Screaming For Ice Cream

By Cheri Scolari

5/2011

There is one food that permeates my childhood memories and even now, can sweeten a day gone sour: Ice cream. The very thought of it hastens the balmy summer days and backyard barbeque's. It takes me back to playing hopscotch on the steamy sidewalk in front of my grandma’s house, listening for the tinkling tunes of the ice cream truck, and finally handing over my pennies for a Push-Up, that orange and vanilla creaminess on a stick. Or savoring the dark chocolaty Fudge Brownie cone at Baskin Robbins after bravely surviving my annual doctor visit and vaccines. I risk dating myself when I confess that one of my favorite hangouts in high school was Lippert’s, our local ice cream shoppe, always good for a Root Beer Float or a Tin Roof Sundae after cruising the main on Friday night.

Well, my hopscotch and cruising days are long gone, but ice cream is definitely here to stay. As a matter of fact, I am in good company when I am indulging in one of my favorite warm weather pastimes. According to the National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot in 2011 survey, artisan or house-made ice cream is number one on the list of top trends this year in the dessert category. The survey was conducted among more than 1,500 professional chefs, all members of the American Culinary Federation. I really don’t need 1,500 chefs telling me that ice cream is good stuff though. Especially artisan ice cream. On my recent vacation to San Fransisco in April, I had the chance to stop by the foodie haven, Bi-Rite Market, and check out their creamery, where I tasted heaven on a spoon: Salted Caramel ice cream. The Honey Lavender was quite beguiling as well, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that Salted Caramel. Unfortunately, Bi-Rite doesn’t ship their ice cream products, so I had to find an alternative solution.

I was delighted to discover that Jeni Britton Bauer, artisanal ice cream pro and proprietor of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, sells her pints all over the U.S. including at Sickles Market. Jeni’s ice creams are less sweet and more flavorful than the traditional American ice cream and she only uses the freshest local ingredients and responsibly raised products from around the world. And best of all, Jeni has Salty Caramel, as well as other amazing flavors such as Corn Syrup Custard With Whiskey and Pecans, and Brambleberry Crisp. They are a bit pricey, but a little goes a long way and the flavor experience is something you won’t forget You’ll also find that it’s hard to go back to the regular grocery store brands after tasting real artisan-made ice cream. If you would prefer to try your own hand at making ice cream, you can check out Jeni’s book, The Homemade-Ice-Cream-Bible (to be published in June, artisanbooks.com), and create your own decadent combinations.

Sometimes I am in the mood for a scoop of vanilla ice cream, pure and simple, and nothing else will do (although a Tate’s dark chocolate chip cookie on the side would be fine too). When vanilla is calling my name, I turn to Gifford’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream. It is the best of both worlds: vibrant vanilla bean and rich dairy cream. In addition to being great ice cream, Gifford’s hails from Maine (they even have a Lobster Tracks flavor!) and has been family owned and managed for five generations. The company supports local farmers in the Northeast and all the milk used is artificial growth hormone free. The company has a plethora of awards including 2010 Grand Champion at the World Dairy Expo, and my favorite, First Place at the 2010 People’s Choice Award at the New Jersey Ice Cream Festival. Try leaving a quart out on the counter for ten minutes or so, until it gets a little melty, then dig in with a spoon, and you’ll see why Gifford’s is New Jersey’s favorite!

I love ice cream because, besides being delicious, it is so versatile. When you need to dress it up, you can layer contrasting flavors in an ice cream terrine.  This recipe uses pistachio ice cream, black currant sorbet and lemon frozen yogurt and with a sprinkling of chopped pistachios. Ice cream bonbons are fun and elegant with their silky coating of chocolate and light flakes of sea salt. Surprising ice cream toppings liven up a party as well. At the end of my birthday dinner at Via 45 in Red Bank recently, I was delighted to receive a dish of basil sorbet accompanied by fresh strawberries, a drizzle of aged balsamic and a candle, rather than the usual tiramisu. Another delicious combination is praline pecan ice cream with crumbled bacon and maple syrup. Or add a hot espresso to your cold gelato and create your own version of affogato, the Italian version of a fountain drink eaten with a spoon. When I want to take my ice cream to the beach or a backyard barbecue, Ciao Bella’s Key Lime Graham Squares are the way to go. These SOFI gold award winning frozen treats are not even in the same ball park with other ice cream sandwiches. The all natural, richly decadent gelato is bursting with tart lime flavor and sandwiched between slightly savory graham crackers. When you don’t have time to cook, simply pile these little gems on a platter and your dessert will be the hit of the party.

