I don't think it's late blight

But some sort of fungus has infected my tomatoes, and after a week of non-growth, I had to pull two of my three plants. This article is freaking me out a little.

Also, made peach ice cream. Lessons learned:

Mark Bittman's French ice cream recipe, plus peaches is too big for my ice cream maker.

Fruit added at the end will stay intact, but fruit pulverized into the base makes for a pretty good ice cream.

The flavor is good, but the texture is grainy and icy. Whether this is just a limitation with home machines, or a function of over-aerating the custard while it cooked and adding brown sugar at the very end (both of which seemed like ok ideas at the time) I have no idea.

Corn Chowder

I took the notes on the soup chapter Friday, so this week is soup week. Corn is at the height of season right now, and a chowder in the summer is a challenge. Corn is a popular flavor base for chowder and as corn provides its own milk and the boiled cobs make a corny stock for a base. Chowders generally are based on seafood, thickened with cream and potatoes, and contain a salted pork product. To keep the soup light, I started with the corn stock, and eschewed the cream in favor of mexican homily for another corn flavor. I suspect that grits, polenta or cornmeal could have been used, but the texture would have been more rustic and less creamy. I used country ham pieces. I intended to go with bacon, but grabbed the wrong package at the market. It ended up working better when I diced bothe the fat and the lean separately. I left the lean raw and fried the fat cubes in a very hot pan, and garnished with both. Here's the method:

Take the kernels off the cob, and roast with butter and salt. Milk the cobs with the back of a knife into a stockpot. Put the cobs in the stockpot with carrot and celery, cover with cold water and bring to a simmer for 30 minutes. Reduce if necessary.

Chop country ham scraps and render. Sweat onion in the fat. Pour the corn stock over, add half the roasted corn and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the ham scraps and puree. Add the rest of the corn and bring to a simmer.
Taste and season.

Cut country ham fat and lean separately into a small dice. Heat a pan with a littlle olive oil till the oils just starts to smoke and fry the fat until brown and crispy. Use equal amounts fat and lean to garnish.

The chowder had a strong corn flavor with porky, salty undertones from the ham fat. I like my corn chowder a little sweeter, so I added some reduced cream I'd been simmering just in case. I'll see how it is tomorrow.

We need to talk

Since I've gotten back to Atlanta, I've heard some great news. More and more friends are gardening, expanding their gardens, or getting loads of produce from parents who have expanded theirs. This enthusiasm for frugality, freshness, and communing with one's food warms a chef's heart.

Yesterday a friend of mine passed on some of the bounty from his parents' garden: a big bag each of squash and okra, and a quart of cherry tomatoes. Having had no good tomatoes in England, I was so excited to get them out of the fridge this morning: Sungolds, little baby red pear tomatoes, all brought back memories of the first summer tomatoes last year at Woodfire. As I cut them for our salad, something seemed...wrong. My paring knife could have been sharper, I suppose, and I used to halve little tomatoes on a cutting board, but it wasn't about the routine, it was the tomatoes. I cursed. The tomatoes were cold.

As we're coming into tomato season, and as I love the tomato with all the tenderness one can lavish on a vegetable, I feel compelled to speak out. Tomatoes are delicate and complex. Their unique, multi-faceted flavor comes from an enzyme system that plays out under the skin as soon as they start to ripen. The interactions between the enzymes give tomatoes their widely variant flavors, their singularly pungent aroma, and that bright, almost sparkling quality on the tongue found only in tomatoes off the vine.

Depending on the enzymes involved, refrigeration either slows or halts the chemical reactions. The smell goes first, then that effervescence, and if the tomato is still cold when you eat it, the tomato itself will taste flat, almost like a supermarket or winter tomato.

When I was taught about the enzyme system, I was told that after refrigeration, nothing can be done. It turns out that's not completely true. Within a few hours, it starts going again, albeit slowly and incompletely. A few days, and it's almost back to normal. I do recall reading that there's one particular enzyme that never recovers, and that may be true.

What's the right thing to do? Store them in a single layer at room temperature: sheet pans are great for this. If you have more tomatoes than you think you know what to do with, here are some ideas:

Make a tomato salad, salsa, or sandwiches.

Roast tomatoes, along with any hard herbs you may have laying around, and freeze them in their oil. Use them later for sauces or to spoon over meat, fish, or other veg.

Can them

Make tomato sauce or paste, and freeze it. Works great for tomato soup too.

Halve them, and dry them on a silpat in a low oven. Keep in oil.

Make tomato jam

Pan con tomate. For breakfast with a cafe con leche.

Give them to me. Maybe I'll give you back a jar of something good.

Any other suggestions?