogue Creamery’s Oregonzola blue cheese

Other than the condiments, that’s half a dozen meals of local or almost-local food, with hardly any effort at all. A light menu, to be sure, but I don’t move around much when it’s hot, so I don’t need much fuel.

How about you? What do you eat when it’s too hot to cook? If you’re trying the eat-local thing, is it working for you? What are the challenges?

Hot cherries

Cherry salsa with basil

I live in a neighborhood of gardeners, and it’s common for us to share our bounty. I’m not just talking drive-by zucchini drop-offs in the dark of night, either. None of us seem to grow exactly the same things, but all of us wind up, sooner or later, with more than we can consume on our own, and those over-the-fence swaps are one a great way to share the wealth and catch up on the neighbors.

One neighbor grows Queen Anne cherries, and maybe it’s the tree’s location or her tender, loving care, but she consistently gets ripe cherries before they come to the market. I was unpacking the car on Saturday after returning from a trip to Ashland when she hollered over from her porch: “Want some cherries?”

Oh, yeah.

Queen Annes are those dappled red-and-yellow cherries, sweet and juicy, not quite as packed with cherry flavor as the darker varieties, and thus, I think less suited for baking or cooked sauces. But they’re great for nibbling (I brought a little bag to work for lunch today) and lovely in uncooked dishes that show off their flavor and vivid colors.

This cherry salsa is just such a dish, with the flavors of basil, lime and chiles providing a zippy contrast to the sweetness of the fruit. It’s a fantastic accompaniment to fish, pork or – as I had it on Sunday – roast chicken. And very easy to make, especially if you happen to own a cherry pitter. (You can buy fancy ones from Williams-Sonoma, OXO or KitchenAid, but my cheap plastic Norpro model has served me well for years). I like it pretty hot, but you can tone the heat up or down by adjusting the amount and variety of peppers you use.

Cherry Salsa

Ingredients:
1 pound cherries, pitted
2 Tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1/2 small onion, or 1 large shallot, chopped
1 or more hot peppers (jalapeño or your choice), seeded and minced.*
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
Black pepper and salt to taste

*I used three tiny, incendiary red peppers of unknown lineage, given by another gardening friend last year and ensconced in my freezer ever since. Peppers freeze remarkably well; just clean and chop them quickly before they go limp from thawing.

Method:
Throw everything but the salt and pepper into a food processor and pulse just until the cherries are coarsely chopped and all the ingredients are blended. Turn out into a non-reactive dish, taste and adjust seasoning. Refrigerate; served chilled as a side dish to meat, fish or poultry, or as a dip for blue-corn chips.