ready, set, EAT!

Have you ever received a big box from Fedex and opened it up to dis­cov­er a dozen toma­toes from your very own father’s gar­den, wrapped up like Christ­mas orna­ments? That’s actu­al­ly a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion because I’m vir­tu­al­ly cer­tain that no one else I know has a father so obsessed with toma­to-grow­ing, a fam­i­ly so devot­ed to Fred­er­ick­son Toma­to Eat­ing, or indeed a fam­i­ly crazy enough about the whole thing to think that send­ing them across coun­try is a rea­son­able thing to do! How­ev­er, we do, and it is. The love waft­ing up from the box, once opened, was almost vis­i­ble! Or maybe it’s the whiff of insan­i­ty. In any case, for the unini­ti­at­ed, Paul Fred­er­ick­son toma­toes have a patent pend­ing. They have fan clubs (with wait­ing lists). They are, quite sim­ply, Man­na From Indi­anapo­lis. So in hon­or of my in-laws’ vis­it from Iowa, my father packed up twelve of his babies and sent them here to Red Gate Farm. There they were joined in holy mat­ri­mo­ny with four pound-and-a-half lob­sters from David Thomas Lob­ster in Isles­ford, Maine, and a dozen ears of corn from Star­chak Pro­duce in South­bury, Con­necti­cut, and there has nev­er been a bet­ter din­ner. EVER. As soon as I get a jpeg from my moth­er-in-law, I’ll post a pic­ture of the whole din­ner. Unbe­liev­able. Added to it was a gen­er­ous help­ing of may­on­naise infused with gar­lic and lemon juice, and lit­tle baguette rounds brushed with olive oil and light­ly toast­ed. Were we light­ly toast­ed? The sin­gle-malt Glenk­inchie Scotch was flow­ing nice­ly! I don’t think any of us has ever had a bet­ter culi­nary expe­ri­ence. Even Avery, who does­n’t eat lob­ster, was hap­py, because her besot­ted moth­er pan-sauteed a lit­tle filet mignon, just for her. Actu­al­ly her father got the best end of the deal: she could­n’t eat it all, so he end­ed up with the ulti­mate Surf and Turf!

Basi­cal­ly all we did dur­ing John’s par­ents’ vis­it was eat. Actu­al­ly, shop, cook, eat, clean up, and then talk about what we just ate. Sick! I’ll give you the high­lights. And it’s been sug­gest­ed to me by read­ers of this blog that I turn my inco­her­ent rav­ings about food into more actu­al recipes, to con­vince you all to try things. So here goes.

First of all, if you love lob­ster, scal­lops, or crab (or all three), may I sug­gest you go online to David’s lob­ster site and order you up some. They will arrive alive, overnight, sur­round­ed by ice and wet news­pa­per, and what you should do is open up the box to make sure they’re still alive, then close it again and leave it till din­ner time (the box does­n’t have to be refrig­er­at­ed). When you’re ready to eat, boil about three inch­es of water (sea­wa­ter if you live by the sea!) in a very large stock­pot (you can buy the cheap­est enam­eled thing on earth, some­times from a hard­ware store) with a lid. Then one by one, quick­ly drop the lob­sters in head­first and put the lid on with some­thing to weight it down (don’t think about why). After 13 min­utes, take them out and put them on a large plat­ter and let cool for five min­utes or so. Then with your nap­kin tucked into your shirt col­lar and very clean hands, the fun can begin. Some peo­ple don’t both­er with the legs, but they have yum­my meat inside that can only be sucked out. Oh, don’t for­get to have a set of crack­ers for each per­son: some peo­ple buy fan­cy task-spe­cif­ic lob­ster crack­ers, in the shape of lob­sters and bright red, but save your mon­ey and buy nut­crack­ers. Just as good, IMHO. I start with the claws because I like them best and I rarely can get through a whole lob­ster, so start with the best is my phi­los­o­phy. Then move onto the tail, then the legs. If you’re still hun­gry you can scoop out the toma­l­ley from the body of the lob­ster and it it on a saltine. Truth to tell, the toma­l­ley gross­es me out so I pre­tend it isn’t there. If you have the tail left­over (both Rose­mary and I did, defeat­ed by all the oth­er food), put it to one side and after din­ner you can rinse it and put it in the refrig­er­a­tor, and then the next day you cut it up and either dress it with a table­spoon of mayo mixed with lemon juice and put it in a toast­ed hot dog bun (this is called a “lob­ster roll”), or eat it with an avo­ca­do dip of my own invention:

Avo­ca­do Dip a la Lit­tle Cran­ber­ry Island

1 avo­ca­do, nice and ripe (so you can make an inden­ta­tion in the flesh, but don’t go crazy doing this), peeled and the seed tak­en out)

Wait.

