Simply Summer

When these long, hot summer days come along there is very little to do but take inspiration from the sun.  The sun provides light, it provides heat and it helps grow all those wonderful berries and stone fruits showing up at farmer’s markets across the country.  Not to mention we are in that hotter than heck two-month (or more if you live in the Midwest) period where temperatures hang out around one hundred degrees and I feel like doing scarcely as little as possible.

If I had my choice I would lay around in the grass most days, taking naps and occasionally waking to plop a cherry into my mouth, continue reading a book from the place I nodded off and simply enjoy the breeze coming off the river.  My eyes would remain at half-mast for as long as possible, halfway between blissful sleep and wild, imaginative journeys the mind takes while in that semi-conscious state.  These are the perfect days for picking out shapes from the clouds and for letting ice cream melt down the cones and down your wrist before you have time to lap it all up.  Though, they may be hot, these are some of my favorite days in the year.

The reality is I have to go to work and am not lounging about any yards or fields near any significant bodies of water.  I am looking at the river from the train in the mornings and planning the next pastry to bake while also entertaining Siena as she continues to grow.  The weekends are the time for play and certainly none more than a summer weekend.  If the grill doesn’t heat up in the backyard I feel it’s a missed opportunity.  Grilled vegetables fresh from the farm stand are heaven, particularly squash, onions and corn on the cob.  Marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and herbs, each vegetable sings. 

We have no shortage of fresh produce about the house since I’ve taken to our weekly, Saturday morning strolls down to the market to “gather” Siena’s latest baby food conquest.  The yellow vegetables and fruits are swiftly moving through our house as her appetite increases.  “Greens” are next on the horizon as we continue the adventure learning what does and doesn’t interest a six month old palette.  So far we haven’t come up against anything adverse (other than cereal), but I’m sure there will be some things she is less fond of than others.  While I’m looking for her lunch and dinner, scrutinizing every stall and chatting with the farmers/farm workers, all the beautiful fruits call to me…a siren song of longing, urging me to drown in the fresh, sweet juices.

There is nothing better than summer fruit.  Being able to pick up a raspberry or blueberry, pop it in my mouth and feel the sunshine dancing across my tongue is something I fantasize about when the ground is hard and covered in snow.  The season moves very quickly and if I’m not careful I will miss any number of special fruits cropping up.  I know I can (and should be) freeze them, but at the moment I’m very interested in what I can make and eat right now.  Who wants to think of winter when it’s 95 degrees in the shade?  The berries are here, now and I want to consume them all.  Apparently I learned nothing from the squirrel that plays all summer without storing nuts for the winter.

After our trip to the Rockefeller State Park a few weeks ago I had raspberries on the brain.  But strangely, when Siena and I arrived at the farm stand, we didn’t see any of the ruby red beauties.  I looked at several of the vendor’s stands and they were nowhere to be found…until I saw a sign for them paired with pints of blackberries.  Upon closer inspection it was confirmed they were indeed raspberries, but black raspberries instead of red.  They were so sweet and delicate I couldn’t resist.  Red berries be damned, I’ll take the black variety any day.  They seemed less tart than the red and reminded me of a blackberry (which I love), and it was then I remembered we used to pick both kinds off the thorny bushes out behind the tool shed when I was a kid.

Just as I was leaving I passed by one smaller grower who had only a few pints of many different fruits.  There were currants and plums, apricots and large greenish-red globes looking not unlike grapes.  The sign next to them proclaimed “gooseberries”, but in my memory gooseberries were always chartreuse green and one of the most tart fruits I can recall eating.  Mom sweetened them with a lot of sugar when she made her pies, but these berries were strangely sweet and sour, tasting a bit like champagne grapes with a similar consistency and texture.  The bottom line is they were gorgeous and I had to have them too.  By the time I left the market, Siena barely had enough room left in her stroller to sit for all the produce suspended willy-nilly under the seat and along the handles.

Returning home I began to search for something to make with my lucky finds.  When fruit is as fresh as this, there is very little I want to do to them.  Simple preparations allow for appreciating their natural state.  I thought back to a couple months ago when I was looking for gooseberries for some tartlets I saw in Martha Stewart’s Pies and Cakes.  The recipe called for twice as many gooseberries as I had purchased at the market, but let us not forget the black raspberries.  They just about made up the difference so I decided to make a few gooseberry, a few raspberry and a few mixed berry tarts.

