Cooling Off: Aguas Frescas

It was one of those weeks all too typical of the food writer’s life. Too many lunch-eclipsing afternoons at the computer. Too many evening spent eating out. Too much of Sunday’s Headhouse booty in the fridge, wasting away like so many Project Runway models. Specifically, a big-ass bowl of sliced yellow watermelon we could never hope to finish before it turned to seed-speckled Highlighter-colored mush. We considered granita, but the freezer was too Tetris-ed with vestiges of June (strawberries, black raspberries), July (garlic scape pesto), August (sliced doughnut peaches) to accommodate the sizeable pan making granita requires. Instead, we turned to aguas frescas, those peerlessly refreshing fruit-flavored waters indigenous to Mexico and Latin America. Not only are these elixirs easy to blend up, they’re also endlessly customizable to whatever you’ve got in the fridge.

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Our basic recipe: H2O + fruit + citrus + accent flavor (herb or spice) + sweetener. Cucumber + lime + mint + brown sugar… Peach + tangerine + basil + honey… The possibilities are, quite literally, endless. In general, we prefer agave nectar as the sweetener for our aguas; it lacks the dimension of flavor that honey or maple syrup will lend, but it dissolves better than anything else in cold liquid and precludes having to make simple syrup. Aguas frescas were the ideal way to use up the extra yellow watermelon staring us down every time we opened the fridge. Here’s the formula:

4 cups watermelon, chopped and seeded unless you have a choking fetish
4 cups cold water
1 stalk lemongrass, finely chopped
1 lemon, juiced
2 tbsp. agave nectar

Zip everything together in a blender and strain through a fine sieve into a pitcher. Straining removes any rogue seeds, as well as the fibrous pieces of lemongrass. (Don’t worry, the exotic, floral citrus flavor will still be there; the blending releases all the stalk’s essential oils.) Taste, adjust flavor (more water, more citrus, more sweeneter, etc.) and chill well. Serve over ice and consume, preferably outside.

Photo: blogalicious

Kernel Olunloyo

Yesterday, the enigmatic Shola Olunloyo leaked on his Twitter feed details for the Sweet Corn Modernista dinner he’s doing September 4th and 5th. Modernista, according to the Nigeria-born and London-raised chef’s blog Studiokitchen, refers to the Spanish aesthetic in art, architecture and literature popular from late nineteenth century through WWII. How does that zeitgeist translate to the $150 per person 10-course menu? If it means scrambled corn with Santa Barbara sea urchin; lemongrass-scented chilled corn soup; and corn pound cake perdu with frozen chocolate, then viva la Modernista! Hunter’s Farm in Riverton, NJ is lending the ears for the dinner, a true celebration of the season. Stay on the Studiokitchen blog; there’ll be a reservation link tomorrow. Proposed menu below:

Lemongrass Scented Chilled Corn Soup . Pink Grapefruit . Hamachi . Combava Lime Gelee
Silver Queen Ice Cream . Lime Struesel . Blis Smoked Steelhead Roe
Scrambled Corn . Santa Barbara Sea Urchin . Iceplant . Lemon
Corn Juice and Ginger Polenta . Summer Truffle . Castelmagno Cheese
Dayboat Scallop . Crushed Marcona Almond . Sweet Corn-Miso Broth
Chitarra Pasta . Sweet Corn "Carbonara" . Meadow Run Egg . Grated Benton's Ham
Slow cooked Pacific king Salmon . Peanut-Corn"somme" . Chanterelle Mushroom
Australian Grass fed Lamb . Corn-Shisito Relish . Yellow Watermelon . Spicy Yuzu
Neal's Yard Dairy "Duckett's Caerphilly" . Edamame-Piquillo "Succotash"
Corn Poundcake "Perdu" . Chocolate Frozen Cold Cool

Photo: Studiokitchen

Cooking 4 Dummies: Roasted Chili-Creamed Corn

Corn, corn, corn. This time of year, feels like we eat it three times a week. Oh, no, we’re not complaining. What’s great about corn is how versatile it is. Grill it, roast it, bake it into bread, buzz it into soup. This week we shore two A.T. Buzby ears clean of their gleaming kernels and did a riff on the American classic creamed corn with roasted Corno di Toro chilies purchased last Sunday from Savoie Farms. Like all blogalicious recipes, it’s easy and requires only a little forethought. The peppers impart a deep, complex smokiness that balances the natural sugars of the cream and corn. Toasted panko-almond breadcrumbs add texture. See for yourself.



