Words evoke just as much longing– descriptions of out-of-season
fruit draped in light glaze; well-crafted recipes telling a story
beyond construction of the dish; a blog poking at the sore spots
and asks you to ask yourself some questions.

Words like this evoke a
longing for summer, and cherries nearly busting their own skins; a seat at
the table where that recipe-dinner was first served; answers to the
queries kicking around in your head.

Think of cupcakes at a picnic on a day so hot the frosting shimmies
off like a stripper shucking a thong. The only solution is to eat
faster, let the frosting land where it may, and tidy your fingers and
sugary lips with a half-moon of watermelon later on.

Think of the way watermelon smells, and then how woody and dull
its January counterpart tastes, swaddled in plastic while it makes its
northward journey from a warmer frontier.

Think of food blogs
written by someone just outside your growing region, where berries and
herbs and cucumbers and greens are ready weeks earlier–not so far ahead
that you're still enjoying whatever season you're in right now; rather,
just that little bit sooner, when it's been ages since you enjoyed
something freshly picked and are tired of hearty stews and stout
sweaters.

And, think of how unappetising a recipe can feel when the weather's
all wrong. For instance, the
Thanksgiving I prepared a three-day duck
stew. It marinaded, then stewed, reduced, sat and thought
about itself a little longer. And finally, on day three, was assembled
into a divine pie, to be served with dry red wine-braised bitter
greens.

A flash heatwave struck when I was too far in to turn back or
adapt, and I sought refuge in the 100-degree heat of my balcony, which
was immeasurably cooler than inside my flat where the oven blazed and
the duck pie browned and crisped. Fatty fowl, parching cahors, cloying
pastry, thick fat… nothing could sound, look or smell more revolting as
the season jack-knifed from  
true autumn to false-July.

Therein lies the beauty of reading and writing about food– a carrot of
the coming season dangled before you on the page; gambling that the
recipe will be all wrong for today; a chance for reading what impels
you to your kitchen to make a dish from memory. The way a little thing
about eating sends you out the door to the place that serves it better
than anywhere else.

*

Amanda Miller lives, writes, and eats in Toronto, ON. Her work appears
online at Well Tailored Cakes and Neckties, The Nervous Breakdown and in a guest piece called Salt Preserved Lemons at Kevin West's wonderful blog, Saving the Season, a site perfectly demonstrating "just a bit ahead of my own
harvest" model.

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it's because you do.

it's because you once did.
it's because body memory records.
it's because body memory breathes. lives. documents. stores.

just because you know a place. does not mean you can know a place forever.
places change.
places die.
places transform.
places grow old with you. and the same place, looks young to someone
else.

you think you know a place.
and then you go away. for a long time.
you visit.
when you can afford to.
when you cannot afford to.
and subtly, you see the changes in your place.
years go by.
you live in a half dozen places.
you try and call each of them home.

but you know where you're from.
you know who made you.
you know what made you.
you can never forget.
even when you drink
even when you cut
even when you hide
even when you run
even when you drown
even when you love

you think you know a place.

 it's because you do.

and now.
now is decades later.
now she's gone.
but you see her everywhere.
most of all, she resides in you.

and now. the place is yours again. and so you walk.
and walk.
and walk.

you think you know a place.
but it never hurts to re-introduce.
to explore.
to make lists. to go back. to show the city that's yours, that's home, that's complicated

to someone else.
to yourself.
you take yourself on dates.
notice. stare. look up!

this place you know?
this place you have known forever?
this place that has made you. fought you. scarred you. challenged you. held you close. never let go. never meant to—
this place that you have always loved? this place you have always feared? this place you have always tasted. even when you called elsewhere home.

this place is meant to be shared.

you think you know a place. because you do. because you can. because you want.
{you want so hard.}

you know it. you know this place.

it's yours to have.

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Crack open the green womb
juicy red fertility
within
freckled by black seed.

Touch the velvet surface
Feel
it ooze beneath
the pressure of eager fingertips.

Smell the
faint odors
of sugar cane and pollen
of hot summer sun.

Bite the soft
fruit
hear the crunchy chatter
of teeth on flesh.

Slurp
sweet red blood
runs down mouth
fingers
neck.

Lick the
last sticky dew drops
breathe summer breeze
Remember
how sweet, how cool.

-
Shelly Butcher

(circa 1996)

Shelly's wit, words & wisdom can be found at her own blog, An Open Cupboard & examiner.com & within the Wellfed Network.

