When Josh & Brent put out the call for their Grilling Contest I had immediate thoughts of summers growing up in California, in a home without air conditioning.  This meant that for a good two months out of the year, my mother avoided turning on the oven at all costs. Steaks, pizzas, fruits – you name it, we threw it on the Webber. And thankfully, my dad was a master at grilling.

But with all the options for dinner from the grill, for me there’s still nothing like a juicy burger. Preferably one that requires two hands to eat.  These days it seems you can get gourmet burgers at every corner café, but there’s still nothing like creating your own at home. So with the official start of summer just around the corner, here’s a delicious turkey burger recipe perfect for your next family cookout.  (And it’s as healthy as a burger can be–which should make Dr. Brent happy.)

And to all those dads just like mine who are masters of the grill – Happy Father’s Day.

Ingredients

1 ½ lbs ground turkey

3 T dijon mustard

1 red onion

1 large avocado

2 t orange marmalade

salt

black pepper

havarti or provolone cheese

toasted brioche buns

cold unsalted butter (optional)

Instructions

1.

In a large bowl, combine the ground turkey, mustard, 1 t salt, and ½ t black pepper. Divide the meat into 4 patties (I love the Barefoot Contessa’s method of adding a small knob of butter to the middle of each patty to keep it moist as it cooks).

2.

Place the burgers on the grill at medium high heat for 5 minutes on one side.

3.

Meanwhile, slice the red onion into rings and place on the grill for 3 minutes, turn over, and continue cooking for 2 minutes, and then set aside.

4.

Flip the burgers, top with thinly sliced cheese, and continue cooking for an additional 4 minutes.

5.

Dice the avocado, and combine with orange marmalade and salt to taste.

6.

When the burgers are cooked through, place the burger onto a brioche bun and top with the grilled red onion and avocado compote.

And what goes better with a burger than almost anything else?  Click here to find out.

“Prunus Cerasus”

One of our greatest discoveries after moving into The Beekman was the giant old pie cherry tree behind the house.

Having first seen The Beekman in early winter, we were savvy enough to be able to identify the apple trees and lilac bushes, but we weren’t expert enough to correctly identify the cherry tree. It looked like it would bear something, but for all we knew it could have been merely ornamental.

That first spring, last year, we were ecstatic to watch the thousands of small green fruits as they swelled into red cherries. We were even more excited to discover that they were pie cherries, which have become difficult to find – even in many farmers’ markets. (One of the few places to buy fresh-frozen tart cherries in America is here.)

The tree bears a truly awesome amount of fruit. We spent three entire weekends that first year picking, pitting, and freezing. (okay…and eating.)

The Beekman Farm cherry trees are always very generous

Our enthusiasm dampened somewhat as the harvest went on. Pick, pit. Pick, pit. Pick, pit. Since it was the beginning of July, it was so hot that we found ourselves standing in the pool with buckets of cherries on the deck, pitting them all, one by one.

While we were using a pitter that is recommended by Martha – and it is a fine pitter – we knew there had to be something more, well, industrial. This one large tree ended up giving us over 20 quarts of cherries – far too many to pit one at a time.

So, last fall, we searched online and found this one! (cue angels singing) :

The best cherry pitter

It is a bit expensive, but we had to have it. Just look at it. So confident. So regal. It’s the Prince of Pitters. So we saved up and bought it for each other as a Christmas gift and have been waiting all spring to try it out.

It doesn’t disappoint.

It pits twelve cherries at a time (six on each side), with razor sharp pitting prongs.

Cherry pitting assembly line

The pits fall into the trays below, and the cherries fall into whatever pan you place underneath.

The pits

The true test, for us, was what kind of condition the pitted cherries are left in. Too many pitting contraptions seem to merely squash the pit out of the fruit.

Here’s the pitter in action:

Our new Princely Pitter doesn’t disappoint on that count either. It pokes the pit through with nary a scar. Check out the results:

Perfectly pitted

Why is it so important to us to wind up with full, rounded, pitted cherries? Because we find that they make far prettier pies. And cherry pie is undoubtably our favorite.

We might be novices at a lot of farm chores, but pie making isn’t one of them. We’ve baked hundreds of pies over the years – long before we ever found The Beekman. After experimenting with many many ingredients and techniques, we’ve finally settled on what we consider to be the best pie pastry there is.

