Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 1:50 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

There's a watermelon in my fridge.

Ripe is the season for massive, oblong fruits. (Yes, I see you, Monster Zucchini, but this isn't about you.) 

See this watermelon in my fridge? Picked Sunday at 4 Corners Farm in Newbury, its preternatural sweetness is helping offset the bitter fact that it's mid-August — and there are pumpkins blushing orange in the wings. 

That alone justifies a cocktail... 

Really, any excuse to pull out a bottle of Stonecutter Spirits' barrel-aged gin is excuse enough for me. I'll swoon for a good gin any day of the week, but I'm especially fond of this new(ish) trend toward barrel-aging the stuff (Caledonia Spirits' Tom Cat gin is another fine local example) and Stonecutter's version — released earlier this summer after many moons at rest —  is really quite special. 

Tags: Cocktails , Stonecutter Spirits , Gin , Watermelon , recipe , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 12:36 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Cucumber-flower salad

A few weeks ago, seminal New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl revisited Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. At his flagship farm-to-table restaurant, Barber is known for presenting meats and vegetables from his onsite farm in their barest form and letting the ingredients speak for themselves. In her review, Reichl describes an early course: "Cucumbers," she writes, were served "simply sliced and so sweet I was reminded that cucumbers belong to the melon family."

While I have mixed feelings about Dan Barber's impact on the food movement, Reichl's review reminded me that fresh, beautiful ingredients are best handled with minimal fuss — and that off-the-vine cucumber season lasts just a few weeks. So when a farmer friend directed me to a table full of fresh produce from Killdeer Farm at a party this weekend, I grabbed up a half dozen cukes, dreaming of a simple, spicy salad. 

With a chicken roasting on the grill Sunday night, I picked some fresh herbs and nasturtiums (the flowers lend a green, floral, spicy note, similar to a radish) from the garden and threw these in with the Killdeer cukes and some oil and vinegar.

All told, it took about five minutes to prepare. And guess what? It was great. 

Tags: Cucumber salad , recipe , nasturtiums , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 3:34 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Pasta salad with beans, veggies and herbs

A few weeks ago, I threw this simple pasta salad together for a potluck. I've been craving it ever since — it's a little sweet, nice and salty, and very light, as pasta salads go. It's also vegan, and if you use gluten-free pasta and Bragg's aminos, it's also gluten-free, which means most everyone at the party can eat it.

Last time, I included chopped sugar-snap peas from LePage Farm, but those are mostly done for the season. This week, I substituted shredded summer squash (and cucumbers) from Pierson Farm's stand in Bradford, since here we are again in the zucchini heart of summer, and it's time to start adding squash to everything.  

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Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 2:06 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Blueberries are in peak season.

I'll be honest: I'm not so into pancakes. As a vehicle for berries, butter and maple syrup, I'll accept them, but I'll opt for a plain bacon-and-egg breakfast every time.. 

But crêpes... Oh, crêpes. These fluffy, French-y little griddlecakes are more egg than flour, sinfully smooth and endlessly flexible — you can fold them around everything from fruits to fish for a meal that feels fancy (but isn't, really), any meal of the day. They've been a staple in my house on and off since college.

This summer, I've been wrapping berries — this week, blueberries from Super Acres Farm, in Lyme, N.H. (which is about 15 miles from my house and offers pick-your-own for $2.75 a pound) — into crêpes with winning results that have been too good not to share.

With all the rain we've been having, the berries have been fruiting like crazy and, so far, 2015 has brought bountiful strawberries, black raspberries and blueberries, as the bushes soak up the water and convert it into fruit. In Chittenden County, pickers can head to Adam's Berry Farm or Charlotte Berry Farm (among others) for pick-your-own, or to Last Resort Farm in Addison County.

I froze much of my last 10-pound pick, but saved the rest for snacking and crêpes — because the summer is short and why not pretend we're fancy?

Tags: Blueberries , crêpes , breakfast , lunch , dessert , recipe , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 1:56 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Purple haricot verts

When midsummer hits, I avoid cooking like the plague. My husband and I forgo the kitchen for the grill and eat whole fruits and vegetables as snacks as much as we can. Right now, our fridge is filled with black raspberries picked from our backyard and snap peas and cucumbers from the market, all of which are wonderful without help from a hot stove.

