Daube Niçoise

Check this out....

We truly waste nothing!

We just cooked a Niçoise style Daube (an obscure french word for braised beef) with Bistro cuts of beef. Take some local vegetables, like carrots, celery, onions, San Marzano tomatoes from our garden, some good white wine and mixed olives to make it truly Niçoise, give it some love, some "savoir faire" and after a few hours, voilà !!! You got yourself a mean Daube!!!

We are going to serve it with fresh, homemade Pappardelle pasta (wide, wide ribbon pasta), biodynamically grown heirloom fingerling potatoes from Ranui Gardens and top it with a Persillade of Chanterelle mushrooms.

Does that sound amazing or what?

The hunt for red....uhhhh.... tomato!

The weather has been cold and blustery for the past couple of days and of course, our garden did not like it one bit.... The last of my basil died days ago and we harvested beautiful bouquets of Greek oregano as well as oodles of Thai chilies. Eric has been obsessively nurturing our plants , however, watching the thermometer and weather forecast in an almost religious fashion, covering the last of our plants with huge tarps every day at dusk in order to protect them from the deathly bite of the cold.

Late last night, after he finally wrapped up his umpteenth project of the day, Eric decided that he was going to come over to my garden in order to rescue the very last of our tomatoes.... It was almost freezing (35ºF) and a dark, moonless night. Since he came directly from the restaurant, he did not have a flashlight and had to settle for his Iphone in order to light up and see what he was picking (I am smiling just picturing the scene)....

After harvesting about 25 pounds of still beautiful heirloom tomatoes, he found a milk crate on my back porch, loaded it up in the front basket of his bicycle and off he went, weighted down and pedaling with great difficulty... I'm still not sure how he managed to arrive home unscathed...

Talk about passion.....

A rather impressive late October bounty