Summery Orange Pasta Salad

Another month, another stab at a Kitchen Play recipe. (Really, if you're not checking out the monthly Progressive Parties on Kitchen Play, you're missing out. I won a prize for making nachos last month). This month's sponsor was Dreamfields Pasta. I'd seen this brand in the store, but I eat pasta so rarely, I never bother with any of the stranger varieties on the shelf. So when it came time for me to actually buy my pasta and I took the time to look at the Dreamfields box, I was impressed - 5 grams of fiber and 7 grams of protein in one serving, and yet it doesn't taste dense like whole wheat pasta! I'm definitely a fan after tasting the stuff, too.

There were so many tasty looking choices on this month's menu, but I was intrigued by Foodalogue's pasta salad with orange sauce. I just so happened to be on my way to a family gathering, and knowing us, I would need to make something that could sit on the table all afternoon while we grazed (and graze we did, for 7 hours straight - pretty typical for us). Unlike so many pasta salads, this one didn't have any mayo or, really, anything that would go bad in the summer heat. Bonus points for lots of fruit and veggies and plenty of taste in each bite.

I loved how fresh and bright the orange dressing made everything taste. I think I'm going to try it on a regular salad sometime soon.

I didn't plan on making any changes to the recipe, but then, I can never really follow a recipe to the T. I left the garlic out of the dressing and the cheese at the end by mistake, but I actually really like it like that, so I'm leaving it out of my version of the recipe. I doubled the recipe for our family gathering, but the recipe below isn't doubled. I also cut my veggies into matchsticks instead of julienned so they would be the same size as the penne - the better to eat it up, my dear!
Summery Orange Pasta Salad (from Foodalogue)
1/2 box Dreamfields penne pasta
1 large navel orange, zested and peeled
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
heaping 1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp fennel seeds
salt to taste
dash of honey
1 zucchini, cut into matchsticks
1 red pepper, cut into matchsticks
1/2 fennel bulb, sliced thin, fronds chopped and reserved
toasted pumpkin seeds
oil cured black olives, pits removed and roughly chopped

Cook pasta according to package.

In a food processor or a blender, combine peeled orange segments, olive oil, spices, and honey, and blend to emulsify. Season with salt to taste, but remember, there will be more salt from the olives later.

In a large bowl, combine vegetable matchsticks and cooked pasta. Add orange sauce and toss to coat. Add chopped orange zest, fennel fronds, pumpkin seeds, and chopped olives and toss to combine.

Farm to Fork Dinner, Wilson Farm

Almost from the moment that last year's Farm to Fork Dinner at Wilson Farm was over, I've been anticipating this summer and another dinner out in the middle of this suburban farm. The minute I heard about this year's dinner, I jumped at the chance to get tickets. For those who don't know, Wilson Farm consists of 33 acres of farm land just outside Boston in Lexington, plus another 500 acres in Litchfield NH, and it has been run by the Wilson family for almost 130 years. The farm stand in Lexington is huge, and includes produce, a bakery, take-out meals, plus indoor and outdoor plants. It's also home to what I think of as the best arugula in the world (I'm not kidding, it's the best I've ever had).

When I told my parents about how wonderful last summer's dinner was, they of course wanted to join me this year. A whole bunch of my friends were supposed to join us to, but they all canceled at the last minute for various reasons (boo! hiss!). That means, though, that I'll be pestering them about the August dinner that the farm has planned.

The crowd - 75 in total - gathered next to the farm stand, and we were led down a set of stairs and out into the field. The location of the dinner this year was a plot that had been filled with beets only a few hours before (and would, of course, be sown with something else the very next day). The tables were decked out with gorgeous centerpieces filled not only with flowers, but also vegetables and herbs. Wine, water, and a fabulously floral soda were passed around, and we all dug into fresh bread.

The first of many salads came out, eliciting excited ooh's from everyone. This plated salad, a mix of arugula, radishes, Thai basil, anise hyssop, microgreens, and roasted peaches, would be at home in any fancy restaurant in Boston. With all of those ingredients, plus garnishes of flowers from the anise, marcona almonds, shaved pecorino, and syrup-thick balsamic vinegar, you'd think there would be too much going on, but everything was very well balanced. I probably could have eaten a whole bowl of this and gone home happy, but there was so much more to come.

