Fruit in the summertime

Growing up in rural Maine taught me that in the summer time you eat what is ripe to the extreme. Eat until the last berry is plucked from the vine or the last carrot is pulled from the ground. Eat to taste the subtle details of the fruit or vegetable till you can tell the difference between types and varieties. Learn the feeling of when a berry is just the right amount of ripe or to smell when the peaches give off perfume so pungent you are intoxicated by the first bite. Eat until you are an expert. In my family always ate what was in season. But my understanding of eating and living seasonally really made sense when I spent my summers working on a farm. We lived and breathed what was going on with the plants we were tending. The shift in the soil the weather and the way the plants matures and bore fruit or leaf, had a direct impact on what would end up on your plate. In Maine farming is a short lived and fast paced race to grow, preserve and eat as much as you can before the leaves begin to toast in the late September sun, turning the leaves many shades of mahogany. Summer is the time to eat as much fresh produce as you can all the time. One of my favorite memories was being taught how to eat a yellow sweet plum by my farming mentor. The small fruit were perfectly ripe about to burst like a balloon with nectar. These plums were not for neat freaks. Each bite would express a deluge of juice down your chin running down your neck and down your shirt. So we assumed the position, ass bent at the hips with your elbow high above your head as you held the fruit. This insured that only a fraction of the juices would coat your face and body. We did this daily eating them straight from the tree one after another, until I really didn’t want to eat them any more. As the plum season tapered off and we had picked enough to fill jars with their beautiful syrup, we moved on to graze from the next mature fruit. Here in New Orleans fruit season feels like it happens all at once and then its over. This makes it hard to gorge on just one varietal, so I have taken to buying massive amounts and freezing it at its peak ripeness, eating as much as I can while its fresh. In the off season when I go to the grocery store and there lies in front of me perfectly perky fruit, all I see is an impostor . I don’t feel tempted to buy them because I know I will be disappointed I try to remind myself “absence makes the stomach grow fonder.” Fruit season will come again. So get out there and gorge on the seasons fruit because it won't last!

Yellow broad beans in quick tomato sauce.

One of my favorite times of summer is when the yellow broad beans start showing up at the farmers market and in the garden. It also happens to be around the time that onions are big enough to pick and tomatoes really get rolling. So this dish is a good way to cook straight from the garden especially with vegetables who’s bounty seems to be never ending. Yellow broad beans are dense and sweet and are great to add to soups stir-fry’s and salads. My favorite way is to cook them is with their fellow seasonal vegetables.
This recipe works served hot or cold as a side dish, starter or as a crustini topper to have with your summers favorite summer white or rose wine.


For every generous hand full of beans plan for one medium sized tomato, 1/2 a small white onion and a clove of garlic.
Medium dice the tomatoes, small dice the onion and rough chop the garlic.
You will also need coarse ground pepper, salt, and olive oil

For the sauce:
Heat a cast iron pan or stainless steel pan with two tablespoons of olive oil until it begins smoking you want it to be as hot as possible without smoking yourself out.
When the pan is ready add all the ingredients and stir vigorously for a minute so nothing sticks or burns. Reduce the heat and cook for 5 to 7 minutes and season with salt and pepper.

The beans:
Tip your beans (aka: take the vine end off) and bring a pot of water to a boil, add enough salt so the water is salty like the sea. Blanch the beans for three minutes in rolling boiling water or adjust the time depending on size, they should be soft but still have a little bite to them. If the beans are large and you want them in smaller pieces make sure to cut them after they are blanched. Have an ice bath ready if you intend to serve this dish cold. If you will be serving it hot, when the beans are blanched you can toss them directly into the tomato sauce season and serve.

My first Michelin * Restaurant: La Bastide Saint Antoine- Chef Jacques Chibois

My first experience dining at a Michelin star restaurant was at times overwhelming but provided to be memorable and delicious. There was simplicity to Chef Chibois food that was inspiring; each plate was composed, clean and perfectly designed. The service was impeccable, but at times its formality made me feel that if I sneezed or coughed that service could come to a screeching halt. Everyone spoke in soft murmurs and the breeze rustled the hanging chimes ever so gently creating a relaxing soundtrack to our meal.
The grounds were beautiful, surrounded by ancient olive trees, herb gardens and the fragrance of jasmine wafting across the breeze.


Amuse bouche
Four small tastes:
Cold carrot soup, large toasted couscous with summer vegetables, morel mushrooms with shrimp and tarragon, and cherry tomato confit.

First course:
Langoustine with zucchini, lemon vinaigrette and assorted vegetables

Second course:
Rouget filets, avocado puree and petit zucchini

Third course:
Fraises des bois, mandarin sorbet and jasmine syrup

Mignardises:
Strawberry macaroons, sugar lace cookies, miniature lemon tarts, marzipan squares and sugared strawberries.

