BYOL: Corn Soup

Is it too late to tell you about corn soup? I don't know. A few days ago I managed to find fantastic local sweet corn at the greenmarket but as I write this it's a blustery, chilly, autumnal evening and nothing could be further from my mind than corn - a vegetable that I most closely associate with clam bakes, backyard barbecues, sunburns, and cold beers.

But this soup? I just have to tell you about this soup. For something that contains no butter, cream, or bacon -- for being, in fact, fully vegan -- it is extraordinarily luxurious and astonishingly flavorful. Thanks to all of the natural sugar and starch in corn, it could almost be confused for a kind of creamy, sweet porridge. Dishes like this one make me wonder why anyone bothers with things like fat free brownies, protein muffins, and low calorie potato chips when you can make soup from nothing but vegetables and a slick of olive oil that tastes this good. And in around 45 minutes and at a price of around $10, no less.

By this point, I have a solid few months under my belt of bringing my lunch to work. I have come to two conclusions: 1) That I can usually make something moderately healthy in an hour or two on a Sunday, which is roughly equivalent to the time I would spend in a five day week consulting takeout menus or wandering up and down Park Avenue trying to decide what to buy for lunch, and 2) That if I don't make my own lunch, I will end up eating something regrettable. That might mean outrageously expensive sushi takeout; since I work for a restaurant, it also might mean caving into "family meal," the food that the kitchen puts out at midday for staff. I know that this might sound like an no-brainer lunch option, but you have to understand that family meal is always both delicious and outrageously heavy. Try eating a grilled cheese sandwich and cream soup or a plate of meat sauce and buttered pasta for lunch and tell me you don't have your head on your desk by 3 PM. Then, tell me you can still button your jeans at the end of the month.

If brown bagging it isn't your thing, a pureed vegetable soup like this is a stellar option to serve at a dinner party. My mother, who was for years in the position of single-handedly putting on multi-course holiday meals, often made a pureed vegetable soup the day before and served it as an hors d'oeuvre about 30 minutes before dinner. In retrospect, it was an ingenious way to keep guests busy while she raced around putting the final touches on dinner.

If local corn is gone by the time you get around to making this soup, never fear -- you can substitute many other vegetables into this recipe, including but not limited to carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, and asparagus.


Sweet Corn Soup

Serves 6

1 small onion, halved and sliced
1 stalk celery
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
9 ears corn
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups vegetable stock
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Sour cream (optional)
Fresh dill (optional)

1. Remove kernels from corn cobs and set aside. Discard cobs.

2. In a large pot, heat oil over medium-low heat until it moves easily across the pan. Add onion and celery and cook until softened but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.

3. Stir in corn, salt, and pepper and let heat for 2-3 minutes. Add vegetable stock and bring stock to a simmer.

4. Cook partially covered for 5-10 minutes, until corn is heated through and beginning to soften. Remove from heat and strain through a mesh sieve, reserving liquid. Puree corn in food processor or blender to desired consistency, adjusting with cooking liquid to desired thickness. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

5. Serve warm or could, with a dallop of sour cream and/or a sprig of dill.

BYOL: Barley, Chicken, And Summer Vegetable Salad

Let me start off by saying that barley is delightful. I feel that I need to say that right off the bat because you may have read the title of this post and thought: Barley! Blegh:

A) Only vegans, personal trainers, revolutionary war reenactors, and people weirdly obsessed with their digestion eat barley.
B) I'm positive I remember eating barley once and that it tasted like cardboard.
C) Yawn.
D) All of the above.

But really, barley is great. It's nuttier and more flavorful than most of the rice that you get at the supermarket, and certainly superior to store bought pasta (about which I've become incredibly snobbish in recent months). Barley has stupendous bite and just the right amount of heft (that is to say, it's substantial without sitting in your stomach like a brick), and it holds together in a sort of glistening, pearly, starchy suspension that makes it the perfect grain to mix in with protein and vegetables. Plus, unlike many sources of carbohydrates that wind up in the lunch bag (I'm looking at you, white bread), barley is full of fiber and vitamins and minerals.

This lunch salad took me about an hour to make (slightly more if you include time waiting for the barley to cook) and cost around $14 in ingredients. It can be served cold or warm, so it's an all-year-round kind of recipe.

A word about recipes: I'm including one for this dish because I really want you to make it and I have a feeling that if I just vaguely sketch out the out gist of it, you won't. But, generally speaking, I'm conflicted about handing out recipes. I think they give people a false sense that there's something magical and particular about a given preparation of a dish, as if you're assembling a model airplane and if you don't attach panel B-11 to hinge G-5 the whole thing will fall apart. Not so.

Still, having said that, it's precisely through following recipes and getting the hang of the basic principles of cooking that you'll learn to figure out your own variations, based on what you happen to have in the fridge or see at a farmer's market or are curious about adding in. Friends, just keep in mind that it doesn't have to be exactly 1 medium zucchini and if you don't have any chicken stock for the barley, you can use water. If you don't have parsley you can use chives, or even nothing at all. You get the picture.


Barley, Chicken, And Summer Vegetable Salad
Serves 5

1 cup pearl barley
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 - 1.5 lbs skinless boneless chicken breast, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 eggplant, cut into 1/2" dice
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2" dice
1 tomato, peeled, seeded, and diced
Extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped or torn
1/4 cup parsley leaves, chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper


1. In a medium saucepan, combine barley and stock. Bring to a low simmer, partially cover, and let simmer for 75 minutes.

2. In a medium saute pan, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat until it slides easily across the pan. Add chicken and cook, stirring regularly, until chicken is cooked through and slightly browned. Remove from pan with slotted spoon and set aside.

3. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to saute pan and then add onions and garlic, cooking until soft and translucent. Add zucchini, eggplant, salt, and pepper, and cook until soft. Add tomato and cook for 1-2 minutes, then return chicken to pan and cook for 1-2 minutes more. Add a splash of red wine vinegar, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen brown bits.

4. In a large bowl, combine barley and vegetable and chicken mixture with 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar. Mix in herbs, salt, and pepper.

