EdHart.me
By late summer, my Asian eggplants are finally hitting their stride. This year I’m growing three varieties: Asian Bride with its beautiful magenta skin, Charming White, and Farmer’s Long Purple. While each has its own personality, the long purple variety was the inspiration for this dish. Its thin skin, tender flesh, and naturally sweet flavor make it perfect for grilling until lightly charred and silky.
Some recipes don’t need a long list of ingredients. They simply need the right ones. When my Cherokee Purple tomatoes reach peak ripeness in the garden, they’re sweet, juicy, and rich with a depth of flavor that grocery store tomatoes rarely match. Pair them with creamy burrata, fragrant basil, good olive oil, and a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, and you’ve created a dish that celebrates summer in its purest form.
There are few dishes that capture the essence of summer quite like a simple tomato and cucumber salad. When the garden is producing ripe heirloom tomatoes and crisp cucumbers every day, there’s no need to overcomplicate things. This is one of those recipes where the ingredients do all the work.
There are some meals that remind me why fresh herbs are worth growing. In the middle of summer, when the dill has reached its feathery peak and the parsley is overflowing the edges of the raised bed, this salmon recipe becomes an easy favorite.
Every once in a while I stumble across a dish that makes me wonder, “Why isn’t everyone making this?” Socca was one of those discoveries.
There are few things more satisfying than pulling a fresh crop of carrots from the garden. The roots are destined for the kitchen, but the tops often end up in the compost pile. I think that’s a missed opportunity.
I couldn’t find a cocktail that felt like a natural companion to my Woodland Harvest pizza, so I started experimenting with one. The result is a garden-inspired riff on the French 75 that borrows a little sweetness from fresh carrot juice and a little warmth from ginger syrup. It’s not a classic, but I think it earns a place alongside this pizza.
Some cocktails feel like they’ve been around forever, even when they’re relatively new to the scene. The Paper Plane is one of those drinks.
Swiss chard is one of those garden vegetables that can quickly outpace your plans for it. When a fresh harvest needed a place at the table, I wanted something that complemented a pot of smoky red beans and rice without asking the chard to pretend it was collard greens.
After a leisurely Italian-inspired dinner with good conversation, a glass of wine still lingering on the table, and the remains of pasta dishes slowly disappearing, tiramisu feels like the only appropriate finale. It’s elegant without being fussy, rich without being heavy, and somehow manages to feel both indulgent and impossibly light at the same time.