Peach & Heirloom Tomato Salad with Peach Vinaigrette

This is one of my most favorite salads, especially during August when tomatoes and peaches are at their finest. I used heirloom roma tomatoes for this salad but any heirloom variety would be wonderful. While perusing the farmers market I found some beautiful, zebra striped romas that were just dying for me to buy them and use them as is, no cooking required! The peaches are so ripe this time of year just touching them causing bruising and you have to eat them within a few days...I don't mind because mine never last that long. I love opening my refrigerator and smelling the sweet, floral aroma of them, it inspires me to make all kinds of peachy delights! This salad is a perfect combination of flavors, ripe tomatoes that are just the right amount of savory, mixed with sweet, juicy peaches, sharp and creamy Italian cheese from Rome and topped with pungent, fresh basil right from my backyard garden. Seriously a salad does not get better than this, ok well maybe when topped with a peach vinaigrette made with small batch, Hudson Valley peach brandy...oh yes I went there!

This salad serves 4-6.

Ingredients

4 Heirloom roma tomatoes, any tomato will work.

4 Organic peaches

8 oz Sharp cheese, mine was a sheep's milk from Rome but any hard cheese with sharpness will work. (suggestions: blue cheese, parmesan or feta)

1/3 Cup fresh basil, chopped finely.

Dressing

1/4 Cup white wine vinegar

1 Tbsp dijon mustard

1 Tbsp peach preserves

1/2 tsp local honey

1/2 Small organic shallot, finely minced.

1/4 Cup peach brandy (optional), I used Peach Jack from Harvest Spirits.

1/2 Cup extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt & fresh ground black pepper, to taste.

Directions

Cut up the tomatoes, peaches and cheese into similar size chunks. Place in a large serving dish and toss to combine. Top with the basil and set aside.

In a dressing shaker or bowl with a tight fitting lid place all dressing ingredients except salt & pepper. Shake vigorously to emulsify, it will look thick and creamy. Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

To serve: Place a serving of salad onto a place and top with dressing and enjoy! I do not dress the whole salad because it makes the peaches and tomatoes soggy if you don't eat them all in one sitting.

Slow Cooker Beef Shank & Fresh Tomato Sauce

I really love using my slow cooker in the summer time to make fresh tomato sauces, especially meat laden ones that cook all day low and slow. It creates a thick, rich and flavorful sauce that requires very little work and doesn't heat up your kitchen. I choose inexpensive and tough cuts of meat that have lots of great bone marrow and lots of wonderful fat. The marrow and fat break down during the long, slow cooking process and make for the most delectable sauce you have ever eaten. For this recipe I used a pasture raised beef shank, its such a large and cheap cut of meat and it tastes so wonderful in the tangy, summery tomato sauce. The meat becomes so tender, like the moistest pot roast on the planet! I love to use fresh tomatoes when they are in season because they are so affordable and they taste so fresh and amazing; feel free to use canned tomatoes if you are reading this in winter, it will still be wonderful! We chose to serve ours over some wonderful organic ravioli but feel free to make my homemade pasta or even serve it up over some garlic mashers, that would be amazing as well!

This recipe will serve 8-10 as a sauce over pasta.

Ingredients

1.5 lbs Pasture raised beef shank

3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

3 lbs of fresh organic tomatoes, about 10 apple size tomatoes.

4 Pieces pasture raised bacon, chopped.

2 Medium, organic onions, diced.

6 Organic cloves garlic, minced or grated.

3 Stalks organic celery, diced.

1 Organic fresno chili, diced, I used all the seeds and ribs but if you don't like it super spicy then remove those and chop, any spicy pepper that you like can be used.

1/4 Cup organic tomato paste

1 Cup dry white wine, I used Pinot Grigio.

2 Tbsp organic, fair trade, raw cane sugar, you may need more or less depending on the acid level of your tomatoes.

2 Sprigs organic, fresh rosemary

5 Sprigs organic, fresh thyme

1 Sprig organic, fresh oregano

1 Fresh, organic bay leaf

Sea salt & fresh ground black pepper, to taste.