In Which My Book Club Finishes Most of The Book, But All of the Malbec

Last night was my night to host book club. Our August selection was Isabelle Allende's The House of the Spirits, which presented me with the perfect excuse to cook Latin food. I made empanadas and salsa verde and bought Argentinian wines and Spanish cheeses (sadly, the aged cheese is not part of the Latin repertoire, but I thought this the closest alternative). I also made a raspberry tart -- outside of the theme as well, but we've had two book club members get engaged this month and it seemed like an appropriately dainty, feminine dessert to bake in celebration.

The book club: it's made up of seven of my closest friends and came into being -- embarrassingly -- a year and half ago after I watched The Jane Austen Book Club (on a plane! I swear it was on a plane, okay?). In moment of (perhaps Ambien-induced) sappiness and nostalgia for college lit seminars, I decided that I wanted to start reading decent books again on a regular basis and, lucky as I am to have such clever friends, to get together with them for discussion. I swore that this would not be your typical book club -- it would be about ideas! Critical reading! Challenging ourselves intellectually, as we once did! We started with Edith Wharton and have worked our way through everything from Jhumpa Lahiri to Michael Pollan to Evelyn Waugh over the course of the last 18 months. Generally, the format for our monthly meetings is as follows: we spend some period of time discussing the book (longer in the case of Atlas Shrugged, shorter in the case of The Elegance of the Hedgehog) and then gradually the conversation devolves towards such topics as whether or not white-on-cream is a good motif for a formal wedding reception, which juice cleanse is the most bearable, how this one's relationship with her mother-in-law is going, whether that one is finding her job any more fulfilling these days. We get pretty drunk for a weeknight. As I mentioned, I just finished hosting a meeting with themed refreshments and a double engagement celebration. In short, it is your typical book club, and I'm surprised to find myself totally okay with that.

The book: it's lushly written, fantastical and tragic in a way typical of Latin American literature from the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julia Alvarez. Perhaps a little dark for my taste but if you have a high tolerance for fictional misfortune, I recommend it. While only half the group had made it all the way through the book in time for last night, the verdict was strongly positive.

The empanadas: I am a white girl from Sleepy Hollow whose experience with South American cuisine is limited to dining at a couple of those all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse horror shows and traveling to Buenos Aires once, so I have absolutely no business making empanadas. Nonetheless my virgin effort at the savory pies was well received, which is to say that the group of us, most of whom are not ravenous in the face of doughy, beefy things, finished off nine empanadas over the course of the night. Afterwards The Viking gobbled up the remains and declared that "they tasted like a Cornish pasty." I have no idea what that means but it appears to have been a compliment.



The raspberry tart: Serviceable. The pistachio crust, which I made in accordance with the instructions despite my intuition that the ratio of butter to flour was off, was sure enough too buttery to be workable. Once I managed to practically spoon it into the tart shell it shrunk during its time in the oven, and cooked unevenly. But the flavor ended up okay in the end and it didn't crumble to dust when sliced as feared. All seemed to enjoy it, but then again it's hard to stray too far from the mark when you're using vanilla pastry cream and local raspberries.



The salsa verde: a monster hit, served with tortilla chips and the first thing to be completely polished off last night (aside from several bottles of wine, natch). Salsa verde (the Mexican kind) is typically made with tomatillos but this one substitutes zucchini. Once all the lime and cilantro is piled in you would never know it was zucchini you were tasting. I'm not sure whether this always counts as a good thing, but if you're dying to get rid of zucchini and/or can't find any tomatillos, then it does. Used as a dip, it's a great way to demonstrate a modicum of effort with guests without actually having to roll up your sleeves and make a real hors d'oeuvre. And in addition to going well with tortilla chips, it's also a great garnish for steak or fish.



The recipe is from this month's Bon Appetit. Don't feel that you need to pay particularly close attention to the quantities, because this is one of those recipes for which there is truly no need for precision.

Zucchini Salsa Verde

Makes about 2 cups

10 ounces zucchini (about 2 medium), trimmed, chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup chopped white onion
5 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon chopped seeded jalapeño chiles
Grated peel of 1 lime
Kosher salt

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Serve immediately, or keep refrigerated for up to one week.

Roasted Tomatoes, The Low And Slow Way

I've already mentioned in a previous post the sort of revival camp fervor that Fuppies lavish on August fruits and vegetables.

Well, the tomato in particular enjoys a status above all of its late summer brethren (zucchini, peaches, squash blossoms, corn, etc) in the minds of Fuppies, eliciting a level of zeal and devotion usually reserved for ones family, best friends, and favorite brand of vodka. Especially heirloom tomatoes. If the Fuppies had a flag, it would be Alice Waters and Dan Barber cradling a bushel of heirloom tomatoes in their arms.

I poke fun, but there's something to all this enthusiasm over the arrival of the local tomato. Here's why:

1. Good tomatoes are undeniably delicious. They are bright and vegetal when fresh, deeply savory when cooked, and versatile enough to be at home in everything from pasta sauces to a BLT.

2. When local tomatoes are out of season the tomatoes that you get at the supermarket mostly come from Florida (year-round) and California (spring/summer). Because the fruit bruises so easily when ripe, they are picked unripe and later ripened using Ethelyn gas. This process, and all the changes in temperature that occur as they travel from the field to your kitchen, is why off-season tomatoes are so often mealy and insipid.

3. Tomato farming in Florida (and to a lesser extent California) is infamous for its exploitation of immigrant workers, many of whom exist in a state of wage slavery and live and work in inhumane conditions.

So, if you care about things like great tomato texture and human rights, and certainly if you are a Fuppie, you really should only eat tomatoes when you can get them locally, which means 4-6 weeks per year. Thus the fanaticism during that brief period when the good stuff is available.

Since there's a limit to how many fresh tomatoes even the most devoted tomato lover can eat in the form of salad, sandwiches, and the like, I strongly suggest roasting them. Slow roasted tomatoes are unbelievably versatile. Just a few of their many uses:

-Chopped up and included in sauces and vegetable sautes
-Mixed into risotto
-Pureed with tomato juice, oil, and vinegar for a vinaigrette
-As a pizza topping
-Seasoned and dressed with olive oil as an antipasto

There are two different approaches to the tomato roasting process: cooking them at a high temperature for under an hour, or at a low temperature for a much longer period of time. I'm a fan of the latter, as I find that the tomatoes roast more evenly, without drying out too much or acquiring a burnt flavor.