I’m looking forward to the sunny days ahead, holiday cookouts and long strolls on the boardwalk. But most of all, I’m screaming for ice cream!

Enjoy!

Cheri the Cheesemonger

Tempting Spring Vegetables

Spring vegetables: ramps, fava beans
fiddle head ferns, & asparagus

Spring is a tease.

Recollections of its gentle warmth and cheery colors comfort you during the gray months of winter. Beguiled, you assume spring will surely arrive by March. Just as a few delicate buds appear on ghostly trees, another snow storm hits and spring eludes you. Come April, just are there are more certain signs of spring, another frost grips the earth, making it hard for you to put your faith in spring's arrival. By the time you can confidently trust spring, trust that it's here to stay, it flees, looking for a chase, and you can't keep up. Daffodils bloom and die; cherry blossoms fall like snow at the slightest breeze; tulips arrive with their stately grace and shed their petals melodramatically on a warm day; azaleas burst into color and then retreat at the sight of the puffy blossoms of rhododendrons. Spring breaks your heart. You want your time with it to last, but it won't wait for you. You're always on its heels, and the next thing you know, when you think you've finally caught up, it's summer.

There are two ways that I have managed to keep a healthy relationship with spring. First, I make the best effort I can to soak in its beauty. I cycle slowly to work, admiring everything in bloom, taking it in with my eyes, knowing that within a week all the cheery blossoms will have gone. Second, I welcome its vegetable treasures, chiefly ramps, fiddle head ferns, fava beans, and asparagus. I cook with them until I can cook with them no more. At a certain point my palette is saturated and mean spring refuses to release any more of these green treasures from the reawakened earth.

Crostini topped with ricotta and
grilled ramps and fava beans

Ramps, or wild leeks, are a rare treat. They look like something you could have pulled from your rain-soaked garden, and they smell almost as earthy and herbal. Their season is so short that their advent at farmers' markets is met with a happy frenzy. This is especially the case in New York City, where I was first introduced to them a few years back, at the Union Square Market. In the city these days, it's hard to escape ramps, until their season is finished--grilled ramps on focaccia, ramps in a vinaigrette for a roasted beet salad, ramps compounded into butter, ramps sauteed and served with soft shell crabs, ramps pickled and jarred. My annual recipe using ramps is a rich, creamy pasta dish created by the New York chef Andrew Carmellini, now of Locanda Verde, but formerly of A Voce, the restaurant where he featured this spaghetti dish in the spring. It's a seasonal tangle of ramps, peas, fava beans, and American speck, bound together in a cream and egg sauce. In my version, I forgo the speck, and emphasize the flavors of the vegetables.

Thai red curry with fiddle head ferns
and tofu

Nothing represents spring as much as fiddle head ferns. Coiled and seemingly ready to bounce into action, they embody all the energy and promise that spring offers. They taste green and damp, just like the season. I first came into culinary contact with them when I was a graduate student in western Massachusetts. They remind me of the local woods that would take their time embracing the spring after the long, harsh winter. A memorable dish from that time period was a veggie Thai red curry with fiddle head ferns. I applauded the novelty and I try to recreate it every year.

Fava beans are as mean as spring. They take some work: you have to shuck them from their pods, blanch them, skin them, and then incorporate them into a dish, like the ramp pasta recipe above, or this Fine Cooking recipe with prosciutto and mint. Another idea is expressed in the picture above, of the crostini--favas and broiled ramps atop toasted bread, which is topped with a fluffy mixture of ricotta, pureed peas, lemon zest, and ramp tops. Despite the tedious work, favas are rewarding: they taste bright and as green as the first leaves that appear on trees. A simpler way to eat them is how I did at an historical, upmarket restaurant in Rome, Checchino dal 1887, where, as an appetizer, I was served a plate of unshelled fava beans and a hunk of pecorino. I was to shuck the fava beans and then eat them raw along with the salty cheese. For Romans, that raw fava beans with sheep's milk cheese means spring.

Cheddar grits with asparagus &
mushrooms

Asparagus is one of the few foods of spring that you can buy all year round, but I suggest eating it now, its traditional season, especially if you can buy it fresh from a farmer's market. I always make something with asparagus for Easter and Mother's Day, e.g., cream of asparagus soup with saffron croutons, linguine with roasted asparagus and almond pesto, and a shaved asparagus salad with Gouda and hazelnuts. For something new, I am going to try them with Cheddar grits, using mushrooms (another sign of spring, especially chantarelles) instead of shrimp.

