High summer at the market, in the kitchen

In the days of high summer, there are few places in Chicago I'd rather be than Green City Market. It is the real deal--small-scale midwestern farmers committed to their land, astonishingly good produce in abundance. Even early on a Wednesday morning, the market hums with quiet excitement. Rounding the corner to the next stretch of stalls, I, anyway, am always buoyed by the prospect of discovering something beautiful and unusual, something I've never seen before.

And I'm glad that Sandra Holl seems to share my feelings about the place. A few weeks ago, I was invited to tag along with her on a market trip. Sandra is chef and owner of Floriole, and I've long been an admirer of hers. Her bakery is incomparable in this city. It turns out such gorgeous stuff--canelés with custard-like centres, mahogany sourdough boules, the flakiest croissants. When I'm in the neighbourhood, I always try and stop in.

We met that morning at Floriole's market stall--it's where the bakery got its start--and then made the rounds. Sandra had already put in orders with some of the farms (peaches and green beans from Mick Klug, arugula from Green Acres), so we visited the stalls to collect them. (If you take your eyes off all the produce for a moment and peer behind the stalls at Green City Market, you'll see tall stacks of cardboard boxes scrawled with some very familiar names--these are all the restaurant orders from around the city awaiting pick-up.) But in between pick-ups and afterwards, we also spent some time looking at what else there was available that day. If something catches her eye, Sandra explained, even if it doesn't fit in with anything she has planned, she'll take it back to the bakery for her chefs to do with it whatever happens to inspire them. On this day, it was the indigo-rose tomatoes at Growing Home that stood out--small and inky purple with just a bit of a blush to them. (Sandra tries to source as much as she can locally for Floriole. And in the days of high summer, between Green City Market, her mother's garden just outside the city, and the bakery's own rooftop setup, that isn't particularly hard. But even staples like flour, eggs, and butter at the bakery come from producers in the Midwest.)

On our way out, we picked up a flat of fat blackberries from Ellis Family Farms and chatted with the Ellises about their teenage daughter Mary, who's in charge of the farm's laying operation. They showed us a recent photo of Mary scrubbing a hen with a toothbrush in preparation for a show. It was pretty clear that over the years Sandra's developed some lasting ties to the people at this market.

Back at the bakery, I was also invited to try my hand at some pastry-making in the kitchen. It was a bit of a dream come true, being there in the midst of that bustle, even if only for half an hour. There was a lot going on around us--challah being tested, tart shells being unmoulded, gougères coming out of the oven, sourdough loaves being sliced by hand. Our plan was to make some galettes with the fruit we'd picked up. The kitchen made it simple for us. There were already rounds of house-made puff pastry  dough ready at hand. All we had to do was slice some peaches for the filling (tasting as we sliced, of course--Sandra emphasized the importance of this) and assemble the galettes. So we spread the pastry-dough rounds with a thin layer of brown-butter custard, mounded each with a big handful of sliced peaches and blackberries, crimped up the edges over the fruit, and then slid them into the oven to bake. And, of course, they were phenomenal. How couldn't they be? Impossibly flaky pastry. Caramel-edged fruit. Nothing better together.

Sandra was kind enough to allow me to share these galettes with you (thanks, Sandra!). How involved you want the process to be is kind of up to you. I took this as an opportunity to make puff pastry from scratch for the very first time. And though I found the work really rewarding and totally worth the effort, I suspect that most of you won't have the time and/or inclination. It can be a two- or three-day process, just because the butter needs to be cold when you're working with it and the gluten in the dough needs a couple of hours to relax after it gets rolled out each time. Instead, you could try making Gourmet's "rough" puff pastry, which is not as demanding and has been my go-to for a long time, or you could buy good-quality ready-made puff pastry (Sandra and lots of others recommend Dufour). The brown-butter custard, as Sandra says, is also optional. It adds extra sweetness and nuttiness to the galettes and prevents the pastry from sopping up too much of the fruit's juices during baking. What's important is that you use the best fruit available to you. It matters here--these galettes are really all about the fruit. Speaking of which--in the time that it's taken me to try out these galettes at home, high summer has come and gone, which means you won't be seeing peaches and blackberries at the market for much longer. But the galettes are very adaptable--you could probably work just about any fruit into them. I made two kinds this past weekend, some peach-blackberry, some plum-rosemary. You should be able to find plums at the market for a good long while still.

