Remember the tomato fiasco of 2009? Those tomatoes would just not ripen. Well, Brian and I are trying again; but this time we’re putting the vegetables in the ground. We have peas, arugula, some tomatoes (keep your finger crossed), and radish. The radish is by far the most gratifying. We plunked them in the soil in early May, and four weeks later, big, beautiful vegetables appeared. Almost instant gratification. I picked a few, and julienned them on my mandolin, and then set them to marinate in olive oil, salt and pepper.

Then I hard-cooked a couple of eggs. I had a few scallions, so those were chopped and set in a bowl. The green garlic was lightly sauteed in olive oil; then that went into a the bowl with the scallions. I pan-fried two Tilapia filets, after dredging them in flour and bread crumbs. (Tilapia is sort of bland– I know– but it is perfect for fish sandwiches and tacos.) I then shredded the Tilapia, and added it to the scallions and garlic. I dumped in the radish, chopped the eggs, which made the mixture creamy, squeezed in a lemon, and seasoned well with with salt and pepper.

I toasted the buns, which incidentally were the perfect foil for this flavorful sandwich, and packed a healthy serving of the salad into each one. I then tore some of the fresh dill on top. The sandwich had a little bit of everything in it; some might say everything but the kitchen sink. But I would say, my kitchen sink never tasted so good! The sandwich was creamy (with no mayo!), lemony, and crunchy from the radish. But most of all, it tasted of spring.

But recently my mother started making them for herself . Maybe she was finally feeling that empty-nest syndrome, or maybe she was hearkening back to her own childhood in the 1950s, filled with tuna-noodle casseroles. Either way she started to rave about them. At first I was appalled; this casserole always sounded like a train wreck to me. But then, as I started thinking about it, and alterations that I would make– tuna-noodle casserole came up in my estimation. So much so, that I had to make one for myself.

Here is what I did:

I sliced and chopped from fresh button mushrooms and sautéed them with an onion. I then made a velouté sauce in the same pan as the mushrooms. You can read about making this sauce here. I threw in a few branches of thyme, and let sauce simmer for a bit.

I cooked about 8 ounces of egg noodles part-way, draining and rinsing them. I also drained two cans of tuna. (If you must know, one of them was in olive oil.)

I then added the noodles and the tuna into the sauce, with the zest and the juice of Meyer lemon. A few handfuls of frozen peas were added. Mixing well, the whole mess went into a casserole dish.

Freshly-made bread crumbs were sprinkled on the top, and the casserole was baked until bubbly, about 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

And you know what, it was delicious: comforting, warming, creamy. I get it. Granted, this might not be the tuna-noodle that my mom makes, but at my house, it was pretty darn good.

I checked out the New York Times Heritage Cookbook by Jean Hewitt from the library. It is an out of print tome from the 1970s celebrating regional American cooking. While glancing through the dessert section from the Midwest, I stopped at Dymple’s Sausage Cake. If I were driving a car, I would have slammed on the brakes so hard, whiplash would have set in. Among the usual list of sugar, flour, and spices, were a few ingredients that made me stop in my tracks. Listed were: lean sausage meat, raisins, walnuts, pulverized gumdrops, and cold, strong coffee.

I read it again and again. There were no eggs, and only a very little bit of additional leavening in the form of baking soda and powder. I showed the recipe to a few friends, both adventurous cooks in their own right, and they couldn’t imagine what it would taste like either. Rightly intrigued, we made a date to bake this cake; and this is what it looked like:

Fruit cake, right? And I guess it tasted like fruit cake too, at least that was what we all imagined as we took slices of Dymple’s Sausage Cake, still warm from the oven. But it was hard to forget what it felt like to plunge your hands into the meaty dough to fold in the raisins. We just didn’t think about the black coffee cascading into the batter, darkening the raw sausage, or the brightly colored gumdrops getting tarnished by the warm spices. Right.

Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t the sausage that was the biggest turn-off. Upon baking it sort of disappeared, leaving behind only a trace of porkiness. It was actually those gum drops that tossed this cake over the edge. I imagine they were intended as substitutes for candied fruit; but yellow gumdrops do not a candied citron make.

