Liver

I've always loved liver since I was a little girl, eating it at the cafe in Cyprus my parents hung out in grossing out the other kids.  In Tuscany I always order fegatelli, pigs liver wrapped in caul fat, seasoned with fresh laurel leaf and wild fennel pollen and grilled or oven roasted.  At Union Square farmrs market I always grab the lamb liver at Violet Hills Farm when he has it.
Here I sauteed it with some lamb kidney and bacon, a few pan roasted cherry tomatoes and served it over toasted bread.  I can't think of a better breakfast

Frying in Extra Virgin Olive Oil

when we first moved to Italy fried zucchini blossoms seemed so exotic.  How weird, we thought, the Italians eat flowers.  But soon we were  converted to the sweet flavor dipped in a simple batter and fried in Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  Extra Virgin used to be the most common fat in the Mediterranean, everyone had a few olive trees and everyone produced oil for the year or if they didn't someone in the family did.  In America people tell you all the time you can't deep fry in olive oil.  But in the Mediterranean we do every day all the time originally because it's the fat that was available, now because people love the taste.  Aside from zucchini blossoms, we also fell in love with calamari fried in olive oil.
Little tiny calamari. just a few hours out of the water, dredged in a littlae flour, fried in fresh oil(very important) and then served with nothing more than salt and a little squeeze of lemon.  The airport in Rome is right near the little fishing village of Fiumeccino and I try to time my departures or arrivals into Italy with a meal at one of the little seafood restaurants there.  Some simple fried fish, a plate of pasta and some lovely chilled white wine and  I feel right back at home or well fortified for take off

Late summer dining

It's really late August before we get all the great summer vegetables and even though by September fall vegetables and fruits are showing up, it's still to warm to want to eat them yet and summer vegetables always continue into early October.  All the restaurants are previewing fall menus with long heavy braises and root vegetable purees but for me summer vegetables are such a short season I want to eat them as long as they are here.  I love to make eggplant parmesan the Tuscan way with aromatic besciamel instead of ricotta or mozzarella.  A light tomato sauce made from fresh plum tomatoes, lots of Parmigiano and basil.  It seems so light and delicate even if it's not.
Sometimes I find green coriander seeds in the market from flowering cilantro.  It's a wonderful intense burst of flavor in the seed that tastes sort of like what I imagine India to taste like.  I like to sprinkle them over fresh salad tomatoes with Feta cheese and a little slivered fresh chili.  It's an exotic play on Insalata Caprese.  the idea behind it is the same though, creamy salty cheese and ripe tangy fruity tomatoes
One year I worked in a tiny hole in the wall in the East Village where the kitchen was in the tiny dining room.  It was a particularly hot summer and it was all we could do with one wheezy old air conditioner to keep the room cool.  I made a lot of cold soups that summer, variations on gazpacho with richness coming from the olive oil blended into the fruit or vegetable base.  This is one I still love to make with cantaloupe melon, a little bit of plain yogurt, some sherry vinegar and plenty of olive oil.  I garnish it with little shavings of prosciuto  or jamon serrano or just a sprinkling of  dried chili pepper.  It's refreshing and beautiful looking

Basil Leaves

It's full on summer and that means eating as many summer vegetables as possible.  This year I have a balcony with herb pots on it.  Most prolific is the basil and I have started incorporating the leaves as a salad green.  This is seared Spanish Mackerel with a salad of warm roasted eggplant, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and whole basil leaves.

The Souk in Morocco

turnips and oranges in the vegetable souk in Agadir
pumpkins
golden turnips, one of my favorites rarely encountered here
purple top turnips
preserved lemons

Tagine

Tagine in Morocco of lamb, artichoke hearts and peas garnished with hard boiled eggs
I became really intrigued with the tagine as a cooking vessel when I went to Morocco in February.  It's a flat bottomed shallow dish that goes straight over the fire and an extremely tall conical lid that rests on top all made out of terracotta.  The bottom is glazed but the inside of the top is not.  When I came back I insisted on buying one.  It's a really unique way of cooking something.  Hot dry heat on the bottom, moist, aromatic steam on top and everything permeated with that terracotta flavor.  The funny thing is in Morocco most of the home cooks prefer the pressure cooker for it's speed but I think the old fashioned tagine is vastly superior.
Last night we bought rabbit at the butcher and braised it with preserved lemons and olives.  When it was almost cooked we added fresh peas and blanched carrots.  It was one of the best rabbits I've ever tasted.

