Tomato season is winding down in Virginia. Time to enjoy the last of these fruits of summer, fresh in salads and salsas or preserved with canning and slow roasting. I like to make my green tomato chutney which carries me through to next summer.
Long before I received any formal culinary training, I purchased some fish sauce at a market near my apartment in “Little Hanoi”, in what is now cosmopolitan Clarendon, Northern Virginia. I am embarrassed to admit that after taking one whiff, it was returned to the shop where a kindly proprietor urged me to reconsider, telling me “fish sauce smells bad, but tastes good”.
We’ve come a long way from salad defined by iceberg lettuce, waxy rounds of cucumber, flabby wedges of pale unripe tomato and bottled thousand island dressing languishing in a faux-wood bowl. These days salad offerings are some of the most intriguing items on restaurant menus, chock full of seasonal vegetables and fruits, local greens and house made vinaigrettes crafted to enhance, not overpower.
When summer’s end robs us of vegetables that peaked earlier in the season, we can always count on eggplant as a farmer’s market lure with its high gloss and firm form. Its meatiness holds up well to grilling and it marries well with tart or sweet condiments, marinades and sauces.
Nobody does heirloom tomatoes like Amy Hicks and George Ferguson of Amy’s Garden in Charles City County, Virginia. Amy introduced me to heirloom tomatoes years ago when we were both vendors at the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market. Produce sold by Amy and other farmers made its way into baked goods I sold at the market, some of which remain on The Good Eats Company menus seasonally : tomato walnut spice bread, provencal tartlets with goat cheese and roasted vegetables and strawberry honey pecan muffins.
How fortuitous that the seasons for sweet corn and sugar snap peas overlap. Sweet beginning for fresh corn, and melancholy ending for the short-lived fresh sugar snap pea, which is worlds apart from the sorry, limp frozen variety available year round at your grocery store.
It’s the age old question I grapple with : What will I take to work for lunch this week? I stand sulking at the fridge, peering at the jumbled contents. I try to make sense out of the possible ingredient combinations and come up with…zip. Nada.
Being a fan of all things winter, I must be dragged kicking and hollering into the freshness of spring. I got my wish for one last snow in Richmond March 24. Like most southern snowfalls, it arrived magically and left town abruptly, leaving traces here and there and front yard snowmen with collapsed torsos and lumpen, tiny heads.
lemon caper caesar dressing
Folks are deeply into New Year’s resolution mode : salad green mixes are flying off the shelves and merchants cannot keep up with the demand. So. You have resolved to eat more salads and fewer French fries. And what are you putting on your colorful, crunchy salads? How about propylene glycol alginate, high fructose corn syrup, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate? Not quite what you had in mind when you signed up for better health in 2013, huh? I thought so. These keep your commercial salad dressings shelf-worthy, but who knows what they do to our bodies, our temples. I would love to convince you that making your own salad dressing is easy, cost effective and a healthier choice overall.
Alfredo Neuman has merry eyes and a kind smile. He spends his retirement as a beekeeper, maintaining at least 120 hives on the grounds of Brookview Farm in bucolic Manakin-Sabot, Virginia. Alfredo and his wife Barbara operate Alfredo’s Beehive at the well-attended South of the James Market in Forest Hill Park (now at Patrick Henry School for the winter term). This is a man who loves his work. Born and raised in Colombia, South America, Alfredo honors his late brother by practicing the art of apiary science. He offers a number of products and gives samples of two types of honey : clover, from nectar gathered in spring, and wildflower, a rich dark amber liquid from summer blooms at Brookview Farm and environs. This latter honey, pictured and used in today’s recipe, is exceptionally fragrant and rich tasting. Alfredo’s honey may also be purchased online or at Good Foods Grocery here in Richmond.