Summer

Always on the hunt for an easy to make ingredient, I discovered roasted tomatoes a few years ago. With several left over after a dinner party, I decided a little experimentation was in order. I discovered that roasted tomatoes served up countless uses and, because they freeze well, they can be pulled out at the last minute and added to soups, stews, and sauces.

Incredibly versatile, roasted tomatoes work as a side dish as well as the basis for sauces. Cold, they can be tossed with cucumbers and onions for a salad. Peeled and chopped, they add body and flavor to stews, soups, and pastas.

Ripe and over ripe tomatoes work best. If you shop at farmers' markets, keep an eye out for discounted tomatoes. This week at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, tomatoes were selling for $2.50 - $3.50/pound, but the over ripe ones were priced at 60 cents/pound.

When they're roasting, tomatoes give off a clear liquid. The flavor is pure essence of tomato. The liquid can be used separately to flavor a simple pasta or as a final basting on a grilled meat. The wonderful chef, cookbook writer, and founder of Fra'Mani, Paul Bertolli was famous for hanging tomatoes in cheese cloth and capturing the clear tomato water that he called "the blood of the fruit."

We eat a lot of salads at La Touche, my father’s country house in the Loire which he shares with a couple of long time friends. Lunch typically consists of several salads, a panier of bread, and a substantial wedge of cheese. It is a meal large enough to satiate an afternoon hunger but is not overly filling because there is rarely meat served unless it is reheated from the night before. A main reason for the plethora of salads is the summer surplus of garden produce including the aforementioned courgettes de nice, tomatoes, potatoes, and haricots verts.

I wanted to do something creative with courgettes, the amazing little light green zucchinis, so I decided to make a carpaccio. Our kitchen is equipped with tons of culinary gadgets and the professional mandolin is one such toy perfect for cutting long translucent slices of zucchini. I arranged the slices on a large platter and dressed them a half hour before sitting down to lunch with lemon juice, olive oil, and sea salt. The brief marinating time gives the acidity in the sauce enough time to slightly breakdown the fibrous cells of the vegetable. I topped the zucchini with some shredded basil, a crack of black pepper, and a white impatient to dress up the presentation before we tucked in.

Sweet, tender, mild, succulent, moist, and juicy. These are some words that describe one of my favorite seafoods, the scallop. I love the shape and design of their shells, which I collect, but I love the mild flavor of their meat even more. Part of the bivalve family of mollusks, these shelled creatures are prized for their tender, white meat. Harvested at sea usually by dredging the ocean floor or by diving, a more ecological method, scallops have their meat removed before arriving in markets. That is why you almost never see them in their shells.

Luckily, I have had the opportunity to see scallops in their natural yet man-made habitat. When I was a teen I worked on a scallop farm out on Long Island Sound as part of a summer aquaculture program. The scallops were housed in lantern nets, suspended directly in the sea between buoys. On reaching the farm, boatmen would lift the nets out of the sea for the students to work on. We moved the baby scallops from their crowded lantern nets into new ones that afforded them the space to grow to full marketable size. While handling them, the scallops, like toy water pistols, would squirt us with briny water. Besides not being allowed to eat the scallops, it was a fun and memorable experience.

Early August is here and the close of peach season in my neck of the woods is drawing nigh. Thankfully 'maters and peas and other summer produce will take us into an Indian Summer and then, thankfully into fall!

I have two sets of iron skillets - one set for savory cooking and one set for sweets. There's hardly anything better than a good iron skillet, but there's hardly anything worse than a peach or apple or berry pie that tastes like onions and gravy! Trust this Farmer, keep a sweet skillet handy so you don't serve onion/gravy flavored peach pie at a dinner party!

Mimi was the source - of course - of any of my iron skillet prowess. She taught me about cooking with them, in them, seasoning them and even bringing a rusty one back to life. She told me that if the house caught on fire, grab the silver and family photos - the skillets will be just fine!

So here is one of my favorite pies in an iron skillet - peach! Followed closely by apple and bringing up the rear would be my pineapple upside cake. The iron gets so hot that the cake or pies cook quickly and give your crust some crunch and substance. Besides tasting absolutely divine, these desserts are beautifully presented in their skillet caches - one less dish to wash and allows for easy reheating!