When I do need to heat something, I prefer to do it in bulk — making big batches of rice, beans and pasta that I can eat all week at room temperature, and blanching whole pots of veggies for use with the starches and legumes. Armed with a fridge full of these, you can produce an amazing variety of healthy, nourishing dishes with the addition everyday condiments or a quick, whisked-together sauce or dressing.

But about the market. Greens are coming into their prime now, as are beans, cucumbers and summer squash. Last week at Barre Farmers Market (which I still maintain is one of Vermont's best — small but wonderful), I grabbed a pound or so of gorgeous purple haricot verts and blonde cucumbers from LePage Farm. Today, I threw both over coconut rice for a light, easy-peasy summer lunch, which is, like so many of my other Farmers Market Kitchen recipes, endlessly variable. No beans? Use kale, broccoli rabe, bok choy, spinach (this will take far less time to cook) or cabbage. No cucumbers? Use apples, honeydew, pears or firm peaches. Even halved seedless grapes would work!

Here's the non-recipe recipe, which will serve about one person per five-inch cucumber. So for two, you'd need two five-inch cucumbers, or one 10-inch cucumber.

Tags: Recipes , rice , haricot vert , cucumber , farmers market kitchen , recipe , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:13 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Black raspberries

There is really nothing better on a hot day than firing up the oven to do a little baking. Just kidding. But right now, my backyard is overgrown with ripe black raspberries. Elsewhere, these, blueberries and currants are just coming into season on Vermont's farms. 

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Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 1:37 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Garlic scapes

Garlic scapes are beautiful, sure. The floral byproduct of a crop seeded for its bulb, these serpentine swirls have a mild, green flavor and texture somewhere between asparagus and that of a firm, fresh pea. I usually pickle them, make them into pesto, or throw them into a sauté as I would a green bean. But what if they were the main event? 

Tags: Garlic scapes , recipes , sesame noodles , peanut sauce , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 1:53 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Net thee some nettles, but do don gloves!

Here's a fancy little something-from-nothing recipe. I spent the weekend moving so I didn't make it to any farmers markets, and I'm also working with a serious case of empty-fridge syndrome. But I've got the basics: eggs, cheeses, milk, butter and a few leftover bacon ends from Vermont Whey Fed Pigs, which I scored at the Winooski farmers market a few weeks ago. The nice part is that it's all local. The cheeses — Tarentaise from Spring Brook Farm, eggs from Savage Gardens, milk from Kimball Brook Farm... It's nice knowing all my staples come from nearby.

And while I could have assembled a simple bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, I'm a huge advocate of greens for breakfast. And my new house is basically overgrowing with edible flora. I've been wanting to work with stinging nettles for a while now, and lacking other greens, today seemed like as good a day as any. 

Tags: Stinging nettles , recipes , eggs florentine , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 8:37 AM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Strawberries and wood sorrel

In parts of New England, "frappes" and "milkshakes" are more or less synonymous. At Brigham's, the Boston-based ice cream chain that closed its last parlors in 2013 after 99 years in business, a frappe was a milkshake, plain and simple. But in many homes, it's a blended, milk-based froth — usually thinner than a milkshake — with some combination of ice, ice cream, fruit or coffee. To me, it's thin enough to sip and has a head of big bubbles.

Tags: Strawberries , frappe , recipe , wood sorrel , ice cream , milk , milkshake , Image , Web Only

Posted By Hannah Palmer Egan on Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 2:19 PM

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Hannah Palmer Egan

Rhubarb ready for the stove

When I was little, my grandmother would make this tart rhubarb (no strawberries) compote and give it to me as a treat with ice cream. I believe she canned it, and she'd leave the excess in a bowl in the fridge. I would sneak in there, standing in the fridge with the door open (the light never worked), and suck down spoons full of the stuff.

I had kind of forgotten about it until recently, but today I made something similar, with some stems I grabbed from River Berry Farm in Fairfax. Guess what? It's super easy — takes less than 15 minutes to make, from start to finish...

I ate it for lunch, parfait style, and it was as lovely as I remember it — quite tart and a little sweet, and perfect with super-smooth vanilla bean ice cream from Strafford Organic Creamery and a few strawberries from Adam's Berry Farm. 

Tags: Rhubarb , Recipes , Compote , Ice Cream , Image , Web Only