The homemade galettes turned out really well. In fact, they might be the best thing I've made all year. Seriously. They were so good. Octavian and I greedily demolished the two we kept for ourselves in seconds and then almost, almost, regretted having given the others away.

When people ask, I always tell them that the best thing about running this blog has been the people I've gotten to know through it. It's always gratifying to find people who think and care even more than I do about good food, people who are completely dedicated to what they do. I feel lucky to have met the people I have. It's affirming and inspiring. And there's always so much to learn from them. Sandra is definitely one of those people. She is serious about good pastry--I've seen it. So, walking around the market with her that morning, it was heartening to see that a good blackberry could still excite her as much as it does me.

Summer Fruit Galettes
An at-home take on Floriole's sweet galettes
NOTE: While in Floriole's kitchen, we didn't do a whole lot of measuring, and afterwards, Sandra only gave me exact quantities for the brown-butter custard, so the quantities below are based on my observations while baking with Sandra and what I did at home. Floriole's galettes, I think, are in fact a bit bigger than the ones I made, but mine still make for nice individual portions. About the fruit. The galettes that I made actually had less fruit than I've called for below (I used about 225 g all in all), but I think they really could have used more. The fruit does reduce a lot during baking. Feel free, of course, to use only peaches and blackberries or only plums. About the temperature. If you have a convection oven, by all means, use the convection option. Just bake the galettes at 350 degrees F instead and for about 30 minutes. About the brown-butter custard. At Floriole, the kitchen goes through a lot of brown-butter custard. This is reflected in the quantities that Sandra gave me. For my batch of custard at home, I converted most of the measurements to grams and divided by eight. And still, I had way more custard than needed for these galettes. I put my remaining custard in the freezer for the time being. Unless you have ideas for what you might do with more than a pound of remaining custard (you could just make a ton of galettes), you might want to try scaling down the recipe more or just skipping it all together. Almond cream would also be a good substitute, if you happen to have any of that lying around. About chilling. It's really important that you chill the pastries after assembling them. This will help them keep their shape as they bake. I rushed mine a little, and they don't quite have the nice star-like shape they're supposed to.

650 g puff pastry dough, chilled
All-purpose flour, for dusting
4 tablespoons brown butter custard (optional - recipe below)

FRUIT FILLING
150 g blackberries and sliced peaches
150 g sliced Italian prune plums
1/4 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary
2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided

EGGWASH
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons heavy cream

Coarse sugar, like turbinado sugar, for finishing

Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin. Place the block of dough on the work surface and dust lightly with flour. Gently but firmly roll it out into a 12-inch square, about 1/4 inch thick, using only as much flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking. Using a 6-inch cake ring or an equivalently sized plate as a guide and a sharp knife (you want the cuts to be as clean as possible, so as not to disturb the layers of butter in the dough), cut 4 6-inch circles from the dough. Place the circles on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
Put the peaches and blackberries in one small mixing bowl, the plums and rosemary in another. Add 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/2 tablespoon flour to each bowl and gently toss to combine.
Whisk together the egg yolk and heavy cream for the eggwash.
Spread 1 tablespoon brown butter custard, if using, in a thin layer over one of the 6-inch circles, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Mound a quarter of the fruit in its centre. Then crimp the pastry in the following way. Start by folding up part of the edge about 3/4 inch over the fruit, then while keeping the fold in place, take another part of the edge, an inch or so to the right, and fold it up over the fruit so that it overlaps the first folded part of the edge. Now, where the two folds overlap, press down firmly with one finger so that the folds hold--you should be able to an indent from your finger. Continue folding and pressing until the crimp goes around the entire pastry. It should take about seven folds. (You may have trouble crimping the pastry with all the fruit mounded in the centre. If that's the case, remove some to make the crimping easier and tuck it back in afterwards. It may seem like too much fruit right now, but it will reduce significantly during baking.) Repeat with the remaining pastries. Brush with eggwash and chill in the fridge for 30-60 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Sprinkle the pastries with coarse sugar and bake for 30-35 minutes, until puffed and deeply golden. The galettes are best eaten warm from the oven.
Makes 4 individual galettes.

