Restingmotion

I never wanted to write a food blog.  There are far too many excellent blogs about food, well written, beautifully photographed, filled with wonderful food, for me to ever want to compete.  I really have nothing to add.

And yet this summer has been mostly about food.  My knitting and sewing have been neglected, mostly my sewing, and I do feel badly about that.  This blog was supposed to be about travel and books and music and just things I do, but then lately that has been about food as well.

I have long loved food and cooking; I have savored thinking about food, reading about food, and most of all eating.  Eating is all about the moment and the experience!  And in a way eating is a metaphor for life.  I had forgotten about that.  I had forgotten about the joy to be found in a simple morsel of perfect fresh fruit.  I had forgotten about savoring the taste of the things we put in our mouths.  I had forgotten that food was more than nourishment.

When I first found out I had Celiac Disease, I instantly felt better than I had in a long time.  Although I had always been interested in food, the diagnosis intensified that interest, piqued my interest in finding things I loved and embracing all the foods I could eat and not the things I couldn’t.  There was a bit of denial mixed in though, and the gluten-free substitutes I found were mostly tasteless and dissapointing. 

But then I started feeling bad again.  MY GI doctor would say "I told you so"; he never really believed I have Celiac, my symptoms were wrong for the classic diagnosis.  And I began to believe him, and to doubt myself.  Since I felt bad anyway, I stopped worrying about hidden gluten, and if you are celiac you will know what I mean, because I fetl terrible all the time anyway.  I felt terrible no matter what I ate, or even if I didn’t eat.    This was completely self-defeating.

Well, now we know that there are different symptoms to Celiac.  And my doctor was both right and wrong.  I do have Celiac, but I also have IBS, and one played off the other.  When I stopped eating gluten I made my IBS worse and eventually I felt worse.  Now I have a new doctor who understands this and has been tryng to explain it to me and help me find how I should be eating. 

Now I feel good.  Energetic again.  Happy with myself.  Well.

And I love eating and cooking, even though planning menus on my new diet still takes hours of my time.  But it is time well spent.  It would be wonderful if I lived in a city where I could run out each day and find the freshest most perfect thing, but even then I would probably spend hours involved in the process of eating.  Now I go several times a week and find the produce, fish, and meat, and then spend hours thinking about what we will eat, making sure my diet fits the parameters we have found work best for me.  But food is what keeps us alive.  It is also the product of hours of labor.  The food that keeps us alive is worth spending time on, worth sharing with family and friends.  If food, the very basis of life is not worth the time, what is?  Is it silly to spend hours on the very thigns that make life worth living.  In the process I have also rediscovered how to savor the music at concerts, the beauty of the landscape when I am driving, the pleasure of just sitting and knitting.

But sometimes I am still overwhelmed by the lack of time to do all I want to do, and my own inclinations to take on more and do more and drive myself into a frenzy.   But I am learning to enjoy the moment.

And now is the moment for tomatoes.  Finally!

Despite the fact that it was an odd summer, despite the fact that we had local corn by July 4th, unusually early, the tomatoes are late.  It has happened before,  The late tomatoes are not as unusual an occurrence as the early corn.  In fact a lot of people lost their tomato crops, myself included.  But luckily there are lots of local farms around.  The tomatoes pictured above are from Montgomery Place.

I ate a significant portion of them for lunch,  2 1/2 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, quartered and tossed with a smidge  of olive oil, some good balsamic vinegar, and some sea salt.

Pure Heaven and all mine.

Local raspberries are in season, at least at local farms.  I saw the first fruits at the the Montgomery Place Farm Stand yesterday.  My own raspberries, which are more of the black raspberry variety,  appear to be about three weeks away yet. I hope I will be here when they ripen.

As soon as a saw the berries, I knew I need a pint for dessert.

Combined with the little bit of incredibly fragrant sweet pineapple still hanging around after the weekend festivities, a perfect dessert was born.