But we had to give it try. We came, we saw, and we sort of conquered. The closest thing that I could find to Dymple’s Cake on line, was this one. It however, omits the gum drops– good thinking.

Growing up in California, eating lobster has a bit of stuffy reputation. The only restaurants that serve them are the starched white napkin sort. Served with mini forks and pokers, sometimes you are given a grown-up bib with which to eat them. But in the summers in New England, it seems you can’t drive more than a few miles without running into a seafood shack that sells lobster of all sorts– in a roll, sumptuously stewed in a bisque, steamed, or grilled. This is definitely one of the perks of living here.

We have been in Connecticut for over a year now, but I had never cooked my own lobsters. Well, that all changed this weekend. I picked up at a passel of snapping, spiky-shelled crustaceans, steamed them off in a bit of salted water, and served them up with wedges of lemon and drawn butter. It couldn’t have been easier, or more delicious!

Away go the potatoes, scrape the bowl clean; the stuffing is neatly wrapped in crinkly foil; cranberry relish is nestled in Tupperware containers, waiting to dye the plastic; globs of congealing gravy go into the fridge; and the crowning achievement, the bird, is sliced and ready to be saved. Just like the shopping list of ingredients that was drawn up to make the meal, I can now tick off, each leftover component.

Perhaps I have mentioned it before, but I am not the biggest fan of leftovers. Wait, wait. Let me rephrase that: I am not the biggest fan of my own leftovers. Chinese dinner, the next day for lunch is quite alright. Reheated Indian food is divine. But having a meal that I prepared? Meh. But I am getting better. I have found that the same food, minimally fussed with, but artfully combined to make a new-ish dish– that I can do. It becomes a little game of trickery.

Take for instance Saturday night’s dinner, a little something I called Pilgrim’s Pie. It is an ex-Californian-now-New-Englander girl’s excuse for Shepherd’s Pie…or, simply put, it’s just another way of using up all of those Thanksgiving leftovers.

One giant mess of carbohydrates– with a little bit of turkey thrown in for good measure. Layer one was the stuffing, and I always make a traditional bread stuffing. Layer two, a thin slick of cranberry relish accented with orange peel. Next comes the turkey, shards of succulent white meat. Then the gravy, rich and smooth, and the crowning glory, soft peaks of mashed potato. I baked the “pie” at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. The mashed potatoes got crispy, their peaks burnished by the heat of the oven, and the layers of leftovers melded together to make one familiar yet still unique November supper. The meal required just about all the effort I could expend after a long holiday weekend, but brought back all the wonderful flavors of the meal…till next Thanksgiving.

The e-vite had read, “Bring a dessert, we’ll supply the wine!” I placed my pie on the table, next to the brownies supplied by one guest, a chocolate fiend no doubt, and the figs supplied by a health nut, and then I sat back down to enjoy the backyard. The house may have been typical, but the backyard was not. Overgrown, but in an English garden sort of way, brambles grew next to tomato plants. There was a trickily pond off in the corner, and the centerpiece of the garden was a gazebo covered in grape vines unfurling their leaves. Twinkling lights wound through the vines, giving off an attractive light, making my pie which had baked unevenly look toasty brown all over.

Conversation flowed, as did the wine and the Slivovitz, a distilled plum liquor supplied by our host. But as I stood under the arbor, I just could not stop thinking about all of those grape leaves, barely beginning to turn the colors of autumn. Bolstered in confidence from a few sips of the Slivovitz, I hatched a plan: pluck, pluck, tear, pluck. “What are you doing?” asked Brian, as he watched me snatching grape leaves from the vines.

“I can’t let all of these beautiful leaves just go. There has got to be something I can do with them,” I proclaimed stuffing untarnished leaves into my pockets. I circled the gazebo continuing the hunt for leaves that had yet to be marred by the fall season, and remained supple enough to play with. By the end of the evening, I went home with the burning feeling of Slivovitz in my esophagus, and my pockets full of grape leaves. I put the grape leaves in the fridge until I figured out what to do with them.