Our pie-making prowess is based on three controversial theses:

1.Only use butter in the crust. Not lard. Not shortening. Only butter – and the very best butter you can find.

2.Mix the crust in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment – not a food processor.

3.Putting some sugar in the crust means you can add less sugar to the filling – allowing the fruit to retain more of its natural flavor.

We know, we know…these violate all sorts of rules.  But give it a shot. If you don’t think our recipe makes the best pie you’ve ever tasted, we’ll eat whatever you don’t want. (Which is our way of saying that it is really kind of hard to mess up pie.)

SOUR CHERRY PIE

CRUST
2 C flour
2 sticks of unsalted butter (plus 1/3 stick for filling)
Fistful of sugar
Dash of salt
up to 2/3 cup of milk, over ice

FILLING
5 C pitted sour cherries
1 C sugar
1/2 of lime, squeezed (or lemon or orange)
1/2 capful of vanilla extract
1/2 capful of almond extract
Zest of 1 orange (do not substitute other citrus zest)
1/3 C instant tapioca
1/3 stick of butter, cut in four pieces

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Lets start by making the crust.  It’s a terribly simple recipe…you’ll have it memorized in no time…which really impresses people. You can just whip up a pie? Off the top of your head?

2 cups of flour, 2 sticks of butter, a fistful of sugar, dash of salt and some milk (pour about a cup over ice ice…you won’t need that much, but since you’ll be working quick, you won’t be able to get more if you don’t have enough poured ahead of time.)

Here’s how it comes together:

First, freeze the butter solid.

Next, put the flour in the bowl of your stand mixer.

Then fill a small measuring cup with ice, and add your whole milk to it.

Ice cold milk is the key

Once the butter is frozen, cut both bars into pieces the size of thick butter pats. Work quickly, but carefully. You’ll need a heavy knife and your body weight, and the frozen butter can slip out from under you.

Frozen butter will give you a flakier crust

Add the butter pats to the flour, and turn mixer on low/medium speed. Probably for no more than a minute or so. We’ve never really timed it…just keep it going until the butter is broken up a little, and coated with flour.

The beginning of perfect pie dough

Be warned…the mixer is not going to like the frozen butter, and it will kachunk kachunk as the paddle tries to smear the frozen butter pats into smaller bits. But that’s the key. As the butter  pats smear against the walls of the bowl, they flatten out into flakes of butter…unlike a food processor that chops it to rounded bits.  And if you want a flaky crust, well then it helps to start with flaky butter.

Once the butter is broken up and coated with flour, begin pouring the iced milk into the bowl…slowly…while the mixer is still mixing. Be careful to hold back any ice.

Only add as much cold milk as necessary until the dough begins to just begin to come together in a loose ball. You want it crumbly, not sticky. Almost so crumbly that you’re not sure it will stick together enough to roll out.

This stage always requires a little taste test for Brent

Grab a little more than half of the dough in your hands and loosely press into a ball. No, it won’t hold together well on its own…don’t worry. Just wrap it in plastic, squeeze it together a little more, and put it in the refrigerator.

Repeat with the remaining dough. (This ball should be a little smaller. You never need as much for the top since it doesn’t need to cover the pie plate sides.)

While the dough balls are chilling in the refrigerator, pull together the filling.

You know us…the measurements are approximate. All you really need to be sure of is that the final amount will fill the pie plate.

In a medium bowl, mix together 5 C of pitted sour cherries, 1 C of sugar, 1/2 capful of vanilla extract, 1/2 capful of almond extract, 1/3 C of instant  minute tapioca (or grind up the larger, regular kind in a coffee grinder), the zest of a small orange, and a squeeze of lime juice. Just mix it all up together. No special order or technique.

Life is like...

The time it takes to pull the filling together is just enough time for the dough to chill in the refrigerator.

Take out the larger pasty ball, and unwrap.  Thwap it down onto a floured surface hard, then press with your palm on top of it to flatten it out a little further.

Rolling out the dough

Did pieces break off? Did it fall apart? No worries. That’s the fallacy of other pie pastry recipes – that your pastry must roll out smoothly and elastically. In actuality the dough shouldn’t stick together too well (and we learned this pastry technique from an old french woman, so it must be true). If the pastry ball is smooth and stretchy, then there won’t be the air gaps that will make it flaky. Instead it’ll wind up like rolled rubber cement.

