Summer in a soup bowl Gazpacho

A couple of weeks ago my friends came over for a farm visit and we all pitched in with lunch.

Linda, myself and her 4 Colorado granddaughters

 Sometime during the sit-down Michele remarked Gazpacho is "summer in a soup bowl."  Precisely.  I thought I would share our luncheon menu since a lot of it came right from the garden/farm

Menu:

Gazpacho ( yes- even the 3 year old loved it)

Egg salad sandwiches

Watermelon pizza

Palmiers

Jun tea

Mis en place

Ingredients:

2 bell peppers, chopped into 1" square pieces

4 plum tomatoes, also 1" pieces

1 cucumber seeded but not peeled, 1 " pieces

1 red onion - 1 " pieces

3 garlic cloves, chopped finely

3 cups tomato juice or enough tomatoes to make your own

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/4 cup good olive oil

1 1/2 tsp salt

pepper

avocado and or cilantro to garnish

Ina Garten's recipe on Food Network

Yes use a food processor but chop each vegetable up separately

Mix all veggies and tomato juice with olive oil and vinegar and store in the fridge for at least a day or two before serving

I have made this soup 3 times now and love each serving.  I will be sad when the tomatoes are gone.

Next up EGG SALAD sandwiches

Mis en place

EGG SALAD SANDWICHES

Ingredients

farm fresh or store bought pasture raised chicken eggs, hard cooked - I prefer to steam

mayonnaise

dijon mustard

red onions chopped fine

I dill pickle slice, chopped fine

fresh dill

salt and pepper

How to hard cook super fresh eggs:

When I first tried to hard boil my fresh eggs I found that the shells would not release from the white when I tried to peel them..  It happened the second, third and fourth times as well ????? So I did some research and found that super fresh eggs just don't do well boiled.  So I steam.  12 minutes in a steamer.  I could give you all of the chemistry behind this....Ask if you really want to know  otherwise just steam your eggs.  You will be glad you did.

Steam for 12 minutes.  Then cool in an ice water bath

Mix about 2 TBs of dijon mustard with about 1/2 cup mayonnaise to start then adjust as needed.  I used 6 eggs and this worked out well.  

Then add the red onion, dill pickle and fresh dill to the sauce.

Mix into the eggs

I use a box grater to cut up the egg but you can hand cut it as well

Assemble between two pieces of bread after piling on some condiments :  how about pickled onions?

I'll add the recipe to the end of the post

Add lettuce and as we did one nasturtium leaf.  The nasturtium leaves and blossoms are edible and add a bit of spice - kind of like arugula.

Egg salad sandwich with pickled onions, lettuce and nastursium leaves

Next up WATERMELON PIZZA

So much fun.  You can see that it is made up of a wedge of watermelon topped with blueberries and reap berries,  The "Cheese" is cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar and pushed through a pastry bag.  Linda's previous performance was with a little smaller hole in her bag thus a narrower stream of cream sheese/sugar

And for dessert:  PALMIERS - Gluten Free!!

Palmiers are a classic French pastry made from the pastry dough mille feuilles  (puff pastry)  This recipe is absolutely easy to make from Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry found in the freezer section of the grocery store and just follow Ina Gartens's recipe   But I decided to make it from scratch since I was really rusty from my school days at The Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Did you know that there are 739 layers of dough/butter/dough in the finished pate ?  You start out with a pie crust round then add a butter layer, wrap the edges of the pie pastry up and over the butter layer.  Now you have 3 layers.  With a sequence of rolling out and folding into thirds six times you end up with a beautiful uncooked dough

Roll the dough in sugar and cinnamon and then roll into a log by folding the outside edges two times each and meeting in the center,  Chill the dough again. 

Classic palmiers do not have cinnamon adulterating the flavor but what American does not like cinnamon sugar?

Then cut the chilled dough into slices

Put them one more time back into the fridge or freezer for a final chill then pop them into a preheated oven

450 degrees for just 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and sprinkle again with cinnamon sugar. 

These will go fast - especially with 9 people for lunch

I made this dough gluten free because my sweet Kate cannot have gluten.  But like any normal teenager she love loves pastries and bread.  Since she was coming for a visit I wanted to make these G-F palmiers for and with her,   She loved it 

We made this batch into twisted sticks.  Kate loves churros so this was our version of a G-F churro/palmier.  You can buy G-F frozen puff pastry in some markets @ $9/box l Yikes.  On the other hand the ingredients for making it at home was not much less.  Good news is I'm not rusty at the technique any more!

And that was our summer lunch!  

Hurricane Hilary has just past through here leaving a mess for all of us to clean up but not any damage here,  I think I have some time to make the pickled red onions 

I have an entire post dedicated to this condiment   Please click on this link to go to that post 

I use Marisa McClellan"s  Food in Jars book many times every summer and throughout the year.  You can also follow her website https://foodinjars.com for many additional ideas 

3 pounds of red onions, thinly sliced

2 cups apple cider vinegar

3/4 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups water

2 TBs Kosher or pickling salt

2 tsp whole mustard seed

1 tsp celery seed

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Combine the vinegar, water, sugar and salt in a pot over high heat and bring the brine to a boil

Add sliced onions to brine and stir to combine,  Reduce heat to medium and simmer briefly to soften onions.

Combine the spices to blend and then divide among 3 pint size jars

Evenly divide the onions among the jars.  Use tongs to transfer.

