[Theo]

Imagine that it’s late afternoon on the weekend. Your thoughts turn to dinner. “Don’t sweat it,” says your 11-year-old kid. “I’ll just whip up some fresh pasta. Ravioli sound good?”

Okay, it’s not quite that smooth and effortless, but here it is, a Saturday afternoon, and Theo is making pasta. Smoked gouda ravioli, to be exact. And he’s got the cooking-demo routine down: he points out the pasta dough he already made and set aside to rest, then starts a fresh batch, cracking a couple eggs into a bowl of flour.

Theo has been hanging around the kitchen since he was three and was able to pull a chair up to the counter to stand on. When he was four, his mom handed him a knife so he could cut up an apple. His dad walked into the kitchen. “Uh, Theo has a sharp knife!” he said with alarm. “He’s fine with it,” his mom replied.

And he was. With a bit of prodding, Theo recalls past culinary feats: real macaroni and cheese; waffles from scratch; a tour-de-force sandwich he created with a friend out of peanut butter, whipped cream, chocolate and caramel sauces, and sliced bread, of course. “It was messy,” he says. “But good.”

Theo cooks regularly at home, where he and his younger brother are each expected to help prepare one dinner a week. Through the gardening and cooking program at his school, he has helped make dilly beans, potato leek soup, and cornbread. Theo even made culinary concerns the center of his campaign for student council: he promised that not only would he try to get more vegetarian meals on the school lunch menu, he would try to bring back chocolate milk. He won.

At some point Theo discovered the hand-crank pasta machine his parents got fifteen years ago as a wedding present. “Rolling out pasta is fun,” he says. “It’s like holding a snake.” Equally appealing is the machine itself. It requires assembly, hand-eye coordination, and, when making filled pasta such as ravioli, a willingness to collaborate. Theo works with his mom or dad to turn the crank, insert the already-rolled stretches of dough, and spoon or sprinkle in the filling. He does NOT cook with his younger brother. There would be too much yelling, he says.

Theo celebrated his birthday in the fall, and among his presents were a whisk and a hatchet. He is working on his scrambled-egg technique, his mom reports; hence, the whisk. But what’s the hatchet for? “Chopping stuff down outside,” he says with a shrug. Duh.

Fresh Egg Pasta (from The Joy of Cooking)

Theo’s family usually makes a half-recipe. They filled the ravioli with either grated smoked gouda cheese, mashed sweet potato, or a sauteed mushroom-spinach mixture. Theo prefers the straight cheese version.

3 1/2 c. flour

5 large eggs or 7 egg whites

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. oil

Place the flour in a bowl, making a well in the center. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork, drawing in flour as you go, until the eggs are mixed in and slightly thickened. Knead into a cohesive dough. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes before using it with a pasta-maker, following whatever directions come with the machine.

Let the ravioli sit for 10 minutes. Cook them in boiling water until they float to the surface, about 3 minutes. Drain and toss with a little butter or olive oil or tomato sauce, and top with grated cheese.

[Dar]

I first heard about Dar because she made a mutual friend some chocolate truffles that looked something like this.

Incredible, right? When Dar agreed to be interviewed, however, she offered to cook one of her vegetarian interpretations of a classic French stew. Thank goodness she changed her mind. I mean, I’ve got nothing against meatless cassoulet, but chocolate truffles? NO CONTEST.

And these truffles are, in a word, sensuous. They are beautiful—not surprisingly, because Dar is a graphic designer—but their taste! Intense and smooth, layered with one flavor after another. Bite into one truffle and taste the richness of caramel, then a touch of crunchy salt; another gives you first a wave of coffee, then a hit of cinnamon, then a flush of cayenne heat. And who knew white chocolate, usually just painfully sweet, could taste this complex, infused with saffron and honey? Sigh.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Dar. The woman behind these truffles grew up in northern New York state, about an hour south of Montreal, in a family of food-lovers. Case in point: her French-Canadian grandmother, who frequently set aside her meat, potatoes, and cornichons to travel and send postcards home that were “pithy,” Dar says, and indicative of her priorities. “Didn’t care for Hunan cuisine. Enjoyed Szechuan.”