The base of the tarts are a creamy, sugary egg custard filling crisp flakey pate brisee crusts.  I seem to be pulling out the pate brisee a lot these days, but I can’t help myself.  The more I make the recipe the better I get, and if I ever want to arrive at the perfect pie crust then practice is the thing I must do, and who doesn’t love to eat crust?  I’m certain I could eat dough and crust every single day of the week and never get tired of it.  I’m not going to put it to a test in an attempt to preserve my bathing suit waistline, but feel confident I’m not wrong.  The crust gets “blind baked” in the oven, is allowed to cool and then filled with the berries and custard before returning to the oven.  These are the perfect summer dessert to serve at a dinner party and each one will both fill your guests up and leave them wanting more.  The recipe is as follows:

Mixed Berry Custard Tartlets (Adapted from a recipe in Martha Stewart’s Pies and Cakes)

Ingredients:

All-purpose flour, for dusting

1 recipe Pate Brisee

2 large whole eggs plus 1 large egg yolk

1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1-cup heavy cream

4 cups fresh green gooseberries (about 2 pints), trimmed
4 cups fresh black raspberries (about 2 pints)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough about 1/8 inch thick.  Cut out eight 6-inch rounds, and fit each round into a 4-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.  Fold edges under, and press dough into sides of tart pans.  Refrigerate or freeze until firm, about 30 minutes.

Pierce bottoms of shells all over with a fork.  Transfer pans to a rimmed baking sheet.  Line shells with parchment, and fill with pie weights or dried beans.  Bake until pale golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.  Remove weights and parchment.  Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Whisk together whole eggs, egg yolk, and 1/3-cup sugar in a small bowl.  Pour in cream, whisking until combined.

In two separate bowls, toss gooseberries and raspberries each with 1/4 cup sugar.  Pile sugar-covered berries into tart shells (a scant 1 cup per tart), and slowly pour in custard (about 1/4 cup per tart).  Dip a pastry brush into each custard filling, and lightly brush onto edges of shell.  Sprinkle tops evenly with sugar.

Bake until custard is just set and gooseberries/raspberries are soft, about 35 minutes.  Transfer tartlets to a wire rack to cool 15 minutes.  Serve warm.

I made these at night after Siena had gone to bed both for the ability to string several minutes together to complete the task as well as it was no longer abominably hot inside the kitchen.  If I knew how to grill the tarts I would have, but that’s a skill I’m yet to possess.  At midnight, when it’s nice and quiet and cool, I am able to share some undivided time with my kitchen stove even in the middle of a heat wave.  I wanted the tartlets ready for the following morning so they could accompany us on Siena’s first trip to the beach!

It is a rare occurrence indeed when we make it to the beach.  I’m not sure whether it’s the sand, the heat or the driving time that keeps us from going more often.  Brian is particularly fair of skin and isn’t one to go out in the sun a whole lot, but I on the other hand am one of those sun worshipers.  I don’t lay out as much as I used to…I know it’s bad for me, but there is nothing more lovely than freshly bronzed skin and a good dose of vitamin D.  Sitting in the direct light with a good book, sweat running down your skin in rivulets, cool beads dripping off a cold glass of iced tea is the ideal way for me to spend a summer day.  This is something easily accomplished in the backyard, but going to the beach is a whole other affair, a destination and one that requires careful planning.

I never saw the ocean until I was out of high school, which seems a little crazy in hindsight, but we were landlocked in the middle of the country so it makes sense.  The first real impact the ocean made on me was driving fourteen hours with my friend’s Lisa and Kathryn to get to Pensacola Beach, Florida.  We spent a rather nutty, frolicing few days beach combing, bar hopping and the general mischief making one does in their early twenties.  We arrived at dawn with the pink sky still kissing the water and empty boats gently moving up and down on the waves.  Hilariously, there was a hurricane that week and the water became violent, full of monstrous swoons.  I couldn’t believe the power of the grey, stormy sea and was too young to doubt I would get into any harm riding up and down on the swells like a crazy person.  That’s when I first fell in love with the ocean.

I have since been to the ocean many times and in many weather conditions including a separate hurricane we found ourselves in Mexico, summer 2005.  The weather gods must be hunting me down for some ill I performed in a past life.  On a good day, there is nothing like the soothing, repetitive crash made by the lapping water, foaming, splashing and bringing all sorts of shells and little creatures to the surface of the sand.  Our day at Point Lookout beach in Long Island was more like that…lots of sun, lots of cooling breezes and lots and lots of people! 

It was perfect beach weather, breezy, 80 degrees with low humidity.  Everybody and their brother wanted to spend their day the exact same way as us and apparently they managed to do it too.  The traffic out to Long Island is notoriously bad on a regular day, but on an immaculately conceived beach day such as this the lines to get to the parking lots within a half a mile of the beach itself were twenty minutes long and followed with the trumped up charge of over twenty dollars to park.  Talk about a scam.  I’m not sure where all that money is going, but someone must be adding onto his or her mansion somewhere.  Money aside, once we actually made it to the beach everything was smooth sailing, so to speak.  There were colorful umbrellas as far as the eye could see and everyone from the largest to smallest framed person was lounging about in the minimum the law would allow.  I, being more of a modest person, was happier to keep my shirt on, eat pastries and judge everyone else…I didn’t say I was always nice.