Directions

Bring your shank to room temp, about 30 minutes on the counter.

Salt and pepper your beef shank all over, generously.

In a dutch oven or heavy bottom sauce pan, over medium high heat, brown the beef shank on all sides. Remove and set aside. In the same pan cook the bacon till crispy and remove. Turn the heat down to medium and in the same pan cook the onions, garlic, celery and pepper till soft and translucent about 6 minutes. Add in the tomato paste and stir to melt, add in the white wine and cook about 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Place the beef, bacon and vegetable mixture into a large slow cooker.

Bring a large pot of water to boil and slice an x in the bottom of each tomato. Boil the tomatoes in batches for about 4 minutes, each batch, until the skin starts to peel away from the flesh, remove tomatoes to a large bowl. When all the tomatoes have been boiled and have cooled so that you can work with them, peel the skin off of each tomato and discard the skin. Break up the tomatoes into a bowl, removing the hard stem that runs through them, its usually white and hard you will feel it. You don't need them to break up uniformly its really only to help the cooking process and take out the stem, I just squeeze them with my hands and pull away the soft flesh from the hard part. Add the soft tomato flesh to the slow cooker.

Tie the rosemary, thyme and oregano up with kitchen twine and place in the slow cooker along with the bay leaf. If you don't have twine its fine to place them in there as is, you will just need to look for and remove the stems when the sauce is done.

Cook everything on high for 6-7 hours, or until the meat is tender and easily pulls apart with a fork, it should literally be like slicing through butter, if its not then keep cooking it. When your meat is tender and falling apart remove it and the bones from the sauce. Separate the meat with two forks and pull out any and all bones. You also want to remove anything that isn't tender, mine had some tough, unappetizing fatty pieces. I also like to check inside the bones for any marrow that hasn't made its way out, I push it out with anything long and thin. Add all your shredded meat and any marrow back to your sauce. Remove the herb stems and bay leaf and turn off the heat. Stir to combine well. At this point I taste for salt, pepper and sugar levels and add accordingly. It sometimes takes quite a bit of salt and sugar to get the sauce you want so don't be afraid to add it in! Stir each time you add, and taste.

To serve: ladle sauce over ravioli, homemade pasta, garlic mashed potatoes or even over bread as an open faced sandwich topping, like a fancy sloppy Joe! Top with parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Garlic Scape & Pistachio Pesto

I absolutely adore garlic scapes, they are the flowering bulb of the garlic plant and they must be cut off so that they root end will grow big and potent heads of garlic. Many farmers used to just cut and compost them, never realizing how incredible they were. Now you can get them every spring at the farmers market or your local co-op, as they have gained culinary notoriety. They are still hard to find in run of the mill grocery stores, so I highly suggest that if you only visit the farmers market once a year then go for this item! They are sweet and mildly garlicky, I just love to eat them any way possible. Someone I know described them as being like a "garlicky green bean" and that description is right on point. They are crunchy and lend themselves well to almost any dish. I snip them into scrambled eggs, grate them into sauces or my most favorite way to use them is in a large batch of pesto. It keeps them raw, which is how they taste best. This particular pesto uses salted pistachios and I think it is an incredible combination. The pistachios are also slightly sweet and they pair perfectly with the scapes, making a deeply green pesto that you will want to put on everything. I like to make up a big batch and freeze it in ice cube trays and then I have it all year long for anything my heart desires. I melt it straight from the freezer into soups, stews and sauces, I thaw it for pesto mayo and I also use it as a topping for  crostini. The sky is the limit, its just plain delicious!

This makes about 2 Cups of pesto, cut the recipe in half if you want less, but it freezes beautifully.

Ingredients

10 Organic garlic scapes, roughly chopped.
1 Cup loosely packed, organic basil leaves
1/2 Cup salted pistachios, I like the salt level, feel free to use unsalted.
Pinch sea salt
1 tsp wild garlic mustard seeds, these I foraged feel free to use fresh ground black pepper.
1/3 Cup parmesan cheese, grated.
1/2 tsp local honey
1 Cup extra virgin olive oil, use the very best here.