As soon as spring arrives, I am already lament its end, just as when you are eating something incredibly spectacular, you are already thinking of taking a second helping instead of savoring what you have. Cooking with spring's mean bounty helps me prolong this seductive season.

Savor these final days of spring!

Diana Pittet the cheesemonger

Baby Rabbits in the House

Garden Newsletter 

Patricia Dumas

May 2011

I have them, doesn’t everyone?  I learned a thing or two about our wild rabbits the other night.

Sitting in my old chair at the TV the other night, the dog and the cat were goofing around as usual.  All of a sudden, there was a high-pitched squeal.  Thinking it was that emboldened squirrel who comes in the cat door to eat morsels of cat food, I knocked the broom handle around wildly under a little table to scare it out of its hiding place.

Nothing.  Not a jitter nor a squeak.  Then I noticed there was something huddled up tightly in the corner under the table amidst the old books and boxed games.  It was so pressed up against the wall that it could have melted into it.  A little baby bunny sat still-- fear keeping it quiet and hardly breathing.

My cat Buster has this idea that if he brings baby rabbits indoors as gifts that I will like him better and feed his fat belly more.  He’ll come in through his little makeshift cat door with a live bundle in his mouth, then set it aside to harass, torture, and bat around later.  Not this time, though.  I scooped the rabbit up gently and brought it outside to a neighboring yard where it could have a decent chance of surviving.

 In my search for info to help my little frightened visitor, I learned that because rabbits are high on the food chain as an appetizer and main meal, the mother feeds them on the run. She’ll feed them heavily and quickly with super nutritious milk only twice a day, and never sleep with them for fear of predators. Hunching over the little shallow nest of fur, she’ll nurse them quickly then be off. 

So much for our visions of a deep “Alice in Wonderland” hole. The rabbit nest is almost laughable--  out in the middle of a pasture or lawn, they are small indentations lined with fur.  In the open, it’s amazing there are so many of them that survive to eat us out of home and garden at all!

But, survive they do.  And they do amazingly well.  Knowing now what I never knew as a kid, I know  why I could never save a young rabbit.  When I was a kid, I used to try and bottle feed the babies.  No luck.  They are stressed easily, need a super nutritious and filling diet, and when a cat bites them, it is often the fatal feline bacteria that kills them.

With all that goes against them--  great predator food,  lawnmowers ravaging nests, and a virtually mother-less life, rabbits survive and end up in our yards by the dozens eating clover as well as our garden lettuce, flowers, and newly planted vegetables.

 I just thought my gardening friends would like to know a few things about the creatures that on one hand touch our hearts, and on the other drive us crazy in our gardens.  We can fence our gardens in, spray deterrent, or just give in.  As the old farm adage goes: Plant two for the farmer and one for the bunnies.

Meanwhile, the end of the bunny story ends well, I think.  After fishing the poor thing out of the pond while the cat was chasing it again, I placed it in a little shelter made out of a turned over plastic flower pot.  It could get out, but, the cat couldn’t get in. One can only hope.  It’s my fault that cat is outside.  More birds and small animals are killed by domestic cats than by any other animal.  It’s a choice we make and have to live with.  I’m not proud of it.

When I held that little bunny in my hands, that old feeling came back.  My hometown of Tinton Falls in the old days was surrounded by many open fields and woods. Baby bunnies, raccoons, and birds were a part of our childhood landscape.  We know more these days about wild animals than we did back in the day when well-meaning kids like me tried to keep baby raccoons in cages, and feed baby rabbits regular milk.  Thankfully, there’s now a growing respect for the animals that we live with and a knowledge that we can’t keep them, control them, or destroy them. 

I think we want it all. Beautiful homes, lawns and gardens away from the bustling cities while at the same time not wanting deer and rabbits eating our plants.  It’s hard to come to a compromise.  We can use organic products like Animal Stopper  to sprinkle around plants as a deterrent, and they work very well when used properly.  Cutting your choices of desirable plants is an option as well-- but, who wants to severely cut back on the beautiful veggies and flowers we can grow during a very short season? 

Fences and barriers work well.   My co-worker Natale and I are planting our vegetables over in the town garden plots in Fair Haven Fields. Anyone from Monmouth County can sign up for $25. a season, and it’s a  place of beauty and tranquility away from the bustle of suburbia.  While years ago it was a simple endeavor, it’s now a labor of love.  Most of us put up 7 foot fences that go down a foot below the soil to keep the critters out.  It’s more work than we bargained for, but it’s worth it when we harvest magnanimous farm-style vegetables throughout the season.