Makes 2 cups
2 ears Jersey corn, kernels only
8 sweet medium-sized chilies (like Corno di Toro)*, whole
½ sweet medium-sized chili, thinly sliced
1 cup whole milk or half-and-half
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
¼ red onion, finely chopped
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. butter
½ cup panko breadcrumbs
½ cup raw almonds
½ cup arugula, finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

To make the roasted chili cream:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Toss chilies with ¼ cup olive oil, salt and pepper and spread on a foil-lined sheet pan.
3. Roast for 30 minutes or until skins are charred and blistered.
4. Once chilies have cooled, remove stems and transfer for blender.
5. Add 1 cup milk or cream and puree till smooth.
6. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and reserve. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To make the breadcrumbs
1. Puree ½ cup almonds in food processor until finely ground
2. Combine with ½ cup panko in pan and toast over low heat until brown and fragrant.

To make the corn:
1. Sauté chopped garlic and onion in ½ cup olive and 1 tbsp. butter oil until translucent, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. Add corn and sauté and additional 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Reduce heat to low, add roasted chili cream and simmer until slightly thickened, approximately 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Remove from heat, fold in ¼ cup chopped arugula and additional 1 tbsp. of butter.
5. Serve warm in cups, topped with panko-almond breadcrumbs, remaining chopped arugula and sliced raw chili.

*If you can’t find Corno di Toros, regular red bell peppers will work. Use 4 and be sure to peel off their skins before pureeing with cream (the smaller chilies don’t require this step).

Photo: blogalicious

Cooking 4 Dummies: Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

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This salsa is like an electrical current running through the lighthearted corn soup, but it’s also ridiculous dabbed on eggs and pizza. We found a giant box of tomatillos (actually a relative of the gooseberry) for $4 at Savoie Farms’ table at Headhouse on Sunday. Dealsky… but what to do with 20 of these sticky green buggers? We made up this roasted salsa on the fly, and it came out crazy delicious: all caramelized sugars up front, followed by the tomatillo’s token sourness, with a wicked after-burn. We advise you to make it now, and if you can’t find tomatillos, this salsa would be just as delicious with tomatoes (just make sure their not too ripe). Do invest in the cumin and fennel seeds (if only for the aroma they’ll give your kitchen as they toast in the oven), and use any herb you have on hand. We have hoja santa (tastes like root beer!) growing in the garden, but basil, cilantro or mint work just as well.

Makes 2 cups
20 tomatillos (approximate)
2 medium-hot peppers (like jalapenos)
1 hot chili (like habanero or Thai bird)
1 tbsp. fennel seed
1 tbsp. cumin seed
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 cup hoja santa, chopped
1 lime, juiced and zested
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Place tomatillos and peppers in ovenproof pan. Add cumin and fennel, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place in oven on top rack and roast for 25 minutes or until tomatillos look blistered and pulpy.
3. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Blend in blender with lime juice, lime zest and epazote till desired consistency is reached. Season with salt and pepper to taste, serve immediately or transfer to airtight container. The salsa will keep in the fridge for 2 weeks, or in the freezer forever.

Photo: blogalicious

Cooking 4 Dummies: Five-Step Corn Soup

While there are plenty of things to gripe about Jersey (its cops, its Housewives), the corn grown in the Garden State is not among our complaints. Gift-wrapped in lime-hued husks, the elegantly slender ears are piled like firewood on Buzby Farm's table at Headhouse. It’s an embarrassment of wealth, actually, so the farmers a favor and take some off their hands. The husks reveal orderly columns of plump, silvery kernels so juicy and sweet they’re remarkable eaten raw. We snack on stray kernels like chips while we make our annual pot of Jersey corn soup. We Tweeted the recipe in real time yesterday and have transcribed it here for your viewing pleasure. The frothy puree is the essence of summer distilled in a bowl; it only takes five steps and doesn’t need to cook all day. Use the very freshest corn and milk you can get. Vegetarians, just swap out the bacon fat for butter. Vegans, cook something else.

Makes 8 cups
8 ears of Jersey white corn
2 tbsp. bacon fat
1 clove garlic, chopped
½ red onion, chopped
½ hot chili pepper, sliced
½ gallon milk
2 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
Salt and pepper to taste

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1. Chop and sauté the garlic, onion and chili in bacon fat. Add 1 bay leaf and cook 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, remove kernels from 8 ears of corn with a sharp knife. Reserve kernels and cobs.
3. Add kernels to onion-garlic-chili mix and sauté 10 minutes. In another pot, add cobs, milk, other bay leaf and cinnamon stick and simmer 30 minutes. Season corn mix and cob stock with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Remove cobs and from pot and add stock to corn mix. Simmer 10 minutes.
5. Remove bay leaves and cinnamon stick, and remove soup from heat. Once cool, puree soup in small batches till frothy and smooth. Strain through a fine sieve if desired and serve garnished with roasted tomatillo salsa (see recipe above).


Photo: blogalicious

Wineberries? Who Ever Heard Of A Wineberry?