Brown Butter Custard
From Floriole Cafe and Bakery

170 g unsalted butter, cut into chunks
Juice of a medium lemon
3 eggs
220 g sugar
1/2 tablespoon brandy
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Kosher salt, a big pinch
33 g all-purpose flour
45 g heavy cream

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted, bring it to a boil, still over medium heat and whisking constantly to prevent it from separating. Continue cooking the butter, whisking occasionally to prevent milk solids from sticking to the bottom of the pan, about 5 minutes. The butter is ready when it is the colour of caramel. Check its colour by lifting some up in a spoon. Pour into a heatproof container, preferably something with a spout. Add the lemon juice and let cool.
Meanwhile, in a stand mixer fitted with the wire whip attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium, until pale and thick, about 3 minutes. Gradually incorporate the browned butter. Then add the brandy, salt, flour, cream, and vanilla and mix just until combined. If the custard starts to look grainy at any point, that's fine. Use immediately or store refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Makes about 585 g.

Setting aside spades and worries

It's been a quiet summer for the two of us. We stuck pretty close to home, busy tending to ideas and vegetable beds, hoping that in time they'd flourish. But summer is fast fading, which means that many of our good friends, who've spent the summer away, will be back in town. I'm thinking that it's time that we set aside our spades and worries for a little and think about breaking the quiet, about maybe having a party.

When we do, this flatbread is sure to be a part of it. (If you want to get fancy, this flatbread is technically a Catalan coca of sorts.) It is perfect late-summer party fare--just red pepper, onion, and eggplant cooked down into a luxurious mess, spread out on thin stretches of dough, and then slipped into a hot oven for a scant few minutes. There, the onion especially melts and chars, while the dough blisters and bakes up shatteringly crisp. Cut into squares, it is ready to be passed around.

This flatbread is decidedly unfussy. The dough, though yeasted, is forgiving. I have let it sit out an hour or two longer than it really should have and then stuck extra in the fridge for later use. It held up just fine. You could definitely cook down the vegetables a few hours, maybe a day even, in advance. And with everything prepped, you could easily keep turning out flatbreads with a party in full swing.

Onion, Red Pepper, and Eggplant Coca

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East

DOUGH

112 g / 1 cup bread flour, plus extra for dusting

1/3 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

75 ml / scant 1/3 cup water

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

VEGETABLES

1 medium eggplant, cut into half-inch cubes

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

6 tablespoons olive oil, plus more as needed

2 medium Spanish onions, roughly chopped

2 red peppers, cut in half lengthwise, seeded, and thinly sliced

1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped rosemary

To make the flatbread dough, place the flour, salt, and yeast in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir together the oil and water in a cup. Make a well in the flour and then pour in the water mixture a little at a time, mixing constantly with your hands. When all the yeast mixture has been incorporated, transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead well for at least 5 minutes. If the dough is still stick, add a little more flour; if it is too stiff, a little more water. It is ready when no longer tacky but soft, elastic, and smooth. Put the dough in a clean, oiled  bowl and leave to rise until doubled in bulk, 1-2 hours. After proofing, it can be chilled until needed. Give it some time to come back to room temperature, about an hour.

For the topping, first toss the eggplant with the salt in a colander and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a heavy, 10-inch sauté pan and, when hot but not smoking, add the onions with a pinch of salt. Give them a good stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add the peppers and cook for 15-20 minutes more, until the onions are golden and sweet and the peppers soft. Be sure to stir them often so they cook evenly and do not stick to the bottom of the pan. Blot the eggplant dry with a towel, add to the pan along with the rosemary, and cook for a final 15 minutes, stirring often, until the eggplant is soft all the way through. Remove from heat and rain off any excess oil. Check the seasoning and set aside to cool.

When ready to bake the flatbread, preheat the oven to 525 degrees F (with a baking stone, if you have one). Divide the dough into two and roll out half very thinly to make a 12-inch by 8-inch oblong. If it's being stubborn, cover and let rest for a few minutes for the gluten to relax and then try again. Place it on a peel, if using a baking stone, or on a baking sheet, if not. Spread half the vegetables over the surface, right up to the edges of the dough. Bake for 8-15 minutes (flatbread baked on a stone will take significantly less time), until browned and crispy underneath. While the first flatbread is in the oven, start rolling and topping the next one. They are great served piping hot from the oven or at room temperature.

Serves 6-8 as an appetizer.