So it’s not weird at all that cooking and baking were the extracurricular activities of choice for Dar and her brother and sister as they were growing up—“how we amused ourselves after school,” she says. They helped get dinner on the table, too, and we’re not talking cube steaks or Tater Tots. Dar liked to make chicken piccata and lasagne. Her brother tackled a bûche de noël when he was 12 or 13.

Dar cooked her way through Italian dishes; Indian; her Polish grandmother’s repertoire of pierogi, latkes, and cheesecake (“Try as I might,” Dar says, “it’s just not same when I make it.”). Along the way, she became a vegetarian, and spent a couple years in Eastern Europe, cooking lots and lots of root vegetables.

But chocolate was always the constant. Years ago, Dar and her mom had started a tradition of making candy during the winter holidays. Over time, Dar moved beyond nut clusters to truffles and mousse, experimenting with ideas she picked up from chocolate shops like the defunct Joseph Schmidt Confections in San Francisco, where she used to live, and our local mecca, Burdick’s in Walpole, New Hampshire. “I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it, but I probably eat chocolate every day,” Dar says. “It’s my comfort food. And I tell my mother it’s medicinal. She likes that.”

Dar hopes to someday open a little chocolate shop of her own, which is why, sadly, she is declining to share her truffle formula. But instead, behold: chocolate mousse!







Chocolate Mousse
(Adapted from Chez Panisse Desserts by Lindsey Remolif Shere)

3 oz. semisweet chocolate
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 Tbsp. cognac or your liqueur of choice
2 Tbsp. brewed coffee
4 eggs
1 cup whipping cream

Separate the eggs and set aside. Chop the chocolate into small pieces. Melt chocolate with the brandy and coffee in a double boiler over low heat until it is smooth, glossy, and lump-free. Remove from heat and whisk the egg yolks into the chocolate. Whip the cream until it holds a soft shape. Heat the egg whites until they are barely warm by swirling the bowl above a burner/gas flame. Beat them until they hold soft peaks. Stir about a quarter of them into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the rest. Fold in the whipped cream. Pour into individual serving bowls, or into a large serving bowl. Chill and serve with fresh whipped cream and/or fruit.

[Bob]

This is Bob. Bob claims to have only one tastebud. Do not invite him to dinner and serve him a pork chop and a salad.

"There is nothing more boring," he says. "I like food that bites hard. I like a salsa or a peanut sauce or something that makes my mouth say, 'Wow, why didn't I think of that?' "

Bob is a biologist, a traveler, a hobo-at-heart who rides a motorcycle instead of the rails and stops wherever there is a decent Mexican restaurant. Earlier this year he mapped out a month-long cross-country ride and set his sights on Santa Fe because he knew of a place there that made really, really good Chile Rellenos. He made his way south to the Cumberland Gap of Kentucky, across Oklahoma, and as far north as the Dakotas, all the while noticing how many mom-and-pop restaurants had closed their doors. "The food in rural America is withering on the vine—at least where I was," he says.

Bob grew up in southern California, eating Tex-Mex border food and old-school square meals prepared by his mom, who considered cooking little more than an activity to be endured. Then, in the 1980s, Bob’s first wife showed him that cooking could be fun, and he grabbed the ball and ran. There were Chinese cooking classes, wine tastings, cannoli-making ventures that involved rolling pastry around a curtain rod, and, after numerous visits south of the border, authentic Mexican food. That is pretty much where Bob settled down. "I can't imagine too many meals without cilantro," he says.

Years, and many enchiladas, passed. Bob began to cook less frequently. He taught biology to college students, tended a greenhouse full of exotic plants, built a house, fell in love with motorcycles, and gradually replaced his Bon Appetit and Gourmet subscriptions with Roadrunner and Motorcycle Consumer News. "I continue to appreciate really good food, but the cooking thrill kind of petered out of me," he says.

Still, if called upon, Bob will pull out his old aluminum comal—a Mexican griddle—and make the tomatillo salsa he ate in large quantities when he lived in Guanajuato, in central Mexico. "There is nothing subtle about salsas down there," he says. They're either smoky from chipotle peppers, or earthy from pasillas, or fresh and sharp from jalapenos or serranos. "If you've got enough hair for a habanero, then more power to you," Bob says.