The slow roasting process takes 4 or so hours from start to finish but only around 20 minutes of active time. That makes it the perfect activity for when you're puttering around the house on a rainy August Sunday, as I was this past weekend. I spent Sunday afternoon plowing through laundry, grumbling along with The Viking about the deteriorating quality of The New York Times, and periodically tending to my roasting tomatoes. It was a septuagenarian sort of day.

Roasted tomatoes will last for 1-2 weeks in the fridge and up six months in the freezer, making it possible to extend your fresh tomato supply clear through winter. If I were a person who knew how to can things, I would also tell you how to can them. But I'm not. Maybe next year.

After roasting ten tomatoes on Sunday, I chopped up a few of them and included them in the filling for a vegetable lasagna (complete with homemade pasta, Italian grandma style). The result was pure summer comfort food, light but satisfying.



Slow Roasted Tomatoes
Adapted from Think Like A Chef

10 Roma tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
1 head of garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
5 sprigs thyme
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cut tomatoes in half latitudinally, place in large bowl along with garlic, olive oil, thyme, and seasoning, and mix gently.
3. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and place the tomato halves on the baking sheet, cut-side down. Pour contents of the bowl over them, distributing thyme and garlic evenly.
4. Bake for 20 minutes (until skins loosen) and then remove and discard skins. Pour any juices that have accumulated into a bowl and reserve.
5. Return the tomatoes to the oven and reduce the temperature to 275 degrees, periodically pouring off and reserving the juices.
6. After about 3 hours, remove the tomatoes from the oven and allow them to cool on their baking sheet.
7. Put garlic, tomatoes, and juice in separate containers and store.

Long Live The Zucchini

It's the middle of August, and if you're a certain type of person -- the type who attends farmers markets and talks about "food systems" and reads five different cooking magazines each month -- it's a very special time for food. That's because corn, tomatoes, peaches, plums, and zucchini have hit the farm stands with a vengeance, and we can all finally stop pretending that we're satisfied with our local selection of dandelion greens, pole beans, baby lettuces, stinging nettles, and the like. The heavy-hitters are finally here. It's all very exciting.

This also means that right about now, Yuppie Foodies (Yoodies? No. Fuppies.) are working themselves into a lather over all this August produce (especially the heirloom tomatoes -- ohhh, do fuppies LOVE their heirloom tomatoes), feasting on it with an enthusiasm that borders on mania. This one can't help working into every conversation how she gets just the best sweet corn at a little roadside stand in Quogue; that one will tell you that her community garden is putting out so much zucchini that she can't give it away fast enough.

The moral of the story is that for this four week period when every farmer's market is bursting at the seams with such primo local offerings, those fruits and vegetables are king. Don't bother cooking with anything else.

Rewind to this past weekend, when we had seven friends over for Sunday dinner. It was meant to be a barbecue (in the Yankee sense of the word) but the weather had other ideas. So, we sent The Viking outside to cook strip steaks in the rain and sat inside drinking cold beers, eating bruschetta, and clumsily decanting a Double Magnum of 1996 Barberesco that The Viking had been given as a gift. There have been worse Sundays.

I wanted to incorporate lots of fresh, local produce into the dinner, and my rule of thumb is that the less you do to tamper with these things, the better.

I made a salad of roasted corn, tomato, avocado, and cilantro, simply dressed with a splash of lime juice.



I also did a second salad of thinly shaved zucchini (I shaved it on a mandolin, but you can do it with a vegetable peeler or knife), toasted pine nuts, and chopped basil, tossed in olive oil and lemon juice and topped with some fresh Parmesan (pictured at top).

For dessert, I cut up a quart of local plums, mixed them with brown sugar and cinnamon, rolled them up in tin foil and stuck them under the broiler. I served them, bubbling and juicy, with homemade pound cake and vanilla ice cream.

Qu'est-ce Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Kale, Melon, Tomatoes, Beets, Purslane, Carrots, Peppers, Apricots, and Donut Peaches

Laziness begets laziness. This is the sort of thing that your mother used to tell you when you were 16 and spent your summer vacation sleeping until 11 AM, then relaxing for the rest of the day on a sun lounger, moving only to refill on lemonade and seek out additional gossip magazines. Just, you know, hypothetically speaking.

Let me tell you, your mother was on to something.

August arrived right on schedule this year, with the past 13 days having been the most phenomenally unproductive since...well...last August. Things are ghostly quiet in the office. The phones are silent, little red voicemail lights have gone dark, and email volume has whittled down to a small fraction of what it usually is. Back on the home front, life has progressed towards complete and total indolence. Of late, there has been a lot of couch time, movie watching, red wine, internet surfing, and sleeping.

And while this happens to be exactly the type of scenario that I dream about when life gets chaotic, a funny thing happens when it actually comes to pass: I don't like who I am. The less I have to do, the less I get done, and what started off as a little extra leisure time ends as full-on torpor.

My new found inertia has got me thinking about adaptation. Last Sunday the New York Times ran a story on a couple who decided to toss away all their possessions and live a simplified, debt-free life. The article talked about "hedonic adaptation," an official-sounding psychological term meaning that once you acquire the nice things you always wanted, you promptly get used to them and they stop seeming so nice anymore. So, you begin wanting even NICER things. This is known to many of us as "being a spoiled brat."

But it's a concept that applies to much more than just wealth. You'll notice that when you start eating too richly (think: a week's vacation in Italy; the entirety of the holiday season), before you know it that indulgent diet becomes merely the new normal. When you're getting 8 hours of sleep a night, you start wanting 10. It also explains why you'll sometimes hear retired people describe their cushy lives as being laced with untold stress and hurry: it's all relative, baby.

Luckily, the concept works in reverse, too. Just out of college many of my friends became i-banking analysts, and I marvelled at how they could possibly put up with a life where 19-hour work days were standard operating procedure. Their answer: "You just get used to it." It's what we do as humans. We adapt.