Pour brine over onions.

Pickles need to cure 48 hours before eating.

I used to water bath preserve these but I find they last in the fridge just fine.....they never last too long.  If you make 3 jars - give one jar to a friend,

The Dog Days of Summer-

Here we are in the middle of the dog days of summer.  It is so hot and humid that my doggie has to come in during the high temperatures to stay cool.  Here is Charlotte definitely playing hookie from her duties as guardian to the farm animals.  It's too hot to ask her to stay outside with her double thick coat.  My kitchen is too hot to do much creativity.  Who wants to turn on the oven?

***For for pics of our "dogs" scroll to bottom of post*****

But what are the dog days of summer?  The Farmers Almanac sites from July 3 - August 11 - the middle of summer and when the temperatures are highest along with high humidity.  After a little research I found out that the "dog" is Sirius from the constellation Canis Majoris.  It seems that the bright star of Sirius appears in the morning sky announcing changes in the weather pattern......some good like flooding in Egypt providing water to the desert fields and some bad.....high temperatures and humidity.

But also in the Farmer's Almanac is the fact that most of the spring planting is now bearing its fruit and the vines and plants that once provided water and nourishment are drying out allowing  the fruit to reach  maximum  sweetness and announcing harvest time.  All the work from the last few months is now paying off.

Some of the garden planted itself.  This single scarlet runner bean sprouted so I gave it a stick to climb on.  The pods have now dried and the beans are ready to harvest.  The beans are such a beautiful color.  And don't worry the pods are given to the goats.  They are dry and crispy and the goats consider them potato chips.

The Satsuma plums are ripening.

I planted blackberry "sticks" and they are starting to ripen

I planted shallots for the first time this year.  When the top green spikes start to wilt and fall to the side they are ready to harvest.  I see caramelized shallots in my near future:

I also planted sweet onion starts - about 50 of them  and they are ready to pull as well.  Last night I grilled two along side my Halibut.  Yes there are apricot preserves and jam on the shelf behind...June's project

Lava flow tomatoes ripening on the now brown vines 

I did plant a variety of pumpkins--most of them are still on the vine but the funny one with peanuts on the skin - "Galeux D'Eysines" started on its own producing about 500 square feet of vines and these 4 large pumpkins.  The largest one weighs about 25 pound and produces the sweetest of pumpkin pies and muffins.  The orange one is a Cinderella  "Rouge vis d'Etampes" and the green is "Jarrahdale"

Yes all of this for  4 pumpkins

Here is a "Jarrahdale hanging from the squash trellis.

But my new adventure was planting a melon patch.  I started in March clearing a space about 10' by 10 " and enriching the soil with compost..  I built up mounds with furrows in between and installed an irrigation system that would flood the furrows therefore avoiding watering from above which can cause mildew to the plant.  Of course no proper melon patch is complete without a dozen or so sunflowers:

Here was the tricky part:  Most melons take about 90 days to develop after 7-14 days for the seed to germinate in 70-90 degree temperatures.  It was cold and wet this spring and not warm enough for the seeds to germinate until Easter weekend.  April 8  But just as the weather cooperated I didn't feel like planting seeds.  In fact I didn't feel like doing anything.  COVID   In spite of feeling awful I planted 4 rows of 12 different varieties before climbing in bed for 3 days.  

Today 114 days after sowing my melon seeds I picked this melon from my patch and ate it for my lunch.

It is a French melon: "Petit Gris de Rennes"  You can smell its perfumes 5 feet away. It is amazingly fragrant and the orange meat is so sweet.  Pairing melons with salty or cured meats and fishes is amazing so this melon draped in prosciutto was perfect.

French melon "Chanterais" hiding under cover.

You can tell a melon is ripe by looking for a scar on the vine end.  The scar is telling us that the vine is about to pull off of the fruit.  It should also smell amazing.  

Petit gris de Rennes cut open....must save some seeds for next year 

Cantaloupe

So much for the melon lesson.  Just choose one that smells divine from the stem end cut open and eat.  No cooking recipes this months.  The kitchen is just too hot.  Dog days.

The sunflowers have all nodded their heads.  This one will be fed to the goats and chickens tonight....maybe I'll save some seeds first 

Rose loves to clean up the garden vines and sunflowers 

But I still have some garden growing.  Next month: green beans, butternut squash, berries, nectarines,  lots of herbs, eggplant, more zucchini, cucumbers, haricots vests, beets and then time to plant again

Enjoy your dog days.  keep your  cool

Share your DOGS:

Rudy's dog days in Manhattan Beach

Rudy is a Morkie

Bullet, Rose and Ella downward dog days

Georgia, Kate and Eddie in the dog days in Denver

Georgia is a Goldendoodle and Eddie is a Newfoundland Poodle

Fiona, Finn and Tiegan dog days

Fiona and Finn are Blue Merle Collie litter mates

Zeke's puppy days in the pool ( 2 minutes after returning home from the groomer)

Zeke is a Giant Schnauzer

Louis' first dog (puppy)  days in Los Angeles with his PaPa Andrew

Louis is a Lagatto Romanolo

Opie - Charlotte's main buddy.  Opie is a rat terrier and right at home here at High Tide Farm during the dog days of summer and all year round

Bear...our dog day friend we see every day on our morning walk

Bear is a Newfoundland

Charlotte on her skim board - dog and beach days