patrickamory

Jamaican lamb curry, homemade Inner Beauty hot sauce (don't know why my comes out brown instead of yellow), red peas and rice.

How about meat pies and pastries? Steak & kidney pies, cold pork pies, French charcuterie with pastry tops?

I would like to know the answer to this too! New Yorkers: these are currently available fresh at Kalustyan's, shipped 2-day from Hatch NM.

Incredible food everyone… so much goodness at one of the best times of year to be cooking. Heirloom tomato salad (sorry can't remember the name of the red variety - I think the dark one was called Black Velvet or similar) Vermicelli with lemon sauce

I love River Cafe.

Olney says not to wash herbs that you have grown and picked yourself, so I don't. Actually, I never wash supermarket herbs either!

Hi Soba, Agree with you - lovely little place with delicious food, but the seating is a nightmare. How about some seat backs! P

Even heirlooms can look like regular tomatoes. If it was delicious, I wouldn't worry about it.

mm those fresh cranberry beans are beautiful. Did you source them locally?

basquecook do you know a source for avocado leaves here in NYC?

Marinated chicken thighs for a couple hours in chopped onion, garlic, chiles, salt, pepper, sage and hyssop. Scraped off the marinade and sautéed it in ghee for a few minutes, then drained and reserved. Browned the chicken thighs in the same ghee in a heavy pot, then covered and simmered over low heat for 20-30 minutes. Returned the marinade to the pot for the last 5-10 minutes, removed chicken, deglazed pot with a little vermouth and boiled it off, scraping it down and removing the contents for an oniony relish. Served with Jewish corn rye from Hot Bread Kitchen in Harlem, and goats milk lebneh from Damascus Bakery.

and Shelby I'd eat that sandwich morning noon and night!

nina that jam looks amazing. Soba the nectarines in New York have been amazing this year. A sentence I never thought I'd write. Summer adaptation of Ruth Rogers' spaghetti with dark-simmered Italian sausage and onion. Adam won't eat this for whatever reason, so I have to make it while he's not here: Very straightforward, but do leave a lot of time – this is really a 2-hour preparation. olive oil 3 Italian sweet sausage (get good ones), skins removed, sausage meat crumbled 1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped 2 cloves purple garlic, minced 1 dried red chile, crumbled 3 dried Turkish bay leaves 1/3 cup red wine 14-15 oz can good Italian tomatoes, fully drained, tomatoes crushed in your hands 1/4 nutmeg, grated 1/3 cup whole milk 1/4 cup romano pecorino, freshly grated salt freshly ground black pepper fresh sage leaves 1/2 lb dry spaghetti Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat. Add the crumbled sausage meat and stir and fry until lightly browned. If it sticks, great. Now add the onion, garlic, chiles and bay leaves and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes until onions are lightly browned, stirring frequently. You will be developing a fond and there will be stickiness – it’s all good. Pour in the wine and stir, scraping up the bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, until the wine has evaporated – about 2 minutes maximum. Add the drained crushed tomatoes, lower the heat, and cook at a steady but low simmer for 45-60 minutes until you have an intense dark red mess. Stir in the nutmeg, milk, and Romano pecorino. Season with salt to taste. Meanwhile, you have brought an extremely large pot of water to the boil. When you anticipate that you are approximately 10 minutes out on the sauce (the sauce can wait, so that part doesn’t matter), add several massive handfuls of kosher salt to the water, cover, and bring to a rolling boil again. Now add the pasta all at once, stir, cover, and set the timer to a minute or so less than the minimum time specified on the pasta box. Once at a rolling boil again, remove cover, stir the pasta, and keep stirring occasionally until timer goes off. About 1 minute before the timer goes off, add half a large ladle starchy pasta water to the sauce, and stir it in – you want to evaporate it so that the sauce is not watery, but you also want a certain amount of pasta starchiness so that the sauce combines well. You might end up adding a half-ladle full of pasta water a second time, and evaporate that too. Play it by ear. Taste the pasta – it should be not quite al dente but not quite inedible either. Drain it in a colander and add it to the sauce pan. Toss, drizzling some more olive oil over the mixture, and continue tossing until pasta and sauce are well combined. Serve into bowls, tear fresh sage leaves over each one. Add a fresh grind of pepper to each bowl and a fresh grating of Romano, and offer your guests the pepper grinder and more cheese to grate at the table.

