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| The Birthday Girl turned 15! |
This past weekend we celebrated another milestone as our god daughter Olivia turned 15! So the first night of her visit, we prepared these two dishes. The first Andrew called “Summer in a Bowl”. It’s a recipe from Saveur and a chef named Cary Wheaton who was inspired to make it on a vacation to the tiny town of Westport, Massachusetts. It features Lobster and the fresh corn we cannot get enough of this time of year. Then it’s topped with diced slab bacon for any extra kick of salty flavor. While I worked on the creamy sweet chowder, Andrew and the Birthday Girl herself made an exceptional Peach Blueberry Crisp filled with local, ripe, sweet peaches, pop-in-your-mouth tart blueberries and a crisp topping that’s a reason to eat the dish all by itself. This recipe came to us all the way from Seattle. “The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook” (William Morrow 2012).and its author, Tom Douglas, waxed poetic over the Red Haven Washington State peaches he used. Ours were endorsed by Olivia’s mother, Jayne, as the best peaches anywhere in the Hamptons. They came from Hardscrabble Farm, whose stand is at the corner of Stephen Hand’s Path and Rte. 114, if you want to duplicate this recipe exactly. Served with a scoop (or two) of vanilla bean ice cream, it’s a salute to an old-fashioned summer bringing up memories of sitting on a porch watching the fireflies.
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| The Seafood Shop sign should read 4 for $52.00. Still a bargain! |
Lobster, that luxury seafood in much of the country, is one of the most inexpensive seafoods you can buy here. Pity the poor lobster fisherman, 4 lobsters of about a lb. each can be had for $52.00. Sadly, Long Island Sound is no longer a viable lobster fishing ground. As the water temperature rises, the lobsters simply cannot survive. Yet another lesson in global warming and its consequences! Our lobster likely hailed from Maine. Now this dish is labor intensive, there’s no denying it. At the same time Andrew and I were buying our lobster at the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, we saw that 1 lb. of Lobster Salad was priced at $65.00. Outrageous? This is actually the low end of the lobster salad scale here where quite notoriously one purveyor of gourmet goodies prices theirs at $100.00 a lb. But after I’d dismembered the four lobsters involved in cooking the Chowder, and badly gashed my thumb on a piece of lobster shell, $65.00 seemed entirely reasonable to me. If you want, you can certainly pony up for cooked lobster for this recipe. But you are going to have to ask for the shells to make the broth.
1. Peel the peaches. This is best done by submerging the peaches in boiling water until their skins split, about 2 minutes. Then use a vegetable peeler to remove the skin entirely. Cut the peaches in half, remove the pits and slice the peaches ¼ inch thick. You should have about 4 cups of sliced peaches.
2. Put the peaches, blueberries, sugar, butter and lemon juice in a large bowl. Split the vanilla beans lengthwise and use a paring knife to scrape out the seeds. Add the vanilla bean scrapings to the bowl. (You can keep the vanilla pod for an alternate use, like making vanilla bean sugar.) Sift the flour and cornstarch into the bowl and gently combine all the ingredients using a rubber spatula. Set aside.1. Combine the oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon in a bowl. Add the diced butter to the dry ingredients and blend with a pastry blender on the tip[s of your fingers until crumbly.
Assemble the crisp:1. Put the berry mixture into the nine inch dish.
3. Set the filled dish on a baking sheet to catch any juices that may bubble over the sides, then place in the oven and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the juices are bubbling, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time.