It’s a cruel trick of the brain that the things we can’t easily reach become so much dearer to us by that quality alone. Consider one of the recent additions to the list of my favorite foods ever: pissaladière, Provençal pizza. It has all the makings of a Neven Pleaser: rich, salty, satisfying. Yet I can’t think of a single restaurant in Portland that serves in (on a regular basis, anyway).

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to make pissaladière at home. Before we look at the ingredients, a brief disclaimer: like pizza, this is a dish of many styles and variations. This recipe is a combination of several kinds I’ve read about, ordered, and attempted myself. Feel free to improvise. I’m including a bonus sauce at the end; it’s optional but delicious, and good to know as a secret weapon for other dishes.

The below recipe, combined with a nice salad, will feed two. If you plan on using both puff pastry sheets from the package, double everything and bake in sequence.

• 1 sheet puff pastry, frozen
• 8-12 anchovy fillets; half chopped, half whole
• 10-15 niçoise (“nee-swaz”) olives or Kalamatas, pitted and quartered
• 1 large onion, sliced chunky
• fresh thyme
• fresh parsley, chopped
• good olive oil
• salt, sugar, black pepper

Ingredient notes: the best possible anchovies are Ortiz brand; Scalia will also work. Check your local Italian deli - the grocery store is unlikely to carry anything you’d want to eat.

Preheat the oven to 500º F. Next, grab the puff pastry sheet; they usually come in pairs, so remove one from the package and place it on a tray on the counter for 30 to 60 minutes, until it unfolds easily.

Meanwhile, let’s caramelize the onions - heat a bit of oil in a shallow nonstick skillet on medium-high. When it’s shimmering, add the onion and half a teaspoon each of salt and sugar. Stir lightly immediately to distribute the sugar. Cook 15-25 minutes until the onion is soft, with some brown spots, but not fully browned. If any slices were so small that they’re now burnt black, remove them. When done, remove from heat and add half a tablespoon of water to the skillet to keep the onions shiny and moving. Set aside.

Time to assemble: place a large sheet of parchment paper (NOT wax paper) on a pizza peel or a cookie sheet. Unfold the puff pastry sheet onto it and roll it out with a rolling pin lightly; we want to prevent the whole thing from puffing up madly, but don’t “crush” it.

Brush the whole thing with olive oil; if your anchovies came in a nice oil themselves, add some of that. Next, top with the olives, then the chopped anchovies, leaving a 1/2” border around the toppings. Add a sprinkle of fresh thyme and grind on some black pepper. Grab onions from the skillet using tongs and top the pissaladière. Finish it off with the whole anchovy fillets arranged in a pretty criss-cross pattern.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the edges of the puff pastry and the underside are golden brown. The edges may puff up quite a bit, but they’ll deflate once out of the oven. Let it cool for 5 minutes, then cut into a 2 × 3 grid. Top with the parsley and the sauce. What sauce? This sauce:

Bonus recipe: herbed mayonnaise

I learned this as sauce ravigote, which is probably not quite right, though the definition of the sauce appears to be controversial. Let’s just call it a sort of herbed mayo.

• 1 tbsp mayo; if possible, Kewpie brand
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp canola, grapeseed, or other mild oil
  
• 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tbsp combined fresh herbs: parsley, chervil, tarragon, thyme; minced as finely as possible

Combine the egg, mayo, and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking vigorously, making sure it gets integrated and the sauce stays together without separating. Stir in the juice and the herbs. Add salt if needed.

Grab dollops of the sauce with a fork and drizzle it over the pissaladière; if you have any left over, it’ll keep in the fridge for a week. Use it on literally anything savory.

Serve everything with a crisp white wine or lemonade for the youngsters.

There’s still some summer left, right? It’s not too late to pick up some peak-o’-the-season tomatoes, is it? There’s no time to waste! Let’s make some tomato-butter sauce using fresh tomatoes this time. Then we can freeze it and enjoy it on January pasta or pizza.

As a reminder, check out our original posting of this recipe. That one used canned San Marzano tomatoes. They’re totally fine, but you can’t beat fresh. I will point out again, however, that out-of-season tomatoes are hardly worth bothering with at all. Fresh in the summer, canned the other nine months of the year, I say.