New daddy Jim Burke, that's who. At James, these raspberry relatives bejeweled the foie gras terrine over brioche and honey-duck jus served last night. Wineberries are native to Asia, look like little razzies and vary in color from orange to maroon. We couldn't tell you what their flavor is like (, as we'd never even heard about a wineberry till now. But therein lies the intrigue. Few are the opps to taste something you've never tasted before. Hurry. At seriously seasonal James, what's there today might be gone tomorrow.

Photo: KristineBoykaKluge

Headhouse Highlight: Yoder Heirlooms' Nasturtiums

Edible flowers. If you've ever been to a wedding reception, or a certain breed of trying-to-be-chic-but-not-really-succeeding restaurant, you've seen them. Orchids, probably. Dewy and crisp. Vain white petals, bursting open to flaunt their fuchsia insides from a corner of the plate. We spent six years working in catering, during which we saw (and ate) enough of these showy (but flavorless) blooms to make us cringe when we hear the words 'edible flower.' Turns out, though, all blossoms are not created equal. Case in point: nasturtiums. We're growing them this year (along with johnny jump ups, an edible violet), with a seedling from Longview Farms. They've yet to bloom, so when we saw these red-and-yellow nasturtiums on Matthew Yoder's table at Headhouse Square, we snatched them up for an advance screening. Nasturtium means 'nose-twister'; one bite of this crunchy, peppery flower and you'll understand why. Watercress and arugula are good flavor comparisons, and you can use the blossoms anywhere you'd use either of those greens. They're dope in salads, where they lend a shot of color and spice, or with fruit (above). We tossed them with strawberries, dried peaches, a squeeze of orange, salt, pepper and Chinese five spice for a sweet sidecar to yesterday's lunch. Today, they top our Wildflour challah french toast.

The Easiest Summer Dessert You Will Ever Make: Granita

At blogalicious, we like to cook, which involves tasting, guessing, improvisation. We do not, on the other hand, like to bake, which involves math, science, measuring and all kind of yucky numbers that just make us hungry. To this effect, you might say we're like Rachael Ray. With better boobs. Due to this baking aversion, dessert in our kitchen in the summer often involves granita, so easy it practically makes itself. This week, we zipped up a zinger: strawberry-lime-and-black pepper, spicy and sour and sweet and icy and so wickedly refreshing. Recipe below, but once you master the basic concept of making the stuff, the flavor combinations are endless. Peach and ginger? Cantaloupe and basil? Chocolate-espresso? Yes, yes, yes. The key: Keep it seasonal, with the best local produce you can find.

Strawberry-Lime-Black Pepper Granita (4 servings)

2 cups fresh strawberries, washed and hulled

4 limes, juice and zest

2 tbsp. agave nectar

Handful mint, chopped

Freshly ground black pepper

Blend berries, lime juice and agave in blender till smooth. (Straining the mix is optional; we like the texture the seeds add.) Pour puree into freezer-proof square or rectangular casserole dish. Scatter chopped mint on top of the puree. Add a few twists of black pepper. Pop in the freezer. In 45 minutes, remove from freezer and scape across the surface of the frozen puree with fork, creating ice crystals. Return dish to freezer and repeat every half-hour until the granita is the texture of a coarser, drier water ice (about three times). Spoon granita into bowl, garnish with mint spring and a twist of black pepper.

Photo: blogalicious

See Scapes

We've written about these curly green critters before, but truth is, we love us some garlic scapes so much you're just gonna have to sit there and listen to us extol their virtues all over again. The twisting coils impart such a cool garlickiness to dishes; the flavor is not quite ramp, not quite leek or scallion, definitely not full-blown head of garlic. Singularly scape. They're great raw, roasted, sauteed in butter and olive oil, but our favorite vehicle for the garlic scape's unusual flavor is pesto. We just whipped up a batch with scapes from Weavers Way based on last summer's recipe, with a few improvements. Instead of straight almonds, we used half almonds and half pignoli (and toasted a handful of both to bring out some smokiness). Also, we rounded out the basil with some grapefruit mint and lemon balm, both of which are threatening to overtake the yard (but really, pesto loves all herbs, so by all mean, use what you've got). The ingredient that made the difference in this summer's scape pesto might surprise you: green grapes. Scapes on their own can be a little astringent; the grapes' natural sugars smooths the rough edges, accentuates the sweetness of the herbs and provides a burst of mouthwatering juiciness we dig. Be sure to use green grapes, so as to not fuck with your pesto's beautiful green-yellow hue. Make a huge batch; it freezes so well you'll be able to eat June long into December.

Headhouse Highlight: Blooming Glen Strawberries

Late spring means one thing: strawberries, baby. Yesterday, we picked up two pints of Tom Murtha and Tricia Borneman’s pretty little antioxidant bombs at the market. Today, they were the sweet-tart foil to creamy Patches of Star chevre in a summery breakfast salad. Eat your heart out, Driscoll’s.