Meanwhile, back at my mini farm on River Rd., another baby rabbit made it into the house by way of Buster. This one wasn’t as lucky and hopefully didn’t suffer.  He was placed, with love and adoration under the piano bench for me to fawn over.  Although I could have strangled the cat, I spoke in cat whispers to him and thanked him kindly for the gift.  He stretched, yawned, and then curled up in my chair.  No doubt he was dreaming of the next chase by which he would earn his keep.

A Few Garden Tips on my mind:

• Plant your tomato and other vegetable plants now.  The weather is getting steadily warmer, and they should take off quickly.  Plants setting fruit during warmer nights prevent bottom-end rot in the resulting fruits.

• Before spreading grass cuttings as mulch on your vegetable garden, make sure it has sat and cured for a while.  The decay process will suck the nitrogen right out of your garden. Instead of cuttings, try some Bumper Crop as a top dressing. It will hold moisture in, and cut down the growth of weeds.  

• Save space by planting cucumbers and other trailing vegetables between the tomato plant and peppers. 

• Instead of using horse hay for mulch in the garden, try salt hay.  Salt hay comes from the marshes and is impervious to weed seeds that will take over our gardens.

• Bush beans, bush cucumbers, bush zucchini and other “bush” vegetable varieties save space in the garden, while still producing prolifically.

• Great plants to try:   Tackle  something different this year.  Swiss Chard “Bright Lights” is a gorgeous, leafy green that grows to 20 inches high in the garden. It’s beefy stalks are colored yellow, pink, purple and crimson.  Use for a bold leafy touch in flower containers, or in the garden for an endless amount of tasty stalks all summer long.

Sickles Market Wows Visitors at Holly Hill

Click here to watch a short video segment about the Sickle's "Wow Pantry" at Holly Hill

Stocked pantry and garden put products and ethos of Little Silver emporium on display at designer show house in Middletown's historic Locust Point District.

By Greg Kulaga | Email the author | May 22, 2011

The VNA Designer Show House at Holly Hill is a labyrinth of happy surprises, and Little Silver's Sickles Market is providing visitors there with at least two sources of inspiration; a fully-loaded pantry and a garden geared for sustainability.

Holly Hill is a historical estate located in the Locust area of Middletown Township. It was built during the depression in 1934 by New Jersey state senator and superior court Judge Thomas Brown, who used local labor and materials for the home's construction.

The estate was chosen to become the third designer show house for Stately Homes By-the-Sea, an organization that brings in acclaimed interior designers, decorators, landscape artists and the like, and has them get creative with various spaces in and around the home.

Sickles Market curated the kitchen's pantry, and third-generation owner Bob Sickles didn't merely want to stock it, he wanted to get a reaction.

Dubbed the "Wow Pantry," Sickles has stuffed the room top to bottom with goods available at his market.

As Karen Irvine, public relations for Sickles Market, explains, "it's an idea Bob Sickles had about three years ago where we can provide pantry staples from the ordinary to the extraordinary into people's homes."

"We wanted to educate our customers on what's available to them," said Irvine, who added that the pantry stocking service is available to anyone who contacts Sickles.

Out of all the items in the pantry, Irvine and Sickles both chose to highlight Mazi Piri Piri sauce, which was recently featured bySaveur magazine. It is a Portuguese hot sauce made from tomatoes, piri piri chile peppers, oil, vinegar, and a little bit of whiskey.

"This sauce has flavor, plus it's not going to kill you," said Sickles of the sauce, which is made locally by Peter Mantas. "I use it like ketchup, I just think that it's really good."

The other part of the Holly Hill estate put together by Sickles is the garden, which is a modern-day victory garden that will produce various fruits and vegetables, and also features aesthetically-pleasing elements such as a blue gazing ball, a bird feeder, and outdoor furniture.

"We all live in very stressful situations with traffic and working and all the recreation that we try to do," said Irvine. "The garden allows us to come and enjoy and relax and see things grow, and it's very extremely rewarding."

Sickles agreed, adding that he believes "gardening and working together outside is very nurturing, it's great stuff to do with your kids, it's good exercise and it teaches about science and nutrition, all kinds of things."

"It's not like everyone's going to go back to being a farmer again, but at least you can have appreciation of it."