Making the salsa is hardly rocket science, he says; you soften and blacken the tomatillos, onions, and peppers on the comal, or in a frying pan, and then pop them in a blender. Done. Throw in a little pineapple, Bob suggests. "You can hybridize it any way you want to."


Tomatillo Salsa
15-20 tomatillos, husks removed
1 small onion, peeled and halved crosswise
1-2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 fresh chile pepper (Bob used a jalapeno)
1-2 tbsp. chopped cilantro
1/4-1/2 tsp. salt or to taste

Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium heat. Blacken the tomatillos, onion, garlic, and chile, turning so they soften, cook through, and char all over, about 10-15 minutes. (You could also boil the vegetables until soft, but you'd miss out on a lot of flavor.) Seed the pepper when it is cool enough to handle. Place all the veggies in a blender or a food processor and puree. If necessary, add a tablespoon or two of water to help blend. Stir in cilantro and salt to taste.

Makes approximately 2 1/2 cups

[Seth]

Mmm . . . pie.

Invoking Homer Simpson is probably the wrong thing to do here, but come on! Isn’t it the first thing that comes to mind when you see this?
















Let’s get one thing straight, though. Seth, a college professor and the creator of this raspberry masterpiece, is the anti-Homer Simpson. He is organized, calm, diplomatic, and reasonable. We're digressing beyond the realm of food and cooking here, but just look at how the guy lays out his utensils before he gets to work.












That sense of orderliness and composure may come naturally to Seth, but it was enhanced by one of his formative food experiences: eating almost daily at the Yankee Doodle Coffee Shop in New Haven, Connecticut, when he was a student. The man who worked the grill was named Lew. “Lew was an artist of short order cooking,” Seth says. From him, Seth learned “to see the beauty in economy of motion,” he says. “Lew was extremely efficient and unflappable. He produced a lot of lunches under pressure.”

Seth has got the efficient and unflappable thing down pat, which is helpful when it comes to rolling out pie crust and weaving it into lattice. But he doesn’t do much short-order cooking under pressure—unless you count the meals he makes for his three-year-old and nine-month-old. That’s REAL pressure.

As a kid, Seth’s interest in food was typically perfunctory. His curiosity grew, and developed into an obsession, when he spent a summer working in Hong Kong. He didn’t cook much there, but oh, how he ate! Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian—“the food was so good, so varied,” Seth says. The theme stuck. A 20-year-old copy of Ken Hom’s Quick and Easy Chinese Cooking—Seth’s bible in graduate school—remains in play, and the one indispensable gadget in his kitchen is a rice cooker.

Yet in the summer and early fall, Seth is all about PIE. Fruit pies. Blueberry. Peach. And lovely raspberry, which turns out to be something of a political statement for Seth, a subtle eat-local call to arms. Because raspberries are so fragile, he says, they are difficult to produce and ship in large quantities—the opposite of wheat, say, or corn. “They lend themselves least well to commodification,” he says proudly. Such a rabble-rouser, that Seth.

Honestly, though, this pie isn't about politics; it's about love. When Seth made a raspberry pie for a potluck dinner earlier in the summer, his wife, Kate, failed to snag a piece. She was understandably bitter. So this one is for her.

Summer Raspberry Pie with Wine Pastry
(adapted from Great Pies & Tarts by Carole Walter)
Pastry
2 1/4 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
2/3 cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into small pieces
3 tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
5-6 tbsp. cold white wine
Filling
6 cups fresh raspberries
1 tbsp. instant tapioca
3/4 cup sugar or to taste
2-2 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. grated orange zest (Seth used a chopped dried apricot)
2 tsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Sift together dry pastry ingredients in a large bowl. Add shortening and butter, toss to coat with flour, and cut the fats into the flour with a pastry blender until mixture resembles course meal. Add the wine, one tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork to blend, until the dough holds together when you press it with your fingertips. Don't overmix! Form dough into two disks, cover in plastic wrap, and chill at least 30 minutes. Roll one disk into a 13-inch circle, place it in a 9-inch pie plate, and trim the edge, leaving a half-inch overhang.

Wash and dry the raspberries. Place them in a bowl and sprinkle with tapioca, shaking the bowl to distribute. Let stand 15 minutes.