This is the best argument I've heard for living a life of virtue -- that breaking it is so much fun! If I'm going to adapt to my chosen lifestyle anyway, I'd rather adapt to being too disciplined than being too being lazy, right? If hedonic adaptation is to be believed, we'll all ultimately be happier if we live hectic lives punctuated by the occasional vacation; eat spartanly and indulge in the occasional feast; spend thriftily and every once in a while, blow it out.

You might be wondering how this applies to my CSA box. Well, in my period of sloth, there has not been a lot of cooking, photography, or writing (or working out, or clean laundry, for that matter), so I don't have much to offer you today. Most of what I did in the kitchen over the past week could have been done by a well-trained monkey.

I cut up the green peppers and purslane and mixed them with store bought lettuce and radishes to create a green salad, tossed with lemon-rosemary vinaigrette.



I cut the apricots in half, put them in a roasting pan, sprinkled them with brown sugar, and stuck them under the broiler for 5-10 minutes (until browned and juicy). I used them to top vanilla ice cream, and which would have been a beautiful photo if I had managed to take it.

The beets I roasted, chopped, and mixed with feta, basil, and balsamic vinegar to create a light salad.




The tomatoes got the same treatment as the beets, but weren't photographed.

The kale and carrots went into that kale and white bean stew that I made once before, which I took to work for lunch all week.

No Ifs, Ands, Or Halibuts

Meet Exhibit A: the red snapper that I bought for dinner with my brother and his wife this past weekend. Unbeknownst to me at the time, red snapper populations are at very low levels due to overfishing and it's best not to eat them. Note Red's expression here: bored, annoyed, put-upon. Watching, judging. All this, and I haven't even done a terrible job at grilling him yet.

The trouble with eating is that almost anything you put in your mouth these days is problematic in one way or another. If the food isn't unhealthy (artery-hardening; cancer-causing; diabetes-inducing), it's unethically grown (cruelly raised; brutally slaughtered), grown or processed in an environmentally harmful way (water-intensive; petroleum-guzzling; toxic in its byproducts), or unsustainably hunted (devastating to wild populations).

After I read all of Michael Pollan's books last year, it appeared that in order to eat with a clean conscience I should stick to a diet of barnacles, forest weeds, pond scum, and wild fish.

Now, a few new books on fish and fishing have hit the shelves and spawned (pun intended) interesting reviews by the likes of Sam Sifton and Elizabeth Kolbert in the New York Times and New Yorker respectively. To make a long story short, it appears that wild fish are off the "safe" list too.

I recommend reading the reviews for the full story, but here's the summary version:

1. The history of commercial fishery is one of progressively working our way though various fish species once thought too numerous to be harmed, fishing them to the brink of extinction, and then moving on to the next one.

2. At the current time we've all but obliterated wild populations of most any fish you can think to eat -- this is surprising given that fish are one of few things which Americans are encouraged to eat more of.

3. Farmed fish isn't necessarily a solution, because farmed fish are fed wild fish (is this not mind-bogglingly backward?), and the farms themselves often pollute natural fish populations/habitats.
Unfortunately none of the authors goes so far as to suggest a solution to this sad state of affairs, they just leave you feeling like a nasty, awful, greedy person for eating fish.

But a little additional research revealed that there are certain species that you can eat with a relatively guilt-free conscience. The Monterrey Bay Aquarium puts out a pocket-size Seafood Watch Guide (in fact, a separate guide for each region of the USA) to make seafood buying decisions easy (or, as easy as they can be given that you still need to distinguish between US-farmed and Central America-farmed tilapia). They also have a handy iPhone app.



Consulting my regional Seafood Watch Guide revealed that one of the things that I am encouraged to eat is wild Pacific halibut. This brings me to Exhibit B: pictured above is last night's dinner, a 6 ounce portion of broiled wild halibut, served with a homemade organic zucchini salsa verde and roasted organic new potatoes.

I'm pretty sure that we got through the meal without committing any major moral offenses.

Furthermore, the zucchini salsa verde is from the August issue of Bon Appetit and is highly recommended -- you can find the recipe here.

Qu'est-ce Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Summer Squash, Japanese Eggplant, Napa Cabbage, Fava Beans, The List Goes On And On...

This week I found myself in an unfamiliar position: I was actually prepared to use all of my CSA produce -- I had the dishes all planned out! -- and then a lot of it went bad on me.

Food spoilage was a serious, complex problem over most of the course of human history, but the invention of refrigeration around 100 years ago should have changed all that. We live in the golden age of food preservation (actually, maybe the baroque period?). If we can make milk that's shelf-stable for months, I should be able to keep a cucumber fresh for 7-10 days.

And yet, my refrigerator is where vegetables go to be tortured. Earlier this week some of the squash froze to death and some of it appears to have been suffocated in an unventilated Ziploc bag. The cucumbers died of dehydration. Poor old squash and cucumbers.

I think that most of you can relate. When a new fruit or vegetable comes into one's life, it's not always obvious what should be done to keep it happy. Does one put it in the fridge? If so, in a plastic bag? Or in a brown paper bag on the counter? Should one wash it first? And if one is having this much trouble caring for vegetable matter, how can one expect to have a child?

To make matters worse, my refrigerator is unpredictable and mean-spirited. It is the Mel Gibson of kitchen appliances, cruel and volatile, freezing things at random and without warning. It appears to be particularly bigoted against leafy greens. Mel is currently set at 38 degrees and still manages to freeze things, leading me to believe that either the thermostat is a lie or I remember even less from high school chemistry than I thought.

This week of ruined foodstuffs was a wake up call to get my act together. For information about properly storing produce, I found this cheat sheet - it's not the prettiest, but the information is presented concisely and clearly. Were you even aware that certain troublemaking fruits like apricots and tomatoes must be stored separately from the rest of their fruit and vegetable friends? Neither was I.

I also need to get myself a refrigerator thermometer and figure out what parts of my fridge stay at what temperature, and store things accordingly. I can already see The Viking throwing his face in his hands at this, envisioning a future in which he gets in trouble for putting the blueberries back on the wrong shelf. Sorry, The Viking, but it's the world in which you are about to live.

Without further ado, here's a rundown of how I used my CSA produce:

I sliced the Japanese eggplants and what was left of the squash, brushed them with olive oil, and simply grilled them on a griddle plate on my stove top.



