52 Foods Week Thirty Two: Cherry Tomatoes

By Michael F. Weinberg | Published: August 13, 2011

A few weeks ago, the night we made the rotisserie rabbit, some friends we’d invited gave us a sack of vegetables fresh from their garden. Along with some tasty peppers, there was a basket full of bright orange-red cherry tomatoes. For much of my childhood, my mother maintained a hearty vegetable garden, complete with many tomato varieties, both large and small. I would often eat whole tomatoes right off the vine—like apples—a pleasure that is hard to duplicate with most grocery tomatoes, which made me all the more delighted to receive such ripe gifts from our friends’ yard.

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52 Foods Week Thirty One: Lemon Cucumber

By Michael F. Weinberg | Published: August 6, 2011

As often happens when strolling the Saturday Farmers’ Market, Jen and I came across a heretofore unfamiliar fruit: the Lemon Cucumber. Pale yellow and almost spherical, the baseball-sized lemon cucumbers we found at Good Hummus were described as a mellow, less astringent version of the common salad and sandwich component. We snatched up two of them.

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52 Foods Week Thirty: Spare Ribs

By Michael F. Weinberg | Published: July 30, 2011

While strolling the Farmers’ Market a couple weeks ago, Jen issued me a challenge that spoke to both my pride and my appetite: “I’ve never been much into ribs before. Make me like ribs.”

We had just visited the Sunblest Orchards booth, where we picked up a jar of Apricot Diablo glaze—a tasty looking mixture of apricots with habañero and jalapeño peppers and other spices. One of the recommended uses was pork ribs, so we checked with Bledsoe Meats and scored their last rack of spare ribs.

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52 Foods Week Twenty Nine: Torpedo Onion

By Michael F. Weinberg | Published: July 23, 2011

Scouring the Farmers’ Market for an interesting ingredient, we came upon the intriguing torpedo onions offered by Towani Organic Farm. Long and purple, torpedo onions are a milder onion with a hint of sweetness and a slightly garlicky flavor. Like other onions that have passed through my care, they looked like great candidates for grilling. We decided to pair them with some goat cheese and pancetta in a sandwich.

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52 Foods Week Twenty Eight: Rabbit

By Michael F. Weinberg | Published: July 15, 2011

To celebrate passing the Fifty Two Foods midpoint, yesterday Jen and I threw a little dinner party featuring the best recipes from the first 26 weeks. Since it was Bastille Day, I decided to include a surprise French dish of whole spit roasted rabbit. Though rabbit is a fairly ubiquitous game animal, enjoyed in much—if not all—of Europe, and not uncommon in the U.S. either, it has been forever tied with French cooking for me since seeing the fantastic rabbit skinning scene in Le Grand Chemin when I was young.

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