Pie season

I'm kind of crazy about fruit pies. They are pretty much everything I want in something sweet--just rich, flaky pastry spilling over with bright, luscious fruit. But I hardly ever make pies. I know, I know. A terrible shame. But you know how it is. Fruit pies are a finicky thing. Between pulling together the pastry, piling in the fruit, and letting it all bubble and bake, there can be a lot of heartbreak. So as much as I love them, I don't bake pies nearly enough.

But I'm hoping that will change, starting with this pie--peach-raspberry with pecan crumble. It is so, so good. It starts out with peaches--blanched and peeled, then roasted until silken and slumped. Then, come the raspberries, stirred into the still-hot peaches. These, once piled into a buttery shell, get mounded with pecan crumble, which bakes up golden and craggy. It's a bit involved, I know. A pie that will likely keep you in the kitchen all afternoon and leave you with a sink full of dishes. There's no hiding that. But this pie is also spectacular, quite possibly the best I've had. The peaches are intense, concentrated, deeply floral from their roasting. And the raspberries scattered throughout are so perfect with them, little pockets of jammy, puckery brightness. The pecan crumble too is spot on--it delivers needed crunch, with all that slumped, soft fruit. All in all, swoon-worthy.

The pie comes from the new Hoosier Mama Book of Pie. Hoosier Mama is local pie shop here in Chicago--an impressive sliver of a storefront and bakery that turns out wonderful pies all year long. They are very serious about their pie there. They are all about buttery, flaky pastry, all about intense, swoon-worthy fillings. It is my kind of shop. So I'm really glad that they've decided to share some of their pie wisdom in this book. Paula Haney and Allison Scott offer encouraging instruction. They recognise that pie-making is something that has mostly fallen out of favour at home and that the wisdom that went with it is largely lost to us. So they explain their process in detail and illustrate with lots of step-by-step photos. These definitely help with potential heartbreak. I am particularly thrilled to have picked up their crimping technique. The crusts at Hoosier Mama always have the most gorgeous, defined crimp. And now mine aren't so bad looking either.

I really would like to make more than one or two pies every year. Pie is just too good to not have around more often. And from here on out, I don't think it's going to be too much of a problem. The peach-raspberry pie is a bit demanding--one to keep in mind for when you want to make someone feel really special--but there are plenty of easier pies in the book. I'm already thinking about my next pie,  likely Lemon Chess with Sticky Blueberries. The gooey filling comes together in five minutes, and the blueberries should be a snap too. And then there's the pie after that. The first apples have already started showing up at the markets, and this book gives apples a lot of love. Classic apple, caramel-apple cider, apple and quince, dutch apple with sour cream custard, etc., etc. I can't wait! This, friends, is the start of pie season.

One final note. As you can probably see, my pie filling is a little runnier than it should be. I wasn't very diligent in following the roasting directions for the peaches. I didn't have an appropriate-sized baking pan and thought my peaches were cooking too quickly, so I pulled them out at the 25-minute mark. It didn't occur to me at the time just how important the long roast was. But this pie's crumble topping mounds over the entire surface. That means none of the water remaining in the peaches evaporates in the final bake. Those peaches need to roast for at least 40 minutes. My mistake.

Peach-Raspberry Pie with Pecan Crumble

From Paula Haney and Allison Scott's Hoosier Mama Book of Pie

NOTE: To peel peaches, bring a wide pot of water to a boil. Using a paring knife, make an X in the bottom of each peach. Blanch the peaches for 45 second or so, in batches if need be. Remove the peaches with a slotted spoon and immediately transfer them to a bowl of ice-water. Peel the peaches, starting from the X. If a peach is being stubborn, try repeating the blanching process. If this doesn't work, take your vegetable peeler to it.

1 single-crust, blind-baked All-Butter Pie Dough shell (available as a PDF here)

125 g / 1 cup raspberries

1230 g / 8 cups peeled peach slices (see note above)

15 g / 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

.5 g / 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

200 g / 1 cup granulated sugar

31 g / 3 tablespoons potato starch

Pinch of kosher salt

1 recipe Pecan Crumble (see below)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Pick through the raspberries, discarding any stems, leaves, or shrivelled berries. Set aside. (There's no need to wash them--the berries grow way off the ground.)