I rescued two cucumbers and used them to make raita, the Indian yogurt, cucumber, and mint sauce. This became a cool, refreshing accompaniment to the grilled vegetables.

The carrots were tossed in with a leftover butterflied lamb shank that I thawed, trussed, and braised on the stove top with tomatoes, lemons, garlic, port, cinnamon, thyme, and bay leaves. I've never cooked lamb this way before and it's worthy of a blog entry of its own - it was sensationally tender and delicately tinged with North African flavors.



The fava beans I blanched and threw together with mint, sliced radishes, sliced red onion, and a honey mustard vinaigrette. I meant to include feta, and that would have been a valuable addition to a salad that ended somewhat too flimsy for its own good.



As previously reported, the Mirabelles became a tart.

As for the Napa Cabbage and Kale...these didn't turn out so well. I braised them in a skillet with garlic and onions and finished them with rice vinegar and raz el hanout. It was a dish that didn't make any sense, and the finished product showed it (it's pictured below with leftover lamb and raita).



This week, only the purslane got left behind. I'll try to do better by it next time around.

A Glut of Mirabelles

Mirabelle. What a great name for a fruit.

Mirabelle comes from the Latin word mirabilis, which mean wondrous. This was not my first impression of the yellow plums that bear that name, but in light of the flattering reputation, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

You see, for the past two weeks, my CSA box has included a quart of these small, firm, buttercup-yellow UFOs (Unidentified Fruitlike Objects). I could tell that they were probably a type of plum, but no plum that I had ever seen before. They were also too sour to eat as a hand fruit -- at least to my taste -- so I stuck them in a big Ziploc bag in the fridge and vowed to find some other use for them.

And there they sat. And sat. And sat. As of yesterday (12 days after the first batch arrived), they were still firm and fresh smelling, and I decided that their time had come.



A little bit of research revealed that these bright yellow plums are known as Mirabelles, and they are a regional delicacy of Lorraine. If Wikipedia is to be believed, 90% of the Mirabelles harvested become jam or eau de vie, and from what I can tell the other 10% are dropped directly into CSA boxes: nearly every reference to them on the interweb was some message board poster overwhelmed by the number she got from her CSA and wondering what the hell to do with them all. So, my position was far from unique.



I'm not set up with jam-making equipment (though I'd like to be!), so I needed to take a different route. I decided to try a tart. If all went according to plan it would be the perfect, summery dessert for our friends The Diplomat and The Free Spirit, both of whom were joining us for dinner last night.



I used a standard pie crust and surrounded the fruit in creamy custard (note: this tart can be made with any stone fruit; if you are using peaches or nectarines, slice them into segments rather than halves). The final result was a particularly...well...tart tart, in which the Mirabelles had softened and mellowed into a lovely, yolk-colored puree. The Viking and our two guests were big fans of the flavor but if you're like me and want a sweeter finish, sprinkle the top of the tart with sugar five minutes before removing it from the oven, and/or serve it with sweetened whipped cream. It'll be mirabilis.



Mirabelle Tart

Serves 8

For the crust:
1 stick butter
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
2 - 4 Tbsp ice water


For the filling:
18 oz. Mirabelles, halved and pitted (*can be substituted for small purple plums, apricots, sliced peaches, or sliced nectarines)
2/3 c. cream
1/3 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp butter

1. Mix together flour, sugar, and salt. Cut butter into 15-20 pieces and while still chilled, work into flour mixture until mixture resembles a course meal. Add water a tablespoon at a time until dough just holds together. Form into a disk and chill 1 hour.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degree. Butter 9 - 10" tart pan. Roll out crust and press into tart pan, discarding any extra dough. Arrange Mirabelle halves, rounded side up, to fill pie crust.

3. Mix together sugar, egg, and cream. Add flour. Pour mixture into tart crust.

5. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes. Let cool at least 20 minutes before serving.

Welcome To Our Garden

Believe it or not, in Manhattan this passes for a garden. Don't laugh. I've worked really hard on it.

I had goals for the place, I really did. I had visions of skipping through the apartment with an apron full of tomatoes, of serving dinner guests home-grown strawberries with cream. This was before I understood anything about growing stuff, and even thought it might be fun to have a fig tree in a big pot on the terrace (no, I am not kidding).

In reality, it's a daily struggle just to keep everybody alive. The unusually hot, dry summer that New York is currently experiencing hasn't helped; for the past month, the terrace has been practically radioactive, which means we've lost a lot of good men out there. It also means that rather than lounging on the terrace in our spare time we mainly dart out in the evening with a couple of cans of water and then retreat back into the safety and comfort of our air-conditioned apartment. So much for that idea.

I took the above picture last night while I was tending to our crops. It captures our ramshackle assortment of plants (the Bad News Bears of rooftop agriculture), and the tools of my trade: a utility broom, a watering can, a pair of clippers, and a glass of wine. Everything that a farmer needs.

Over the past few months, trial and error has taught me a thing or two about rooftop plant husbandry, and I thought I would pass these lessons on to you.

Plant herbs: Unless you want to sit around waiting for your three tomatoes and eight beans to ripen (or possibly to die in the meantime, as mine did), stick to herbs. Herbs grow fast (they are, after all, mostly weeds), they are resilient, and being able to go outside and choose from a wide array of available herbs will do wonders for your cooking. It's a genuine money-saver to be able to snip off a few sprigs rosemary instead of buying a fistful of it at the grocery store.

Specifically, basil: You can use basil to flavor just about anything during the summer, and our two plants produce more than we can eat. Every few weeks the basil threatens to take over the world and I have to cut it all down and make pesto. What's more, I've brought my basil to the brink of death at least three times and it has always snapped back quickly, so that's a good sign for those of you without a green thumb. The only thing to keep in mind about this herb is that it will continuously sprout little white flowers, and you need to pull them off in order to keep it strong and productive.

Give your plants room to grow: Plant each starter plant with plenty of room to breathe and grow -- more than seems necessary. I arranged mine too close together and after a week had to rip them all out and replant them. If they're too crowded, they won't grow to their full potential and will compete with each other for resources.

Water, water, water: In case you haven't heard, water is very important for plants, especially for ones in small pots sitting on baking-hot pavement. Unlike plants growing in the ground which can spread their roots and pull water from far and wide, plants in containers have very limited water supplies. We water once if not twice a day and that still probably isn't enough.