As a reminder, while I'm buried alive by opening a restaurant in NYC, there's an open call for guest authoring on eggbeater! email me directly if you've got something…

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About two weeks ago Patrick Ridder called me, worried. He'd planted what he calls a garden but what any chef would call a small farm, and he has no one to sell its growing produce to. He got too excited, he admits, when he began buying seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds…

and now he has too much of a great thing on his hands.

Are you interested in buying any or all of it for your restaurant?

Patrick's garden sits on a dash of ground between his house on the levee, and the Napa River. About a mile south of Yountville. The land is CCOF Certified Organic, but between all y'all and me, he farms 'beyond organic,' meaning he doesn't use any nasties, not even the ones the USDA allows for Organic Certification.

You will not see Patrick at a farmers market. You will not see a stand by the side of the road. You will not even see a sign leading to the garden, or the fig trees, the cherry orchard or the grapes. Massa Ranch is not a U Pick or an advertised farm.

But, if you want to taste his okra, his 6 kinds of tomatoes, 4 varieties of eggplant, the best, most densely flavored Black Mission Figs from the ineffable Fig Church, roast his beets, make ratatouille with his summer squashes, char his peppers with fire on the grill or braise collards or slice melon or steam Blue Lakes or just wrap your tongue around Quadrato D'Asti Rosso {pepper}, Tondo Scuro Di Piacenza {summer squash}, Thai Long Green {eggplant}, Jaune Dickfleischige {cucumber}, Canton Long greasy-Back {pole bean} and more,

contact Patrick Ridder by leaving a comment here with your contact information. Or hit the email link on his gorgeous blog Root Cap.

Your information will not be published if you leave it here. It will be passed on to Patrick directly.

I hope you take me up on my fruit and veg pimping.

Believe me when I say you will not be disappointed if you do.

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The world is your oyster. Right now. As spring turns into summer. Before the holidays and after late winter's lull.

Restaurants have seasons they like to open in. They follow the moon, in a crazy sort of way.

And right now, the moon is very full, pregnant, in fact, with imminent births.

If you want to cook New York City, may I suggest you check in with Craigslist today? Whether it be in San Francisco, somewhere in the delicious deep South, or right here in the Big Apple, a city for which sleep is not needed, you might see a posting you want to answer.

New York is your oyster. Whether you swallow or chew, spurn or hoard, relish or retch, eat traif or not, come and get it while the gettin' is good.

{see you soon?}

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if you know me, you know i adore the mermaid day parade in brooklyn.

if you really know me, you know why. 

if you’ve known me a long time you have seen me dress up for it at least once.

if you have no idea what i’m going on about, now even you mermaid day parade virgins can listen to the whispering words of the wild & wacky isle of coney.

if you want to come/go this year, i cannot endorse, suggest, cajole, force, beg, suggest, carry, kidnap, mention, guilt, announce, and/or tell you enough.

i can personally guarantee that   you’ve never seen,  whispered, sorted, bitten, felt, tasted, touched, licked, breathed, smoked, peeled, sliced, diced, sanded, snorted, cooked, eaten, plugged in, sweet nothinged, ridden, nibbled, undressed for, taken the subway to                       anything else like it!

you have my word{s}.

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Writer David Hoffman for the Fairfax Times writes about this incredible work best.

Twenty five years in the writing, almost 50 years in the living, and directed by Tina Landau, something tells me you won't be disappointed by Sycamore Trees. The only disappointment I have is I live far away.

You have about a week & a 1/2 more to go.

Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, VA 22206
| 703-820-9771

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Anissa Helou, a friend I was honoured enough to meet, eat with, and feed, in London is busier than most of us dream to be. Here is a short video she's made worth watching if for nothing else than to watch someone's brilliant hands handling pastry more pliable than pizza dough, as thin as strudel. And look at the color of that pistachio dust! 

The world of pastry is an endless as the hands and the cultures that dream them up! Never be limited by what merely lives in the books and kitchens of your home country. All pastry is related, bound by common history.

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I haven't disappeared.
but maybe I have.
it depends on how you look at it.
many people will tell you I'm more present than ever.
many of these last days have not been spent in the kitchen.
but soon that's the only place I'll be.

These days I'm shaking hands with a lot of guys who sell big machines.
They say things to me like, "Why are you being so fucking polite?! We don't trust you if you're too nice…" {Not gonna lie– It's a strange acclamation to go from London to NYC.}

Excel has become a great friend of mine. 

I've built a database in fact.
One wouldn't think a pastry chef could do such a thing.