1 pint raspberries (about 230 grams)
similar weight of pineapple — 250 grams.  I didn’t measure, just weighed pieces
1 tablespoon Cuisine Perel Black Fig Vinegar

Combine all ingredients.  Stir very gently, but the ripe raspberries will begin to crush as soon as you touch them.  Let sit at room temperature for at least 1 hour for the flavors to combine.  My raspberries and pineapple where both incredibly sweet so no sugar was necessary.  You may have to adjut the flavors to taste.

Serves 2.

Sometimes I think that my favorite part of summer music festivals are the picnics that we share as part of the festivities.  Summertime lends itself to cold foods, foods that are perfect for a picnic.

Well, perhaps soups aren’t always the perfect picnic food.  They can be messy.  For the most part the cold summer soups I favor tend to be smooth purees, perfect for serving in a glass or mug for drinking on the lawn.  There are exceptions however, and our favorite summer soup is not a drinking type of soup.  We have it every year during the Bard Music Festival, and a couple of other times as well.  This soup is a meal in itself, with a glass of white wine it is almost a festival.

Chilled Tomato Soup with Endive Salad

This soup is not my creation but I am not sure of its source.  Usually I am quite meticulous about authors and sources of recipes in my collection but this recipe either predates my record keeping or was lost along the way.  I know I have been making it for at least 13 years, and I am pretty sure that the original recipe came from New York Magazine .  They used to do a semi-annual issue with recipes from assorted New York restaurants.  I am not sure if they still do, I haven’t read the magazine for years, the food issues alone weren’t worth keeping up the subscription.  Anyway I have probably altered the recipe over time, but am not sure how extensively.  It was originally an appetizer type soup and served 6 or 8 in the original version, but we make it for 4 and it is a filling meal.

The soup was originally written for fresh tomatoes, and I have made it as such, but the tomato season around here is sometimes quite short, so I converted it to canned tomatoes long ago.  If using fresh tomatoes you would need to lengthen the simmering time for the soup to upwards of 2 1/2 to 3 hours in order to get the same rich melding of flavors.

I have been recently converting my recipes to metric weights simply for ease of figuring out nutritional information.  It is just easier to make a calculation with a known quantity than with a vague "1 celery stalk".  1 ounce is about 28.35 grams, my scale does both but I have to push a button to convert to ounces and I often forget.   As in all my recipes, amounts are relative.

CHILLED TOMATO SOUP WITH ENDIVE SALAD

1 large or 2 small garlic cloves, 10 grams, peeled and minced
105 grams celery stalk,  chopped
105 grams    leek, chopped
200 grams    red potato, chopped
32 ounces canned whole tomatoes.  I use Redpack Italian Style Tomatoes with puree.
1 quart chicken stock
1/4 cup olive oil
55 grams  shallots, minced
200 grams fresh shiitake mushroom caps, about 18 caps
2 large belgian endive, about 360 grams total
1/3    cup red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
balsamic vinegar for drizzlng on soup, if desired.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, over medium heat, saute garlic, celery, leek and potato in 2 tablespoons olive oil for 5 minutes, until vegetables are softened and beginning to color. Add tomatoes with their juice and stir to combine.  When tomatoes are starting to simmer, add chicken stock.  Bring soup to a boil, reduce heat to low, and cook for about an hour.  Be sure the heat is low and only an occasional bubble breaks the surface of the soup, you want it to be just below a simmer. 

Puree the soup, adding pepper to taste.  I don’t usually add salt as I find the canned tomatoes are sufficiently salty.  Depending on how well your blender purees the vegetable matter, you might need to strain the soup through a fine strainer to achieve a silky texture.  Chill.

Heat the remaining olive oil in a large saute pan.  Add shallots and shiitake  and season with salt and pepper.  When shallots are soft and golden add vinegar and cook slowly over low heat until the shiitake are soft and most of the liquid is absorbed.  Remove from heat and allow the mushrooms ot cool.

In a bowl toss the endive and shiitake mushroom mixture.  If you are not serving the soup right away, chill the salad.

Ladle soup into four bowls.  Place salad on top of soup in the middle of each bowl. The soup is quite thick and rich and the salad will sit on the top for the most part.   Drizzle with balsamic vinegar if desired.