Place the peeled peach slices in a large bowl. Add the lemon juice and almond extract and toss until the peaches are well coated.

Place the sugar, potato starch, and salt in a small bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined. Pour the dry ingredients over the peaches and gently toss until most of the dry ingredients cling to the peaches.

Spray a 9 x 13-inch non-reactive baking pan with cooking spray. (I used butter without much issue.) Transfer the peaches to the baking pan and bake for 20 minutes. 

Remove the pan from the oven and stir the peaches, making sure to scrape out any ingredients that stick to the sides of the baking dish. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20 more minutes. 

Repeat this step until the peach juices are thickened and translucent. The peach slices should be tender but still hold their shape. Stir the raspberries directly into the hot peaches and cool to room temperature.

Once cooled, spoon the fruit into the pie shell and top with 1/2 of the Pecan Crumble. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the crumble is lightly toasted. (I'd recommend setting your pie plate on a baking sheet--you might get a few drips over the side.) Top the pie with remaining crumble and bake 20-25 minutes more, until the top is crispy.

Cool for at least 1 hour before slicing. The pie can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 days and in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Pecan Crumble

From Paula Haney and Allison Scott's Hoosier Mama Book of Pie

NOTE: To toast the pecans, spread them out on a baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees F for 10 minutes.

148 g / 1 cup all-purpose flour

100 g / 1/2 cup granulated sugar

30 g / 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

50 g / 1/2 cup toasted pecans

84 g / 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes

Pinch of kosher salt

Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.

Mix on low until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Increase the speed to medium and mix until gravel-sized pieces form.

Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before using to top a pie. The crumble can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Something enduring

I know, I know, another batch of preserves--what gives? I've been asking that of myself a lot lately, and I still don't have much of an answer. I've just found myself this summer making jam feverishly--and not only that but thinking a lot about it (also feverishly)--about what went well and what didn't with past batches, about how to squeeze in another session soon, about what to make next. It's all gotten, I admit, just a little bit obsessive. And before this, if you can believe it, jam wasn't something that really held my interest. Butter, I thought, is all a girl really needs. Why complicate matters?

Why, indeed, complicate matters? That was, for a long time, my attitude towards summer fruit. Berries, peaches, and plums--why fuss with them when they're good as they are? On a sticky July day, you can't do much better for yourself than eating a cold plum over the kitchen sink, juices running down your arms. So why trouble yourself with more? But then twice last week I found myself in the kitchen sweating it out over a pot of bubbling fruit and sugar, glass jars close at hand waiting to be filled. So obviously, at some point, I'd undergone a change of mind.

It had a lot to do with the process, I think. Making preserves is very physical, very absorbing--pulling apart cherries one by one and plucking out their pits or slicing up a mound of plums. You give more attention to the fruit than you might just sticking it in your mouth, and it feels good. And the transformation that takes place, because it happens in an open pan, and because you're there the whole time, stirring, stirring, stirring, is one you get to see all the way through. You get to see the fruit slump and soften. You get to see the sugar disappear into the juices, and the juices bubble up wildly and thicken. It's dramatic and beautiful. You get a different appreciation of the fruit. And you feel like you're tapping into something old, elemental, deeply human.

This, anyway, is the feeling I'm left with, having recently read and swooned over much of Kevin West's Saving the Season. The book is a bit unusual for a cookbook. West provides plenty of clear instruction and assurance on pickles, jams, jellies, and the like. But he also contextualizes preservation as a practice. Between recipes, he draws on a mixture of history, literature, and personal narrative to give us a better sense of the fruits, vegetables, and processes to follow. You get the feeling reading it that you're being given an heirloom, something enduring to hold on to. I'm pretty sure that I'll be turning to the book season after season, year after year, for a long time. (Before the book, West wrote a blog by the same name. I suggest you check on his post on quince, if you want to get the flavour of his work. It's heady.)

This latest batch is from the book, a mixture of early plums and sweet cherries, finished with a splash of bourbon. I didn't make it quite as intended. I was supposed to use inky-dark Bing cherries, but in a moment of absentmindedness at the market, I ended up with a brighter, less assertive variety. So my preserves don't quite have the depth and colour they're supposed to. But I don't really mind. Instead, they have a sort of all-round, stone-fruit sunniness to them, something I know I'll appreciate come January. My favourite spoonfuls are the ones that include a slice of plum. The fruit is velvety, yielding in the best way. And with the bourbon, it is made luxurious, buttery even.