Use plant food: I water with Miracle Grow at least once a week. This is important in a container garden, because the amount of soil that your plants have access to -- and therefore the amount of nutrients -- is so limited.

Keep the faith: If you forget to water your plants for a while and they look like goners for sure (I'm talking splayed out on the soil, leaves shriveled up, brown, the works), keep watering them anyway because they might not have given up the ghost yet. They might not be dead, just playing dead. If after a couple of weeks there is no sign of life, then it's time to stop CPR.

Qu'est-ce Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Japanese Eggplant, Zucchini, Kale, Fava Beans, Green Beans, Radishes, Apricots, & Sugar Plums

I'm happy to report that there's one upside, at least, to moving ever-deeper into the jaws of summer: the CSA box is finally graduating away from lettuces, skillet greens and garlic and into more inspiring fare. Fava beans! Japanese eggplant! Oh, the possibilities are endless...

That having been said, I still had kale to contend with in this past delivery, and you've already born witness to the sad results. Will the kale never stop coming?? It feels like I'm caught in some kind of cosmic loop where kale will perpetually show up on my doorstep no matter how I try to stop it. Have you ever seen Groundhog Day? It's like that, except instead of Andy McDowell it's kale. Kale, kale, and more kale. Shudder.

Anyway, moving on.

The three firm little Japanese eggplants went into the topping for bruschetta. I sauteed thinly sliced red onions and the eggplant in olive oil, and once they were soft and brown I added a splash of red wine vinegar. I took this off the heat and mixed in cubed mozzarella, shredded basil, salt, and pepper. That all got piled onto grilled bread and topped with prosciutto and a drizzle of olive oil. Trust me when I say that if you start out with all the ingredients named above, it is nearly impossible to end up with something that doesn't taste good.



On to the green beans. FYI, the word "green bean" is simply a general term for many different types of bean. These guys were long, fat, and slightly leathery, so I think they were pole beans. Recipes do not abound for the pole bean, but I thought the only way to get them tender enough to eat would be to stew them. I did this the Southern way, in salt pork broth. I put a dutch oven over medium-high heat, added a ham hock, and let that give off most of its fat. I then added some finely chopped onion and a pint of water. I let that simmer loosely covered for half an hour, then added the beans (topped, tailed, and cut into 1" lengths) and left them partially covered at a low simmer for 90 minutes. The beans came out tender and with a distinctly smoky, briney, pork-tastic flavor.



The fava beans and a few radishes became a salad (dressed with sage, chives, lemon juice, and walnut pesto) atop slices of prosciutto. It was light, fresh, and flavorful, and very quick to throw together. The recipe can be found in Tom Colicchio's Think Like A Chef.



For the zucchini, I used a recipe from this month's Fine Cooking, which can be found here. The general idea is to saute zucchini and a little bit of red onion, toss it in a Middle Eastern spice blend (I traded za'atar for Ras El Hanout, but the effect is the same), and top with chick peas that you've crisped up by coating them in cornstarch and pan frying them in olive oil.



Now here's an interesting one: did you know that radishes could be roasted? Because they can! And they taste more or less like turnips, which is not really what I expected. I found a recipe for roasted radishes by Gerard Craft (a superstar chef from St. Louis and former Food & Wine Best New Chef) on the Food & Wine website -- the key with this is to make sure you get a good sear on the radishes, to give them that caramelized flavor. Speaking of "searing," be very careful when dealing with with cast iron skillets and 500 degree ovens. A cast iron skillet gets very hot and stays that way for a long time, as I learned the hard way last night when I absent-mindedly grabbed for its handle...suffice it to say that I spent a couple of hours last night with my left hand submerged in vodka (an old Swedish burn remedy).



Aaaannnddd that's all she wrote. Oh -- if you're wondering what happened to the fruits, those were all hoarded by the The Viking and eaten as snacks.

Qu'est-ce Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Cherries, Greens, Lettuces, Garlics, Beets, & Spring Red Onions

This past week has been one particularly full of upsets and surprises in the world of sports. In the World Cup, England didn't make it past the Round of 16, having been asked by zie Germans on Sunday to pack up their three-piece suits and go home. Over at Wimbledon, two little-known men stretched their first round match to over 11 hours and almost 180 games; one of those leggy blonde Russian model-slash-tennis-players vanquished Venus Williams in the quarterfinals; and just a few hours ago, a person I have never even heard of dissed and dismissed Roger Federer in four sets.

Likewise, this past week I astounded myself (and maybe The Viking a little bit too) by using everything that the CSA man delivered to me last Tuesday night -- despite many dinners out, despite too much work, despite utter weariness of Swiss chard, which has begun to haunt me in my dreams. Would I call this an athletic feat? Probably not. But getting all those fruits and vegetables into food form in a seven day period took intense concentration, discipline, and training. The results weren't always pretty, but I got the job done.

[Ed Note: If you think that this sports analogy was an awkward and terrible way to begin a blog post mostly about beets and leafy greens, you are correct. I just really wanted to mention that FEDERER LOST to some rando! In 4 sets! What's up with the world?!]

I don't have a lot of time to elaborate today, but I did want to give a brief recap of where this week's produce went (with promises to be more entertaining tomorrow):

We got exactly five beets in this week's CSA delivery, none of which were larger than a lime. I turned them into an appetizer for Monday night's dinner (a two course dinner on a weeknight = a rarity, by the way). I wrapped the beets in tin foil and roasted them at 375 for half an hour, then let them cool, peeled the skins off, and sliced them thin. I topped that with shards of cold Crottin goat cheese, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and walnut oil, and a sprinkling of chopped basil, kosher salt, and pepper. The outcome was terrific, and I plan on making this again when we have company (and a more sizeable delivery of beets).



Of the cherries that look so gorgeous up above, most went directly into The Viking's mouth, who spat their pits into a bowl like machine gun fire. The cherries that I could rescue from his gaping maw became that sad clafouti that I told you about.