We brought a large red umbrella; blankets and some sunscreen ready to spend a few hours and see how well Siena would take to the water.  The short answer is she didn’t.  The Atlantic was so cold, even after all the warm days we’ve had.  As soon as she dipped a teeny-tiny toe into the water she began to cry.  The same went for Brian and myself, so the family opted to hang out under the umbrella, eat chicken fingers and fries from the food cart and watch all the extra thin, well built youths casually play some form of volleyball in an effort to display how hard they worked at the gym and how little good food they must eat.  Am I jealous?  Yes.  Can I stop eating butter and dairy?  No.  It’s a very simple equation.

After several hours of people watching and wave listening, Siena was exhausted and so were we.  And I’m still not sure why it now takes us 30 minutes to pack up our things and walk a quarter of a mile to the car, but it is increasingly becoming a pattern.  Having a child has certainly slowed down our entries and departures. There are so many toys to make sure we didn’t forget, diapers, blankets, bottles, the baby…I’m still amazed any of us is able to grow up and become a functioning adult that moves at regular speed.  I think it’s a little harder too because we are used to New York City street pace.  If you aren’t making a mad dash to get to your next destination then you must not be doing anything of importance.  I can certainly say it is important to move slow and never forget the bink.

Another trip to the farmer’s market last weekend yielded a nice crop of peaches.  I’d been keeping an eye on them the past few weeks.  So far they had either seemed under-ripe or had a lot of holes in them.  This was finally the week for the fragrant smell wafting off the stone fruit, heavy for it’s size but with flesh that gives.  There is something magical about a peach.  The color of the skin, the soft sheen, it has a seductive quality and never more so than eating one right out of hand with juice flying all over the place.  Cast me out from Eden, I have sinned and I don’t even care that it wasn’t an apple.

I had never made an upside-down cake before.  I’ve seen them done many times, often with caramelized rings of pineapple as the feature.  In my Internet scouring for peach recipes I came across one for an upside-down peach cake that also contained a hint of lavender.  Lavender is finishing up its bloom time in my backyard, but I have a canister of dried flowers in the pantry I like to break out every once in awhile for that mysterious, “something special” kind of flavor. 

This recipe also intrigued me because it calls for a cup of cornmeal or polenta.  I absolutely adore polenta or a nice golden cornbread so it seemed an interesting flavor profile to mix in with the peaches and herbs, I’ve gotta say I haven’t had such rave cake reviews in awhile.  I’m not sure if it was the strange combination of ingredients, the extra moist cake (full of butter and cream) or the memory sense trigger of ripe summer peaches, but everyone seemed very excited by this simple little cake.  The only thing you need to have on hand is an iron skillet.  Many people have grandma’s seasoned skillet squirreled away in the back of their pantry or closet somewhere and this is the perfect opportunity to bring it back to life and out into the light.

Peach and Cornmeal Upside-Down Cake

The recipe says you can use either fresh or dried lavender, but I’ve only ever worked with the dry.  If you have trouble finding it and would like to order some you can score a tin here, at Dean and Deluca’s website. 

Skipping the salty air for good old fresh town air we took Siena over for a “play-date” with Mia, our friend Izabella and Jonathan’s daughter.  She just turned one and is going to have a party next weekend, one in which I will be learning how to make lion faces to go on top of cupcakes.  I can’t wait!  Mia has a pool in her backyard and we thought it a great excuse to get the girls (and ourselves) together for a sunny Sunday afternoon.  Again, Siena didn’t seem too sure about the water at first.  Mia was splashing and having fun and Siena wasn’t sure what to make of it, but sometimes “second time” is the charm and once she was in and chewing on plastic toys, a favorite pastime of hers, she happily sat in the water and played for at least a half an hour.  Granted there were only a couple of inches of water for obvious reasons, but the girls seemed to have a grand old time while the adults were able to sit around casually, for the most part, and eat fresh watermelon and plums (and tequila drinks).

Summer is about sitting.  Summer is about eating.  Summer is about sharing your days and nights with friends and family out on the patio with the grill blazing or loaded up to the moon with toys to take to the beach.  Summer is about letting yourself unwind at least for a few minutes everyday, taking off your sandals (as not to get tan-lines) and feeling our bodies and minds warmed up. 

It’s this same carefree attitude that can make work so hard during this time of year, especially when you’re mind is already daydreaming on a sunny patch of grass somewhere or a sandy beach in the Grenadine Islands (oh Mustique how I miss you).  It’s essential to take the little summer moments where you can find them, whether on a park bench in the blazing afternoon sun or by popping a fresh picked peach into your mouth.   I’m learning to slow down a bit and relish these moments, much more than I used to.  Relax on the beach with a peach and you’ve got nothing to worry about.  I’m learning how.  It’s just who I am.