Let me inter­rupt myself and teach you how to pre­pare an avo­ca­do. I had to learn the hard way, where you man­gle many, many avo­ca­dos and are final­ly tak­en to task by some more knowl­edge­able din­ner guest watch­ing you be your idiot self. You hold it in one hand and using a nice par­ing knife, pierce the avo­ca­do with the tip till you feel the seed inside, then run your knife all the way around the avo­ca­do, mak­ing con­tact with the seed at all times. Then hold each half of the avo­ca­do in a hand and twist till it comes apart. Then VERY CARE­FUL­LY ease your knife tip into the seed (I once com­plete­ly stabbed myself in the palm doing this, so deeply that it did­n’t even bleed, and it had to be patched up by my din­ner guest who hap­pened to be a doc­tor — a der­ma­tol­o­gist, but I could­n’t be choosy). Wig­gle the knife in the seed VERY CARE­FUL­LY till you dis­lodge the seed and then dis­card it. Now pull the skin off the whole avo­ca­do and either slice nice­ly for a sal­ad or in this case…

Place avo­ca­do in food proces­sor or blender. Add:

three table­spoons sour cream
three table­spoons goat cheese
sev­er­al shakes Tabasco
juice of a lime, juice of a lemon
salt to taste

Whizz till com­plete­ly smooth. This with lob­ster or crab is DIVINE. Unless, like my moth­er who is oth­er­wise per­fect, you feel that avo­ca­do is infe­ri­or to mod­el­ling clay as a food.

The evening of the Cur­rans’ arrival we had a gor­geous din­ner as well, if I do say so myself, and real­ly a diet chick­en sal­ad din­ner. For when you’re in a no-carb mood. The chick­en sal­ad idea is mod­i­fied from a love­ly lunch my friend Kath­leen served to me at her house in Mys­tic, Con­necti­cut. With it I served my pink gaz­pa­cho (recipe in an ear­li­er post from May).

Guilt-free Chick­en Salad
(serves four)

three whole bone-in chick­en breasts
salt and pepper
half stick of butter

1 large bag or bunch of baby spinach, or mixed leaf salad
8 very small toma­toes (prefer­ably on the vine)
1 avo­ca­do, sliced prettily
dress­ing of your choice

Place 1/4 stick but­ter on each chick­en breast and salt and pep­per it. Roast at 425 degrees for an hour, then five min­utes under the broil­er or until nice and crispy (if you real­ly want it a diet sal­ad, remove the skin after roast­ing; remov­ing it before roast­ing will make it dry out). While the chick­en cools, arrange the greens on a large plat­ter, pre­pare your avo­ca­do, quar­ter the toma­toes and mix your dress­ing. Remem­ber this basic rule, taught to me by the moth­er of the French fam­i­ly I lived with when I was six­teen, nev­er for­got­ten. Three parts oil to one part vine­gar (or oth­er acidic liq­uid like fruit juice. Then you can add what­ev­er oth­er things occur to you with aban­don (mus­tard, Tabas­co, mayo, pesto, you name it). Slice the chick­en breasts and arrange them on the greens, then scat­ter the toma­toes and avo­ca­do all over and around. Driz­zle a min­i­mum of dress­ing on just before serving.

After din­ner, if you’re feel­ing at all ener­getic, put the breast bones in a stock­pot and cov­er with water, and quite a bit of salt. If any sal­ad is left, you can throw that in too. Boil pret­ty high for at least an hour, strain through a colan­der (throw the bits away tak­ing care not to attract skunks!) and refrig­er­ate. In the morn­ing you can take the fat off the top of the pot and you’ve got chick­en broth, good on its own or per­fect as the basis of any good chilled sum­mer soup!

Mmm. We’re going out for din­ner tonight, but right now I’m pret­ty sure it won’t get bet­ter than that! Enjoy what­ev­er is on your plate tonight…