Some of the Swiss chard went into my lunches this week. But I find that no matter how much Swiss chard you use, the next time you open your fridge the same amount seems to be waiting for you. Luckily all of this pressure to use leafy greens has taught me a thing or two about disposing of large quantities of them (and spring onions and garlic, too). Just chop them all up and saute them! Really, I cooked Swiss chard, kale, and beet greens according to the method described here, adding a splash of white wine vinegar at the end to give them a little tang. They wilt down to almost nothing, and I served them with roast pork and new potatoes.




And finally the lettuces. Lettuces tend to speak for themselves. I ripped them up and dressed them with a vinaigrette of garlic scapes, Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and olive oil, and served them with roasted new potatoes and broiled sockeye salmon.

The Return Of BYOL

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
-Somerset Maugham

Bad habits: we all have them, privately hate them, ritualistically try to break them, almost always fail, and then doggedly try, try again. It's what makes us human. That, and opposable thumbs.

Since I'm in the habit (whether good or bad, only time will tell) of sharing things with you, here are some of my nasty practices:

-I do not make my bed
-I do not hang up wet towels after using them
-I pick my nails
-I leave doors/cabinets/drawers open
-I do not drink enough water
-I consume too much caffeine
-I floss irregularly
-I sometimes conform to the technical definition of a binge drinker ("consuming four or more drinks on a single occasion")
-I eat less than 2 hours before bedtime
-I do not bring my own lunch to work.

This last one is of particular concern. I like to think of myself as the kind of person who packs an economical, healthy lunch each day, but a Saturday morning audit of my most recent credit card statement revealed that things have really been slipping. Most days, I spend $10.02 at Le Pain Quotidien for some extremely mediocre vegan soup and a mint lemonade. That's over $50 per week, which is appalling. Something must be done.

Habit-breaking seems to happen in waves (see: New Years, Lent, Intervention), so this was all-around a weekend of resolutions and good intentions. I made the bed each morning, hung up my towels post-shower, flossed every night, and plunged head-first into the routine of making my own lunch again.

I got back in the swing of things with a simple, satisfying dish that was one of my old standbys: roast chicken + brown rice + vegetable of choice, tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbs. This time, the guest stars were sauteed Swiss chard, basil, and parsley. The ingredients for 5 lunches cost around $20, and it took two hours to make (including cleanup).

It's important to start with a good chicken, not one of the deformed, big-breasted monsters sold by Butterball or Purdue. I don't want to go into all the details here, but suffice it to say that these are the chicken equivalent of Heidi Montag. An all-natural, free-range chicken (like the ones I get from Epicurian Farms) should be only 3-4 lbs in size and all of its body parts should be proportional.



For all of you in the 'set it and forget it' camp, I have some bad news regarding the roasting of a chicken: doing it well requires a fair bit of fussing and tending (I use Julia Child's method; I'm by no means saying it's definitive, but it's the best I've found so far).

First you must truss the bird (getting the chicken in a tight football shape helps it cook evenly and keeps the juices in; leaving the legs and wings to jangle around on their own in a hot oven really has a bad effect on the meat) and slather the whole thing with butter, salt, and pepper. Once it's in the oven, there's a lot of chicken calisthenics to tend to during the cooking process -- basting, turning, adjusting, etc. etc.

Here's a breakdown of how Miss J suggests doing things:

0:00 - 0:05 - Oven at 425, birdie breast side down.
0:05 - 0:10 - Move the bird onto its right side; baste.
0:10 - 0:15 - Move the bird onto its left side; baste.
0:15 - 0:35 - Turn oven down to 350; baste bird every 8 minutes.
0:35 - 0:55 - Move bird back onto right side; baste every 8 minutes.
0:55 - 1:10 - Turn the bird breast side up and cook until juices run clear, basting frequently.

I don't know that the timing of the turning and basting has to be all that precise, but the important thing is to only put the carcass breast side up for the last 15 minutes. This is because the breast meat tends to be the driest, and cooking breast side down lets the juices pool in and around that area of the bird.

While you're babysitting your roasting chicken you can prepare the rest of the dish. Start the brown rice according to the instructions on the bag (liquid, rice, simmer, you get the picture). Use a knob of butter, a pinch of salt, and stock instead of water if you have it on hand. Make about 6 servings.



Then it's time for the vegetables. Chop up a few cloves of garlic (I used spring garlic), and a couple of small shallots or red spring onions, and then saute them in a large skillet over medium heat in olive oil. Separate the stems from the leaves of the Swiss chard, chopping each separately. Add the chopped stems, salt, pepper, and a splash of water to the skillet; cook covered for 2-3 minutes. Add the leaves and a splash of water and cook covered until wilted, around 10 minutes. Set aside.

You should let the chicken rest until it cools and then take as much meat off the carcass as possible, cutting it into bite-sized pieces. Mix this in with the chard and brown rice, and add a tablespoon of olive oil and a a couple of tablespoons each of chopped basil and parsley to finish it off.

There you have it: two hours and $20 later, you've got five days worth of lunch tucked neatly in your fridge. Now that's a habit worth keeping.

Cherry Clafouti, Take One

I don't remember loving cherry clafouti as a little kid, but I'll take my mom's word for it that I did. Apparently, she used to make it for me so often that the particular page in her copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking is dog-eared and stained. She even showed it to me last weekend, and didn't seem at all irritated that countless hours in front of the oven had been squandered on her forgetful daughter. I think I would have been.

Lest I con you into believing that I was an exceptionally sophisticated toddler, it's important to point out that a clafouti is little more than a really big fruit pancake, sprinkled with sugar. Not exactly challenging to the palette. We're not talking foie gras and sweetbreads here. Clafouti is also incredibly quick and easy to make and almost impossible to mess up.

Or, so I thought. This week I had a couple of pints of local cherries on hand and the burning desire to make a clafouti with them. What I did not have was the three eggs or the appropriate baking dish called for in Ms. Child's recipe; I had two eggs and a 12' cast iron skillet. So, I thought: what's the harm in using a different recipe? How bad could it be?



Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. My clafouti was kind of an embarrassment, all lumpy and unevenly baked and not having risen like it should. Sure, it was edible, but it's a buttery, sugary carbohydrate. So that's not saying a lot.

A word to the wise: when Julia Child has a recipe for something, don't ask questions. Just make a habit of using it.