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Lunch With The Pabbit

It was one of those perfect late-spring Philadelphia afternoons at Pub & Kitchen. Sun streamed through the peek-a-boo shutters opened along the 20th Street facade, washing the long, narrow saloon in honey light. A solo customer with a Windsor burger. A vase of lilies swaying in the cool zephyrs. Barbacks moving boxes, bringing up lemons and fronds of fresh mint so big it was like they were welcoming the bartender to Jerusalem. It was quiet, serene, a way we’re not used to seeing the often jubilant, occasionally rowdy P&K. For some, pure relaxation transpires during yoga retreats and wilderness hikes. For us, these crystallized moments occur at off-peak hours at bars we love.



With a lip-puckering gin rickey, condensation inching closer to the bev-nap as Ibañez inched closer to second, we were damn pleased with life. Like we said, a perfect afternoon—one enhanced by Johnny Mac’s lunch menu that premiered last month. The spring salad embodied the color green, a generous tuft of peppery arugula, fragrant mint, sweet peas and crisp cucumbers tossed in a light, lemony dressing. For people who say cocktails don’t pair with food, we challenge them to bite this salad with P&K’s rickey, tarted up with lime juice hand-squeezed in an old-school citrus press. Honey-whisky wings followed. Pretty sure they’re available on the dinner menu as well, but before the other day we’d yet to bask in their glory. The goodness isn’t necessarily in the wings and drumsticks (perfectly cooked but kinda puny), but in the sauce: sticky and sweet, with an unapologetically boozy finish. It’s how your alcoholic uncle would make honey-whisky sauce. Service, as usual, was easygoing and genuine. The Phils went on to lose, but we were so sated we hardly noticed. Lunch served Thursdays and Fridays only.

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Cooking 4 Dummies: Ramp Pesto!

The other day, this Foobooz post got us hungry for those harbingers of spring, ramps. (Some light ramp reading here.) We picked up a bunch at Reading Terminal’s Iovine Produce on Wednesday, stirred some into our omelet this morning, and used them to make pesto this afternoon. For home cooks just starting out, classic Genovese pesto is one of the most invaluable recipes and as well as one of the easiest recipes to master. The basics: basil, olive oil, cheese, pine nuts, garlic, lemon, all zipped together in the blender. It’s fresh, sharp, lively. We just love the stuff. But pesto, which means ‘paste’ in Italian, can be made a thousand different ways. We add garlic scapes to pesto in the early summer, for example, and fresh peas in the spring. The bright, oniony flavor of the ramps killed it in today’s version. It also freezes beautifully, so you can enjoy this springy sauce all year round.

We start with the basic blogalicious pesto recipe…

One handful each fresh basil and mint
One handful Locatelli cheese
Two garlic cloves
The zest and juice of half a lemon
Half a cup of almonds
One cup extra-virgin olive oil

…And just added one bunch of ramps, roughly chopped. Traditional Genovese pesto calls for pignoli nuts, but we had none on hand, so we substituted almonds. Walnuts and pistachios, or a blend of nuts also work well. Pile everything into a blender, turn it on, and stream in EVOO until the pesto comes together into a thick, glossy, green puree. Today we used a combination of DiBruno’s fruity cold-pressed oil from Italy and Les Moulins Mahjoub’s delicate, organic oil from Tunisia, but you can use any good-quality EVOO you happen to groove on. You can take the pesto to a smoother consistency, or just pulse it for a rough, rustic version.

Pour the pesto into a freezer-safe container and give it a try. The cheese is pretty salty, so don’t salt and pepper until this point. We added a little of each, and dialed up the brightness with a little extra lemon zest and chopped mint stirred in at the last minute. For lunch we spread some on a simple pan-roasted chicken breast alongside sweet-and-sour mushrooms. Ramp pesto: make it now.

Photo: blogalicious

In Season: Cara Cara Oranges

Perhaps you've noticed the Cara Cara orange has graced our monthly changing List on the right right side of this page, but that little line doesn't do this citrus justice. This strain of navel orange originated at the Hacienda de Cara Cara in Valencia, Venezuela in 1976 and has been a cult favorite since. Also called pink navels for the blushed color of their flesh, Caras have a mellow acidity and sweet, almost floral flavor. They're in season rightthisveryminute, solid for 99 cents each at Whole Foods. Yesterday we tossed some segments with fennel, avocado, red onion, olive oil and a spritz of rose water (to pick up the orange's flowery notes) for a bright, summery salad alongside pan-roasted pork chops, but Caras are also perfectly delicious eaten out of hand. Get 'em while the last.

Photo: blogalicious