May 26th Offerings
Welcome to cherry season.
I can’t help myself from eating cherries out of hand until I’m sick to my stomach. And I won’t stop until the short and sweet cherry season is over. We bought over 35 pounds of Murray Family Farm’s organic Brooks cherries last week, and Mel and Jared have been busy pitting them.
Mel is making a cherry gastrique: a classic French sweet and sour sauce made from caramelized sugar dissolved in vinegar and simmered with fresh cherries. It is lovely with duck confit, Peads and Barnetts’s pork tenderloin, or a triple creme cheese. Mel’s duck confit is salt-cured and gently cooked in duck fat for hours. All you need to do is reheat it. If you crisp the skin, that’s even better. We’ll walk you through a couple different ways to serve it.
Since we have a confit and gastrique, the rest of the menu naturally swung towards France. We have mini Brillat-Savarins: cute 3.5 oz. buttons of soft-ripened, triple cream cow’s milk cheese from Burgundy. They have a soft blooming rind and luscious, creamy interior. Delicious on a cheese board with the cherry gastrique at the beginning or end of a meal.
Mel is also making a lemon-dijon vinaigrette. This version is a little sweeter than the classic French dressing, and happens to be Sam’s favorite. There’s Ora King Salmon, and I’m making a batch of olive tapenade to go with it. We’re also getting salmon roe, and Mel is making a batch of homemade creme fraiche. To make easy meals out of all of this, there will be potatoes in the box as well as chives, tarragon, and parsley.
For your pantry, there are beluga lentils. I’m envisioning a stunning dish of black lentils, tossed with radicchio and topped with duck confit napped with the red cherry gastrique. Or beluga lentils, roasted beets, salmon, and herbed creme fraiche. Or a beluga lentil salad with avocado, watermelon radishes, last week’s ricotta salata (there’s more in the last chance shop) and the lemon-dijon vinaigrette.
We also decided to get some skirt steaks, because we haven’t offered them since last summer. And grilled steak with smashed potatoes dolloped with creme fraiche and chives sounds good to me.
Finally, for something sweet, Jared is making petite cherry cheesecakes with his irresistible salted graham cracker crust, whipped vanilla bean cream cheese custard, and Murray’s organic cherries in compote on top.
Of course, there will also be cherries in every box.
Click each item below to add to your cart. All orders due by Sunday, 05/23 at noon.
12.00
20.00
PEADS AND BARNETTS'S PORK TENDERLOIN
13.50
10.50
22.00
30.00
8.00
8.00
6.00
3.00
6.50
14.00