Summer solstice is long gone.
Corn that’s knee high by the Fourth of July? Already past. Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat? Not quite to that point yet, but we have reached the peak of Kentucky’s bounty, right here and now. I know that because I have too many choices to make and too little cooler space to fit everything.
A sample list of what I could provide would go something like this. Tomatoes, Romas, cherries, plum and slicers. Cucumbers, pickling and slicers. Mushrooms, in my cooler right now I have five types of local mushrooms with exotic names like Boletes and milkys. Squash and zucchini, spaghetti squash and eggplant. Corn, some of the best I’ve had in years. Onions, carrots, celery, garlic, the base aromatics for any dish I might want to attempt. Potatoes, fresh herbs, whole chickens and a half of a pig. Beans, half runners, flat beans and string less.
There really is too much, making my life on one hand exciting and on the other a pressure cooker of decision making. This is the other side of farm to table eating, the side that produces endless hand-wringing by chefs as they direct traffic and make sometimes difficult choices on what they buy and sell.
Dan Barber has a fabulous story about buying asparagus in season, and then finding he has much more back at his restaurant. In a fit of professional pique he declares that every dish that night will have asparagus. People loved it, found it heartening that a chef would stick to his guns and truly espouse the farm to table concept in this way.
And that is precisely where we are right now. Several columns ago I talked about making a family meal from the market once or twice a week. Now I challenge you to do it all week, like the big boys and girls!
My secret? I switch methods a lot, taking a green bean and turning it into five different elements during the week. If they are string less and thin I might treat them like raw asparagus, a little olive oil and lemon with salt and pepper top them with warm goat cheese and sprinkle them with toasted walnuts, your first course.
Putting them with an entrée I might blanch and shock to start and then parse them into a chicken dish by using half runners to braise with country ham, tomato and corn. They will retain more color if they’ve been blanched and they provide a meatiness that anchors the vegetables on the plate and responds well to the savory chicken.
Other blanched and shocked beans will be roasted with garlic and a hint of lemon to go with a pan roasted redfish or seared scallops. A light caramelization is best. Get them too roasted and they shrivel up like a deflated balloon.
I use corn as a sauce, a component of salsa, a soup, a stew, a bisque, in sautés, the list is long. Corn gives me a versatility to span multiple cuisines and provides crunch, sweetness and an abundance of color.
I’ll roast pork belly, caramelize onions, roast red peppers and then add some corn to a risotto. All that richness and spice, dark colors and soft textures, balanced with a bit of fresh corn cooked only in the risotto. With the cobs I’ll simmer them in cream and make a chowder with onion, bacon, celery and potato. I’ll add in roasted red pepper to order and finish with some fresh corn cooked quickly in the summer soup.
Let’s talk tomatoes, specifically the diversity of the tomatoes. Romas for sauce, heirloom for salads, slicers for sandwiches and short stacks. Cherry and pear tomatoes have been great this year, allowing me to plate them with salads, put them in pasta and risotto, and roast them with many different summer vegetables.
The skin is just strong enough to build up steam as the tomato heats and then warm the tomato from the inside out. The result is a warm rush of intense tomato flavor as you bite into them.
So you see, with just a few ingredients there are numerous and sometimes overwhelming choices. We can choose to simplify, to settle on one or two items and use them in multiple ways. You can branch out a bit and choose specific recipes to highlight specific ingredients that you can feature or do at home.
Or you can be wildly unpredictable, jump on an ingredient that may not be here next week (chicken of the woods mushrooms) and in the process of using it, find new combinations, new ways and even new cooking methods that bring out the best in the ingredient and the inner chef in you.
John Foster is an executive chef who heads the culinary program at Sullivan University’s Lexington campus. A New York native, Foster has been active in the Lexington culinary scene and a promoter of local and seasonal foods for more than 20 years. The French Culinary Institute-trained chef has been the executive chef of his former restaurant, Harvest, and now his Chevy Chase eatery, The Sage Rabbit.
To read more from Chef John Foster, including his recipes, click here.
