BellyGlad has relocated to Tunisia!

It's true: Thanks to a grant from the U.S. government, I'm spending a year teaching college students in the coastal city of Sousse, Tunisia. If you're interested in reading about my experiences there, please send an email to bellyglad@gmail.com.

Curious about Tunisian cuisine? Check out Eating our way across Tunisia from May, 2010.

Before & After: Plums from the Central Square farmers' market

I found these multi-colored plums and thought they looked perfect for a casual galette I was making to take to a friend's barbecue. I used the Frog Commissary crust and prepped it with a mixture of semolina and sugar, as recommended here. The only problem was that I didn't use quite as much sugar with the plums as was recommended (I used only 1 Tablespoon; the recipe called for 3), and the result was a bit more tart than I would have liked. Still, such lovely colors!

Summer Veggie Blessings

So much has been happening in my life lately (see here) that I've found it difficult to keep up with blogging--though that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking. In fact, nothing calms me down and clears my head like standing in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. So whenever I'm not planning and packing and sorting out financial details and studying Arabic, I'm making things for dinner on the porch or picnics by the river or family get-togethers. And because it's been hot out, I've been favoring lighter fare--especially summer salads and side dishes and main courses made with fresh produce I've collected at the farmers' market. Herewith, a few of my favorite summer recipes and some photos, to boot!

Corn Salad with Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette

• 6 ears of corn, shucked
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

Place ears of corn on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast at 450 degrees for about 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool before slicing the kernels from each cob with a knife. Prepare dressing by combining remaining ingredients, then tossing with corn.



Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cilantro-Lime-Vinaigrette-103849#ixzz1SCTinr6O

Roasted Carrots with Dill
8-10 large carrots (I prefer to use the smaller ones I find at the farmers' market, and slice them lengthwise into halves or quarters)

• Olive oil
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into small pieces (optional)
• Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

• In a roasting pan, toss carrots with enough olive oil to coat. Top with butter, kosher salt, and pepper. Roast in a 425° oven to desired tenderness, then turn the broiler to high and cook carrots until lightly browned. Sprinkle fresh dill over carrots.

Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2011/06/roasted-carrots-with-dill#ixzz1SCUy91OG

Zucchini Pesto Pizza


For this one, I simply bought a whole wheat pizza dough at Whole Foods and pre-baked it for about 5 minutes on parchment paper. Then, I topped it with homemade pesto, sauteed zucchini slices, onions, and goat cheese crumbles and baked at 450 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Enterprise Mobile Market Hits the Road

If you attended last year’s Boston Local Food Festival, you probably noticed--amidst the food
vendors and farm stands--a big white bus, outfitted with an awning to provide shade to boxes of
heirloom tomatoes, beets, heads of lettuce, and other produce.

This is the “mobile market,” debuted by Dave Jackson of Enterprise Farm at the first BLFF in
2010. The inspiration for a farmers’ market on wheels came from similar ventures across the
country. At Enterprise (located in Whately, Massachusetts, about two hours west of Boston), the
project began with the purchase of a ‘95 Chevy Bluebird once used by a military traveling band.

“We bought the bus a year ago and converted it over the summer,” said Shelly Beck, project
manager at the farm. She described ripping out the seats and adding produce bins, along with a
refrigerator, stairs out the back, and an awning attached to the side of the bus.

The goal of the bus project is to bring Certified Organic produce grown on Enterprise Farm’s
80 acres to urban areas without access to fresh farm food. Because the fruits and vegetables
are direct from the grower, Beck said, “Prices can be kept low--comparable to wholesale.” The
mobile market also carries a SNAP machine so that it can accept food stamps.

It’s a program that fits well with Jackson’s mission to “change our food distribution system
so that people of all walks of life can eat fresh, local, and healthy.” Recently, he and Beck
partnered with an organization called Shape Up Somerville to bring the mobile market to the
Mystic Avenue Housing Development, an area along Route 93 that qualifies as a “food desert”
because of its lack of access to healthy, affordable food. “It’s the kind of place where you have
to take a cab to get to a grocery store,” Beck said. Starting in June, the mobile market will bring
fresh produce to the neighborhood on Saturdays.

The bus will also make regular stops at housing communities and senior centers in
Northampton and Greenfield, and soon perhaps at a school in Holyoke where Beck envisions
parents’ picking up their kids and stopping to buy some fresh produce on their way home for
dinner. These sites will be testing grounds for the future of the mobile market, Beck said: “We
need to find out what the demand is, what people want, and what the food culture is in these
areas.”

Membership support from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at Enterprise
Farm allows Jackson and Beck to pursue projects like the mobile farmers’ market and to
subsidize some of the cost of the fruits and vegetables sold on the bus. “The best way to
support what we’re doing,” Beck said, “is to join the CSA.”

She hopes to bring the mobile market back to this year’s BLFF so that festival-goers can stop by and learn more about Enterprise’s innovative efforts to make fresh, delicious food more accessible.

Photos courtesy of Shelly Beck.

Eating in the south of France: Highlights from the markets & cafes

For me, one of the most exciting parts of traveling is checking out the local food scene. We did just that on a recent trip to the south of France, with stops at markets and outdoor cafes in every city and town along the Cote d'Azur and the Rhone River that we visited.

Candied fruits at the Saleya street market in Nice.