Next came a trio of appetizers. The plate was piled up with all kinds of good things, like a pulled pork sandwich (on an arugula pesto biscuit), grilled hanger steak crostini with a spinach gorgonzola pesto, and empanadas de cabra. Chef Todd Heberlein told everyone to take a bite of the empanada before informing us that "cabra" means goat. (I had already spoiled this to my whole table, having watched the conversation between Todd and local meat purveyor Concord Prime on Twitter all week.) The big winner on this plate (not surprisingly) was the beet chips in the center. People kept saying "I didn't know you could make chips out of beets," but come on, they're root vegetables. I've never met a fried root vegetable I didn't like (and I'm still not a fan of beets - sorry, Todd!).

The next salad course came out (and only a meal on a farm could pull off multiple salad courses and have everyone wanting more), and it featured a basic green salad, tossed with a wonderfully light vinaigrette, and a huge plate of pickled vegetables. I, of course, enjoyed the beans and the cucumber (still not the beets!), but I absolutely loved the radishes, fennel, and ginger. I was surprised about how mild the radishes became after pickling. I'm ready to go out and buy tons of radishes and bulb after bulb of fennel so I can eat these all the time.

By main course time, we were all getting full, and there seemed to be a little vegetable fatigue going on around me (while I was anxiously awaiting the next big bowl of vegetables to come my way). The main dish of the course was local sea bass with nasturtium butter. Not being a huge fan of bass, I didn't love this dish, although the compound butter was lovely (hell, you could put flowers in anything and I'd like it, but butter? What's not to love?!). The vegetarian main dish was fresh cajun-spiced pasta with kale, chard, and Jacob's cattle beans (garnished with rosemary frico). I always think of kale and beans (a perfect combo, by the way) to be more of a winter dish, so it seemed out of place while sitting out on a beautiful summer's night. (That's not to say it wasn't delicious...) The two veggie dishes - green and wax beans with fennel, arugula, and parsley, and zucchini and summer squash with caramelized onions, olives, and zucchini blossoms - were very tasty, and they got me excited about eating boatloads of zucchini in the next few months (my first zucchini, coincidentally, came in this weekend).

Just as the sun went down, it was time for our final course - dessert! Because the bakery is a different department than the kitchen, I'm sure they feel that they have to show off what they can do as well, so we were treated to not one, not two, but three desserts. First off, there were blueberries and strawberries in balsamic vinegar atop ginger ice cream (with a strawberry jam pastry straw to boot). A little sliver of zucchini bread (more like a super-moist cake) sat nearby, topped with butter cream frosting and purple basil. Last but not least was the "floral surprise," a lily filled with marscapone and blueberries (and topped with a chocolate dragonfly). Doesn't it look gorgeous?

We rolled our way back out of the farm (I had warned my mother that it would be dark, so she led the way with her little pocketbook-sized flashlight). I was full but not overly so, probably because the meal wasn't terribly rich but plenty satisfying.

If you're interested in attending a Farm to Fork dinner at Wilson Farm, they are planning on hosting another in August. The exact date will be announced in early August - if it's anything like this time, they'll announce it on Twitter and it'll sell out quickly. Don't hesitate to put your name on the wait list if it fills up, though, since there were quite a few people who had taken spots from people who had canceled.

Not Armenia

This is not the post I had hoped to be posting this week. I had hoped to tell you that I was off on a two-week trip to Armenia, my de facto homeland (although all my grandparents were from towns that are well into Turkey). I had hoped to tell you that I busy eating pomegranates right off the trees and seeing bread cook in tradition tanor ovens (the precursor to the Indian tandoor). Instead, our trip had to be canceled at the very last minute, and I'm left telling you that I am still here in Boston, missing a place that I have never seen.

The morning of our trip, my father woke up with the worst arthritis pain he has ever had, and we spent the morning on the phone with Air France and American Express Travel trying to recoup some of our losses (over 4 hours on the phone, however, gained us nothing, and we still lost the entire cost of our plane tickets). To say it mildly, I was bummed, but we all agreed that it was better to be safe than sorry.

So then I hoped that I would cook a bunch of Armenian dishes, but I haven't exactly lived up to that promise. I've mostly been moping around, trying to keep my DVR as clean as possible and working on some embroideries. I have promised my father a batch of simit, and I have already bought the ingredients for that, so I know I'll make at least one recipe in the next few days. I've been wanting to try something different, but I realized that I've already made quite a few Armenian dishes for this blog: manti, paklava, baba ganoush, kadayif, sou boreg, tourshi, vospov kheyma, mock kheyma, and string cheese.

Instead, while I was busy organizing and packing for the trip last week, I took some time to make tabbouleh from the piles of parsley in my garden. I hadn't anticipated that it would be useful in such a way as this, but these things always work out as they should, right?