Cherry Preserves with Plums

From Kevin West's Saving the Season

NOTE: Fruit obviously varies in sweetness. The measurements provided for both sugar and lemon juice are therefore guidelines only. West encourages you to taste your fruit at every stage of the process--out of hand, once macerated, and during reduction (after a minute on one of those chilled plates). Adjust with more sugar or lemon juice as you see fit. West also advises starting out with a little less (up to a 1/2 cup less) sugar, depending on the plum varieties available to you. You can always add more sugar towards the end, if you don't think the preserves are sweet enough.

2 pounds black cherries, such as Bing

2 pounds firm, yellow-fleshed plums, such as Red Beauty (the tarter, the better)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 cups sugar

1/4 cup bourbon or brandy

Wash and drain the fruit. Pit the cherries. (West isn't one for cherry-pitters. His method is to grab each cherry, one thumb on either side of the stem, and pull it apart. It should split lengthwise along its seam. Then you can just dig out the pit. This works best, I've found, with soft, ripe cherries. It makes less of a mess than a pitter.) Slice the plums away from their pits in sections. Stir together the fruit, lemon juice, and sugar. Set aside to macerate for at least 15 minutes. (If you plan to macerate for longer, e.g. overnight, press a piece of parchment paper or plastic wrap close to the fruit to prevent oxidation.)

Set a few small plates in the freezer. Warm 5 clean half-pint jars and lids in the oven set at 200 degrees F.

Turn the fruit-sugar mixture into a preserving pan or other large, wide, heavy-bottomed pot. Reduce over high heat, stirring frequently. Once it comes to a full rolling boil, it should take 10-12 more minutes to fully reduce. Test the preserves. Turn off the heat and spoon about a teaspoon's worth onto one of the chilled plates. Return it to the freezer for 1 minute. If the surface wrinkles when you push your finger through it, it's ready. If not, continue reducing for a couple minutes more and test the consistency again. Once fully reduced, add the brandy or bourbon and continue to cook, stirring well, for 1 minute longer.

Ladle the hot preserves into the five half-pint jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Wipe the jars' rims clean and put on their lids and bands (screwed only finger-tight).

Process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes (count 10 minutes from when the water returns to a boil). Remove the jars from the water and let cool. Check to see if a proper seal has formed by removing each jar's band and holding the jar by its lid. The lid should hold firm. If it doesn't, store the jar in the fridge and eat its contents promptly.
Makes about 5 1/2-pint jars. 

So I'll just say this

Heat here in the Midwest is a sticky, unrelenting thing. It hangs heavy in the air and clings to you. It leaves you feeling muddled and slow, thick as the air around you. On some days, by early afternoon, it is hard to string together sentences. You are reduced to a hot, sticky puddle of yourself. Kind of like today.

So I'll just say this. I am glad, so glad, that I churned out this batch of sour cherry frozen yogurt a few days ago (a rare moment of foresight on my part). A few spoons (or more!) snuck from the freezer at midday--clean, bright, and cold sliding down your throat--are utterly restorative. And best of all, the taste vividly recalls forkfuls of leftover sour cherry pie, eaten cold from the fridge for breakfast (an indulgent breakfast of the best kind, if you ask me).

And even if this finds you already a hot, sticky, muddled mess, not to worry. This frozen yogurt only calls for three ingredients, really--sour cherries, sugar, and yogurt. And the cherries, once pitted, need only a scant few minutes' cooking, just until they yield. Then, all you have to do is blend the cherries and yogurt together and get them a-churnin'. Relief--cold, sour, and electrically pink--is not far off.

Sour Cherry Frozen Yogurt

Adapted, just a little, from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop

Note: This frozen yogurt's consistency is best the day it's made, but that shouldn't stop you from having it around for a little longer.

450 g / 1 pound fresh sour cherries (about 3 cups before pitting)

150 g / 3/4 cup sugar

240 g / 1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt (Greek-style, if you'd like)

A splash of brandy or 2 drops almond extract (optional)

Stem and pit the cherries. Put them in a medium saucepan with the sugar and brandy, if using. Cover, bring to a boil, and then lower the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently to encourage the juices to flow. The cherries are ready when tender and cooked through. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Purée the cooked cherries and any liquid with the yogurt and almond extract, if using, in a blender or food processor until smooth. 

