Happy Labor Day !


In the spirit of the holiday, today, Fisher and I are going to take a break. He has a new tennis ball, and I'm hoping for one last hurrah at the beach. Enjoy the holiday, and we'll see you Thursday, everyone.

Cucumbers, I used to think, were long and round and green. Then I met the Lemon Cucumber, and the Boothby Blonde, and the Miniature White, and all that changed.

That up there is a Lemon Cucumber, picked from our garden the other day. It looks nothing like a traditional cucumber—what with its roly-poly shape and citrus color and mottled, spiny back. But inside, it is all crunch and gush and seeds. It doesn't have quite so much of the chemical compounds—cucurbitacins—that make some cucumbers bitter and some people prone to burps, which is part of what makes it so unusual, and why people like it so much. It's best for eating fresh and slicing into salads, and if you're into cold soups, it hollows out as a serving vessel quite nicely.

I've been talking with farmers all over the Cape about what varieties of cucumbers they're growing this summer, and the Lemon is just one. There are all sorts of other unusual varieties—the Miniature White I mentioned above, which is good for slicing and excellent for bread and butter pickles, and the Boothby Blonde, an heirloom from Livermore, Maine. Gretel Norgeot is growing Sour Mexican Gherkins for the second year in a row, Ron Backer has a wild, curvy Asian variety called Suyo Long, and of course, a lot of people are growing regular old English cucumbers and Marketmores.

My favorite varieties, though, are the ones that lend themselves to pickling. I lean toward bread and butter pickles, at least I have since I met my husband. I used to be more of a Claussen Kosher Dill girl, but then I tasted a jar of pickles made from the recipe Alex's grandfather got from a friend, copied down decades ago from an inn in Maine. The pickles are thin, and sweet, and tangy, and absolutely perfect piled into a grilled cheese or alongside meat.


But, for those of you who do lean dill—even garlicy dill—I recruited another tried and true recipe today. It's from my producer, Jay, who is a bit of a pickle fanatic. He makes these pickles almost entirely out of his garden, and while they're very different from the bread and butters I make, they are good.

So here you are—two pickle recipes—for whatever kind of cucumbers you might find.

BRAD'S FAMOUS BREAD 'N BUTTER PICKLES

This recipe was passed down to us by Alex's grandfather, Martin Luther Bradford. He got it from a friend, who in turn copied it down from an innkeeper in Maine. The key is to slice the cucumbers and the onions very thinly—Alex's grandfather used the Cusinart slicing attachment; I like to use a mandolin. It makes 6-8 pints.

16 medium cucumbers, very thinly sliced
6 onions, very thinly sliced
1 green pepper, diced (optional)
1 red pepper, diced (optional)
1/3 cup pickling salt
2 trays ice cubes
5 cups granulated sugar
3 cups white vinegar
1 and 1/2 tablespoons celery seed
1 and 1/2 teaspoons turmeric
2 tablespoons mustard seed

Combine the cucumbers, onions, peppers (if using), and salt in a large bowl. Mix well, then crack the ice cubes over top. Let sit for 3 hours, then drain.

Combine the sugar, vinegar, celery seed, turmeric, and mustard seed in a large, non-reactive pot. Add the cucumbers and bring to a rolling boil. Spoon into sterile jars and seal.


BRINY GARLIC DILL PICKLES

This recipe, which comes from Jay Allison, is based on a Mark Bittman recipe. On a good year, Jay is able to get almost all the ingredients from his garden, and he says this year has been especially good for dill. In my opinion the spears are best cold, straight from the fridge, alongside a sandwich.

1/3 cup kosher salt
1 cup hot water
2 pounds pickling cucumbers
6-12 cloves fresh crushed garlic, to taste
1/2 bunch dill
1 jalapeño, without seeds (optional)
cold water

Dissolve the salt in the hot water, then put the mixture in the freezer to cool. Pour this cold salt water into a large bowl or storage container. Quarter the cucumbers into spears (you may even want to cut them into eighths if they're especially large) and layer them into the bowl with the garlic, dill, and jalapeño, if using. Add cold water as needed to just cover the layers.

Cover the bowl and leave it out at room temperature for about 4 hours, longer if you like your pickles stronger (read: more garlicy). Then refrigerate; they last for about a week in the brine.

Still, around here, it's Ode to Tomatoes. Reading top to bottom, left to right, we have this cast to sing:


Yellow Peach, Orange Banana, Amish Paste, Sun Gold Cherry, and Purple Cherokee sounding the final note.

Every day I collect them, slice them, halve them into ovals and rounds and tangled webs of seeds and stars. Then I turn on the oven, low, and roast them down—all syrupy juices, rich red flesh, crinkled skins and hollowed sides. Drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, they sparkle, bubble, deflate, and rise.

We eat them hot from the pan, plain, sweet. Tucked into sandwiches—basil and grilled cheese. Alex cooks them down into a slow, rich sauce—and we soak up the last of summer's heat.