Directions

Place everything, but the olive oil, in a food processor and pulse till it is roughly chopped and starting to make a sauce.

While the machine is running slowly pour the olive oil into the pesto and whir till it just starts to pull away from the sides of the machine, I like a chunky pesto. Feel free to continue processing if you want a smoother product.

Serve on a crostini with a slice of sharp manchego,  melt over hot pasta or dollop on the top of your favorite soup, I hope you enjoy!

It will keep in the fridge for up to 2 months, place any that you will not use in that time into the freezer. I like to freeze it in an ice cube tray and then pop them out into a freezer bag to use all year long.

Vanilla, Lavender & Wild Dandelion Syrup

This syrup was meant to be a jelly, but I am a novice with powder pectin. The flavor is still amazing, no matter what the consistency of the product so it didn't bother me in the least; you could still spread it on toast very easily just like honey. I recently became obsessed with foraging everything! My parent's live in a very rural area that is lush with wild edibles! Dandelions, violets, mushrooms, berries, wild asparagus...the list goes on and on. I spent part of Mother's Day foraging in their front yard, I picked a whole bunch of dandelion flowers and violets. Then I got to work researching recipes, ideas and coming up with a plan. This was my first time making dandelion flower anything; I have used the greens numerous times but I wasn't aware that the flowers were so delicious as well! I knew you could make tea with them but I didn't know that people made other things like wine and jelly. I read that the jelly tastes a lot like honey. Mine is definitely honey-esque but it also has a lot of other flavors happening. I soaked a vanilla bean and some lavender in with the dandelion flower infusion that you make before you make the jelly. I also added the vanilla seeds to the final product. The result is a very pleasing floral flavor that would taste absolutely lovely on a hot biscuit or over oatmeal. The recipes I was looking at said to add food coloring, which I personally thought was incredibly gross. Why on earth would you want an unnatural green colored jelly when you can have a beautiful, natural amber color? I did not add food coloring, I chose to let the dandelion petals color it how they wished.


Lets talk about preparing the wild dandelion flowers for a minute, because this is the most difficult part of the recipe. You want to pick dandelions that have very big and fully bloomed heads, it makes getting the petals off easier. You will notice in the picture on the right, that one of the flowers does not have any green around the petals, this has been removed. The easiest way to do this is to push it back, like a cuticle and then pull it off gently, after you do it half way around the head it pushes back very easily so that all you have to do is cut the head of the flower off with scissors. Its ok if you get a little bit of green in, but you want to be careful not to get too much, the green parts of the plant have a white milky substance in them that is incredibly bitter, and when cooked down will make your syrup bitter. I sat in my driveway watching my daughter play and cleaned my dandelions,
sort of like shucking corn or peas, very relaxing. Make sure when you forage your dandelions that they are not in an area that has been fertilized or sprayed with pesticide. You also don't want the ones that grow along the roadside because they are covered in the pollutants of exhaust.

This recipe makes 3 half pint jars of syrup. This recipe was adapted from The Independent Herbalist.

Ingredients

3 Cups wild dandelion flower petals, you want the yellow part of the flower only, no green. 

2 1/4 Cups boiling water

1/2 A package of 100% natural Sure-Jell, fruit pectin.

1Organic vanilla bean, whole.

1 Tbsp organic lavender

2 Cups fair trade, organic, raw cane sugar

1/4 Cup fresh squeezed orange juice

Directions

Pour the boiling water over the dandelion petals, add in the vanilla bean and lavender and let them steep at

least 2 hours, up to 24 hours. I let mine steep for 24.

Strain and reserve the liquid and vanilla bean.

In a non-reactive pan over high heat bring the dandelion infused liquid, orange juice and sugar to a boil. Add in the pectin and boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Cut the vanilla bean in half and scrape out the seeds from both halves and add them into the mixture. 

