Harvest Salad with Chicken, Goat Cheese, and Apple Butter Dressing

Tonight I made a Harvest Salad with Apple Butter Dressing, consisting of greens, discs of goat cheese, red grapes, dried cranberries, and dried apricots. At the last minute, I added slices of Granny Smith and Gala apples. I also threw in some pecans and pomegranate seeds. Instead of left-over turkey, I used chicken from the Chestnut Farm CSA. The friend with whom I was making dinner slathered the chicken breast with sour cream, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and baked it in the oven. It was succulent and had an intense chicken flavor that is hard to find in mass-produced chicken – chicken that actually tastes like chicken!

The chicken breast was still warm and very juicy when I added it to the salad. I created a salad dressing using some apple butter from a batch that another friend recently made as a base. I added cider vinegar, olive oil, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. I had planned on adding shallots, but it was so good as it was that I decided to leave well enough alone. The apple butter had a strong clove flavor, so I didn’t need to add any ground cloves to the dressing, but if I had been using an apple butter that lacked a strong hit of clove, I would have had to add some.

The dressing was viscous and thick, so I dropped little bits of it onto the salad using the tip of a spoon.

For dessert my friend prepared roasted pears, a recipe that she said she got from John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger’s recipe for a salad that calls for pears and blue cheese. She simply brushed the pear halves with olive oil and then seasoned them with salt and pepper, and roasted them. I felt somewhat dubious that a pear seasoned with salt and pepper would make a good dessert – but it did, especially when the warm pear halves were topped with Maple Walnut ice cream from Toscanini’s. My friend confessed to me that she was not looking forward to having to eat my experimental apple butter dressing. Once she tasted it, however, she said that it was the best dinner she’d had all fall. I think the key is the presence of strong autumnal flavors in a light, refreshing dish – a perfect end to Thanksgiving weekend.

I just started a blog on Salon.com called Mirepoix

I will be updating both this blog and that one soon. In particular, I will be interviewing some of my friends who wrote cookbooks this year. Be on the lookout for these interviews in the next few weeks...

My first homegrown tomato...

A ripe Red Zebra.

My friend Rachel Simon describes attending Woodstock as a ten year-old girl...

I really enjoyed hearing Rachel recount her experience at Woodstock.... She thought she was going to an aquarium.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQWtCXsTSP8

Verrill Farm Tomato and Corn Festival: photos

These are the first two tables.

The third table was under another tent.

Plate number one included a mozzarella-tomato salad and tomato
risotto, zucchini pancakes, and some polenta, as well as all manner
of tomatoes...


This was plate #2, mostly red tomatoes

I couldn't resist these images of bounty...

Happiness is LOTS of tomatoes...

I took a quick trip out to Verrill Farm today. The tomatoes were beautiful, plentiful, and delicious. I had some of my old favorites, like Black Prince, and tasted some new ones, including one that I'm growing but have never had before, the Paul Robeson. A black tomato called Carbon was fantastic - juicy and almost salty-tasting all on its own - and an orange one called Orange Blossom had a nice flavor - a good balance between acidic and sweet with a true tomato flavor. There were some orange cherry tomatoes called Garden Sweet, and a variety called Aunt Ginny Purple that was bright red. (Maybe Aunt Ginny was colorblind?) There were some Ultra Sweets and a cherry variety named Sappho Cherry.

I skipped the corn and went to the sample tent, where I had some really good tomato risotto. I am not normally a fan of risotto because I find it's texture too monotonous, but the fact that this had a strong tomato flavor made it palatable. There were also plates of polenta and some zucchini pancakes. I detest zucchini pancakes but, being the consummate professional food writer, I forced myself to eat one and decided, "Yup! I still hate them!" (What don't I do for you, dear reader?) The tomato-mozzarella salad was good, but truly there is nothing better than straight-up sliced tomatoes.

I do have a caveat for anyone planning to attend tomorrow. BYOS&P: Bring your own salt & pepper. There were a few containers of salt near the corn table, but to use them you had to stand on the corn line. There weren't any salt containers on the condiment table.

I think it's best to bring your own. I have fantasies of a sort of a holster that holds both a salt shaker and pepper grinder, or something sort of like an ammo belt that contains multiple salt and pepper shakers so you can also offer salt and pepper to your friends.

BTW, if you are not a fan of port-a-potties (who is?) there is a Dunkin' Donuts down the road a little bit past the farm. If you bring a hat, sunscreen, and your own salt and pepper, you should be all set and have a great time. Bon Appetit!

Verrill Farm Tomato and Corn Festival

I'm on my way to the Tomato and Corn Festival. Pictures later!

Tomato blight? Or just too much rain and not enough sun?

I checked on my tomatoes a few days ago and was horrified to discover that many of the tomatoes on my "Red Zebra" plant are rotting from the bottom up. From above they looked perfect. If it hadn't been for the fact that I looked at something lying on the soil, I would never have noticed this problem.

I wondered if it was blight, which would necessitate the immediate removal of the plants - you are supposed to wrap them and put them in the garbage rather than compost them in order to limit the spread of the fungus. The leaves all look fine, however. A friend who lives in normally rainy and cool Oregon (where it was 107 degrees recently!) said that she thinks it's just the result of the incredible amount of rain that we had here this year because something similar has happened to her tomato plants in the past.