The database does all sorts of mathematical tricks.
And all the pages talk to each other.  
VLOOKUP and Dropdown Menus, yo.
So few restaurants, and less chefs {who are not hotel/corporate trained, which I am not} understand the power of internal, back-end organization.
The Excel document is a list of all raw product, a compilation of recipes, a break down of all product to show price per gram, a relay of price per gram embedded in each recipe to cost out each recipe, and, as we move through costing out each product, we can add these "working products" to our "list of ingredients."
So if you want to know the cost of butterscotch ice cream you take the cost of ice cream as a recipe and add to it the cost of butterscotch, a working product, by the gram amount you need.

If this sounds too nerdy for you, or if this doesn't sound like cheffing as you know it, think about it this way:  for every skill you add to your resume you become that much more valuable, can garner a higher wage and you might even be able to keep your job when the economy tanks.

This is the second restaurant database I've written, and if we all use it to its potential it will also help us with inventory, ordering, wholesale/catering, and price tracking.

Or think about it this way: It's easier to work in your business than on it.

When you think, "I want to be a chef when I grow up," remember that just being a great cook is not enough.

What else am I doing? 
Test baking,
measuring my station and the equipment I've ordered,
having lots and lots and lots of menu meetings,
talking to future staff about the possibility of working with me, with us, 
visiting the future home of the restaurant in all its stages: raw, midrare etc. {we are going to inhabit a building that basically needed to be gutted & rebuilt from the inside-out},
tracking down an ice cream machine,
attempting to navigate the farmers market and taking notes on which farmers have what produce during which weeks/months/seasons,
organizing recipes & recipe notes,
finding hard to find product through available purveyors and looking under rocks for the rest,
going on field trips to places I won't be able to once we open the doors to the public,
and spending as much time with my family and friends as I and they can and have time for.

Opening a restaurant is like nothing else. Joanne Chang of Boston's incredible, incomparible Flour bakery put it best,

"There's a lot of 'hurry up and wait.' You have all this time to organize yourself, your time and the project. But you wait. A lot. And then when the restaurant is going to open any minute you have a thousand things to do and no time to do them!"

I know you want to know more about the project. Where it is, who its with, what my menu will be like, when we'll open. I promise you'll know, as soon as I can tell. 

Until then, eggbeater is taking suggestions for posts &/or 'bids' for guest authoring. Know anyone?

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Scared still.

Maybe not, though, for the reasons you might think.

I was scared of making marmalade because I respect it so much. Its craft, its patience, its perfect balance of sweet, gel, bitter, bite, fruit to peel ratio. All of it. When citrus marmalade is right, like so many things, its perfect is quiet, soft, shy.

A je ne sais quoi perfection.

It stemmed from having once, perhaps 20 years ago, done a bit of work for the British Marmalade Goddess June Taylor. June did it the old school way. Really old school, ancient. Cutting thousands of citrus orbs by hand. With a knife. No cutting of corners, no electric machinery.

I even took a marmalade class from her.

But still. Scared.

And then I was forced. Pulled out from under the car by my tail.

By the most wondrous citrus marmalade! Kumquat Marmalade! Anna Hansen, possibly by way of Christine Manfield, had one of the best, most straightforward, citrus fruit marmalade recipes anyone could possess & execute. I arched my back, hissed, and then looked as if nothing was ever wrong with hiding under a big dangerous machine.

When I tasted that gorgeous, bright, fruity Kumquat Marmalade I never looked back. When I landed back in America and began working at 10 Downing all of Florida's citrus was a' raging, I set to task. And marmalade I made! I made grapefruit, lime-ginger, Meyer lemon, Orange-Mineola Tangelo-Grapefruit-Navel Orange, lemon and grapefruit-fennel. If you go into that restaurant now you will still be eating my marmalades. /yeah, I went a little crazy once the fear left.

So, without further waiting & hoping, I give you my "recipe" which is more of a method than anything else.

For real live Recipes please check out Elise's step-by-step instruction for a Meyer Lemon marmalade recipe on Simply Recipes. But beware: it's a time consuming, old school method. And David Lebovitz has a great recipe for Seville Orange.

**TAKE NOTE: For your health & safety if you plan on jarring your marmalade you must follow proper 'canning' procedure.** I am a restaurant pastry chef and am not making marmalade for resale to the public. I am cooling down swiftly & keeping my product refrigerated indefinitely. 