You can make this with any small and red variety of tomatoes available in your area. Early girls, Romas, San Marzano (or other plum tomatoes), Campari, even cherry tomatoes if you’re willing to clean a whole lot. Anything but beefsteak or heirloom will work; use those for sandwiches and salads. Buy as much as you can fit into your nicest pot. A good, enameled Dutch oven will never let you down.

Wash your tomatoes and remove the stems. Scoop out the stem root with a small utility knife (I like the Global); our goal is to use only the fleshy, red parts of the fruit. Next, we’ll peel and seed.

Fill a big bowl with ice and cold water; place it in the sink. In the largest pot you have, boil enough water to cover all the tomatoes. Drop them in carefully and boil for thirty seconds, then drain and move them to the ice bath. This is blanching, and the second part of the process is called shocking. It will make the tomatoes slip out of their skins as easy as, well, make your own analogy. Make sure your sink is clear and you have lots of counter space to set up a production line: you’ll be removing tomatoes from the ice bowl, peeling their skins into your trash bag or garbage disposal, seeding them over a colander placed over another huge bowl, then crushing them into your final cooking pot. This will let you end up with nothing but tomato flesh and gathered juices from the seeding process, both of which make up the sauce.

Seeding is a messy bit of fun. Halve the tomato with your thumbs, then scoop out the seeds and jelly. Seeds contribute nothing but bitterness; flesh is where it’s at. Crush the clean tomato halves into the Dutch oven, getting them down to no bigger than about an inch. Trust me, it’s faster and cleaner than attempting to chop them.

This process might take a while, but it’s not particularly tiring or demanding. Keep paper towels at hand since you’ll be up to your ears in tomatoes, and if your hands itch, that’s tomato juice doing its thing. Wash your hands and continue. 

Eventually you’ll arrive at a pot full of crushed tomatoes and a bowl of tomato juice. I wish they sold this juice in bottles, by the way; not pureed tomatoes mixed with water, but the actual juice inside tomatoes. It’s a foggy, pink liquid with a crisp flavor all its own. You’ve been saving it as you seeded so you could add it to the pot, so do that.

Ingredient number two: butter. I recommend buying it the same place you get the tomatoes - your local farmers’ market. How much butter you use is kind of up to you. I go with 1/3 - 1/2 of a stick per tomato, depending on its size. The sauce should be pinkish/orangish, but not so oily that you get pools of butter at the top. 

Ingredient the third: one large yellow onion, peeled and cut in half. Place this cut-side-down in the sauce. It’ll contribute sugar, but you won’t keep it in the sauce. When cooking’s done, toss it or eat it as it is. It’ll be sweet and salty and pretty nice, in fact. How about quickly browning it under the broiler and serving it on bread?

That’s all. Start the sauce over medium heat until small bubbles appear on the surface, then go down to low heat and stay there for the next hour or two. You might need to increase and decrease the heat as you go. There should be some movement at the top, but nothing so vigorous that the sauce makes a gurgling sound.

Stir with a wooden spoon every now, and as you do so, break up any large chunks of tomato. This will become easier as fibers break down and the sauce comes together. How long that will take is contingent on many factors: how much you’re making, how juicy your tomatoes were, how well you cleaned them. This can be anything from a very fresh, bright sauce to a fully reduced, roasty-rich flavor bomb. You’ll definitely want to cook off all the water and make the solids and the liquids integrate, but beyond that, it’s your call. If you like a really smooth sauce, take an immersion blender to it right in the pot.

As for salt: add a little bit here and there as you stir. Don’t go overboard right away since the sauce will reduce with time and end up saltier than it starts. 

If you’ve made enough to freeze, let it cool down, then portion it into good zip-close bags. Cooks Illustrated recommends thick, freezer-grade, double-groove bags. Those that slide to close are convenient, but they leak.

Eat it in its jammy, true-to-the-tomato form or add herbs, cheese, or whatever you like on your pasta. Just get those tomatoes quickly, while they’re still delicious. This weekend! Go!

The heat reached 96 degrees in Portland yesterday. I wasn’t built for this sort of thing, I tell you. I knew I’d have to prepare something cold for lunch, but I also had a bit of a salty tooth, as I usually do. Cold food usually covers the creamy and sweet parts of the flavor spectrum; what about salty, spicy, and pungent?

