Know-how

The sweetest words I've ever heard--right up there with: "will you marry me?"--burst from the lips of a shopkeeper who specializes in Middle Eastern food. I'd just announced my reason for coming into his store: "I've just come from the farmers' market with, finally, exquisite tomatoes, so I need to get some really good sheep milk feta and a few Greek olives. Gotta honor those tomatoes properly."

"You know how to eat," he said.

When a farmer hands over something as purely perfect in its natural state as a juicy thin skinned tomato or a plump ear of old fashioned corn or a green pint box of high bush blueberries, it's no-brainer easy. You just celebrate your good fortune in making such a catch by honoring the honest flavor of that food. Serve those height of summer blueberries in a bowl as you would cocktail nuts or a raisin snack. You cannot do this in January so it practically screams July and the special joys of summertime. It puts you in time and place; feng shui for the stomach.

Serve the gloriously succulent tomatoes ripening now simply sliced and seasoned with pinches of salt and pepper and a sprinkle of basil or parsley or cilantro and a smattering of salty feta cheese. That's the Mediterranean way that's been pleasing people for millenniums, so why mess with it.

Actually, now when the produce tide is running so high, there's not much to mess with. Just serve straight up. Celebrate the heat seeking plants in bloom with a traditional Greek salad, farmer's salad it's called: chunks of freshly picked tomatoes with slices of cucumber (pickling or Persian work best as they are closer to the original in the recipe), strips of crisp green pepper, chunks of salty sheep milk feta and a handful of fat black olives. Dress with fresh lemon juice and olive oil (2 tsp oil to 1 tsp lemon juice ), season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and enjoy the sensation of summer. Save lettuce salads for the colder times: it's a cold weather crop.

I've had a lot of company at my table this week and I've been pleasing everyone with a vibrant array of produce from the market. I boiled a bunch of beets with their greens, peeled and thinly sliced those beets into a serving bowl and added the rings of two very thinly sliced new red/purple onions that were no more than an inch in diameter. I dressed the combination with balsamic vinegar and a splash of not so fruity olive oil (which means you can't really distinguish the taste of olives in it)--3 parts vinegar to 1 part oil, seasoned it with salt and pepper and chopped a quarter of a bunch of fresh dill onto the finished product. I put out a platter of bright red tomatoes laying on a bed of fresh basil leaves along with the Moroccan carrots in my book How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers Market, as well as fresh yogurt from a local farm turned lickety split into tsatziki by the addition of salt, a pickling cucumber, two cloves of garlic and a handful of mint leaves all chopped together in my mini processor.

Magenta, crimson, orange and white touched with brilliant green: what a colorful feast for the eye! Served with fresh local crab meat adulterated only with a squirt of lemon juice, a teaspoon of capers and 1/2 cup chopped fresh chives--and served on a bed of the celery leaves cut from stalks the farmer had just harvested. Finally a wooden board of artisan cheeses, goat and cow, from my local markets and olive bread from the local bakery. Farmer's market watermelon and cookies for dessert. No muss, no fuss and not too many calories to burden the body in the heat.

For another meal, I served up those beets along with my beloved Greek farmer's salad and a big bowl of spicy new potatoes that had been parboiled and then quickly stir fried til crisp in corn oil with chilies, garlic, salt and other spices. I cooked up ears of corn, broke them in half and served in a bowl doused with fresh cilantro pesto. And finally, I diced those celery stalks into their own salad with diced radishes, fennel, pitted black olives and those sweet tokyo turnips. All of it with some smoked chicken I found.

For tonight's guests, the main dish is going to be penne with summer squash (yellow), basil, a red bell pepper and new red onions sauteed in olive oil with pine nuts, red pepper flakes, and pepperoni. Coming with it will be sliced tomatoes with chunks of fresh goat cheese and the remains of that celery salad. For dessert, blackberry clafouti, one of the easiest recipes in my book.

Right now feeding people boils down to perusing and picking luscious products at the local markets. If it's good to go, you don't have to go to much trouble to serve it up.

P.S. You may have noticed these height of summer meals do not much feature meat. That is deliberate, part of knowing how to eat. I've learned to save the heavy meat eating for cooler weather, when the body heat generated by the burning of those meaty calories is more useful and thus welcome. I start with stews in early autumn, mixing meat with the bevy of root vegetables, and move on into winter with more substantial servings. But that said, I am not thoroughly carnivorous. I am managing three to four days a week now without the help of meat/fish/chicken, and with the help of cornmeal pancakes, pasta, eggs, dairy and all sorts of beans.