Oversize artichokes and "coeur de boeuf" (beefsteak) tomatoes--which, incidentally, David Lebovitz says are a sham.

Luscious zucchini flowers still attached to the veg.

White asparagus, inexplicably beloved by Europeans, still at Saleya.

A pain au chocolat and cafe au lait at a charming bakery and cafe near Saleya that was decorated with pink tulips in the windows.

Local honey, so pretty in the sunlight, at the huge street market in Arles, once home to Vincent van Gogh and (briefly) Paul Gauguin.

Amazing little macarons in every color and flavor, including strawberry, lime, pistachio, vanilla, coffee, mint, etc.

Piles of spices, including a mixture made with rosebuds in the foreground.

A "living" wall known as the mur vegetal on the outside of the Les Halles building that houses the indoor food market in Avignon.

Delicate sea creatures harvested from the Mediterranean, for sale at Les Halles in Avignon.

A picnic lunch procured at a street market in the Croix-Rousse neighborhood of Lyon, and consumed in the Parc de la Tete d'Or. It included a spicy saucisson, green olive tapenade, creamy Saint-Marcellin cheese, a bottle of local Lyonnaise rose wine, and of course, a fresh baguette.

Two glasses of Montrachet wine, costing nearly $20 each and worth every penny, accompanied by olives and cheese, at an outdoor cafe in Beaune.

BSO Hosts Annual Food Drive April 14-May 7, 2011 at Symphony Hall

Each year (since 2009), the Boston Symphony Orchestra hosts a food drive to benefit the Greater Boston Food Bank, and this year, the drive has been extended from one week to four weeks, with donations of canned foods accepted at all performances and rehearsals April 14-May 7. Even if you don't have tickets for a show, you can still drop off canned goods (but please no baby food or formula) at Symphony Hall between 7pm and 8pm for evening concerts and between 12:30pm and 1:30pm for afternoon concerts. Or make a cash donation online at www.bso.org/fooddrive.

Photo of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, who made a huge contribution to this year's BSO Food Drive, by Stu Rosner.

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FOOD DRIVE PROGRAMS, APRIL 14-MAY 7, 2011

Thursday, April 14, 10:30 a.m. (Open Rehearsal)
Thursday, April 14, 8 p.m.
Friday, April 15, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 16, 8 p.m.
Stéphane Denève, conductor
Jonathan Biss, piano
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor
ROUSSEL Symphony No. 3
RAVEL La Valse
_________________________

Thursday, April 21, 8 p.m.
Friday, April 22, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 23, 8 p.m.
Maasaki Suzuki, conductor
Hana Blažíková, soprano
Ingeborg Danz, mezzo-soprano
Christoph Prégardien, tenor (Evangelist and arias)
Hanno Müller-Brachmann, bass-baritone (Jesus and
arias)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor
J.S. BACH St. John Passion (1749 version)
_________________________

Thursday, April 28, 8 p.m.
Friday, April 29, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 30, 8 p.m.
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor
Simon Trpčeski, piano
REGER Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart
LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2
RAVEL Boléro
_________________________

Wednesday, May 4, 7:30 p.m. (Open Rehearsal)
Thursday, May 5, 8 p.m.
Friday, May 6, 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 7, 8 p.m.
Charles Dutoit, conductor
Bernarda Fink, mezzo-soprano**
Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, tenor
Laurent Naouri, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor
BERLIOZ Roméo et Juliette

A chocolate truffle-making workshop in downtown Boston

I was lucky enough to be invited to a Taste of Chocolate workshop at Elephant & Castle last Saturday, and was pleased to find that the instructor was none other than Valerie Conyngham of Vianne Chocolat (about whom, incidentally, a friend of mine recently wrote a great profile in Edible Boston).

Valerie introduced us to cocoa beans (left) as well as cocoa butter (right), which is often sold by chocolate makers for use in cosmetic products. Some chocolate makers (Hershey's, for instance) replace some of the cocoa butter in their chocolate with vegetable oil, which gives the chocolate a waxy flavor (watch out for this in the list of ingredients when shopping for chocolate).

Valerie showed us an 11 lb. bar of chocolate that used to be the only way chocolate was sold--now it comes in handy chips and disks for chocolate makers.

She demonstrated the process for making chocolate ganache and flavoring it with Chai tea. When making a flavored ganache, you can infuse the heavy cream with a flavor (as she did with the tea) or add the flavor later (as you might do with raspberry jam, for instance). When I asked about the most challenging flavor to get into a ganache, she said that for her it was stout beer. 

Though we didn't have a chance to try it ourselves, Valerie spoke about tempering chocolate, a tricky process that requires raising and lowering the temperature of melted chocolate in order to give it that glossy appearance and satisfying snap of chocolate candy you find at a chocolatier. David Lebovitz offers some good information and instructions on tempering here.

Then each student in the workshop received a tray that contained three kinds of ganache--burnt caramel, raspberry, and milk chocolate--and could choose how to assemble the truffles and whether to coat them in tempered chocolate or roll in toppings like ground almonds, toasted coconut, or cocoa powder. The chocolate we used was Callebaut.

The final step in our process was packaging our candies--setting them on gold pads inside little candy boxes and tying them up with ribbon. I took home three boxes of truffles, quite enough for after-dinner treats and sharing with friends.