Presenting: cold sesame noodles with fried anchovies.

We will need the following ingredients, which are discussed in more detail after the list:

• Soba noodles
• Toasted sesame oil
• Sesame seeds
• Soy sauce
• Rice vinegar
• Fish sauce
• Dried anchovies

You’ll notice I’m skipping measurements; they make no more sense here than in, say, salad dressing. Start with what looks right, don’t add too much of anything, and since there’s no cooking involved in the sauce, you can always correct as you mix. The liquids in my list are probably sorted from highest to lowest amount, but please, follow your own stomach.

If you don’t stock any of these items, it’s time to make a trip to your local Asian market. These are all rewarding ingredients with a long shelf life. Speaking of which: store your sesame oil in the fridge. Precious oils (like hazelnut oil or truffle oil) will lose their punch quickly if left in the pantry.

You can buy toasted sesame seeds, but toasting your own isn’t rocket surgery: nonstick pan over medium heat for a minute or two until they’re fragrant and hazelnut-colored (but not dark brown.)

The rice vinegar and the fish sauce are optional, but you’ll be breaking my heart if you skip them.

As for those anchovies… Fine, they’re not totally crucial, and most places won’t top their noodles with them. Most places don’t serve the best cold sesame noodles ever. If you’re vegetarian, I get it. If you eat fish otherwise, it’s time to acquaint yourself with one of the world’s greatest under-appreciated flavors. 

In this case, we’ll be using Thai dried anchovies. Your Asian market will definitely have them; look for bags near all the other dried foods. There are myriad brands; here’s how to spot the good ones: the fish should be about 3” in length, whole, and shiny. Avoid broken fish and anything with “dust”, either at the bottom of the bag or on the fishies themselves. Think of it as cereal - you want solid pieces.

Start cooking by frying the anchovies, brave soul: in a small pan, heat canola or peanut oil over medium-high heat; drop in the fish, then spoon them out onto a paper-towel-lined plate in a minute or so. They should look darker and crisper, but not burned. 

While that’s going, boil your noodle water and cook the soba for about 4 minutes, or whatever the package instructs you to do. Then do the thing you never want to do with hot pasta: rinse the noodles with very cold water, moving them so they don’t stick. Immediately toss them in a large bowl (no, seriously, a very large bowl) with all the liquid ingredients. As you do that, throw in the toasted sesame seeds. Season with furikake or shichimi togarashi, garnish with green onions and the anchovies.

This recipe has meandered a bit, so to recap: toast the sesame, mix the wet ingredients in a bowl, fry the fish, boil the noodles. Enjoy on the porch or in front of a fan. Happy summer!

We’re right in the middle of fava bean season here in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s a recipe to enjoy for the next few weeks and hopefully greet these guys with next year.

When shopping for fava beans, look for decent-sized pods with thick, solid peas. While you can sometimes buy shelled favas, it’s probably not worth the extra cost; I find shelling easy and fun anyway.

But I’m getting head of myself. Here’s what we’ll be making: fava bean soup with morel mushrooms and carrot cream.

For the soup, we will need:

• 1 cup shelled fava beans, skin removed
• 1 medium gold potato, cubed
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
• 1 small stalk celery, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup morel mushrooms, sliced, divided in half
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup stock, chicken or veggie
• 1/4 cup heavy cream

And for the cream:

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp sour cream
• 1 medium carrot, shredded or grated
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt

It’s hard to estimate how much favas you’ll need in pods to yield 1 cup shelled beans - maybe 1 to 2 lb? Buy more and I’m sure you’ll have no problem using up the leftovers. If you can’t find morel mushrooms, substitute whatever ones you can find.

We’ll start by preparing the beans. Shell them by breaking the pod and removing the white-coated beans. This should be fun, especially since the inside of fava pods feels like a fuzzy Muppet. Do it over a bag and it won’t take a minute.

You’re still not looking at the beans, though. The white wax coating is edible but not tasty; you’ll want to remove it. Do this by boiling the beans for 3 minutes, until they’re a bit softer. Run them under cold water in a strainer so they’re cool enough to handle. They’ll also shrivel a little, making it easier to pierce the coating with your fingernails (or a knife) and extract the wonderfully green beans inside. This might take a few minutes - employ a child or a loved one while you dice up the rest.

