Back from the land of plenty

I’m back from a super-long extended weekend in my dear-and-as-yet-unsold house in Columbia County.  This was supposed to be the last weekend of summer, but since summer had quietly yet quite suddenly disappeared at some point during the last rainy week, it felt more like the first weekend of an alternate Keatsian pre-fall “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

It was a 5-day weekend in which there were cucumbers that were so sweet in their over-ripeness that they tasted faintly of melon.  There was juicy peach pie made from the ripest of peaches.  There was corn and there were tomatoes and there was a tomato-corn gratin that expressed the quintessence of corn and tomatoes (this month Gourmet hit several nails on the head!).  There was grilled lamb that rewardingly became the entirely other dish that is cold grilled lamb the next day.  And with the cold lamb there was the Ultimate Farro Salad to cap my Farro salad season (an adaptation of that linked recipe that used farro, left out the zucchini, and was spicier).  There was a Pissaladiere with a perfectly thin flaky crust to serve to company.  And to use up the rest of the pastry there was a tiny tomato tart I made for myself with mustard and a little crème freche (an idea I got from here, but used the sliced and salted beefsteak tomatoes I use for my usual, less-fancy tomato tart instead of roasting plum tomatoes because the plum tomatoes just don’t want to ripen all at once this year). And despite the season’s desire to leave us with almost nothing but green tomatoes there were a few cans of tomatoes put up, and some sauce with garlic made and frozen for winter.   A few bags of chard and Italian bitter greens blanched and frozen too, waiting for winter soups and frittatas.

There were a couple of long runs in the Columbia County hills, and more than a couple of long afternoon naps.  Some friends thankfully came to share all that food and indulge my completely unfashionable taste in wines (and they brought their delightful dogs!  Who eat cucumbers!).  We had Mondeuse, from Savoie, which tastes like a willowy mountain love-child of Syrah and Gamay; we had the Mondeuse’s companion white, made from Jacquere, which tastes like what perfectly bracing and delicious mountain mineral water might taste like if it could be made from grapes.  We had my favorite Muscadet (the Clos de Briords), always deeply mineral and satisfying.  We had some Donnas, which is not a girl band but another delicious mountain wine from Italy, made (mostly) from Nebbiolo.  We had some bottles of the lip-smackingly delicious Julienas 2005 from Michel Tete (cf Joe’s comments on 2005 Beaujolais, all true). All wines that are a joy to drink:  light and fresh and perfect for washing down good food, conducive to good talk, followed by sweet sleep and pleasant mornings.  (And it is this final test that is the acid test that separates the truly good wines from all others.)

All in all, I ate so much that I skipped an entire meal today and didn’t even notice.  It was a beautiful time from which to emerge in order to plunge into the next 12 weeks, which mark my busiest and most stressful time of year . . . .