OVEN-ROASTED TOMATOES

I like to make these on a slightly chilly day—the kind of late-summer, early-fall afternoon when you can't excuse turning up the heat or starting a fire, but the house has a little bit of a chill. The tomatoes take a few hours on low heat to bake down, and the heat spills out into the kitchen, and then the dining room, and slowly upstairs.

Any variety of tomato works well, although I don't usually bother with the cherries. They lose so much size in the oven, they're hardly worth the trouble.

fresh-picked tomatoes
olive oil
salt

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Wash the tomatoes and pick off any stems; then slice them in half through the middle, so that the cut makes a top and a bottom rather than two sides. Arrange the halves face-up on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Bake for roughly 2 hours, or until the tomatoes give up their juices and curl up—tender, sweet, and rich. Eat warm, straight off the baking sheet, tossed over pasta with basil, or layered into a hot grilled-cheese sandwich.

Elise Kaufman bakes a mean strawberry rhubarb pie. You know the type—rich, custardy filling; tender, flaky pastry; crystals of sugar on the crust, thick wedges that slide out intact. It's the kind of pie you want to devour with your bare hands, straight from the plate cold for breakfast, or hot out of the oven with vanilla ice cream on top.


The judges at last year's first annual Truro Ag Fair agreed. Elise entered her pie in the pie-baking contest on a whim. She and her husband and daughters had been watching reruns of The Waltons all summer, and there was this one episode—the one where Olivia enters her best pickles and pie in the County Fair—that had them all going one night. A few days later Elise's daughter saw a flyer for the contest at the fair, and the whole family agreed: Elise had to enter her strawberry-rhubarb pie.

She won the blue ribbon.

She was shocked, she says, but after watching her make the pie, I'm not surprised in the least. Elise has all sorts of pie-perfection tricks up her sleeve—she stews the rhubarb in orange juice to give it some sweetness along with a bit of extra tang, and she makes sure the pulp is strained. She keep the butter and water ice cold while she works with her pastry, then refrigerates it, the lattice already woven, so that it's still cold when it goes onto the pie. She takes the rhubarb out of the orange juice with a slotted spoon, then thickens the leftover juice with cornstarch before mixing it back into the fruit. She halves her strawberries, then gently spoons the rhubarb and thick orange juice custard over them before pouring it all into the plate. She brushes the crust with an egg wash, sprinkles a bit of sugar over top , and then finally, puts it in the oven, on the bottom rack. This helps the bottom crust cook through and the filling thicken up, she says, and then after 15 minutes, she turns down the heat and moves it up to the top rack.

It takes a lot of concentration. And on top of all that, she grows the rhubarb herself.




It's quite a pie to beat. But the Fair is coming up again next week—Sunday, September 5th, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend—and I'm thinking I might have to enter, even though the competition is so stiff. Of course, the more the merrier (is there such a thing as too much pie?)—if you'd like to enter your pie, you can find out more over here.

Elise will be giving us a run for our money, but I hope to see you there.

BLUE RIBBON STRAWBERRY RHUBARB PIE

This is Elise Kaufman's exact recipe, though I've changed a few words here and there for clarification. It won first place—a blue ribbon—at the 2009 Truro Agricultural Fair Pie Baking Contest.

dough for a 9-inch bottom pie crust and a lattice top
4 cups strawberries, halved and hulled
1 pound rhubarb
3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 cup orange juice, strained
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 egg
1 tablespoon cold water
a pinch of salt

Make your crust and chill it while you start the filling.

Clean the rhubarb and string it. Trim the bottom and top edges and chop the stalks into 1- to 1 and 1/2-inch pieces. Combine the sugar and orange juice in a medium sauce pot and bring to a boil. Stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is boiling. Add the rhubarb and cook, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb gives up some of its juice and the syrup thins. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and leave the rhubarb to steam for 15 minutes.

Roll out the dough for the crust, lining a Pyrex pie plate with a bottom crust (Elise says Pyrex distributes the heat more evenly than metal) and weaving a lattice top (Elise does this on a baking sheet). Return both the bottom and top crusts to the fridge to chill.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Use a slotted spoon to lift the rhubarb out of the sauce pot and set it aside in a bowl. Sift the cornstarch into the orange juice, sugar, and rhubarb juice mixture and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture gets thick and becomes clear. Pour the thickened syrup into the rhubarb in the bowl and gently mix in the halved strawberries and the butter.

Get out the bottom crust and pour the fruit filling in. Slide the lattice on top. Whisk the egg, water, and salt together to make an egg wash, and brush it gently over the pastry top. Take care to make sure the egg doesn't pool—it will fry. Sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Place the pie plate on a cookie sheet with rimmed edges (the pie may overflow) and bake on the bottom rack of the oven. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 degrees F and move the pie to the middle rack. Bake for another 30 minutes, or until the crust is a deep golden brown and the filling is cooked through.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.