Florida butter beans with caramelized onions and bacon. This was a Rancho Gordo recipe - I found that the onions and bacon overpowered the rather mild beans, which were much better the next day without the garnish. Still, a bit chalky and characterless, perhaps my least favorite RG bean that I've tried to date.

I've had kedgeree in England and loved it. I think there's an episode of Two Fat Ladies where they make it. Andie, did you use brown rice, or is it simply colored from the curry and spices? Yum… can taste it now. This place called the Cow in Notting Hill used to do a great version of it.

Still recovering from Maine-iacal excess, we couldn't help ourselves and got two dry-aged grass-fed ribsteaks from the Meat Hook in Williamsburg. That place is as great as people say it is. Served with white rice, snake beans, and a 2005 première cru Chambolle-Musigny a friend had given us. Life doesn't get much better.

basquecook it's sort of a puttanesca in a way and sounds delicious!

How about a Mughal dish - fragrant chicken braised in yogurt? I love Julie Sahni's version - the recipe is around on the web, here is one link: http://rhosgobel.blogspot.com/2006/02/yogurt-braised-chicken-dahi-murghi.html Takes some time (I definitely recommend the final hour sitting for the flavors to cohere, probably even better the next day), but wonderful. We eat it all the time.

More details: the roast sat on a low cookie-type rack set in a large shallow pan (edges about 1 inch tall). The oven was a cheap GE model; it goes down to 170F but the actual temp inside as measured by oven thermometer was closer to 160F.

Blether thanks. These meals were a group effort and I was only peripherally involved in the preparation of the roast, but I've just confirmed that it was 7 hours at 160F, followed by a brief sear under the broiler for a few minutes. It had previously been salted and allowed to rest on a rack in the fridge for 2 days. I'll admit I was skeptical, but it was the some of the best roast beef I've ever had.

Third and final Maine vacation dinners post. (It should be noted that we had simple burgers and dogs on a few nights - not all the time was spent cooking!) 3 1/2" thick porterhouses from French's in Camden. Grilled NYC steakhouse style: Island oysters - really terrific, found in restaurants up and down the coast, but these were raised and bought a mile from our house. We got 100 of them, which is a lot of shucking - served two ways: On the way back down, wonderful fried clams at the Sea Basket in Wiscasset (go there over the way overhyped Red's! yes I know they serve different things, but you can do way better for lobster rolls, trust me):

Part 2 of our Maine dinners. Chile powders made from whole dried chiles brought up from New York. Clockwise from lower left: cascabel, ancho, pasilla. These formed the basis of two Texas reds, one less spicy (more pasilla, and generally simpler), and one fiery (less pasilla, more of the other two plus a generous helping of minced fresh habaneros, crumbled dried pequins, and some secret ingredients). The recipe uses only different cuts of beef fried in suet with onions and garlic - no tomatoes and beans are cooked and served separately. Unfortunately only a pic of the chile powders here: Homemade pâté à la Jane Grigson, featuring a trio of different lards and hours of finely chopping meat by hand: Steamers, dug locally: (a highlight of the trip btw) Spatchcocked roasters, marinated Thai style à la Kenji, grilled, and served with Naomi Duguid's Burmese sweet and tart chile-garlic sauce (many ingredients had to be brought up from NYC for this one too), served with a spicy slaw: The local produce in Maine is exquisite, poignancy (and doubtless flavor) added by the short, sharp growing season and the sea salt air and soil - the fresh corn, onions and especially the purple yellow garlic are key ingredients in many of the meals pictured here, but this one heirloom tomato will have to suffice to represent for all of them: More to come...

Just got back from two weeks on an island in Maine, so apologies in advance for the mega-post, or posts as it may turn out to be. One of my favorite seafood chowders on earth at the Maine Diner in Wells during the drive up: A 14-pound prime rib, from French & Brawns in Camden, roasted at 160F for seven hours and served with its jus. Meltingly tender: Lobsters delivered to our dock, steamed and served with corn on the cob, no-knead bread and a magnum of Chorey-les-Beaune - and the leftovers turned into lobster rolls the next day:

huiray that grouper looks spectacular.

Simple summer meal. Salad of mixed lettuces with cinnamon basil, sage and hyssop. Chicken thighs marinated for three hours in chopped habanero, shallots, garlic, Mexican oregano, salt and pepper. Sautéd in ghee, pan deglazed with vermouth and served with a squeeze of lemon and parsleyed rice.