Solstice Pizza Party

Foodscription...it cures boredom! So does playing with your food...which, btw, almost always results in some fabulous concoction worth writing about. These are the concoctions I served up for a small party Saturday night (sadly, we gorged before snapping pictures of a few of them). Thank god for leftovers. Yep.

when leftovers look this good, you know it was a great party!  leftovers, dontcha know, are windows of opportunity, 'specially the WTFJTII kind. 

Farmers’ Market Griller w/ Garlic Scape Ricotta* (above and below)

Garlic scape pesto folded with lemon zested same-day ricotta, topped with grilled pencil-thin asparagus, saltwort and zucchini, drizzled with buttery extra virgin olive oil and seasoned with Hawaiian black sea salt.

• Local: Barker’s Farm; Brookford Farm; New Hampshire Mushroom Co.; Wake Robin Farm; Wolf Meadow Farm
• Regional: Oyster Creek Mushroom Co.
• Long Distance: Chilean olive oil; lemon; Hawaiian sea salt

*not quite the original product; we made a couple changes before reheating: first we added leftover roasted oyster mushrooms from the 'Potato Leek & Mushroom' pie below. then we added a bit of the raw milk cheddar intended for the 'Apple & Caramelized Onion' pie, and then what the heck, why not add summa them maple-glazed apple slices, and then well we might as well keep on goin' and add summa that Candy Cap mushroom oil.  Super winner.  Where's there a pizza contest when I need one!!

Grilled Saltwort, Asparagus and Fiddlehead Pizza

Sauteed fiddleheads, grilled asparagus and grilled saltwort, with a little spinach-basil pesto.  Spring has sprung!

Salt what?

Saltwort!  It's a coastal plains/saltmarsh-loving plant (so, tolerant of salty soils and climes) known for its versatility in the kitchen (raw, grilled, sauteed, steamed...), as well as its medicinal benefit as a mineral-rich diuretic.

Wiggin Farm is selling this delicious plant (likely the komarovii species...now known, thanks to fellow blogger 'Diary of a Tomato', as the soda species from the genus Salsola, family amaranthaceae); remember King Phillip Came Over Fearing Green Snakes?).

We tried it raw--yummy, crunchy, watery like a succulent--and grilled this first go-round.  Grilling it is fun and exciting, particularly if you're a fire bug.  I'm a fire bug.

Lather up the stems in olive oil.  I drizzled the oil over a plate of the saltwort and asparagus stems, then used the stems of the wort to pick up the last bit of oil--paintbrush style--before laying them down on the grill.  Flames will shoot out and spark up, so just be careful.  You can even use these as natural basting brushes for oiling up the grill plate before grilling!

A couple flips and maybe 2-1/2 to 3 minutes later and off they came (asparagus, too).  Scissors made quick work of removing the root end, with nary a leaf left behind.

Fiddleheads were sauteeing in the meantime, just in olive oil, fresh garlic, finished with lemon zest.  All three veg were arranged on the dough that got its headstart and finish on the grill. Grated gruyere and scamorza played along in their magnificant glue role, and a little spinach-basil pesto made for the final curtain.  Er, topping.

Three clumps of Shagbark spinach on their last legs met up with a big ol' clump of basil, several final cloves of winter garlic, toasted pine nuts, olive oil and salt for this ridiculously simple but ridiculously tasty pesto.  Nope, no cheese.

A good drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt and freshly ground pepper was all it took for this 30-minute meal to go down in less time.

So much for relishing the deliciousness that this spring meal had to offer....

Green food!  It's what's for dinner!

Ultimate Summer Salad and Grilled Pizza

I. Am. Not. A. Purist.  Not with this salad, anyway.  While I might be incurring some form of slight guilt, I say to hell with purity and exploit the living daylights out of your farmers' market for this super simple Greek salad.  It took less than ten minutes to prepare this bowl of crunchy, sweet and briny goodness.

What can I say, we LOVE grilled flatbreads, especially those with succulently sweet, summer heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese!  Y-U-M!!

Bull's Heart, Valencia, and Black Prince heirloom tomatoes strut their colors on this grilled pizza made with local flour for the dough and fresh cheese from Vermont.  Basil from my garden certainly could have been treated a little more kindly and chiffonaded instead of torn wrecklessly in a fit of hunger furor!  :)  

 All that's missing from the above picture is the gorgeous and delicious salad made with all kinds of scrumptiously colorful local garden goodies: chopped radishes, purple carrots, sungold tomatoes, sweet red pepper, garlic scapes (the very last of the tender ones), red onion and cucumber.  Added in a bunch of crunchy chopped lettuce and a can of garbanzos just for good measure.  Light vinaigrette and you're good to go!

Who took a bite out of that slice!?!

Food With Color

Click on any of the pictures to see them enlarged 100%.

Here we have grilled Beach Pea's rosemary batard, brushed with homemade garlic scape pesto, topped with grilled eggplant (New Roots Farm) smothered in provolone cheese,  8-ball and 1-ball zucchini (small, round, baseball-size green and yellow fruits from Stonewall Farm), grilled sweet Ailsa Craig onions (Touching Earth Farm), slices of luscious tomatoes (Barker's Farm), and, finally, mounds of arugula (Riverside Farm).  Now THAT'S a farmers' market sandwich!  Pass the chips, please!

An heirloom cuke, these White Wonders are heading for another batch of my Summer Herb and Cucumber Soup.   Their creamy white flesh is slightly sweeter than regular cukes.  P.S.  I used basil, parsley and fennel fronds in this batch of soup, and garnished bowls of it with borage and lemon gem marigold flowers.  Delish!  

Cute little flying saucers.

Can you guess what this is?

Fiddleheads!

Friends and fiddleheads, local asparagus and lotsa laughs, peas and the perfect pizza - that's what I call a great thing to blog about!  A spring green special fit for a queen!  Okay, enough with the wordplay.  (Ever tried haiku?  None of this was, but I'm about to explore it as a form of meditative writing.)

First things first: grill your asparagus (toss the spears in olive oil, s&p, and cook carefully--maintain crunch), sauté your fiddleheads (olive oil over a hot pan with a hint of butter and fresh minced garlic--again, maintain crunch), and blanch your peas if  using fresh (I only had frozen on hand, and simply let them thaw at room temp).  Season each veggie independently with kosher salt and ground pepper.

BTW, if you've never had fresh cut asparagus, you must seek some out. Fresh cut asparagus has an entirely different flavor than that rubbery monocrop-style stuff from Peru or California. It's more intense in its compounds (and yes, in your pee!)--earthy, buttery and meaty, rich in numerous vitamins, and really snappy at the base of the stalk.

Grate your cheeses.  I used O.V.'s mozzarella, some freshly rasped parmesan, and a bit of locally produced cheddar.  Next,