"That experience of farm to table happens when you pick your own tomatoes, pick your own lettuce, pick your own string beans, and are able to bring them in and eat."

The VNA Stately Homes By-the-Sea Designer Show House at Holly Hill is open Tuesday through Sunday until June 12.

You can learn more about the property, which is for sale, and find out about other designers showcased there on the Stately Homes By-the-Sea website.

Sickles Market ~ Customer's Landscape Makeover ~ Step 4

Food from the Streets

Leon, Nicaragua

Eating street food while traveling in foreign locales can be considered a crapshoot, so to speak. When you buy something from a vendor on the side of the road, you don’t know whether you’ll be getting a deliciously prepared meal or snack for ridiculously cheap or something that will keep you confined to your hotel room in embarrassing discomfort for a day or two or, worse yet, create more serious health complications.

Rice and Beans
Little Corn Island, Nicaragua

I say that it’s worth the risk. More than that, I say that you’re not taking much of a chance at all. To date, I have never gotten sick from eating street food; the only times I have experienced food poisoning while traveling was from restaurants (twice in Australia). This actually makes sense: there tends to be a high turnover of food from a food cart, which means that there is less of a chance that the food will be sitting around and thereby endangering your health. This isn’t to say, however, that there is no risk; I do know fellow travelers who have become ill eating street food, usually something prepared with meat. If you are going to nosh from the street, make sure the food cart is popular (this indicates that there is a high turnover and that it has a solid track record) and be extra careful with meat, which tends to be the most common culprit in food-borne illness.

Cuenca, Ecuador

Street food is more rewarding than risky. For much less money than what you’d spend at a sit-down restaurant, even an informal one, you can feast or snack on fresh food cooked to order right in front of you, in no time at all. If you’re in Latin America or Southeast Asia, regions of the world renown for their street food, you don’t even need to track it down, unless you’ve heard of a particular vendor whom you want to visit. Whatever road you’re on, in whatever city, town, or village you may be in, there most likely will be someone serving up something delicious from an ingeniously rigged cart. If you are feeling peckish, hungry, or curious, stop at a vendor that has caught your eye, check out what he or she is cooking, order what you want (just point if there is a language barrier), pay, wait a few minutes, if that, eat--either standing up or at makeshift plastic tables if available--and then be on your way, satisfied. Now that’s real fast food!

Leon, Nicaragua

More than just being cheap, fast, and delicious, street food also gives insight into local food and customs, much more so than restaurants. Folks in countries where there is a lively tradition of eating food on the go usually don’t eat in restaurants. By eating food from a vendor, you are joining what everyone else is doing. Since vendors are preparing dishes that came out of their homes, both literally and figuratively, you are tasting something truly of the place. As Francis Lam wrote in Gourmet, about the new Los Angeles restaurant, Street, that is devoted to street food, “No wonder, then, that people take their street food so personally. It’s iconic; it’s their culture.” An added bonus is that you get to meet the people who are making your food, as well as the locals consuming it. 

Montanita, Ecuador

In Latin America, where I recently spent three months, street food isn’t limited to just food—you can also buy drinks—and it’s not just limited to the street—you can also buy it on the beach.  Can you imagine lying on the beach in Sea Bright or Sandy Hook and having enterprising vendors selling you a treat or a drink (even a cocktail!), that is certainly more tasty and healthful than the usual beach fare of hotdogs, hamburgers, fries, and soda? And you wouldn’t even need to get up off your beach chair to track the vendor down; he or she will come to you. What service! What a delight!

Brazilian cocktail
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

I am certainly happy to be back home (I’ll be even happier when the weather heats up), but I miss street food. It is on the rise in New York City, where there’s a welcome increase of independently run trucks and carts, but it’s not the same as in Latin America or Southeast Asia, where you can’t escape it. It’s everywhere, 24/7, and it’s fantastic and cheap and tastes both of home and the exotic.

Eat from the street!

Diana Pittet the Cheesemonger

Shakespeare’s Herb Garden

By Patricia Dumas

May 2011

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray you, love,

remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

-William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5)

To plant an herb garden is to plant a piece of poetry. The scents and taste alone can bring one to ruminate on many things- life, love, and the pleasures of the garden.

William Shakespeare was a man of many loves—and the plants of the Renaissance herb garden inspired him to pen many words in honor of them. A flower wasn’t just a plant, it was a view into the soul. The herb was more than a drop of spice into a pot of stewed venison- it was a peek into human nature.
If you plant an herb garden a’la Shakespeare, there are a few little touches you might want to include.