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and orange zest/dried apricot in a small bowl. Sprinkle two tablespoons of this mixture over the pie crust. Place half the raspberries in the crust, sprinkle with half the sugar mixture, then repeat with the rest of the raspberries and the sugar mixture. Drizzle with lemon juice and dot with butter.

Now we get fancy: roll the remaining dough disk into a 13-inch circle. Cut into 1-or 2-inch strips with a knife or a pastry wheel/pizza cutter. Lay one of the longer strips down the center of the pie. Place a shorter strip on either side, then rotate the pie 90 degrees. Center another longer strip on top of the pie, weaving it over and under the first three strips. Repeat the weaving with two more strips. Add additional shorter strips to the sides if you cut narrower strips, as Seth did. Or throw a little tantrum, shake your fist at the over-under weaving, and simply lay the strips down in a pretend woven pattern. Fold the bottom-crust edge over the ends of the lattice and crimp gently.

With a cookie sheet or a piece of aluminum foil on the rack below to catch drips, bake the pie for 55 minutes, until crust is golden brown and juices begin to bubble. Important: cover the edges of the crust with foil or a pie crust shield for the first 40 minutes to prevent burning. Remove from oven, cool on a rack, and torture yourself by letting the pie stand for at least three hours before serving.

[Dan]

The first thing to know about Dan is that he is nice to children.

He loves food and cooking, too, natch, but he is an elementary-school teacher with a compassionate, generous soul, and he came to my house to cook and ended up discussing books with my daughter.

Other interesting things to know about Dan: he built his own house; he’s a vegetarian who craves pastrami; and, get this, he says he never feels food guilt. What the hell? Is that a man thing? Barbecue chips, vegetarian Slim Jims, chocolate, LOTS of chocolate—Dan runs through a short list of foods he loves to eat even though he knows they’re not so good for him, but guilt? Not a shred.

He grew up watching his mom make chicken parmesan, baked beans, brisket, and hamentaschen (three-cornered, fruity pastries). Oh, and she worked full-time, too. “She was a good cook,” Dan says. “And it couldn’t have been easy.” He was the youngest of four boys—four constantly hungry boys. “There’s a reason I eat as fast as I do," he says. "If you didn’t get to seconds early, you didn’t get seconds.”

When Dan was in elementary school, he was the family’s go-to guy for making Passover charoset, the chopped-apple mixture that symbolizes mortar during the Seder meal. He didn’t really start cooking until college, though. He went through a Molly Katzen phase (one of the original Moosewood-ians), which manifested itself in many bowls of black bean soup. Gradually, Dan recognized that the process of cooking was, for him, a form of relaxation. “It totally de-stresses me," he says. "As long as there’s no one else in the kitchen. I don’t really like help.”

What he does like is cooking seasonally, which sounds all idyllic and Alice-Waters-y, but for Dan it means lots of fresh vegetables from his CSA in the summer and peanut butter cake in the winter. Right now the rain has eased up in southern Vermont and gardens have come alive, so Dan is sighing contentedly and envisioning dishes like roasted beets with a balsamic-molasses glaze and crumbled goat cheese, or a Thai noodle salad with carrots and snap peas. He likes a sweet-savory blend of flavors; “I think raisins taste good in a lot of things,” he says. He even claims hummus on banana bread is a worthy combo, but I'm afraid I may have to draw the line at that one.

Instead, try the noodle salad. It's inspired by the “Thai spaghetti” that Dan used to eat in a tiny Thai restaurant in Portland, Maine, nearly a decade ago. For those of us who are incapable of sticking to a recipe, it's a welcome model of flexibility: the herbs and veggies can be swapped around or increased, tofu or another chopped-up protein could be added, and any thoughts of precise measuring should be tossed out the window. “I cook, I taste, I cook, I taste,” Dan says. When the salad tastes like he remembers, it’s done.



[Rice noodle salad]

1/2 lb. quarter-inch-wide rice noodles
1 carrot, julienned
a really big handful peapods (a scant cup)
3 scallions, chopped
fresh herbs, approximately 5 Tbsp. (Dan used 3 Tbsp. chopped mint and a scant 2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro, but you could include some fresh basil in the mix as well)
1/2 cup lime juice
3/4 cup Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce

(Dan also likes to include thinly sliced cabbage, about 1/4 head. And add a little soy sauce if you like a saltier taste.)