The following day, a stack of leaves now placed on my desk, many Google searches, and far too many dolmas recipes to count, it seemed I was on my own as to what I would make from my leaves. I didn’t have enough to make piles of dolmas, but what about wrapping these leaves around something else altogether. Like salmon…

So that was what I did. I blanched my fresh grape leaves for a few minutes in some boiling, salted water, to make them more malleable. I then wrapped the leaves around some salmon filets, seasoned just with salt, pepper, and a bit of olive oil. After wrapping, I then seasoned the leaves with salt and pepper, and gave the newly wrapped filets another glug of olive oil. I then popped them in a 425 degree oven for 12 minutes. (I don’t like my salmon well-done.)

This dish was simple to the extreme, but had that special, homemade quality due to the grape leaves. When baked, the leaves became crisp, almost like a Mediterranean nori. The salmon was moist and flavorful, tinged with the flavor from the leaves. Of course, I’m not sure how practical of a recipe this is for Nosheteria. I’m not sure how many of you have access to a grape arbor, or even one measly vine, but if you do, I strongly suggest you go plucking before the season is gone.

But in the summertime, when the weather is warm, and the produce is displaying its array of bright hues, I favor salads. But salads? Some guests may be a tad disappointed when they sit down for a meal at my house, and all that I serve are some beautiful sliced tomatoes, their juice spilling out over crumbles of feta cheese, and doused with some heady olive oil. As delicious as this sounds to some, others may desire a little something more. I get it–enter the cockle.

Cockles are so simple to make– I have composed salads that are more labor intensive. The smallest type of clam, they offer up a sweet, briny mouthful of the ocean to diners. My favorite way to eat them is to pluck them from the shell using an empty shell as pincers. Set just a bit of roughly chopped garlic to saute in some olive oil in a deep sided dutch oven. The cockles go tumbling in, closed mouth like a child who got into her birthday cake too soon, some freshly squeezed lemon juice (and go ahead chuck in the rinds), a twisting of cracked black pepper– no salt is needed as the cockles retain much of their salty ocean water– and on goes the lid. Wait five minutes, remove the lid, and a puff of sea air rushes upwards to meet your nose. If your cockles aren’t opened yet, give them a few more minutes on the stove.

In keeping with the summer attitude, the cockles can be eaten hot from the stove, or mellowing to a pleasant room temperature. I’ve been making grilled tomato bread to go alongside them. Slices of baguette, grilled to a crisp, rubbed with a garlic clove, and then smeared with a cut Roma tomato. What you are left with is juicy tomato pulp and seed. All that is needed is a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and a proper dunking in the broth that is created from the cockles.

Pinch. Dunk. Repeat. That is what I call the perfect directions for a summertime meal.

But now that I have moved to Connecticut, lobster abounds in the summertime. Steamed, grilled, and of course rolled, these succulent babies are served up in a variety of different ways, at a variety of different establishments. But for my very first lobster roll, I went to Chick’s in West Haven. Chick’s is truly a relic from the past, not much has changed here since the 1950’s. While the food is standard, large and usually fried, the location can’t be beat– it’s literally across the street from the beach. Moments after ordering, my lobster roll came out of the kitchen, piping hot, dripping with butter, on a toasted hot dog bun.

The Connecticut lobster roll is ideal for a mayonnaise-phobic fiend, such as myself, because it is simplicity itself. All you really taste is lobster, moist and slightly chewy, and butter, lots of butter. The cheap white hot dog bun, toasted to perfection, is merely a vehicle for getting the lobster into one’s mouth.

My husband, though sampling my lobster roll, ordered the special, deep-fried, soft-shell crab. It was served with toast in order to make a sandwich that looked like it could literally walk away with its claws peeking out from under the bread. The crackly carapace offered a welcome crunch to the sweet crab meat hiding within.

(That’s my husband’s hairy arm. I think it is the perfect backdrop for his fried feast.)

