Happy Birthday, Bear!

Today, dear readers, is my little brother Jeremy's (hence the "Bear" - as in, "Jer Bear") 27th birthday. That's right: on this day in 1982, my life changed forever, thanks to a 10-pound (yes, you read that right) bundle of mischief and love.

This weekend, we celebrated things right, with an outing to Dinosaur Barbecue on Friday night and a homemade clambake (full culinary report later this week) on Saturday. We topped things off with a homemade chocolate birthday cake, a special request from the birthday boy himself (though this brown sugar-blackberry cake was a close runner-up).

Tonight, after he spends some alone time with his lovely wife, Miriam, we'll meet up for a celebratory Scotch.

Am I proud that my little brother chose to celebrate his birthday with a series of fabulous foods and friends? You bet your ass I am.

Happy birthday, Bear!

Fresh from the tree.

When I was 15, I spent the summer in France.

We (by which I mean a group of about 20 high school kids and a few brave teachers) started in the south, gradually making our way to Paris via Nice, Cannes, Avignon, Montpellier, the Gorges du Tarn and the Loire Valley. Most of the eight weeks were spent in various hostels, where we breakfasted on baguettes smeared with butter and jam, washed down with latte bowls brimming with chocolat chaud. We took language classes in the mornings and spent the afternoons seeing the sights.

That summer, I tasted my first Roquefort cheese (in a cave on the side of a Roquefort hill, no less), fell in love with perfume at Fragonard, kissed a boy on a dark beach in Nice, ate tarte tropézienne while walking down a cobblestone street in Saint-Tropez, and tasted my first Berthillon glace on the Île Saint-Louis.

Every single moment of that summer was memorable, but one sun-bleached afternoon in Provence stands out from the others.

Our two weeks in Montpellier were spent on homestays; we met our host families at the American students' center and fanned out around the city, nerves jangling. My family lived in a suburb about twenty minutes from the center of town, which was exactly as bland as it sounds. Over the weekend, we drove out into the country to visit my host mother's family at their farm in southern Provence.

All week, my family had been talking about the pool. "La piscine, la piscine": it was all I heard about for seven whole days. You can imagine my disappointment when la piscine turned out to be an inflatable kiddie pool - one that measured 10 feet across, fair enough, but a kiddie pool nonetheless.

Far more exciting to me was the farm itself. My host mother's brother took me on a tour of the fields, the enclosure where they kept the goats, and, finally, the cherry orchard. Acre upon acre of rich Provencale hillside planted with endless rows of cherry trees. I'd never been much of a cherry fan, having been raised by a mother who favored strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. But that day changed everything.

After the tour, while my family lounged in the pool, I walked back to the orchard and stood in the cool shade of the cherry trees. Their sweet, rich fragrance was overwhelming in the heat of the afternoon sun. The branches were dripping with ripe fruit almost ready for the season's largest harvest, which would happen over the next few days.

While I stood there, a cherry fell off a branch and fell to the ground in front of my feet. I picked it up; it was heavy with juice and piping hot from the sun. I popped it into my mouth and savored the scarlet juice and soft flesh of the cherry. Its flavor was complex - sweet, tangy and rich all at once, the juice stained my fingertips pink and dyed my lips crimson. I picked a handful more and ate them slowly, standing in the orchard, under the deep blue French sky.

To this day, I prefer my cherries warm, and leave them - by the bowlful - on my windowsill for a little while before devouring them. It helps recapture a tiny bit of that stolen moment, if only for a short time.

This summer brought to you by macaroni salad.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Danielle (aka Foodmomiac) posted what looked like a seriously delicious macaroni salad on her blog. I love a good macaroni salad, I trust Danielle implicitly, and so I decided to make a big bowl of the stuff to take for lunch last week.

Most of us probably remember the gloppy, gluey, overly-tangy versions of macaroni salad that grocery stores used to sell by the pound (They probably still do, eh?). The pasta was usually overcooked, the veggies soggy - and the dressing? Far too plentiful.

Danielle's version, though, keeps the best parts of the original (bendy pasta, glorious mayonnaise, carrots & celery, and a bit of sugar) and leaves the gloppiness behind. The veggies are crisp and plentiful, the dressing coats the noodles but doesn't pool on the plate, and the turbinado sugar adds sweetness and tang without overwhelming the pasta. Making this salad feels like an inherently summery act, though it would be delicious in any season. I ate it with cold roast chicken, and, one hungry morning, on its own for breakfast.

The original recipe (click here) makes enough to feed an army; my version is half the size, and provided enough for four generous portions. I also added a dash of my beloved spiciness, with a few glugs of Sriracha, and improvised a half-mayo, half-yogurt dressing upon realizing I only had half a cup of the former. Danielle's recipe listed elbow macaroni, but her picture showed the decidedly more grown-up cavatappi, and I decided to follow her lead on that, too.

Whichever version you make, and however much of it you make, one thing is absolutely essential: you MUST let the salad spend a few hours in the fridge before eating it. Trust me - before it ages a bit, it tastes like a mishmash of veggies, dressing and pasta. Once it's had time to hang out and get to know itself a bit, it is pure awesomeness.

Foodmomiac's Macaroni Salad
Adapted from Foodmomiac's original version

1/2 lb. cavatappi
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
1/8 cup turbinado sugar
1 1/4 tbs. dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. Sriracha (you can also go crazy and add a full teaspoon, if you choose)
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 sweet white onion, minced
1 stalk celery, minced
1 carrot, minced
1 dill pickle, finely chopped

Cook cavatappi in boiling, salted water until just al dente. Drain, rinse in cold water and set aside.