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the noodles according to the directions on the package. Drain and cool completely. (Here's my back-seat-driver suggestion: rinse the noodles in cold water once or twice while they're cooling so they don't clump together.) In a bowl, place the noodles, chopped veggies, and herbs. Combine the lime juice and sweet chili sauce in a separate bowl and then add to the noodles, tossing gently to mix. Adjust seasoning if necessary. Dan says, “It should taste really lime-y.”

[Eileen]

This woman has set kitchens on fire. Literally.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but one of the reasons Eileen didn’t cook much until her mid-20s was that as a kid she set her parents’ stove on fire during an ill-fated attempt to make Rice Krispies Treats. Subsequently, she says, she was branded the “ditz” who wasn’t allowed near the kitchen. Her sisters were the ones who baked cookies after school and learned how to get a chicken in the oven for dinner.

But ever since she took a stab at linguine with clam sauce when she was 24—“You can’t fuck it up if it’s got butter and garlic!”—Eileen has been a total kitchen dweller. She bakes coconut cupcakes and makes her own pulled pork for parties. One of her favorite meals is a traditional (i.e. early) Sunday dinner. “When I was a kid, we’d come home from church, take off the pantyhose, and have a big meal. It was great,” she says. Eileen’s an experimenter, but as the parent of a picky eater, she’s also realistic. Case in point: her “cold pantry.” She tries to set a block of time aside, say on a weekend afternoon, and make a collection of simple dishes—things like hummus, tuna salad, egg salad, carrot salad. She stores them in the fridge for easy dinners. “Let’s just say I used to read Gourmet,” Eileen says. “Now Every Day Food is my bible.”

Eileen moved to Brattleboro from San Francisco seven years ago. Since then she has had a second child, become an elementary-school librarian, and come to the sad, sad realization that the Mexican food she remembers from California just isn’t going to happen the same way here in Vermont. And so, as an alternative, she recently turned to Spanish cuisine.

We're talking gazpacho and patatas bravas, to be specific. Wearing pink lipstick and a vintage thrift-store apron and brandishing a handful of beautifully twirly garlic scapes (for both the soup and an aioli for the potatoes), Eileen steers me to the stove, where she’s heating up a skillet of oil. “I’m generally not a fryer,” she says. But her kids are visiting their grandparents, so she’s got room to experiment, make a mess, and not contend with eaters more selective than she.

Yet who in their right mind would say no to what is essentially a chunky french fry dipped in garlicky mayonnaise? I could eat a LOT of these. Seeing that I’m in the presence of a woman wearing pink lipstick and a pretty apron, though, I refrain from embarrassing myself. The gazpacho is the perfect antidote: fresh, salad-y, just a little sharp from sherry vinegar.

Family dinner entrée? Not at Eileen's house. But she thinks eating together as a family is overrated, anyway. “As long as you curl up and read together every day, she says, “you’re good.”

[Gazpacho]

4 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
most of a hothouse (Kirby) cucumber, chopped
half a red onion, chopped fine but not minced
2-3 whole garlic scapes, chopped (remove the outer papery skin from the bulb)
1/3 c. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar (or to taste)
handful of stale white bread chunks (optional, for a thicker soup)
Salt and pepper to taste

If you’re using the bread, whiz it in a food processor to make crumbs. Set aside. Into the processor put the tomatoes, the scapes, and half the pepper, cucumber, and onion. Puree. Stir in the rest of the veggies and the oil, vinegar, bread crumbs, and salt and pepper. Serve cold. Goes great with chunks of avocado and/or grilled shrimp on top.

[Patatas Bravas]
1 lb. Yukon Gold potatoes
Oil for frying (Eileen uses half olive oil and half vegetable oil, with a touch of avocado oil thrown in)
Salt

Boil potatoes whole until tender. Drain and slip the peels off when they’re cool enough to handle. When the
potatoes are completely cool, cut into one-inch chunks. Heat a half-inch of oil in a cast-iron skillet over high heat until it shimmers. Place potatoes in oil and fry until golden brown and crusty, about 5 minutes, turning them over carefully—you want to keep them whole. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Salt to taste. Serve hot.