The trouble with written recipes is that they have a way of looking very official, whether they were written by Pierre Gagniere or some model/actress that the Food Network taught knife skills and put on TV. You must resist the urge to trust every recipe that crosses your path, because many are flat out bad: lazy, hastily done, misleading, inexpert. I know this sounds a bit like a Buddhist parable -- "believe nothing, not even what I tell you" -- but there it is. If at all possible, figure out a few culinary authorities whose judgment you trust and seek out their recipes. Julia Child wasn't perfect, but she had the good sense to learn time-tested preparations and write them down accurately.

I know Julie Powell has cornered the Julia Child market so I'm not going to elaborate any further on this point. I'm not going to give you the recipe for this either, because I wouldn't be doing you any favors. But I will remake it the Julia way one of these days and show you the difference.

Qu'est Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Kale, Swiss Chard, Lettuces, Radishes, Carrots, Spring Garlic, & Garlic Scapes

Another Wednesday, another batch of sad vegetables languishing in my crisper drawer. I didn't get a chance to do much cooking these past days (too much World Cup, too many Real Housewives reruns, too little culinary ambition), and as a result was again unable to make the most of my CSA delivery. Whimper.

I'm becoming slightly worried that this CSA produce is going to function much in the same way as my New Yorker subscription, which exists to sit around the house and make me feel bad about myself, reminding me of the person that I could be: someone who reads contemporary short fiction and doesn't let good food go to waste.

But, let's start with the high points.

Kale and carrots went into this gorgeous white bean & kale soup. It's Dan Barber's recipe (courtesy of Bon Appetit, available here), and I have to say that it seemed suspiciously healthy when I first encountered it. I worried that it might turn out to be one of those things that personal trainers and trophy wives eat and rave about but that really tastes like sawdust mixed with dishwater.



It does not. It's tangy and light and delicious. The key here is the Sherry vinegar added in at the end -- if you don't have Sherry vinegar on hand, do not skip this step. You can use white wine vinegar instead. Also, make sure to give the stock and white wine plenty of time to reduce down to make a concentrated broth, even if you exceed the timing marked in the recipe.

The Viking and I ate the soup with some disappointing store bought bread. The whole meal happened to be vegan, for those of you who go in for that sort of thing. For those that don't: I'd suggest frying bacon or pancetta in with the shallots at the beginning for a heartier soup.

The next night, I made a pasta dish from the Swiss chard, garlic scapes, and spring garlic, and served it with with pork cutlets in a cider-mustard sauce.



For the pasta dish, I separated the leaves and stems of the Swiss chard, chopping them separately. Then I sliced and sauteed garlic scapes and spring garlic (white parts only) in olive oil. I added in the sliced stems and a little water, letting them soften and then adding the leaves and little bit more water. Then I added almost 2 cups of chopped San Marzano tomatoes. That all got mixed together with a pound of penne and 1/2 cup Parmesan. As a side note, do yourself a favor and buy high quality pasta -- something other than Ronzoni, De Cecco, and Barilla if you can find it. It has more texture and flavor, and really makes all the difference.

I digress. I suppose I shouldn't spend any more effort trying to distract you from the issue at hand, which is of course the big bag of lettuces and radishes left in my fridge. I briefly considered eating a side salad with my double espresso this morning, but ultimately decided against it. They're still sitting in the fridge wilting right now, probably wishing that they were delivered to someone who really appreciated them.

Thank You All For Coming, My Friends. I Hope You're Enjoying The Clams Casino.

This was a weekend of birthday parties. Well, "parties" might be too strong a word, since there were no martinis involved. Celebrations. We had my mother over for a birthday dinner on Friday night and on Sunday hosted a very belated one for my friend the Tiger.

The big thrill in my little world these days is the large (by New York standards) outdoor space attached to our new apartment. It was the main selling point to the place as far as I was concerned, and set visions of sunbathing, barbecues, and dinner parties under the stars dancing in my head. It's finally warm enough to start executing on plans; we have a Weber grill, a table and benches, a chaise long, and several plants. It's all terribly exciting.

There's only one hitch: the actual grilling part. My culinary interests have developed over a period of years completely devoid of any outdoor cooking facilities whatsoever, meaning that I'm still a total grill novice. The Viking has equally little experience with an open flame and yet wordlessly, instinctively, the Weber has become his domain. I'm not sure that I like the implicit gender politics -- and I do want to learn to be a grillmaster in my own right -- but for now, it's a nice change from our typical mealtime roles. It feels good to be a team.

Over the past few weeks it's been the blind leading the blind, The Viking neurotically cutting into meat and prodding things with tongs while I hover and speculate about proper grill surface placement. But we persevere.

For the Tiger's birthday, we attempted the hamburger.

One of these days I'm going to make a research project of tasting my way around New York hamburgers and learning all the nuances of really a good one, but one thing I do already know is that the key to a successful burger is achieving a balance of textures and tastes: the unctuous beef patty, the soft, sweet roll, the pickly tang of a relish or ketchup, the crisp lettuce, and the sharp creaminess of melting cheese.



For Sunday's BBQ I bought Pat LaFrieda patties (somewhat of a fad here in NYC, due to the decadent meat blends that he creates for restaurants), Martin's potato rolls, and cheddar and pecorino cheeses. I made caramelized onions and a tomato relish, too. It wasn't the best burger we'll ever make, but it wasn't bad for a couple of rookies.

I threw together a green salad (...of CSA lettuces, thankyouverymuch), and realizing that my planter full of basil was poised to make a land grab from the strawberries, I made pesto and used it to dress a cold pasta salad of rotini, plum tomatoes, pine nuts, and peas.



I was pleasantly surprised by the tomato relish, which was essentially just my attempt to dress up ketchup in a hurry; it lent a bright, fresh note that turned out to be crucial to the whole burger experience. In truth this relish hardly needs a recipe - it's not rocket science - but here it is.




Tomato Relish

Serves 10

3 medium tomatoes
1 small onion
1 jalapeno pepper (optional)
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 c. ketchup

1. Chop tomatoes and mince (i.e. finely chop) onion and pepper; combine with salt and pepper in small bowl, cover, and chill for 1 hour.
2. Strain tomato mixture through fine sieve and discard juices.
3. Stir ketchup into tomato mixture and serve.