Chill for 2 hours, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Makes about 3 cups.

What was missing

Awhile ago, I finally picked up Luisa Weiss' memoir, My Berlin Kitchen. And, friends, if you don't already know firsthand, it is lovely through and through. Most of us at some point, I think, find ourselves struggling to figure out where it is we really belong, and Luisa gives clear and heartfelt expression to this in telling her story--the pull of your roots, your history can be hard, but it takes serious courage to leave one life for another, to really listen to yourself for once. 

The bits of the book that I like best are by far the ones that take place in Berlin. These for the most part are little vignettes of everyday life--birthday parties, dinners with old friends, summer picnics--but they sparkle in a certain way. You can really tell that this is where Luisa feels most at home. And you get glimpses of Berlin that you can't just by visiting. I was there for a bit last summer and tried to take in as much as I could. I walked and walked and ate and ate, and though I loved almost every bit of it, I never really felt as though I quite got what Berlin was about. And maybe it's just that I wasn't there for long enough, that I didn't see quite enough of it, but my guess now is that what was missing from it all was a kitchen to cook in. You really get the sense from Luisa that Berlin's soul is in its kitchens, with its women and men tending to bubbling pots and deep bowls. How better, after all, could you get to know a city than by taking a trip to an overgrown orchard at its outskirts--probably given up during the Cold War--and picking plums for Pflaumenmus? Or by gathering up bunches of white asparagus at its markets and making sharp, bright salads? Or by snipping the sprays of elderflowers that bloom in its parks and bringing them home to make syrup? I can't really think of any.

In Chicago, you definitely can't expect to find elderflowers just anywhere. (And even if you do happen upon some in the city, I wouldn't advise cooking with them. Some of the soil around here is pretty seriously lead-laced. This NPR article on lead and urban gardening advises against eating roots and greens growing in contaminated soil but suggests that fruit and flowers might be safe to eat. Maybe you can just harvest elderflowers if you find them in your neighbourhood after all? I don't know. I'd have to do more research.) But Luisa's description of her first drink of elderflower syrup--a couple of fingers' worth poured in a glass filled with cold water, evocative of Berlin's spring and all that was missing in her life at the time--was enough to send me looking for some blooms around here. And I happened to be in luck. Elderflowers' short season in the Midwest falls between late June and early July. So, I was able to arrange with Seedling Farm to have some sprays ready for pick-up at the market. (The blooms are too delicate to survive much shuttling back and forth, so you have to contact the farm ahead of time.) Finding elderflowers is definitely the most troublesome part of making this syrup. The rest is just a matter of snipping the blooms from their stems and steeping them in a sugar syrup, along with a little lemon and citric acid. In a few days' time, the golden syrup is ready for bottling and drinking.

So far, my friends and I have been enjoying it mixed with sparkling water and lemon, sometimes a little good gin too. Yesterday, I tried adding a bit of muddled basil, which I quite liked. Luisa recommends a mix of Prosecco, muddled mint, sparkling water, and lemon. She also says that elderflower, while refreshing in the summer, is an entirely different thing in the dark of winter, that it really tastes of spring and even joy then. I am doing my best to save a little, but I can already tell that it's going to be hard.

Elderflower Syrup

From Luisa Weiss' My Berlin Kitchen

NOTE: You can find citric acid at Indian grocery stores, where it is labelled as "lemon salt" or "sour salt." As usual, I found mine at the Spice House.
UPDATE, 2013-12-09: A couple of months in, I noticed that my syrup had started fermenting a little. When I opened the bottle, there was a noticeable pop. I am not sure what to attribute this to. Perhaps I was not as thorough as I could have been with cleaning out my bottles. In any case, I didn't think too much of it until today when I opened my fridge to find that the fermentation had caused the glass bottle to explode (I hadn't opened it for awhile, and the bottle was stoppered with a wire-bail mechanism, so it was too secure to let any gas escape). Anyway, take this as a lesson--mind your fermentation.

20 to 25 large elderflower sprays

3 to 4 organic lemons, washed and sliced paper-thin, seeds removed

3 1/2 tablespoons citric acid

3 pounds and 6 ounces sugar

Clean and dry an opaque vessel large enough to hold about 5 quarts.