[Easy Aioli]
3/4-1 c. Hellman’s mayonnaise
2 garlic scape bulbs, chopped fine (remove outer papery skin from the bulb)
Spanish paprika and salt to taste

Mix everything together. That’s it. (This is a “blob” sauce for dipping, Eileen says. If you prefer a thinner sauce for drizzling over the potatoes, add a little lemon juice.)

Janice

Everybody, meet Janice, the agreeable—and perhaps foolish—soul who has volunteered to be my guinea pig in launching Brattleboro Cooks.

Janice is a social worker, a mother of three, a grandmother of two, a gardener, a vegetarian, and a serious cook. The first food she remembers making is challah bread, and even though that was decades ago, the shiny brown braided loaf is emblematic of how Janice approaches cooking. She’s willing to invest time in a food project to make it taste good, and she cares deeply about how a dish looks when it is presented. This is a woman who made her own wedding cake—white chocolate with pistachio marzipan and burnt-orange silk-meringue buttercream. For a hundred people.

Despite her top-shelf culinary tendencies, Janice will cheerfully share her project-of-the-moment with anyone who shows up and shows interest—like me. She once greeted me at her door with a slice of homemade quince paste (who knew people actually made that?). Another time, it was a spoonful of peach chutney. Ladle some of that over goat cheese or cream cheese, and go straight to food heaven.

Janice grew up in Queens, New York, surrounded by good home cooking. Her mother fried chicken. Her grandmother made her own strudel dough. Her neighbor, Emma, whose kids she babysat, kept things like brains and chocolate mousse in the refrigerator. By the time Janice was old enough to go to summer camp, she eschewed the archery and the craft projects and instead hung around the kitchen to help the cook fry johnnycakes and bacon.

While bacon is no longer a part of Janice’s life, the concept of cooking as an enjoyable activity is, whether we’re talking about a constructing a wedding cake or chopping a leek for a regular weeknight dinner with her husband and youngest daughter. These days, such a dinner might mean risotto with swiss chard, or couscous-and-bean cakes atop a salad. But Janice, what about when you’re too beat to cook? Do you ever just throw your hands in the air and break out the cheese and crackers?

Janice laughs politely. In other words, no. “A frittata’s an acceptable dinner,” she offers nicely. But after further questioning, she breaks down—clearly I missed my calling as a police interrogator—and admits that she has Boca Burgers and Trader Joe’s tamales in the freezer.

Now that it’s almost summer in Brattleboro, Janice is itching to use produce from her small garden that’s up the street in a community plot. Specifically, she’s got her eye on a big bunch of sorrel leaves, for soup. Sorrel is a spring crop, like spinach, and it’s considered both a vegetable and an herb. It’s got a lemony flavor that grows sharper as the plant gets bigger.

Today’s soup is adapted from a Silver Palate recipe, so of course it contains a stick of butter, but Janice is all about depth of flavor, and she says that without meat in her diet, she feels fine about a chunk of butter now and then. Amen to that. The soup is bright and tart, but also smooth and rich. Best of all, it’s easy to make, even for a cheese-and-crackers-for-dinner-aficionado like me. Be forewarned: as soon as sorrel hits the heat, it darkens considerably and loses its grassy color—but none of its flavor.

Sorrel Soup
(adapted from the original Silver Palate cookbook)

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter
1 large leek, trimmed and chopped
1 cup chopped onion
4 medium cloves garlic, chopped
1 large bunch sorrel (7-8 cups of leaves, removed from stems)
3-4 cups of vegetable broth (Janice uses 3 tablespoons of Seitenbacher powdered broth and 3-4 cups water)
2 pinches nutmeg or mace
salt and pepper to taste
possible garnishes: sour cream, plain yogurt, or crème fraiche, with chopped chives, scallions, or parsley

Melt butter in a medium-to-large pot. Over medium-low heat, sauté leek, onion, and garlic until soft, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the sorrel and broth, lower heat, and simmer 15-20 minutes. Let cool briefly, then purée. Janice uses an immersion blender, which is basically a blender in a stick—one of the greatest kitchen inventions ever. Serve hot or cold, topped with one of the suggested garnishes. Janice spooned on a little goat yogurt and chopped chives.

(Note: the photograph of Janice was taken by Mark Piepkorn.)