LEMON, ORANGE, KUMQUAT, TANGERINE, MEYER LEMON MARMALADE etc*

• prep your fruit any way you like. I like to think in terms of bite size pieces but I have also been known to shake it up a bit. know that you will lose size when it begins to cook, like a cotton shirt you put in hot water & a dryer on the first go round. your knife should be non serrated and be sharp.
  make sure to discard only the stem end where the little green button resides. taste your fruit! even if they are lemons, eat it rind and all. yes. no whining. you need to know how sweet or sour your overall batch of fruit is. you cannot be psychic about this step. you have to know. for certain. empirically.
• pull, push, nudge out any and all seeds. SAVE YOUR SEEDS!! the seeds are money. do not throw
  
  them away.
• when you have all your cut up fruit, and your seeds in a separate container, weigh your fruit. write this number {I like to work in grams because they are easier, better, easier to remember & make more sense} on a piece of masking tape. put all your fruit in a container large enough to hold it & the step you are about to take next.
• fill your container with cold water from the tap. you may use expensive water too if you like. the fruit should BE COVERED AND SUBMERGED but NOT DROWNING. my most common mistake is I drown the fruit. you become sorry later, I promise you. if you have OCD and are worried about that fruit that floats to the top you can lay a folded clean dishcloth over the top and put a plate on top of that. but none of that is necessary. place this container in the fridge and affix that important piece of masking tape to the outside.
  
• in order to make marmalade you NEED a stainless steel HEAVY BOTTOMED pot. your pot should be twice the size of the batch of marmalade you are making. please do not crowd the pot. you spent all this time prepping the fruit and taking out all the seeds…
• you will also need a piece of cheesecloth the size of a dishtowel. you may also use a jelly bag, but you may not use a paper coffee filter. if the mesh on the cloth you are using is too tight, your marmalade will not get thick enough. or, it won't get as thick as if you use cheesecloth.
• the next day {although truth be told you can also cook this two days after you submerge it under water} dump all the contents of the container into your stainless steel pot.
• you know you have just the right amount of water in there when, upon pressing down on the fruit, you feel a mass like washing a sweater in the bathroom sink. if it feels like floating, amorphous fruit, your fruit is drowning and you need to pour away some of your water.
• turn the heat on to medium or medium high.
• do not leave the house.
• but you may want to plan an afternoon activity. the next step, depending on your batch size, could take 3+ hours total cooking time.
• you are cooking your prepped fruit until THE PEEL IS TEETH TENDER. you are not making mush. you do not want a rapid boil. you do not want aggressive water or to stir the mass aggressively. be firm but fair with your wooden spoon or heat-proof spatula.
• AS SOON AS THE PEEL is palatable by way of feel and taste, you are going to measure out 40-60% of the fruit's total weight {which you wrote on that piece of masking tape} in sugar. white sugar. so. if you have 1500g lemon slices, you probably want 750 – 900g sugar. lemons are sour. but if you have 1000g Navel oranges or Meyer lemons you may only want 400g sugar. see? see why grams are better? easier, that's for damn sure.
• now you want to turn the flame down to an exact medium. not medium high, not medium low. call in one of the Three Bears if you can't decide. if you're lucky the Christian Right will not have locked up Goldylocks just yet.
• see those beautiful glistening seeds? touch them. fondle them. feel their slimyness? that slime is natural pectin. fruit protein of the gods.
• dump out your seeds into the cheesecloth. you probably want to have folded your cheesecloth in half, though, so it's not too porous.
• wipe out any excess pectin that's clinging to the sides, with your cheesecloth. every molecule matters. I'm not joking.
• make a little package of your seeds. NOT TIGHT. do not suffocate your seeds. they are like bees– give them room and you will be much rewarded. tie top with food grade twine or a rubber band. plop in the center of your hot fruit mess.
• stir infrequently, but intentionally.
• do not leave the house. but you may water the garden or dust.
• place a saucer or two in the freezer.
• this is what you are looking for:
• your marmalade is done when it begins to thicken and your bubbles get lazy. yes, bubbles. you want your mixture to simmer on the high side.
• your marmalade is done when the mixture darkens but it is overcooked if it begins to take on a golden hue.
• when you think you're getting close, spoon out a bit of the mixture & drop it onto your frozen saucer. when the droplet firms up instead of melts out it is ready.
• do not plotz if your first batch does not set up stiff like a tight skirt. like a three piece suit. you are making a homemade something wondrous and it will not look like any commercial jam, jelly or marmalade you have in your condiments section.
• when you think your marmalade is done, pour it immediately into a large vessel and place that in a larger vessel filled with ice. or you can leave it out at room temp, uncovered, until it can be handled.
  

*This recipe is good for "soft" skinned fruits. By this I do not mean limes or grapefruits. If you are dead set on making either or both, let me know in the comments section and I will tell you how I deal with these fruits. I definitely do not suggest starting your marmalade making with limes or grapefruits as they are tricky in the frustrating kind of way.
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