Tabbouleh (often spelled tabouli or with other variations) can be made in a million different ways, as long as there is parsley, bulgur wheat, oil, and lemon juice. I like mine to be predominantly parsley, with just a hint of wheat, but the ratios can be changed depending on your own taste. I also love chopping herbs, so I don't mind the effort that goes into making this dish predominantly parsley. I like a little spice in mine, but that can be left out.

Tabbouleh
1/2 cup fine bulgur wheat
1 cup warm water
2 large bunches parsley
2 large sprigs mint
4 scallions
1 large tomato
olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
salt
cayenne pepper

In a large bowl, combine bulgur wheat and water. Stir so that all the grains are coated with water. Let soak while you chop the vegetables, or at least 30 minutes. If the wheat soaks up all the water while you are chopping, add a little bit more.

Finely mince the parsley, mint, and scallions. I mean fine. Remove the seeds from the tomato and chop fine. Pour off any excess water from the bulgur wheat, then add parsley, mint, scallions, and tomato. Add some olive oil, a little at a time, and the lemon juice. Toss well to coat. Make sure to add enough oil so that the salad is not dry. Season with salt and pepper (or cayenne pepper) to taste.

Farm to Fork Dinner at Wilson Farm

Growing up in Lexington meant frequent trips to Wilson Farm for fresh veggies (and somehow, I'd always manage to get a honey stick too). No autumn was complete without a trip through their haunted house and a big, fat caramel apple with peanuts. Wilson Farm has been operating in Lexington since 1884 as a family-run farm, and they work 33 acres in Lexington (probably some of the most expensive farm land around, considering the price of houses in town) and 500 more acres in Litchfield, New Hampshire. So when I heard through Twitter that the farm would be hosting a farm-to-fork dinner in the fields, complete with over 50 items grown on the farm, I jumped at the chance to attend.

My friend Melody came with me, and we arrived to quite a crowd gathered next to the store. Turns out this was only about half the night's crowd - there were 100 people at the dinner! Farmer Jim Wilson walked us through the field, explaining their state-of-the-art greenhouse and their Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques in abbreviated form (every two weeks in the summer, Jim leads a much longer tour that is worth attending). Right smack in the middle of the field, three looooong tables were set up along the rows, and we headed for seats at the end of the table nestled in amongst the tomato plants. While the attendees were a good mix of ages, our table was skewed a little older - we just happened to take the seats across from a sweet and funny couple our age, though, so I didn't have to spend too much time talking about why I was taking pictures or what the purpose of my blog was. The tables were decorated with beautiful arrangements of not just flowers, but also radishes, beans, kale, basil, and dill.

Fresh bread was passed around (the farmstand has a pretty fantastic bakery), as were herb olive oil and a tremendous roasted eggplant dip (recipe here). There was also red and white wines, and carafes of water with sprigs of salad burnet, an unusual herb that tastes a bit like cucumber, a bit like melon. Chef Todd Heberlein introduced each course as it came out, but since we were at the end of our table, it was a bit hard to hear.

The first course, "Prosciutto and Melon," was brought out in shot glasses - always an interesting way to start a meal. The amuse bouche turned the typical salty-and-sweet combination of melon and proscuitto on its head - it was served as a chilled honeydew melon soup with crispy proscuitto bits on top. I'm not usually a chilled soup fan, but the saltiness of the bacon (as well as the crispy texture) added a lot to the dish.

As the second course was passed out, the chef joked that a lot of people thought it was risky of him to serve not one, but three types of beets to the crowd. He insisted that he would convert some people into beet fans with this dish, and he won over quite a few with his mixture of Chioggia beets tossed in creme fraiche on a bed of beet greens, served with purees of red and golden beets. Walking around the table to say hello, though, he did jokingly scold me for not finishing my plate - what can I say, I can only eat so many beets at one time, which is about a million times more beets than I would have eaten even a few years ago.

Course three featured a little patty of corn and chorizo pudding, as well as an heirloom tomato gazpacho salad and a grilled Athena melon salad. The pudding (recipe here), featuring sweet corn and spicy chorizo, was a great match for the lighter salads alongside it. The tomato salad was amazing, filled with more kinds of tomatoes than I could count, cucumbers, and peppers - it's easy to forget what a tomato really tastes like over the long winter, which is why late summer should be filled with big bowls of tomatoes just like this. Heavenly. The grilled Athena melon (similar to a cantaloupe) was served on a bed of salad greens tossed with a roasted tomatillo vinaigrette. I loved this dressing - light and tangy - and it paired beautifully with the supersweet melon. I'd love to make a dressing like this with all the tomatillos that are coming in in my own garden.

