zoramargolis

Sounds like we missed out by not getting up to Sweet Pea's. We never made it further up the coast than Belfast, but had several outstanding meals of lobster and clams at Shaw's lobster pound in New Harbor. Also had fantastic Damariscotta oysters in an otherwise unremarkable pub in Damariscotta.

last night: corpse reviver #2 (gin-lillet blanc-cointreau-lemon juice-brandied cherry) fresh pea soup with mint panko-crusted fish cakes made with leftover Copper River salmon and Spanish canned tuna loin served with sorrel remoulade 2013 Drylands sauvignon blanc

last night: made masa corn cakes, using my recent food52 winning recipe--I haven't made them in a long time, and damn they are good IIDSSM. Served with lime crema and chopped rotisserie chicken re heated in salsa verde green salad fat tire

Carrot halwa with cardamom and pistachios. Mmmm. Perhaps my favorite Indian sweet.

Tuesday night: beefsteak tomato with mozz di bufala and basil cedar planked, charcoal-grilled Copper River salmon filet sorrel-chard sauce fresh corn polenta 2013 Mulderbosch rosé last night: Costco rotisserie chicken enchiladas with cooked salsa verde and cheese (enchiladas suisas) La Costeí±a refried beans pico de gallo apricot crisp with vanilla ice cream fat tire

I usually put so much time/effort into cooking that I have little time/energy for baking. Clearly my cooking skills are more developed than my baking skills. Years ago, when I first got serious in the kitchen I made my own puff pastry, cream puffs, brioche-based desserts. And lots of home made pastas. But ultimately decided that the effort:reward ratio wasn't enough to continue doing it. Made cookies more often when there was a child growing up in my home. I don't think I have made cookies since she left for college. Cakes and pies/tarts more often. I was making bread regularly for a couple of years, with my cousin Pedro Pan's wild yeast starter and no-knead method. But we decided it was too good and we were eating too much of it. With the stone fruit starting to appear, I can whip out a crisp for a weekday dinner without too much trouble. But baking is a different mind-set than savory cooking, and like Ilaine, I need to cut back on carbs.

J. went out to Homestead Farm on Saturday with a friend and picked blueberries. He was inspired to make a blueberry pie--including the crust !!! The pie was eaten for breakfast and dessert on successive days until it was gone. I made blueberry preserves and today for breakfast had the last of the little bit that didn't fill out a whole half-pint jar on toast with goat cheese.

schav--cold sorrel soup with yogurt, cucumber, onion, dill, garlic chives

meatless monday: well, ok it had some dried shrimp in it sort-of-thai rice noodle salad with slivered veg (carrot, shallot, cucumber, zucchini, celery), rehydrated dried shrimp, tamarind-fish sauce-palm sugar-ginger-lemongrass sauce, garlic chives and cilantro, topped with peanuts pandanus water bing cherries

smoked eggplant baba ghanoush with pita chips salade nií§oise: Spanish canned tuna loin, green beans, new potatoes, hard boiled egg, tomato, roasted red pepper, cucumber, pressure cooked garbanzo beans, kalamata olives, mixed lettuces, vinaigrette seeded multi-grain toast 2013 Drylands sauvignon blanc

Try it again later in the summer/early fall.

herb-brined, sumac-rubbed eco-friendly chicken, charcoal and oak roasted with cherry smoke chips grilled yellow cauliflower with garbanzo beans and roasted red pepper, caper-dill vinaigrette basmati rice roasted apricots drizzled with honey, roasted almond oil, lemon juice and zest, orange flower water and pine nuts, served with vanilla ice cream chilled rosé

last night: charcoal-grilled swordfish (I know it's not a sustainable choice, but I hadn't bought any in years and this was beautifully fresh and on sale at A&H. And it was delicious.) basmati rice 4 bean salad (green, wax, kidney, garbanzo) with cucumber and spring onion 2013 Villa Maria sauvignon blanc

In the spring, milk from grass-fed cows can sometimes taste of the wild onion-type plants that are common in the meadows at that time of year.

last night: lettuce and cucumber salad with lemon-mustard vinaigrette English pea and mushroom risotto (almost vegetarian: I used watered-down homemade turkey stock) made with Vialone Nanno sour cherry crisp with vanilla ice cream 2013 Le Petit Rouviére rosé

Your dedication to this experimental method is impressive. Bosc is perhaps the firmest variety of pear. Unless you use one that is very ripe, it is unlikely to break down. "Red" pears are either bartlett or anjou variety, closer to what you are looking for, but again only when very ripe are they soft enough to melt. It is just about impossible to buy a truly ripe pear in a supermarket--they are picked when still green in order to survive the ordeal of packing, shipping, and displaying. And since pears ripen from the inside out, if you find one in the store that is soft, it will probably be rotten at the core and possibly mealy. The best solution is to buy the pears and put them in a brown paper bag under your kitchen sink and leave them there for a few days--checking frequently to find them at their optimal state--a bartlett will go from green to yellow and have a slight give--and then refrigerate them.

you've heard of "breakfast for dinner." why not "dessert for dinner"?

Agreed. It's too early for North American pears, period. Any pear in the markets these days is likely to come from Argentina or Chile. I wouldn't completely rule out finding a comice, but plan to get whatever pear early, so it can be given several days to ripen. I have found the greatest number of pear varieties at the Korean markets like Super H and H Mart. Also Balducci's tends to have out-of-season produce of many kinds.

Forelle is a small firm pear similar to a seckel. It's a great pear for poaching in spiced red wine syrup. If a forelle were used in risotto, there would probably be recognizable pieces of pear in the final product--not a bad thing at all. But if the pear is meant to dissolve into the risotto, a comice type pear would be the choice to make.

I wouldn't use pear butter. Lightly cooked fresh pear is very different than long-cooked pear butter, which has reduced the water content of the pears and concentrated the sugars.

Comice.

I bought the Assam mango in a little grocery store in Manhattan on Lexington Avenue between 28th and 29th, next door to Kalustyan's--a few block stretch known as "Little India." they also had Alphonso mangoes, but were sold out of Kesars, which leads me to believe those are the most favored. We were on our way to several other places and our shopping bag was already heavy, so being familiar with the flavor of the Alphonso, we opted for a new (to us) variety. I would say that both texture and flavor-wise, the Assam is less interesting than the Alphonso, but much more complex than the standard supermarket mango. It is quite a bit larger and more bulbous shaped than the Alphonso, which has a flattened shape like a slightly larger "Champagne" mango, and the flesh is a bit stringier. Now I really want to try a Kesar. I bought them at the co-op market in Damariscotta, Maine, and brought them home in a food cooler. I did see a few roadside stands advertising that they had them for sale. These had probably been picked a week or ten days earlier, judging by how the stems were starting to discolor. They had a very late start to spring this year up there, and the fiddleheads may have been picked further north. I first tasted and gathered them when I lived in Vermont on the early-mid 70's. I remember those as being much more flavorful, probably because very little time elapsed between picking and cooking them.

slow roasted salmon--chinook for me, Icelandic farmed for J. orzo with ramps and Maine fiddleheads, fromage blanc, and pecorino Assam mango

I was without a wireless internet connection earlier. Here's the little interview they did with me. Thanks for all the support and good wishes. And votes, of course.

Thanks for voting for me. I won!