During Elizabethan times, the classic “Knot Garden” was made symmetrically from 4 different designs that blended in with one another in a knot-like design. Evergreen herbs, boxwood and dense-growing groundcovers were used to create the manicured and precision-cut design.

In modern times, a little Shakespearean herb garden need not be as lavishly prepared. A few choice herbs and small shrubs can be planted and trimmed to create a circle, square, or triangle. Herbs that are good to use are ones that are dense and evergreen like Rosemary, Lavender, Teucrium, Boxwood, and silvery Santolina. These plants have the ability to be shaped and cut closely to keep the design tight and shapely. We may not have serfs anymore to cut our lawns and mazes with sickles and ancient scythes, but, we have the availability of a tremendous selection of common and uncommon herbs from places like Gilbertie's Herb Farm to recreate a sense of history in our gardens.

Putting together a little Shakespearean herb garden is not Love’s Labour Lost. You’ll have a memorable quote in your head for the herbs you love, and the kids may learn a few things when you put a little placard with a quote for each herb. Here’s a few herbs and quotes that may help you start a little romantic herb garden in honor of the greatest bard and poet who ever lived:

Parsley- Used in Renaissance times to make tinctures for poisons and potions for the cure of parasites, Parsley was thought to be associated with the devil. It was believed that a parsley seed had to go to hell and back before it would sprout. “I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit.” – The Taming of the Shrew.

Thyme- Thought to protect people from witchcraft and poisons, Thyme was crushed, baked and smoked by the medieval and renaissance population- giving rise, no doubt, to the thought that they could see fairies when imbibing. “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mint- Collected in the wild by the folks of Shakespeare’s time, mint was, (as it is now) a soothing flavorful herb for stomach upsets. If you wanted to be protected against the “evil eye” and not get drunk while you’re at it, mint was the herb of choice.

Here's flowers for you; Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram; The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun, And with him rises weeping-- The Winters Tale
Fennel- A beautiful airy herb that is rooted in the past, it is as important today as it was centuries ago. Today, we plant it for its succulent, licorice- flavored bulb, and food for the Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. In Shakespeare’s world, it was considered a cure for insanity and the most effective cure for eye diseases. “There’s fennel for you and columbines.” Hamlet

Hyssop- Rich in history and allure, hyssop’s intense licorice flavor and aroma was thought to cure lung disease and prevent infection when used as a poultice. It’s a strong and powerful herb, and often known as “the holy herb” for its use in cleaning sacred places of worship. Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop, and weed up Thyme.. – Othello

Today, when we buy herbs, we are usually not making poultice, charms, and potions. We buy them for scent, cooking and just the joy of having them grow in our little gardens. Large herb farms like Gilbertie's www.gilbertiesherbs.com/ in Westport, CT carry over 400 herbs for our gardening pleasure. They have meticulously researched descriptions on the markers that touch on a herb history, use, and cultivation. We don’t have to forage the fields and meadows anymore for our herbs. They are as sweet and powerful now as they were almost 500 years ago when the poet of Stratford-Upon-Avon took to walking in his garden.

There are over 130 references to flowers, herbs and other flora in Shakespeare’s poems, sonnets and plays. The natural world – often misunderstood and misinterpreted- was a large, unknown presence in William Shakespeare’s time. Trying to understand it was part of a poets job.. Thank goodness he wrote. We wouldn’t have his words that often define our thoughts nor the presence of history that is always rooted in our gardens if he didn’t.
****
Dragon Soup

14 hot onions (or 6 shallots and 2 cloves of garlic)
1 pinch salt
1 handful dill
1 handful parsley
1 pinch black pepper
1 skin goat's milk
much clean water
dragon meat (ingredients listed do up to 10 pounds)

In a cauldron, bring water to a boil Chop the onions (and garlic, if used) finely. Stir this in , adding salt, dill, and pepper to the pot.

Remove any scaly, inedible outer hide from the dragon meat. Cut the meat into manageable portions, and drop it into the pot--which must be at a roiling boil. Let boil while an inch is burned down on a thumb-thick candle. Then, stop feeding the fire. As the pot cools, stir in the goat's milk and the parsley. Let stand until the fat and oil present in all dragon meat comes to the surface. Skim this off, and then reheat the mixture for dining. Uncooked dragon meat keeps six sunrises. Cooked meat keeps for twice that.

Courtesy of www.moonmuses.com

Disclaimer: No real Dragons were hurt in the conception and idealization of this recipe.