Bumper Crops, вишневый датский, and Becoming a Cooking Show Host!

Saturday News Digest, V1/E21

Table of Contents

• The August Crop Report

• Eastern European Street Gems

• The News Desk’s Favorite Quote of the Week

• Achieve Your Dreams of Becoming a Cooking Show Host

The August Crop Report
New Jersey tomato and corn crops are in!

After the August week at the New Jersey shore, after the faded beach umbrella and sagging web chairs, the cooler, fishing rods, crab cage, suitcases, and three sunburnt kids were packed into the station wagon, my mom would place a large brown paper bag full of tomatoes and corn on the floor of the front passenger seat. For the hour and a half ride home, she pressed her left leg gently against it so the tomatoes and corn wouldn’t spill across the car floor. The bag was the first out of the car when we arrived home, carried with care into the house and to the kitchen table. It would not be wrong for a stranger to think that the tomatoes and corn were the most precious cargo in the car. Their purchase at farm stands perched at the edge of farmhouse lawns along back roads and their limited availability anywhere other than New Jersey earned their exceptionalness.

The tomatoes’ ancestry stretches back to 1934 when Rutgers University's Agricultural Experiment Station and the Campbell Soup Company's research department developed a flavorful variety specifically fit for making sauces and soups—hence Campbell’s involvement. With genetic manipulation far in the future, the scientists created the variety through cross-pollination, which meant farmers and gardeners would collect seeds after the harvest to use for the next season. Because the tomatoes were self-pollinators, their seeds intermingled with a few other varieties that growers planted among them. This means that today’s New Jersey tomatoes are not quite the same as their great-grandparents, but they are pretty close, with the same craggy top and folds. Their taste continues to be marked by a sweet acidity, and their skins so thin that they cannot be shipped much farther beyond the state’s borders.

New Jersey corn has a less storied pedigree but is equally uncommon. The variety, Silver Queen, was once the dominant crop grown on the East Coast because it is so sweet and juicy. Few commercial farms these days grow Silver Queen because its high sugar content begins to disintegrate soon after it’s picked. After a few days, the corn is almost flavorless, making it just as fragile to ship out of state as New Jersey’s tomatoes.

If you are lucky to be near enough to the state’s boarders and come upon New Jersey’s corn and tomatoes buy as much tomatoes and corn as you can. Shuck the corn into a bag and place the tomatoes in another plastic bag. Freeze both. Come winter, the corn will be just as sweet and the tomatoes will make a bright summer-tasting sauce.

Last weekend, after spending the day at an oyster farm, I stopped at a small stand built at the edge of a farmhouse lawn on a back road. Wooden baskets overflowed with newly picked tomatoes and the table was piled high with corn. A dozen tomatoes and six ears of corn, just enough for each family member, went into two brown paper bags, the bags gingerly placed on the floor of the front seat passenger side. They were the first to be carried into the house and placed gingerly on the kitchen counter. That night’s dinner consisted of barely boiled corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes arranged over thin slices of red onions and showered with fresh basil. All they needed was a slab of sweet butter and a dribble of olive oil for a feast laden with family memories.

Eastern European Street Gems
A glutton's guide to unfamiliar food

Today’s excursion was to the Home Made Cooking Café. It’s on Brighton Beach Avenue, hard up against the Brighton Beach station on the B and Q subway lines. Back in the 1980s a great influx of Russian Jews settled into the existing Jewish community after the U.S.S.R. firmly suggested they’d be happier living elsewhere. Brooklyn was a favorite destination, right after Israel. Since then, other refugees from Eastern European countries have followed, particularly from Ukraine, and more Ukrainians are arriving every day.

The woman who stands behind the checker-cloth covered table outside her very narrow, tiny café leans slightly forward with a bag in hand, waiting for my selection.

“What are these?” I ask.

“No English,” she says with a friendly, resigned smile.

I smile back and pantomime that I’ll take one of each. And while we’re at it, one each of several others under clouded plastic lids that have a little more description on them.

Also, for good measure, one вишневый датский (cherry danish) and a булочка с маком (poppy seed danish).

I cut into them as soon as I get back home and am chewing through the one stuffed with cabbage and onion when one of the sons comes in to steal the car. He takes a slice of the pork. I keep saying we need to save some for when the husband/father returns from a long road trip. But we don’t. We finish them all and feel pretty guilty about it but pleasantly stuffed, too.

The News Desk’s Favorite Quote of the Week
An expert weighs in

“I told you: no one with any brains at all ever messes with archivists.” ~ Heather Cox Richardson, August 8, 2020, Letters from an American

Achieve Your Dreams of Becoming a Cooking Show Host
Apply now!

The Manchester Academy for Cooking Show Hosts is world-famous for honing the skills of talented chefs to achieve their dreams of having their own, award-winning cooking show. Applications for fall 2022 are still being accepted. Submit yours today and take your next step in realizing your culinary ambitions!

And while you’re at, let’s talk! I’d love to hear from you! What’s your favorite summer crop? Eaten anything new this week? Tell me all about it!