Wine: Domaine Des Peirecèdes, Côtes de Provence

La Bastide Saint Antoine

Poisson

Memories have been triggered lately by smells wafting from pots, escaping from fridges or carried across the wind. The memories have given me pause to look at how my time spent traveling, working in kitchens, working in the NYC fashion industry, growing up in rural Maine, living on couches, traveling on public transportation and years wrought with trepidation about the future has led me here.
I have been indulging in memories as I prep letting my hands work as my mind wanders. I recall the subtle details of the moments of smells and stop motion images that play like a flip book in my mind. I have spent a large portion of my week bent over the stainless steel fish sink and a cutting board butchering fish. My hands frigid and pink and my forearms covered in splatters of guts and scales. Boxes of large lemon sole with perfect lilywhite bellies and far away crooked eyes, pounds of Barbue with their raspy white teeth and their large scales and large pink prawns wait to be gutted, cleaned and portioned. The smell of the sea lingers in the sink and the counter well after I’m finished, even after I have cleaned all the stainless steel with warm soapy bubbles. These smells conjure the summer I lived on a tiny island off the coast of Maine nestles in a confetti of islands a couple of miles offshore. I lived in the attic of a tiny red cabin made of plywood with a large yellow heart shingled on the roof surrounded by tall conifers. It was within earshot of lapping waves on the seaweed covered rocks and the constant diesel hum of lobster boats going out to haul their traps.

I was at the time focusing my creative efforts on jewelry making as well as my tentative teenage romance with an island boy. I had moved out to the island at the beginning of the summer to work as a part time apprentice at a jewelry studio as well as work at a restaurant on a neighboring island half a mile away. It was a tourist destination and a haven for the likes of Martha Stewart and the New England elite. The restaurant was on the end of long deepwater dock, a New England style building flanked by the classic graying cedar shingles aged by the sea. It’s doors painted a dark blue gray, the color mirroring the water lapping beneath. Next door to the restaurant was a locally run lobster coop that at times was as busy as a Harlem bodega. The fisherman would bring their lobsters, bi-catch and other larger fish to the coop to sell and unload. The catch would then get processed, packed and then shipped all over the world. Being a restaurant positioned right next door to a fisherman’s coop, we had the pick of the litter of fresh seafood. Most of the time the fish, shellfish and crustaceans we got were so fresh they were still alive. They hadn’t been weighed, tagged and banded for more than 3 hours before they were in our kitchen.

I cooked lunch, feeding the fisherman daytime tourists and locals out to catch up on gossip. I was 19 pretentious, tan and totally unaware of the can of worms I had just opened by entering the crazy culinary industry. I had been working in kitchens for the last couple of summers but the responsibility had never been placed on me to be in charge of the line and all its prep. I was flying solo and I remember the high I felt the first time the board was full of tickets and I was humming along. As the summer rolled on I was given more leeway with the menu. I made fish tacos, Vietnamese fish soup loaded with scallions and ginger, double layer chicken sandwiches with pesto mayonnaise, crab cakes with spicy remoulade sauce and steamed muscles laden with shallots and white wine.
I was hooked addicted to the buzz I caught from the adrenaline and the instant gratification, but I was caught in the middle of my own conflict of ease and expectation. My own deep slicing self-criticisms of my life’s trajectory had reared its ugly head. My drive was to be an artist it was my identity. I told myself over and over that cooking was just a fun and easy way to make money to fuel my artistic endeavors. But through out this I continued cooking. I realize now that was the beginning even though I didn’t know it and even though it took another eight years, culinary school and constant support from the people closest to help me to comprehend and accept that cooking was my art. It was the beginning of scars, of a knowledge base of taste memory, the beginning of my evolution. I will never forget what really fresh halibut tastes like, how short you really have to cook mussels so they open and display their plump yellow gems and opalesant broth, or how incredibly stupid I felt after an argument with the owner in the middle of a rush left me fired.

Tonight it is 8 years later and I am standing at the pass of the restaurant in the Château in France and cooking won.
I have three beautifully cooked lemon soles to be de-boned and plated in front of me. I handle them gently, carefully lifting one side and then the other off the bones placing them on the plate. They get little to no garnish and are whisked away almost as soon as my spatula leaves the plate. I scrape the remaining flesh from the bones and scoop it into my mouth it is so tender and fresh with just a hint of the sea still lingering on its flesh. I get caught in a momentary tangle of the past as the flavor of the fish lingers on my tongue. The moment passes and I come to feeling honestly content standing here hot tiered and smelling of fish.

Snapshots of Provence