Mix together the mayo, yogurt, vinegar, sugar, mustard, Sriracha, salt and pepper in a large bowl.

Add the onion, celery and carrot to the sauce in the bowl, along with the cavatappi and pickles. Mix to combine, cover, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

Serves 4 (or one person, four times)

Shifting allegiances.

All my life, I've clung to the belief that no chocolate chip cookie recipe could ever overtake the classic Tollhouse version. I've dutifully tried each new recipe as they've emerged, including last year's much-discussed version from the New York Times and the much-touted Jacques Torres' recipe. Every single time, though, I emerged from the experience convinced that the original was still the best. Which always made me feel a little twinge of satisfaction and loyalty.

Today, however, I must admit that I have finally met my match. I thought I'd spend my life happily married to the Tollhouse recipe, content in our groove, calm in the knowledge that I had memorized the recipe somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years ago and could make cookies anytime, anywhere, given a few simple pantry ingredients. I was wrong.

Thomas Keller's recipe, which has been making the internet rounds in anticipation of the release of the Ad Hoc cookbook this fall, is amazing. It doesn't require cake flour, bread flour, refrigeration, or any of that nonsense. Which, in my opinion, is as it should be.

A chocolate chip cookie should be something you can whip up with the most basic pantry ingredients, not something for which you have to make a special trip to the store. Accordingly, the fanciest thing Keller calls for is a combination of bittersweet and semisweet chocolate.

The cookies bake to a dark brown, with just a touch of gold. Left to their own devices, the cookies are crisp on top and chewy inside (if you like a truly chewy cookie, mist them with water before baking).

The chocolate (I used fèves, as opposed to chopped chocolate) is perfectly oozy and plentiful, while leaving enough real estate for the actual cookie. They're just as easy to make as the Tollhouse cookies (the only extra step is a little sifting) - and, in fact, take even less preparation, since the butter in Keller's recipe is cold.

No waiting around for your butter to get to room temperature, people! You're free!

Ad Hoc Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes approximately 30 3-inch cookies

2 1/3 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
5 ounces 55% (semisweet) chocolate
5 ounces 70 to 72%(bittersweet) chocolate
1/2 lb. cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs

Chop the chocolate into chip-sized bits.

Position racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.

Sift flour and baking soda into a medium bowl. Stir in the salt.

Put chips in a fine-mesh basket strainer and shake to remove any chocolate “dust” (small fragments).

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, beat half the butter on medium speed until fairly smooth. Add both sugars and the remaining butter, and beat until well combined, then beat for a few minutes, until mixture is light and creamy. Scrape down sides of the bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating until the first one is incorporated before adding the next and scraping the bowl as necessary. Add dry ingredients and mix on low speed to combine. Mix in chocolate.

Remove bowl from mixer and fold dough with a spatula to be sure the chocolate is evenly incorporated. The dough or shaped cookies can be refrigerated, well wrapped, for up to 5 days or frozen for 2 weeks. Freeze shaped cookies on the baking sheets until firm, then transfer to freezer containers. (Defrost frozen cookies overnight in the refrigerator before baking.)

Using about 2 level tablespoons per cookie, shape dough into balls. Arrange 8 cookies on each pan, leaving about 2 inches between them, because the dough will spread. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the tops are no longer shiny, switching the position and rotating pans halfway through baking.

Cool cookies on the pans on cooling racks for about 2 minutes to firm up a bit, then transfer to the racks to cool completely. Repeat with second batch of cookies. (The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.)

Many thanks to Food Gal for sharing this recipe on her fabulous blog!

Salad for breakfast? Don't mind if I do.

The first corn of the season is always a little exciting for me. Summers in my mother's house always meant piles and piles of corn, usually steamed or boiled and served with butter, salt and pepper. I had braces from the seventh to the eleventh grade, so there were a few years there where I tended to cut it off the cob - but, for the most part, summer to me is my face covered in butter and bits of corn, a naked corncob on my plate.

Saturday morning, Migliorelli had a pile of early corn for sale, and I dove right in. I bought three ears and toted them home along with some scallions, tomatoes, cherries and other goodies. Sunday morning, not much in the mood to do a lot of cooking, I decided to whip up a warm corn and tomato salad for breakfast.

I cubed two small tomatoes, diced a little red onion, and mixed the two in a small bowl. Then, I cut the kernels off of one ear of corn, chopped up a little scallion, and sauteed those two together in a teeny bit of canola oil. A splash of sherry vinegar and a healthy amount of salt later, and I had a damn satisfying breakfast - sweet, earthy, crunchy, soft, and a bit tangy. Summer in a bowl.

Improvisation is the spice of life.

I love summer squash. It's sweet, it's pretty, and it's so easy to cook - unlike all those fall and winter squashes, with their giant seeds and pulpy insides, summer squash is pretty much just slice-and-serve. You can roast it, saute it, or eat it raw, if you like.

Most of the time, I roast mine with a little olive oil, some salt and pepper, and a sprinkling of thyme from the windowsill garden. But, one night last week, I found myself in need of dinner and without any meat in the house. The result? An improvised pasta dish: green and yellow zucchini sauteed with garlic, onion, mustard and thyme, deglazed with a little chicken stock and tossed with penne.

There's no real recipe here - just an example of improvisation at work. Don't be afraid to play around with whatever you have in the fridge - at worst, you'll have a slightly less than stellar meal - at best, you'll add a new standard to your repertoire.

I made zucchini with penne again for lunch Saturday, natch.

From peonies to dahlias.

Dahlias have replaced peonies as the flower of the moment at the Greenmarket, and I love them almost as much. Almost.