Let’s get cooking: melt 3 tbsp of butter over medium-high heat in a medium-sized pot. Add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add the potato. Stir for another 3 minutes, then add the beans and half the mushrooms.

The water should be evaporating pretty quickly now so hit the pot with the wine and stir to make sure nothing’s sticking to the bottom. When most of the wine cooks off, add the stock, stir, cover, and drop the heat to low. Keep it there for 20-30 minutes, adjusting the heat as needed. The soup should bubble lively but not violently. Turn off the heat when the potatoes are soft. 

While the soup is cooking, combine all the cream ingredients except sour cream and refrigerate. When the soup is done and cooling off, strain the cream mix into a large bowl, pressing to extract as much carrot juice as you can. Add the sour cream and whip this into a stiff cream; an immersion blender with a whisk attachment works great - I like the Braun model.

It’s double handy because you’ll also need it in the next step: pureeing the soup. Immersion blenders are awesome because they let you liquify your soup right in the pot, piping hot. If you only have a regular blender, do NOT attempt to blend hot soup; wait until it cools off. Either way, puree the soup well and strain it. Straining is not strictly necessary, but it makes a difference between a diner soup and a wedding-anniversary-restaurant soup. Add the 1/4 cup of cream, season with salt and pepper, and stir one last time.

In a small pan, quickly fry the remaining mushroom slices in olive oil. When they’re done, add more oil and fry some baguette slices.

Serve by topping the soup with a dollop of carrot cream, a few fried mushroom slices, maybe some chopped chives and a drop or two of truffle oil.

Jim has already written a fine post on traditional, all-American burgers; I won’t mess with his wisdom on his homeland’s favorite summer lunch. Instead, I will tell you about mine.

I grew up on the border of Croatia and Bosnia, in a region whose culinary weapons are onion, pork fat, and paprika. If you can fry one in the other and dust it with the third, you’re golden. It’s beautiful country in the summer - Oregon reminds me of it, in that you get three months of fantastic weather and spend the other nine waiting for three more. And in those tanning days, you better invite friends over on the weekend and serve them one of these.

It’s basically a spicy patty topped with sour cream, served on a softened roll and accompanied with raw green onions. Are you still reading? Good - let’s break it down!

• 1/8 lb ground pork and 1/8 lb ground beef (or, in my case, 1/4 lb ground turkey)
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• Paprika and cayenne pepper
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 ciabatta roll, sliced in half
• 1/4 cup stock (chicken, vegetable, turkey, what have you)
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 4-5 thin slices of onion, white or yellow
• 2-3 green onions, fresh and crisp

In a plastic bowl - larger than you think, as is always the case with bowls - mix the meat with the garlic, and season with the hot stuff as you see fit. This should be fairly spicy in that dry, peppery way - don’t introduce any acid by the way of hot sauce. You’ll be cutting the heat with the cream, so live a little.

Press the patty into shape on a large piece of plastic wrap. Go thinner than you would with a typical burger - I don’t recommend you go rare here. We’re shooting for more of a meatball-type muscle to the patty. That said, make sure it all stays together.

Heat your grill, griddle, or frying pan, and get everything oiled enough to minimize sticking - follow Jim’s instructions in the above-linked burger post. If you’re cooking on a solid surface (not a grill grate) and you’d like to try the unorthodox Shake Shack method, press the patty down and let it caramelize on one side before scraping it off with a sharp metal spatula and giving the other side the same treatment. This will result in a “smashed” texture and a burger that’s crispy on the outside. 

Meanwhile, grab a strip of aluminum foil. You’ll build a makeshift rack by twisting the foil into a rope and then coiling it into a ring. Place this in a small saucepot and add enough stock to cover the bottom, but no more than half the height of the rack.

Heat the stock over medium heat; don’t boil it, just get it steaming a bit.Place one half of the ciabatta roll, cut side down, on the rack, so it gets steamed by doesn’t sit in the stock. Place the other half of the roll on it, cut side up. Cover the pot so you get a nice steam room going. This will turn the dry ciabatta into a spongy bun - it’s not a texture you get in regular burger buns.