Hold each elderflower spray over the vessel and snip the tiny blossoms away from the stem and let them fall into the crock, taking care not to lose any of the pale yellow pollen. (Keep an eye out for tiny insects in among the blossoms. One or two are probably unavoidable. I found an itty bitty caterpillar. Shake them out or nudge them along towards the stem so that they don't end up in your syrup.) Add the sliced lemons to the vessel and sprinkle in the citric acid.

In a medium pot over medium heat, combine the sugar and 1 1/2 quarts of water. Stirring occasionally, melt the sugar and bring the mixture to a boil. Then remove it from heat and let the syrup sit until lukewarm.

Pour the syrup over the lemon and elderflowers and mix well. Cover the vessel with plastic wrap and let it stand in a cool corner of your home for 3 days, stirring once a day.

On the final day, uncover the crock and pour the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer into clean glass bottles. Discard the lemon slices and elderflowers. Store in the refrigerator or in a cool, dark cellar for up to a year.

Makes about 2 litres.

Effort well spent

Summer is easy on us home cooks. There's hardly any need to fuss at the stove, to coax sweetness and colour onto our plates. There's plenty to be had already. That's the thing about summer. The produce doesn't need much help from us--a few seconds' blanching, a pinch of flaky salt, maybe. But that's it. The rest we can just put in our mouths, and it is good just as it is. How crazy is that?

So, lately, and especially when headed out to the farmers' market, I haven't been thinking too hard about what dinner or the next day's lunch will look like. I've taken to wandering the stretch of stands and going home with just whatever catches my eye. No lists, no set ideas. I figure that things will sort themselves out. And usually they do. Paper-thin slices of radish find their way into a tangle of chilled soba noodles, baby mustard greens into a sharp, garlicky salad. So things have been a little more laid-back around here. (Outside the the market season, I always head out with a list, sometimes two.) 

But I did make an exception this past weekend at the market. I made sure to pick up what I needed for this kohlrabi salad. I first had it at a friend's late last year. And at the time, admittedly, I wasn't expecting much. Kohlrabi was that one member of the cabbage family I just didn't get. Dark, bitter greens--yes. Creamy, starchy roots--still good. But that strange, saw-toothed bulb? It wasn't something that I'd yet come to terms with. This salad, though, changed that. All evening, I kept coming back for more. (And to be clear, there was competition--these pommes Anna and a sumptuous venison roast.) It was hard not to when it had so much going for it--toasted almonds, slivers of fennel, blueberries, salty goat's cheese, mint, and a serious gingery kick. But make no mistake, the kohlrabi, with its earthy sweetness, its addictive crunch, was at the centre of it all. And I got it.

So though it's been good just eating whatever comes my way, having hardly done a thing to it, the little bit of extra effort for this salad is effort well spent. Some things, like a good bulb or two of kohlrabi, are just worth seeking out.

Kohlrabi, Fennel, and Blueberry Salad

From Stephanie Izard via Food & Wine

NOTE: Choosing kohlrabi. Try to find bulbs on the smaller side, about the size of a tennis ball. They'll be sweeter and not so fibrous. The mandoline. I've never actually used a mandoline for this salad. I've always sliced everything by hand. Things might turn out prettier with a mandoline, but I like the extra crunch of the slightly thicker kohlrabi slices. I also just tend to avoid using more kitchen tools than I really have to.

DRESSING

2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger

2 tablespoons minced shallot

1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon pure maple syrup

1/4 cup grapeseed oil

SALAD

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1 1/4 pounds kohlrabi, peeled and very thinly sliced on a mandoline

1 fennel bulb, trimmed and thinly sliced on a mandoline

2 ounces semifirm goat cheese, such as Evalon, Garrotxa or Manchester, shaved

1 cup blueberries or pitted, halved sweet cherries

2 tablespoons torn mint leaves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast for 8-10 minutes, until deeply golden. Let cool. 

In a blender, combine the ginger, shallot, vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard, soy sauce, and maple syrup and puree. With the blender on, add the grapeseed oil in a thin stream and blend until creamy. Season the dressing with salt and pepper. 

In a large bowl, toss the kohlrabi with the fennel, cheese, toasted almonds and dressing. Season with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Add the blueberries and mint and toss gently. Serve right away.

Serves 4-6.