Maine

I went to Maine for the fourth of July which means lots of Seafood
A ten pound cod grilled over drift wood
Fried clams at Gilmores

And of course a bushel of steamed lobsters

Fava Beans

In Tuscany in the spring fava beans are one of the first things to come up.  At Easter time traditionally favas are eaten with Salamis that were made in the early days of January.  Here in New England favas come a bit later and they are not here for very long.  The heat destroys them.  They are often harvested too big and their outer skin becomes tough and bitter.  One farmstand in Union Square picks them young and tender enough to eat them the way they do in the Mediterranean with out the foolish blanch and peel that makes thousands of prep cooks in New York groan and want to call in sick.  In Italy I would eat fava beans until I couldn't stand it anymore but here I count myself lucky if I make it to the market in time for perfect favas.  This year I almost missed them.

I sauteed the favas and some fresh peas with serrano ham and young onions and tossed in fresh mint at the very end.
One of my favorite ways to eat favas is raw, tossed with a young, mild sheep's milk cheese such as Pecorino Toscano or a young Manchego, extra virgin olive oil and all sorts of tender young herbs and greens, pea shoots, basil leaves, "micro greens" whatever you find or imagine.  A fair amount of cracked black pepper but no vinegar or acid.  Every time I make it here it makes me wish I lived in Italy again

Rice Salad

I'm known for my Mediterranean cooking and it's what I know best, the flavors are in my bones and my cooking is unthinking and instinctual with  Mediterranean ingredients.  My guilty secret is my equal love of Asian flavors particularly South East Asia.  It doesn't really make any sense because for the two years I lived in Hong Kong as a child I turned my nose up at Chinese food.  It's not something I know in my bones at all.  Still I like to cook with asian flavors at home whenever I can get away with it.  I make sure to always have ginger and fish sauce on hand.  Toasted sesame oil is good.  Then many of the North African ingredients we always have work as well, cilantro, lime, hot chilies.  Todays lunch was inspired by a salad I read about in The Seductions of Rice a wonderful book of recipes involving rice supposedly from around the world but the passion is all in Asia.  The book describes a South East Asian salad of vegetables, fresh herbs, cold rice and lime juice.  I took some leftover fish and added it to the rice, sliced cucumbers and radishes.  Used whole leaves of mint, cilantro and basil as my salad greens.  I made what I consider a basic Vietnamese dressing of pounded ginger, garlic and chili.  A little sugar, lime and fish sauce.  I let it macerate and the sugar dissolve then poured it over the salad, added some toasted sesame oil and there it was a perfect hot weather dish.

Blackfish

Blackfish or Tautog is a delicious firm fleshed slightly pink fish that swims off the Atlantic.  It feeds on tiny sea urchin and crab giving the flesh a sweet almost shellfish like flavor.  So far it's not overfished although it's hard to find outside of the farmers market or Chinatown.  I snap it up whenever I come across it as I think it's really fine eating.  In a restaurant I would probably pan sear the fish in extra virgin olive oil but at home I prefer to broil my fish.  I smear a little olive oil over the top and salt and pepper the filet, flesh side up if its been skinned, skin side up if the skin is still on.  The old adage ten minutes an inch seems to work well.  The top gets nice and brown and crispy and the bottom stays moist and tender.  When fish is fresh I don't really like to add much to it.  Here I plated it over some baby Romaine lettuce and added a couple of spoonfuls of Moroccan style eggplant, a drizzle of Teverina olive oil and a squirt of lemon. 

Bread Salads

the Cretan Salad at the restaurant near my house
the home made version with better Feta, better tomatoes and fresh oregano
Lebanese Fattouche 

Bread salad are pretty common in the Mediterranean,  Tuscan Panzanella with tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions and basil dressed with olive oil and vinegar or Lebanese Fattouche with romaine, cucumbers, radishes, pickles, mint and Sumac dressed with garlic and lemon .  Recently I was introduced to a Cretan version with barley rusks and Feta and capers and olives at my local Greek restaurant.  Of course I wanted to make it better with farmers market tomatoes and fresh oregano instead of dried.  Now I'm on a bread salad frenzy.  I made Fattouche with vegetables from the farmers market.

strawberries

I'm always excited when ramps and asparagus shows up at the market but nothing really compares to the joy I feel when strawberries arrive.  I like to eat them Italian style with a sprinkling of sugar and a squeeze of lemon.

Summer Lunch

I bought too much skate on Friday, so today I made a salad of poached skate, grape tomatoes, celery, Persian Cucumbers and Kalamata Olives.