Throw some flour on top of the flattened dough disk and begin rolling it out. Start in the center and roll towards the edge. Turn the dough each couple of rolls. Imagine that you’re pressing the dough out from the center…not flattening from side to side.

Dough still falling apart? Good! Get as much of it to stick together as you can, fold it in half…

First fold

then half again…

Second fold

and transfer it to the waiting pie plate. Unfold it in the pie plate. If the whole thing falls apart, don’t worry! You’re only goal is transfer the dough into the pie plate and ultimately cover the bottom and sides of the dish. If there are tears, patch ‘em up with any extra dough hanging off the edges. This is the bottom of the pie, for pete’s sake…who’s gonna notice patches?

Tip: keep your pie plate in the freezer until you are ready to place the dough

Put the pie plate with the bottom shell back into the fridge and take out the other dough ball. Repeat the rolling just as you did the first one.

Should we make a lattice top? Why not? It is a cherry pie, after all.

You can one of these thingies to roll out some pretty strips:

A handy tool

Or just use any old knife.

Once the lattice strips are cut, remove the pie pan with the bottom crust from the fridge, and pour the filling into it.

Almost done

Now this is the part I always forget, but it does make a difference. Place four or five butter pats on top of the filling before covering with the lattice top.

To make a lattice pattern, lay the strips of top crust all in the same direction over the top of the pie, leaving even spaces between them.

Weaving the lattice: step one

Once finished, peel back alternating strips halfway back across the pie. Lay down a new strip of lattice down the center perpendicular to the ones remaining on the surface. Then replace the strips you pulled back, and pull back the ones you didn’t pull back the first time. Once you’ve finished the lattice on half, turn the pie plate 180 degrees and lattice the other half.

This is much too confusing to explain in words, but it’s basically basket weaving. Just follow the pictures and it’ll become clear.

Weaving the lattice: step two

Weaving the lattice: step three

Weaving the lattice: step 4

Once the lattice is complete, you fold the edges of the bottom crust up over the lattice strips. Crimp them as fancily or as simply  as you wish. We happen to think that the more you work the dough into perfect little crimps, the less flaky it will be. Under no circumstances mash it with the tines of a fork. That guarantees it’ll be tough.

Some people glaze the top crust with a beaten egg, or milk, or sprinkled sugar. Sometimes we do too, but mostly we think the crust shouldn’t put on any fancy airs.

A fully crowned glory

It’s ready for a preheated 400 degree oven. The middle rack. We usually start it off with strips of tin foil folded over the edges of the crust so that it doesn’t burn. (We really want one of these, but after buying the Prince of Pitters, it’ll have to wait a bit.) Remove the foil about halfway through so that crust browns.

Aluminum foil keeps pie edges from burning

Bake for about an hour…but start checking about 45 minutes in. We’ve had pies take 45 minutes to bake, and we’ve had pies take one and a half hours. Just keep watching till the filling is happily bubbling. If the crust seems to be getting too brown, lightly cover with tin foil.

Speaking of bubbling, it helps to place a cookie sheet covered in foil on the rack below your pie. You’ll know the pie is finished when juices are dripping off onto it (and thankfully not the oven floor.)

Once finished, we do the old pie-cooling-in-the-window trick.

We’re telling you that on the honor system, of course.

Delicious fresh cherry pie

Send us pictures of your pies, and tell us your tricks. You can upload them right to this blog entry. (no more than 1 MB please.)

Let’s face it.  We’ve all become a little too lazy.  Too lazy, in fact, to ever consider taking the time to shell our own peas.  Even at Beekman 1802 we’ve been known to invite people over  just so that they can shell peas “while we wait for dinner to finish.”

Peas are just like anything else that comes out of the garden, the extra effort you make is worth it. By some estimates 80% of the sugar in a sweet pea is lost within the first four hours after picking.  Even if you are buying peas in a Farmer’s Market, you’re unlikely to get them in that time frame, so only true gardeners will know the intense sweetness of real peas.

