Tarragon and Chives

Summer = Heirloom tomato + Sweet basil +White wine.  This tasty equation adds up for me.  Heirloom tomato risotto is always better made with and accompanied by Chardonnay.  We love tomatoes 🍅  I try to keep a large footed serving plate piled high with heirlooms in my kitchen at all times.  My goal is to create a steady stream of sliced or diced summer tomatoes coming out of the kitchen with no end in sight.  So, when I found a recipe for risotto using a generous amount of cut up tomatoes as well as sliced tomatoes, I added + ...make a tomato risotto to my above equation.  I made a few changes to a NYT recipe so here is my adapted recipe. Ingredients and Recipe for Heirloom Tomato Risotto   Makes 4 servings Extra virgin olive oil 1 large yellow onion, diced Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1&1/2 cups arborio rice Pinch of red pepper flakes 2 garlic cloves 1/2 cup white wine 2 cups cored and then diced heirloom tomatoes 4 cups...

  I'm looking for you- red kuri squash.  When summer turns to fall, as the bins in front of my market fill with all the beautiful kinds of squash, like butternut, spaghetti, delicata, acorn, pie pumpkins 🎃  or red kuri, I'm thinking it's time to bake, make soup or pie.  Yesterday I made soup with the beautifully colored red kuri squash, it's so simple and rewarding.  Red kuri squash which is similar looking to a small pie pumpkin, only a deeper orange color, is known for it's smooth texture, buttery flesh and a light chestnut flavor.  I like to roast the squash after I've cut it in half and scooped out all the stringy seeds.  Then after it cools, I just peel off the skin and add it to my soup pot where I've already sautéed a few cups of mirepoix.  I add a cup of dry white wine, like a Pinot Gris and a quart of vegetable broth.  I simmer my soup until all the vegetables are tender and then zap it in my NutriBullet, I love the way it blends so...

  Broccoli, Cheddar Cheese, Brown Butter & Sage Soup October brings mild weather in our area with a small amount of rain in the monthly forecast but we can still see slight changes outside, leaves turning colors and falling off trees.  We don't really see a big  change here until November when hopefully we will experience rain and our fire season will be diminished. I found sage in a garden pot and thought about creating a soup using sage brown butter, here comes Fall-really just around the corner.  I tried to garnish my soup using broccoli florets, grated cheddar cheese and fried sage leaves, what happened?  The cheese mostly sunk along with the broccoli florets but the fried sage leaves saved the day and floated on top.  I also added a flourish of sweet paprika and I think that turned out ok, so if interested in a garnish for the top of your soup just go with the sage and paprika. Ingredients and Recipe for Broccoli, Cheddar Cheese, Brown Butter &...

We made a road trip to play golf a few weeks ago to the Oregon coast at Bandon Dunes, it's beautiful. This was our fourth trip to play golf in the past several years at Bandon. We cancelled our trip to Ireland this summer and don't know when we will make it back over there to play golf at some of our favorite courses in the world. I'm not complaining, yes its disappointing to cancel all your vacations but I have this new food blog and I can drive back up to Oregon and play golf there again soon, so there's that. We played the new course at Bandon called Sheep Ranch and it was incredible just like the other courses. I can't even say which one is my favorite because in their own ways they are all equally challenging and ruggedly beautiful, in that Oregon coast kind of way. Which brings me to this carrot Jalapeño soup recipe that I enjoyed at the Pacific Grill at Bandon Dunes. They would not give me the recipe, of course I asked. But, then I went googling and t...

I love cranberry beans and this soup recipe with homemade pork sausage is one of my favorites made with these classic heirloom beans.  First I make a big pot of beans, always flavoring my beans with Mediterranean bay laurel leaves, then I freeze what we don't eat for later.  I get a lot of mileage out of a 16 ounce bag of beans. During the first weeks of our Corona Virus quarantine the bean shelves at our markets were either empty or largely picked over and there's a good reason for that, homemade beans are an easy to prepare, delicious and healthy food.  First you soak them overnight in cool water and in the morning place the beans with the  soaking water in a large pot and add flavorings, like onions, carrots and bay leaves.  Then bring to a boil and simmer until tender -for a few hours, depending on the beans and that's it, so simple, delicious and good for you. I also add a spoonful of salt to my beans towards the end of cooking and often the bea...