mmm, pie

When you’re talking to the farmer who got up at 4am and drove 2 hours from Sebastopol to bring you 14 varieties of apples that run the entire sweet-tart spectrum, how can you not want to make pie?

Tip: You can freeze wedges of fruit pie for later to ensure you don’t eat the whole thing in one sitting. Yes, I love pie.

The lemons have gone berserk!

It’s a holiday of grilling, which always drives me nuts, since I don’t have a grill nor space for one myself. (Grill pans and broilers don’t cut it on the 4th, honestly.) But here’s the answer: If you don’t have a grill, and your friends didn’t step up, throw together a batch of this deliciousness — then crash the neighbor’s yard party.

With many thanks to Mark Bittman, whose recipe I poached.

Summer Peach Salsa

3 good-size, firm peaches
1 red bell pepper
2 chiles in adobe, chopped finely or mashed with the back of a spoon
the juice of 2-3 limes, or more to taste
a large pile of chopped cilantro
a tsp or 2 of sugar, depending on the sweetness of your peaches
salt to taste

Wash but don’t bother to peel your peaches. Finely dice the peaches and the pepper (1/4 inch or smaller will work best if you want to pile the salsa on chips, but larger is fine if you plan to spoon it over your grillables). Avoid the urge to simply spoon the peaches directly into your mouth.

Mix the peaches and pepper gently with the rest of the ingredients, let rest a few minutes, then taste for seasoning and adjust as you like. Just make sure you don’t overwhelm the peaches!

Makes a few cups — enough for you and a few greedy friends (or strangers), or for a crowd, if you also made fresh guacamole. (We’ll be inhaling both at the beach tomorrow with fajitas and beer.)

Well, first I ate and socialized: Jonas and Melissa came to town, and I found myself nominated once again to be social coordinator (hilarious, really, when one thinks about how socially backwards I really am). But first, dinner.

I made a bargain with some folks at work, many of whom live in lovely homes with yards in the steamy South Bay: Bring me the fruit from your tree, and I will make you treats. From Cara I got a bag of Meyer lemons (which immediately turned into lemon bars); from Jin a bag of the most enormous Eureka lemons I have ever seen. All organic, naturally, and I swear, these things are as big as Nerf footballs. I couldn’t even carry home the entire bag at once.

The lemon biscotti (image lifted
from Leite’s Culinaria)

Jin’s lemons became lemon biscotti, as I had some citron vodka in the house. Crunchy but disappointingly not so lemony, despite the vodka, zest, and lemon oil. Round two went into an enormous batch of lemon curd (I know, I’m not terribly creative). Jin claims to love lemon curd, fortunately, so I’m hoping the jar I gave him won’t go to waste; the rest was split between a gift for Angus and a good-size scoop still waiting in the fridge for my spoon. Tonight the lemons would also become dinner.

I had crème fraîche leftover in the fridge from Kevin’s brunch, so I finally got to try Amanda Hesser’s recipe for pasta with lemon, crème fraîche, and arugula, with spinach in lieu of the arugula. (You can find the recipe in Cooking for Mr. Latte, which despite the precious title is actually a fascinating, witty, and saliva-inducing read. Don’t miss the almond cake.) It wasn’t nearly as puckery as I’d feared, since I wasn’t using Meyer lemons; but the creaminess and slight tang of the crème fraîche was set off nicely by the sweet spinach and bite of the pasta — quite wonderful, really.

The quickie dinner gave me time to eat and plan drinks in honor of the last-minute Jonas and Melissa visit (Nihon, as usual), which thankfully we kept early, so I was up in time to hit the farmer’s market the next morning.

Keeping a really long weekend story short for the moment, the market led to gift-certificate spending at Williams-Sonoma, then a well-deserved, if sweaty, nap and a lovely steak and panzanella dinner for one. Later, drinks again, this time at Medjool, until all the buttheads showed up and we had to flee to Doc’s.

Yesterday? With all those egg whites in the fridge, I had to get to work, and despite the junglelike feel of my kitchen…yep, angel food cake (it’ll go nicely with the lemon curd!). So maybe it is strange to wake up and bake a cake on a Sunday morning for no one in particular, and it’s certainly irresponsible to keep the gas on for an hour when power is at a premium, but you can’t beat a light dessert in the dead of summer.

Which is why I finished the day by making lemon sorbet.

Slice a nearly ripe peach in two and remove the pit. Rest each half on its backside and cover it with a spoonful of crumbled Gorgonzola. Run them under the broiler, or even in the microwave, if you’re feeling really lazy. When the cheese is melted, your peach is warm, and you’re ready.

You’ll have a hard time restraining yourself from gobbling the whole thing up in under a minute, but why not? You don’t have to share.