Mild onion flavor, sweet and a bit of heat.

Nice combo.

I can assure you the rats got to nibble on this one after I chucked it off the balcony.

This was a promising breakfast of a simple baked egg & rosemary. The egg tasted great, and the complete package looked great. However I HIGHLY recommend never using 100% semolina flour when you’re looking to achieve a nice, flaky, pastry consistency to hold your breakfast. The semolina flour produced a very grainy texture (obviously). If you’ve never used semolina flour before, the grain consistency is close corn meal.

I should have known better, but I had so much semolina flour I went with it.

I’m not one to ever brag but, I make a better omelette than your favorite restaurant. After years of eating mediocre breakfasts’, brunch’s and bigfoot sized omelette’s I had to put my foot down. It was time to take matters into my own hands. I’m not a fan of teflon pans but having one in your arsenal is almost essential for this cause.

The star this morning is the fresh Goat Rising cheese inside. Hailing from a super tiny family farm in Charlemont on the Mohawk trail, this goat cheese is honestly heavenly. It is so smooth, crisp and packed with great garlic flavor it is the perfect compliment to your favorite cracker OR even my new favorite omelette.

Prep before hand is easy, in a saute pan I fired up a bit of fresh picked kale, 1 pepper, garlic and snipped chives. Bring them to temp to soften them through just enough. Whisk two cracked eggs with a touch of milk. Pour into your pan and rotate to get the mixed egg to evenly distribute. When the edges start to crisp make a line down the middle with your kale mixture and liberally dollop your goat cheese. Use the pan to fold your omelette onto the plate. Garnish with fresh parsley, snipped chives bacon & slices of Asian pear.

A few of these were made for friends one morning in Western MA, one diner gasped “this is decadent,” while slowly eating this omelette…

Sometimes it pays to be late. The vendors at the Union Square Greenmarket were packing up just as I arrived. I saw these zucchini flowers being tucked away and knew I had to act fast. I lucked out, the vendor gave me her 12 remaining flowers for $2.00 which is a great bargain. These lovely flowers are usually the highest price starters on most respectable menus.

I used The Fat Red Baron’s (ahem, Batali) recipe for this. The Baron did suggest goat cheese ricotta which sounds delicious but, I opted for some fresh, local, farm house cow’s milk ricotta instead.

12 zucchini flowers
1 cup ricotta
1 egg
2 scallions (thinly sliced)
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
sea salt & black pepper to taste

Mix thoroughly & get ready to stuff. Each flower took about 1 tablespoon of filling.


A second set of hands is suggested in stuffing these flowers. A pastry piping bag would have also done the trick. Be sure to inspect inside each flower for renegade insects that may be attracted to the sweet pollen.

These baby’s were fried in OO on medium high heat and do need to be served immediately. A quick tomato salad was served along side, inspired by a dish had at Il Panino, created by the lovely & talented Marissa Iocco.

3 field tomatoes, rough dice
1 cucumber, half moons
1 tablespoon of capers
handful of fresh basil, cut chiffonade
juice of half a lemon
splash of unfiltered good GREEN olive oil
sea salt & black pepper to taste

Let the juices mingle at room temp in a nice bowl. After a few minutes you’ll have some really intensely flavored red juice which I saved to drizzle over the hot zucchini flowers. I grilled the rosemary focaccia which was a most excellent choice to sop up the salad juice.

The stuffed zucchini flowers came out wonderfully. The flowers had nice caramelization with the cheese oozing out, making them really out of this world. We were popping these in our mouth like candy.

An excellent meal served on the balcony with some bubbly Chistalino, a Prosecco style rose wine.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, finally week 11 brings tomatoes. We received a nice pint of plump cherry tomatoes. The Salted Cod was popping these babies like candy on the way home from the drop.

Week 11 also brings us a great harvest salad. Maybe we were a bit overexcited this week; it feels like most of the produce went into this salad. (We aren’t complaining)

We made mustard vinaigrette with a good grainy French Dijon. The vinaigrette dressed our arugula greens as seen in the middle. On top we have some quick pickled onions which were a nice zesty addition to this. Notice our new sea salt on the cherry tomatoes! Green peppers, purple basil and fresh mozzarella are also coming to this party.

This is a caprese omelette! Fresh mozzarella, tomato and purple basil fill this big guy.

Let me state right now that week 9 makes us feel good inside. The Salted Cod had a half work day on week 9’s pickup date so we took our bike down to central square to make the pickup. Little did we know that it would be this large.

Corn, this was some great corn, very sweet with small kernels. We almost ate a weeks worth of corn in one sitting. Steamed for a 5 minutes lots of good butter, sea salt and black pepper.Made a quick lunch of sauteed squash, spring onions and rice for lunch.

We’ve also attempted to make kimchi with our napa cabbage. Unfortunately we had a bad recipe and it’s not looking too good.

A great Sunday breakfast with our potatoes and onions.

Finally we made a nice fresh sauce with our squash, onions, mizuna and corn. We even threw a corn cob in the sauce for extra flavor! Very nice!