By the time the main course came out, everyone was pretty full, but of course we had to try it all. The protein was striped bass from Martha's Vineyard, served over an amazing crunchy vegetable slaw with Thai basil pesto. I wanted to eat more of that slaw, I just couldn't fit it in! There was ricotta and swiss chard stuffed pasta, topped with a ratatouille sauce, that was hearty without being heavy, and the ratatouille, which can often turn out mushy or even slimy, still had a bit of firm texture to it, and the flavors of each of the vegetables was pronounced. The sides were Beans, Beans, and More Beans (a crispy green and yellow bean salad, tossed with roasted tomatoes, feta, and olives) and Cranberry Bean and Corn Stew (sweet corn, creamy and perfectly cooked cranberry beans, a little tomato, and some kale and collard greens). Both of these sides would be perfect as a light lunch.

Of course, we were all really stuffed by then, but dessert was yet to come. It was the only course that Chef Heberlein didn't have a hand in, as the bakery department had made it. When the menu said "Stone Fruit Tart with Our Own Berries," I figured we each get a little slice of tart with a handful of berries - more than enough dessert after such a big meal. But no, the plate we were served could have been a meal on its own, with a delicate puff pastry topped with a variety of stone fruits (peaches, nectarines, plums), ginger whipped cream, deliciously ripe berries, sesame tuile cookies in big fat curls, and underneath it all, a whole almond macaroon. Four of us could have shared one plate and been happy - instead, I put the dessert shelf in my stomach* to good use, eating more than my fair share.

It was dark by the end of the meal, and we walked back through the fields, lit by small candles, full and happy after such a wonderful meal. This is the second time Wilson Farm has hosted a Farm to Fork dinner, and hopefully they will continue this tradition next summer. Keep an eye on their Happenings page for other great events, like their upcoming tomato festival.

*Melody and I had a teacher in elementary school that taught us about the dessert shelf. Think about it - even when you're full, you still have room for something sweet. It can only be because there is a shelf in your stomach that ONLY dessert can fit onto.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

If you follow me on Twitter, you've noticed that I've been talking a lot about my garden in the past few months. Since I live in the suburbs, I have a little more room to play than my neighbors in the city. After living in a basement in Brookline for two years, where we couldn't even get herbs to grow on the windowsill, my small garden in Lexington seems like acres. Last summer, I didn't really know what I was doing, but I still ended up with a bounty of tomatoes, eggplants, and herbs. It taught me a lot, so I'm back this year, bigger and better.

The most important thing I learned last summer? Rabbits can (and will) chew through a plastic fence. Putting a big rock in front of the hole they chewed means that they will just chew another one right next to the first. So far, with my new metal fence, I have yet to see a rabbit in the garden, although they live under our deck and run through the rest of the yard all the time.

Second, even if you have the room to plant things in the ground, it may not be the best thing to do. Some perennial herbs, especially mint, will completely take over an area if you let it. Keeping it in a pot means it doesn't get the chance. My mint is CRAZY right now - it's probably the thing that's growing the best.

I've had a hard time growing things like lettuce in the ground, and yet it has completely flourished in its pot this year. This is some of the best lettuce I've ever eaten (planted from a seed packet that included seeds for three types of lettuce, which they called the "salad bowl mix") - it's so tender and soft that I don't know if I'll be able to eat lettuce during the winter anymore. Did you know that lettuce regrows from the root after you cut it? The lettuce pictured above was cut on Sunday night and it's already grown more than an inch!

Overall, I think I have a good variety of things that will grown throughout the season. I've already picked my first round of radishes and planted the second batch, which should be ready by July. Garden radishes are fantastic, so easy, and amazingly quick! I have a few peas, above, ready to pick, which I'll do for dinner tonight (with more salad) to encourage the plant to grow.

Cucumbers, eggplants, red peppers, 5 kinds of tomatoes (not counting the ones I started from seed, way too late), zucchini (more than I need, which means I'll get to eat the flowers too!), pumpkins (both jack o'lantern and mini pumpkins), butternut squash (which doesn't look too promising), parsley, basil, cilantro, dill, lavender, rosemary, chives, scallions, red onions, carrots, kale, arugula, rhubarb, and potatoes round out the garden. Am I missing anything?

So tell me, how does your garden grow? (This post inspired by similar posts by Erin Cooks and Hungry Bruno.)