Peas are not the most efficient of plantings. You need some sort of trellis.  And they don’t really yield that much per vine. And then, one warm night and they stop producing altogether. Sometimes before you’ve even gotten a handful of pods! But when the stars do line up, and we get a decent crop, sweet peas have the capacity to make us happier than fresh tomatoes. And few other things in this world can do that.
Here are the heirloom varieties we’re growing in our garden this year:

LITTLE MARVEL PEAS Introduced in 1908 and also known as American Wonder, this variety is an English variety that is a cross between Daisy and William Hurst. Plants are 15-20 in. tall. Pods are 3 4 in. long and contain 6 7 medium size, dark green peas. Very sweet flavor. Long picking season. High yielder.
LINCOLN PEAS – Introduced before 1908, this variety is also known as Homesteader. Plants are 18-30 in. tall. Pods are 3 4 in. long and contain 6 9 small, wrinkled, cream colored peas. Excellent flavor. Performs well in cold climates.
THOMAS LAXTON PEAS–  Introduced in 1900, this variety is also known as Freezonian, and was named after the famous pea breeder. It is a cross between Gradus and Earliest of All. Plants grow to 3 ft. Pods are 3 5 in. long and contain 7 9 large peas. An early to mid season producer that yields over a long season. Does well in coastal regions. Good flavor, but not real sweet.
ALASKA PEAS – Introduced in 1880, this is an early semidwarf variety named after a srteamship that held the transatlantic speed record because it is one of the earliest of all peas. Plants are 24 36 in. tall. Pods are 2 3 in. long and contain 5 8 small, smooth, light green peas. Peas are not real sweet, but plants are great for cool climates.

One pound of pea pods will give you about a cup of shelled peas, so you want a recipe that really highlights that flavor in a memorable way. This recipe combines flavors that will do just that.  Garlic scapes taste something like a cross between garlic and scallions; mildly assertive but not overpowering. The combination of mint and peas is classic and just a touch of fresh lavender peaks the flavor.

Spring Peas & Pasta

Ingredients

coarse salt
8 ounces linguine
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup thinly sliced garlic scapes
1 1/2 pounds fresh English peas, shelled (1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon chopped fresh lavender
3 tablespoons cold butter, cut up

Instructions

1 In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the linguine according to package directions.
2 Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat the oil over medium. Add the garlic scapes and cook until tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the peas, 1/4 cup water, the mint, and lavender. Season with salt and cook until the peas are bright green, and crisp-tender, 1 to 2 minutes.
3 Drain the pasta and return it to the pot. Add the peas along with any liquid remaining in the pan, and the cold butter and swirl until the butter is creamy and coats the pasta. Season with salt and serve.

All summer long we are working with our friend Sandy Gluck to develop recipes fresh from the heirloom vegetable garden.  Up next week?  All we are sayin’ is give beets a chance.

Soft spinach leaves are complimented by the peppery bite of nasturtium (they’re also pretty nice to look at!). Grapes add a touch of sweetness without being overpowering and the chives, oniony and crisp, add yet another dimension. Whether you serve it with the cheese or without, is entirely up to you.

Makes 4 servings
Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 cups packed (8 ounces) washed and well-dried spinach, preferably flat leaf or baby
2 cups loosely packed nasturtium flowers and leaves (leaves torn if large)
1 cup seedless red grapes, halved lengthwise
3 flowering chives, greens thinly sliced, flowers torn
4 ounces goat feta, crumbled, optional

Preparation

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, honey, and salt until well combined. Add the spinach, nasturtium flowers and leaves, grapes, and chives and toss to coat. Serve immediately.

Each week this summer, we’re working with our friend, Sandy Gluck, to develop original recipes fresh from the garden. Next week, the carrots should be ready

Earlier this year, our life at The Beekman Farm was chronicled in an excellent article in the New York Times.  We heard from hundreds of hundreds of people who saw in our dreams of a better life a little bit of their own dreams and aspirations.

Shortly after the article appeared, we received a note from a young woman who had been so inspired by the images that accompanied the story (and by the goats!),  that she asked if she could have her wedding at the farm.

After meeting the young bride and some of her friends, there was simply no way we could say ‘no’

As wedding plans are coming together,  every gaze out into the flower garden over the last month has made me think about the blushing brides of June.

…but maybe that’s just projection.  What do you think?