Was the food at Chick’s amazing? No, there is better fried fish to be found, and I am sure now that I am a Nutmegger, I will eat a better lobster roll. But Chick’s was the perfect introduction to this state. Sitting outside, on hard concrete benches, with our plastic plates of seafood before us, with a watery dish of coleslaw, and a lemon wedge as accompaniments, the cool breeze of summertime by the water, and the waves lapping the rocky shoreline across the street– Chick’s was great. I definitely think I will be back again.

I myself was not always a lover of liver. When I was young my mom would prepare them every so often for Sunday supper, and I would gag. She would drag out the heavy, cast-iron skillet, and set the individual chicken livers to sizzle in the buttered pan, with a healthy seasoning of sliced onions, salt and pepper. My nose would set to twitching even before I could see what we were having for dinner. My family would sit down to eat, my parents each taking a hearty portion of liver, and even my sister, my kindred spirit of sorts, with an even more timid palate then my own, liked the liver too. I, on the other hand, would take a small serving, poking it, rolling it around my plate, smelling its acrid, pungent odor, and ultimately leave it. It was just plain nasty.

But then I went to Italy. Oh, and about 10 years passed. In Florence, on a warm July evening, with people zooming by on their scooters, anything, even chicken liver, smeared on a crostini, and drizzled with fruity, olive oil is going to taste good. Smooth and creamy, with just the right amount of heft to truly remember what it was that you were eating, I was now a chicken liver convert. And I have never gone back. Now it is me, who drags out my cast-iron skillet to fry up some liver for dinner. I make my own rustic pates. That smell that was once so acrid is now deeply savory, and a bit smoky.

So this weekend, while watching cooking shows on PBS, I saw Lidia make a pasta sauce with chopped-up chicken liver and I knew that this was a sauce I had to try. Although this may appear to look like a hearty bolognese, it is anything but. Don’t get me wrong, it is no primavera, but it is simply not heavy and rib-sticking either.

To make the chicken liver sauce, saute an onion and a few cloves of garlic with a bay leaf. Add a few tablespoon of butter, and a bit of tomato paste. When all is toasty, add about a pound of coarsely chopped chicken liver, and some peas. Continue to saute, until the liver has a nice crust on the outside, and then add a bit of stock. Stir well to mix, and heat through. Season with salt and pepper, then add in your cooked pasta (I used linguini) and some Parmesan cheese.

Delicate and buttery, smooth in both consistency and texture, with a pop of sweetness from the peas, this sauce was a dream for those who have a taste for the innards. And maybe it is even unassuming enough to sneak past the liver haters left out there.

I will eat just about anything. There were the bunny hearts of last year, grilled and skewered on pine-y rosemary branches. They were chewy. I have loved sweetbreads from the time that I was young and traveling in France with my father. At the time, I thought they were artichoke hearts and ate them right up. Yes, give me your snails, slippery and drenched in garlicky butter! I don’t suppose I cover my carnivorous leanings on this site because offal usually doesn’t photograph too well. But roasted mustard rabbit, wrapped in salty prosciutto, adorned with pan juices deglazed with cream and lying on a bed of soft polenta, that looked, and tasted pretty darn fine.

When my sister (who still lives in California) called me this weekend, our conversation went something like this:

“So what are you doing?”
“Making dinner.”
“Oh, what are you having,” she asked, as she heard pans clattering in the background.
“Rabbit.”

Silence.

“That’s gross. I couldn’t.”

And I realize many people couldn’t. No amount of soothing my sister’s nerves by telling her how they were farm-raised, or that many people think that rabbit tastes just like chicken could alleviate her gag reflex. And I understand, I really do. But I thought that you, my faithful readers might like to see what I had for dinner this weekend.

I can see why parallels are so often created between rabbits and clucking barnyard fowl. The meat tends to exactly the same in color and texture. But with rabbit it is more subtle, more delicate. I tucked one fresh sage leaf under each slice of prosciutto, this perfumed the meat in a woodsy, herbaceous way. And the pan-juices, salty from the ham, and pale from the cream, were perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed my supper, but you should feel free to make the same recipe with chicken as well.