Ladle into clean, sterilized canning jars and cover. Tip them upside-down to seal, or store them in the fridge to eat immediately. 

Spinach & Walnut Pesto

I am a sucker for a good pesto! I have been known to use it as a dip for chips or homemade bread, as a pasta sauce or to top a huge bowl of homemade tomato soup!

Pestos are a great way to use up very delicate herbs and greens that do not last very long in the fridge and it's super healthy! I like to make up huge batches of pesto, when basil and baby spinach are in season and then freeze it and use it all year long. You can thaw out a little taste of summer during the  winter, whenever you have a hankering. It's also a super easy way to get those leafy greens into little tummies who claim they hate them...like my two year old. I like to make some whole grain pasta and then melt some pesto over it, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and...poof...you have a super healthy meal that kids will love!

When I make pesto I like to use the very best ingredients I can find. It's a raw sauce that will not be cooked and, therefore the things you put in it should be the best. I also like to play around with the herbs and greens I use in mine to get all different flavors and nutrient levels. Basil is a very anise flavored herb that is sometimes a little aggressive on more delicate dishes, so I like to cut that back with baby spinach which gives you an extremely healthy and lightly flavored pesto. The other component of pesto that I like to experiment with are the nuts. You don't have to use just pine nuts, which are very expensive, you can use any nut combo you like. I use walnuts the most because I think they make an incredibly rich pesto and they are loaded with omega-3's.

Pesto is a great way to use up and preserve your herbs, but you can also freeze them whole in olive oil as well. Let's talk about how to make and freeze pesto and also how to freeze herbs that you don't want to use in pesto.





















Let's talk about pesto first. I like to jar some of the pesto to use right away, but it's so intensely flavored that a little goes a long way...so what to do with the rest? I have a few, flexible, ice cube trays that are designated to herb freezing only. These ice cube trays are easy to bend so they make popping out the cubes of pesto very easy. I just spoon in the pesto, about 1 Tbsp each cube place them in the freezer, wait 24 hours and then pop them out and store them in a freezer bag. They can be thawed out in about 20 minutes just sitting on the counter, zapped for a few seconds in the microwave or they can be added directly from the freezer into a hot dish to melt in, easy peasy!!



Now let's talk about the herbs that aren't going in your pesto. These can also be saved and used all year long with one easy tip...olive oil ice cubes! Yep, you just chop up the herbs you are freezing, you can do them alone or in your favorite combos and then add them to your flexible ice cube trays, pour in good quality olive oil and freeze! This suspends them in a tiny block of olive oil ice that can be thawed or used directly from the freezer the same as your pesto cubes! Genius, absolute genius! I did not come up with this idea on my own, I have seen many Facebook shares with this, but I have been using this method for a long time and thought I would share my technique with you in case you haven't seen the viral herb freezing posts.  





This recipe makes about 2 cups.


Ingredients

2 Cup fresh, organic basil leaves
3 Cups organic baby spinach leaves
1/2 Cup raw, unsalted walnuts
4 Organic garlic cloves, roughly chopped.
Sea salt & fresh ground pepper, to taste.
1/2 Cup to 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 Cup Parmesan-Reggiano, grated.



Directions

In a food processor add in basil, spinach, walnuts and garlic. Pulse on low till the mixture resembles wet sand.

Add in Parmesan cheese and pulse a few more times.

With the processor on low, drizzle in olive oil slowly, using only enough to make a creamy, smooth consistency. Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

Serve immediately or store in fridge for up to 2 weeks. Freeze any that you aren't going to use within 2 weeks.



Pesto ideas:

Pesto mayo

1 tsp mixed into 1 Tbsp mayo for a pesto mayo for sandies.

Melt over your favorite pasta and a little pasta water for a quick sauce.

Mix with hummus for a great, healthy dip for bread or chips.

Spoon over chopped tomatoes for a low-carb side dish for breakfast or lunch.

Mix into your favorite Bloody Mary mix and serve an herbed Bloody Mary for brunch.