Cook Summer Souvenirs

Galley still life on the Julia Hoyt

Between sorting vacation pictures (no easy feat on the computer btw and just as hidden away as a box of old 1980’s Kodachrome slides), I have to eat. So whilst looking at slides of Turkish delights, herring sandwiches and pickled cabbage, I neglect my own potager where the haricots are ever verts and fattening beyond the ‘fine’ stage. Instead, I turn to a gift box from my local CSA—the neighbor’s tidy-as-a-pin potager overflowing with perfect tomatoes while mine rotted on the vine as I was gallivanting around the Balkans taking pictures of the market in Veliko Tarnova ,drinking giant beers and eating fresh cabbage slaw.

The French box, passed across the garden gate that keeps two voracious ponies from the blettes or chard, had just the right ingredients for a Balkan-inspired salad. A hybrid shopska salad/ratatouille.

If I play this out right, I’ll have a chilled grilled eggplant and tomato salad with cucumber, onion and goat's milk yogurt sauce to serve to friends--the well-travelled Bosco and his master, when they come for lunch on Thursday.

Served in large bowls earthenware bowls gleaned from a bulgarian brocante, what better than a culinary souvenir to start the stories flowing. "Remember when you went to Kiev?" "Oh, Istanbul..." "I found this in a souk in Tunis..." Cooking the stuff that Summer Adventures are made of.