Perhaps all of these glorious blooms are what attract so many brides to the Month of June.  Kate, the bride-to-be, chose not to compete with nature’s showiness and is getting married later in the summer.  I am certain though that as she makes her way down the stairs and into the formal flower garden, a blush on her cheeks hidden beneath a white veil, all of the remaining blooms of summer will bow in her honor.

A dear friend of ours sings her philosophy of life…

Homemade yogurt with fresh honey

Have you ever read the ingredients on supermarket yogurt? What should be one of the healthiest things one can eat is often no better for you than sitting down and having an ice cream sundae. (Not that we have anything against ice cream sundaes.)

Yogurt should have two things listed in the ingredients: milk and cultures. No thickeners. No preservatives. And certainly no corn syrup. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that you’ll find any yogurt in your supermarket that lives up to such minimalist restrictions.

What’s surprising, however, is how easy it is to make your own yogurt – even the thicker, richer greek-style stuff.  All you need, of course, is milk, live cultures, a thermometer, and warmth.

We make our yogurt from our own unpasteurized goat milk, but of course we would be legally remiss if we didn’t tell you that using raw milk is not recommended by government health agencies – especially for children, pregnant women, or anyone with a compromised immune system.

But making your own yogurt works just as well with the pasteurized milk you find at your grocers. Any percentage of milkfat will do, but whole milk naturally makes a richer yogurt.

We also use a counter top yogurt incubator to make ours. It’s true that you can make yogurt easily without one. There are plenty of different techniques using everything from your oven to a beer cooler. But if you’re going to make yogurt regularly (and you will once you realize how simple it is) a relatively inexpensive machine is worth the investment.  Since the cultures in yogurt are living things, and the process of making yogurt takes several hours, it’s nice to have an incubator that keeps a constant temperature automatically. It will result in fewer batches that “don’t take.”

To begin, measure out approx 40 oz of milk into a heavy pot. Gently heat the milk to a temperature of 112 degrees. (If using raw milk, and you would like it pasteurized, bring milk to temperature of 161 degrees for 15 seconds. Then cool to 112 again.)  It’s important that the milk be no hotter than 115 degrees or the cultures will be killed on contact.  And no cooler than 100 degrees, or the cultures will not be warm enough to reproduce.

Once milk is at 112 degrees, it’s time to add the cultures. While there are sites online where you can buy freeze dried cultures, we find it easiest to simply add roughly half a cup of store-bought yogurt to the warm milk. Be sure, however, that the store-bought yogurt lists live cultures in the ingredients (and the greater variety of them the better.)

Stir the starter yogurt in well, until it is completely dissolved.

You’ll only have to add the store-bought yogurt starter once. After that, just like using a sour dough starter, you can simply use some of the previous batch of yogurt to start the new one. (If you find your yogurt batches begin to lose their thickened consistency over time, we find it helps to occasionally give a new batch a boost with store-bought yogurt again.)

Then pour the warm milk/yogurt mixture into the jars of the yogurt maker.

After replacing the lid, simply turn the machine on. (Do not put the caps on the jars while it incubates.)  The yogurt maker will automatically keep the milk/yogurt at the perfect temperature for the yogurt cultures to multiply. Generally we leave ours overnight for 12-15 hours, though the yogurt can set in as little as 9.

Don’t fret if the yogurt appears a little runny. Real yogurt is almost never as stiff as what is found in stores. Most store-bought yogurts add thickeners and gelatins. Your delicious homemade yogurt will become thicker once cooled in the refrigerator.

But what about Greek yogurt? …That really rich thick yogurt that’s suddenly become so popular? Well, it’s simply regular yogurt which has been drained of excess water.

We messed around with all sorts of cheesecloth sacks and dishtowels before we finally hit upon the easiest way to strain our yogurt. Our simplified method simply uses a wire strainer, propped over a deep bowl and lined with a regular coffee filter.

Again, let it set overnight (drape a paper towel over the top to keep out pests) and by morning you’ll have the thickest richest yogurt available anywhere. Drain even longer and you’ll have a type of spreadable yogurt cheese which you can season with cracked pepper, herbs, or chopped vegetables.

We usually top our yogurt with nothing more than fresh fruit. But if you’re not overly fond of the natural sourness of unsweetened yogurt, then by all means….add a little honey, honey.

Tell us your favorite yogurt toppings in the comments below. We love experimenting.