The Wednesday Chef

Blini are those smallish Russian pancakes made from buckwheat flour, often topped off with a cap of sour cream and a spoonful of caviar. In a recent article in the L.A. Times about corn, Russ Parsons fiddled with a recipe from Jeremiah Tower for cornmeal blini, adding fresh corn and jalapeno peppers. They were to be finished off with a spoonful of Mexican crema and a cilantro leaf. Now, to me, not much else can beat the repulsiveness of cilantro. I believe someone somewhere is doing a study on how some of us are missing the cilantro enzyme in our mouths, rendering the flavor of a leaf of it akin to, oh, say, a chemical meant to kill us all off in a few minutes or less. So I tend to avoid all recipes that include cilantro. In this case, I figured I could easily leave out the garnish and so would also remove the jalapeno from the batter (these two go together like peas in a pod, so what's one without the other?). To make up for this omission, and because I had two cobs in the fridge, not one, I doubled the amount of fresh corn in the recipe.

Don't attempt to make these blini any larger than the two tablespoons or so that are recommended in the recipe. The batter is thin, and the blini will rip apart if they are too big to be flipped easily. They are pretty salty, so the sour cream or creme fraiche is essential to smoothing out the taste a bit. I'd sprinkle some minced chives on top for an elegant, crunchy little appetizer. I can imagine getting creative with the toppings: slivers of smoked fish, a few tiny cubes of tomatoes soaked in basil oil, or perhaps even a tangle of caramelized onions. In total, the blini were not bad, though I do think that plain old buckwheat blini are somewhat easier to make (no pesky corn kernels flying through the kitchen), and that wonderful buckwheat texture really can't be beat.

First, I whisked together cornmeal, salt, sugar and some boiling water to create a thickish  batter.

After this cooled off, I beat in two eggs, some milk, sifted flour and a bit of melted butter. The batter becomes very thin.

I added in the cooked corn kernels and let the batter rest in the fridge for a while.
After melting butter in a pan (I don't use nonstick, but the recipe instructs you to), I poured in five or six little puddles of batter.

I cooked them a few minutes on each side, then turned them out onto a plate. Keep the plate warm in the oven until you're ready to serve.

What do you do when the gloriously perfumed stone fruit that you so carefully selected from large bins at the market one day, transitions too quickly from the promise of juicy, pliant flesh to an almost decadent state of over-ripeness? Slice away the offending areas, douse in an acidic slosh of citrus juice and booze, and serve with a floppy crown of cream. There's no real recipe for this, because so much depends on the state of your fruit and what you have on hand in your kitchen cupboards, and what your personal taste decrees. So, use my suggestions as a guideline and feel free to experiment. Important is only that your fruit not be the mealy supermarket kind, devoid of all flavor and texture.

First, I slice up whatever stone fruit I have that needs to consumed that very minute. Last night, it consisted of a nectarine and two white peaches. Don't bother peeling them – this is a rustic kind of dessert. Cut away whatever parts of the fruit may already be over the hill. You could use any combination of peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and so on.

Squeeze half a lemon (or more, depending on the amount of fruit; or else use a lime or perhaps an orange) over the fruit and pour in a glug or two of dark rum (you could use Armagnac, cognac, fruit liqueur, Prosecco or whatever else seems appropriate). The alcohol pulls out some interesting flavors in the fruit – last night my peaches tasted almost like the freshest, sweetest bananas you could imagine. You won't need any additional sugar because your fruit should be chockful of the natural stuff. Toss the fruit with the citrus juice and alcohol, then let it sit for a while. Only have 20 minutes? That's fine. Want to make it a few hours in advance? That's probably fine, too, although the fruit might darken a bit.

When it's time to serve, plop a dollop of sour cream on top. You could sweeten this cream with honey or sugar or maple syrup, but plain is a nice balance to the sweet fruit. You could use plain yogurt or some heavy cream or creme fraiche or… you get the picture. Serve a bowlful with a snappy cookie alongside, or maybe with your morning toast. Whenever, whatever – this is one easygoing and forgiving recipe.

Dear readers, I have been humbled. After being somewhat scornful of the roasted peppers I made last night, I had some cooled to room temperature for lunch. And what had seemed bland and a bit forgettable yesterday was concentrated and delicious today. It's not exactly rocket science that leftovers (when not chilled to tooth-aching temperatures) often taste better than freshly prepared dishes, but nevertheless I crossed these off the list too quickly, without giving them fair shakes. So, mea culpa. My advice to you is to make these after work for a picnic the next day! They do seem like ideal food for an al fresco meal, wedged between some crusty bread that has sopped up the deeply flavored juices.

And while we're on the subjects of picnics (and warm weather fare in general, I suppose), I have to share with you one of my favorite discoveries of the summer: the combination of beets and mint. I like to boil beets until they're tender (you could also wrap them in foil and roast), then peel off the thin skins when they've cooled. The pink and stripey beets above are Chioggia beets. I toss the little nuggets with chopped fresh mint, a delicately flavored olive oil (or if it's around, walnut oil), and a few drops of sherry vinegar. Don't forget a light sprinkling of salt. Sweet beets, faintly pungent mint, a nicely astringent dressing: not only do the flavors really work together, this salad is assembled in no time at all.

Since I so often mention my CSA basket, I thought that I might also dedicate a post to it. Community Supported Agriculture is a program that has city folk support a farmer by buying shares of his harvest in advance, and thereby giving him the money he (or she!) needs to tend the farm, buy equipment, and hire farmhands. My friend Dave likes to refer to this as the Communist Vegetable Collective. The farmer delivers the vegetables harvested each week and we, the recipients, enjoy a constantly changing supply of healthy food that has been farmed organically and sustainably. Not only that, we also have the pleasure of knowing that we’ve kept a farm in business for an entire season.

It also turns out to be incredibly cheap. I split my share with a friend: we each pay $210 for the season, which goes from June to November. This works out to be around $8 a person per week. Yesterday, our share included six zucchini, a bunch of Chioggia beets, a bunch of Bright Lights chard, five tomatoes, a basket of tomatillos, several poblano peppers, a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, six zucchini, one head of red cabbage, a bunch of Cosmic Purple carrots (purple on the outside, orange on the inside!), four Orient Express eggplant, and four yellow frying peppers. The CSA adjusts their prices on a sliding scale so that low-income families pay less, while receiving the same amount of vegetables.

On the days when my CSA delivery matches the ingredient list of a recipe on my radar for that week, I feel like the universe is coming together in a particularly lovely way.