After about a minute of steaming, remove the roll and the rack from the stock. Dip the cut side of each slice of the bread into the stock, brush it with oil, and place it on the grill. This will add lots of flavor and also remove much of the water from the outside of it. Again, it’s a texture all its own.

Time to assemble: when the burger is done - medium-well, I recommend - place it on the bun and top it with the sour cream. Spread the cream on the patty with the back of a spoon; you should see it melt a little. Top with onion slices. Add more cayenne if that’s your thing.

On the side, you’d serve freshly washed green onions with a little mound of salt. Dip the onion in the salt - just a little! - and crunch away. Weird? Yeah, but - it’s crispy, hot, and salty! Sort of like potato chips, right?

We never called this a “burger” when I was a kid. I’m not sure you’d call it one either. But the great thing about food is, your taste buds shouldn’t care who calls it what - I just hope they like it!

Sometimes even a sandwich can get pretty complicated. And sometimes a “complicated” recipe won’t have you searching for scores of obscure ingredients or washing countless bowls. Sometimes it’s just that a “sandwich” typically means a fresh stack of things between slices of bread, and the atypical is a bit more involved, but surprisingly tasty.

This is an overnight sandwich. Make it if you find yourself with the right ingredients and a spare minute at 10 PM one night.

You will need:

• A “medium-soft” baguette
• Smoked turkey, sliced
• Brie cheese, sliced
• Cucumber
• Salt, flakes if possible
• Crème fraiche (optional)

Let’s break down the ingredients. I’ll cover the turkey last.

By “medium-soft” baguette I mean, not super-fluffy and not super-rustic either. The bread should give when you squeeze, but it shouldn’t collapse. 

I prefer English cucumbers for raw preparations. Why? Well, they’re nearly seedless, and they’re unwaxed. Instead of wax, they’re wrapped in plastic. This is not entirely wasteful packaging - unless your cucumbers are grown very locally, they’ll lose moisture quickly if they’re not sealed in some way. 

Now, the turkey. The most convenient sandwich turkey is, well, sandwich turkey - those huge, pale, dry slices of baked breast that adorn every supermarket’s fridge across from the deli. I buy this stuff often - it’s not bad. But you know what’s better? Smoked turkey.

More precisely, whole, unsliced turkey drumstick and thigh. This is where things get downright prosciuttal (you know, like prosciutto.) Where breast meat is predictably inoffensive, thigh meat is fatty and juicy, with loads of texture and flavor. Slice it yourself, and use the remaining bone in soup or stock.

You should be able to find smoked turkey at a good butcher or deli; around here, Whole Foods carries the Diestel brand. I hate to be a tease about this, but I actually used home-cured turkey made by my dad. He cold-smokes it, a bit on the rare side (which I should point out is probably not cool with the FDA, but my stomach has never complained.) I’d love to share a recipe for this, but it involves a custom-built smoker, so, maybe some other time. Take it as a suggestion to befriend a knowledgeable butcher! 

Whatever turkey you end up with, this should make at least a very good sandwich. Follow these easy directions:

Slice the bread and salt one side just a bit. Top with cheese. Top with cucumber. Top with turkey. Close.

Simple, huh? So let’s add some complications and clarifications:

Depending on how salty your turkey is, you may or may not need to add salt. If you do add it, the reason it goes on the bread (!) is because otherwise, it would either touch the cucumber (which would then release water) or the already salty turkey.

The cucumber goes in the middle so it’s bookended by two soft layers, which will minimize sliding. Nobody likes a poorly structured sandwich.

If you went with pre-sliced turkey, or whatever else you got is on the dry side, top it with a bit of crème fraiche. If you don’t have crème fraiche (who does, on a normal day?) you’ll still be ok.

Now wrap the whole thing tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate it. I mean, you don’t have to do this, but if you’ve trusted me this far, trust me another eight hours: the flavors will blend beautifully, resulting in a sandwich that tastes prepared more than assembled. Before enjoying, let it sit out of the fridge for 10-20 minutes, then serve with slices of tart apple and a glass of light white wine. 

This is another recipe inspired by a Portland food cart - this time, Addy’s. They’re friendly, quick, and they take credit cards. Now, I mean no insult to Addy when I say that I prefer my version. It’s just that not everyone has a dad who’ll send them home from Florida with a backpack full of freshly cured and smoked poultry.