The first month of our shiso plants. Left: green shiso; right: red shiso.
This season I got a head start on the garden, and also started branching out with some interesting-sounding seed packets from local growers. One herb I absolutely love, but have only ever seen in Japanese food, is shiso leaf. I wanted to see if we could grow it here, and what else we could do with it besides roll it in sushi. So far it’s been a raging success: a ridiculous number of sprouts have come up, seemingly twice as many as the seeds I planted. The leaves are gorgeous and super aromatic. Really looking forward to seeing what we can make out of this later in the year!
It’s also really fantastic on avocado toast. Left: with pepitas, ancho chile flakes, and cilantro from the garden. Right: with sesame and red shiso.
When life gives you gherkins, you make bread-and-butter pickles. At least, that’s what I’ve been doing. I started with this recipe, but as usual, had to modify it based on what we happened to have in our spice rack. I made a few rookie moves, like using the mandoline bare-handed (and let me tell you, that’s a mistake you’ll only make once. Those things are vicious!) But the pickles are so worth it. Sweet and spicy, great with a sandwich, or just straight out of the jar in your pyjamas (not that I’d ever do that, no sir.)
These fresh gherkins have an amazing flavor, almost sweet, even the weird-looking yellow ones.Finally got an excuse to use the zigzag blade on the mandoline!Cinnamon, turmeric, clove, cardamom, mustard seed, white peppercorns, chili flakes.Two 5-inch gherkins, with 1/2 cup of pickling syrup, will just about fill one pint jar.
Every place has a certain food that you just can’t seem to get anywhere else. For New Yorkers it’s the bagel. For the French, the croissant. Pão de Queijo (cheese bread) is that food for Brazilians. For years we’ve gotten by on packaged dough balls from the frozen section of our local Brazilian market. But this weekend we found an old recipe from a friend, and realized we had everything we needed to make it from scratch at home.
