No. 265: Grill-Roasted Potatoes with Lemon, Rosemary & Fresh Corn Dressing
Plus: Quick Roasted Eggplant Stacks, Fluke Rollups, Grilled Peaches, Farm stand finds, new restaurants, and a snapshot of last week's fun Cook the Vineyard event.
🥔 Dig this!
Last Friday I picked up baby red potatoes and fresh corn at Morning Glory Farm on my way home from work. Because our refrigerator is on the fritz again (a new one is finally on order), I am storing the corn in my husband’s wine cooler! Everything else is in a tiny bar refrigerator – about two cubic feet – in the basement. So I’m leaning heavily on garden tomatoes, garden onions, and potatoes (no fridge needed), since I can’t store more than one veg at a time. Fun times around here!
As it turns out, potatoes are popping out of the ground all over the Island. (Well, not literally - a broadfork is the best tool for digging them!) I went on a farm stand tour this morning and found the most delightful mix of small baby potatoes at Whippoorwill Farm, and a huge table of Rusty Gordon’s freshly dug potatoes greeting me when I walked in the door of Ghost Island Farm. You’ve got your pick of Yukon Golds, fingerlings, purple potatoes, and many more, so take advantage of the variety right now.
Because I had potatoes, corn, onions, lemons, and garden herbs on hand, I made an old favorite from Fresh From The Farm - this recipe for Grill-Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary, Lemon, Sea Salt & Fresh Corn Vinaigrette. And now I’m wondering why I haven’t made this dish more recently, especially because the cooking is all hands-off. Everything goes into a foil package that sits directly on the grill grates in a covered grill. All you have to do is flip the package once. Inside the foil, the veggies both steam and caramelize, while the aroma of lemons and rosemary permeate everything. With the bright corn dressing, there are layers of flavor and texture here that make a star side dish.
Check out our killer archive of potato recipes if you need more inspiration.
🍆 Farmstand finds: eggplant, romaine, herbs and more
Some of you know I’m fond of the Whippoorwill Farm stand on Old County Road, but I still think it flies a bit under the radar. Farmer Rebecca Sanders is a talented grower and has an eye for unusual varieties. Right now, among many other things, she’s got lemon and Thai basil, beautiful flowers, artisan romaine heads, Romanesco cauliflower, three kinds of kale, carrots, and Rosa Bianca eggplant.
I bought two heads of romaine (currently in water, unrefrigerated in the basement!) and plan to make a Caesar salad, inspired by my Lemony Caesar Salad with Grilled Croutons. I’ll add in sliced Grilled Mayonnaise-Mustard Chicken.
I resisted the pretty eggplant, but I just saw that Morning Glory has white eggplants in now, so that means we’re officially in August vegetable world!
With your eggplants, you can make Roasted August Vegetables with Garlic, Ginger, and Lime. You can use that Thai basil from Whippoorwill in this, too. And if you’ve got cilantro in your garden, by now it is probably flowering and producing those yummy green coriander seeds that you can add to this as well.
They make a nice bed for Sear-Roasted Black Sea Bass with Ginger-Garlic-Lime Butter and Roasted August Vegetables.
Or you can make Quick Roasted Eggplant Slices, Stacks & Rollups. Those slices are delicious on their own but also a lot of fun to play around with.
Another fun destination for eggplant is this dish of Stir-Fried Eggplant, Corn, and Peanuts with Noodles and Soy-Ginger Sauce. You can serve that to eggplant doubters and win them over.
🐟 This isn’t a fluke. Wait, yes it is.
While we’re on the subject of rollups, I want to bring up those yummy Fluke Rollups with Sundried Tomato Filling, one of our most popular recipes from last year. We’ve been pan-frying fluke (since we have some in the chest freezer from our CSF), but when I get a working fridge back, I’m making the rollups for sure.
🍑 Dessert on the grill, of course!
In addition to last week’s peach desserts, we’re still dreaming up things to do with peaches. (Coming soon: TWO kinds of peach ice cream.) But this week it seems only appropriate to grill our peaches (or nectarines). I saw nice stone fruit (not local) at both farm stands I visited this morning. Here’s the recipe and technique for Grilled Peaches with Vanilla Ice Cream and Berry Sauce.
If you need other ideas for dessert this week, check out our collection of Abby Dodge’s Baking Together Recipes.
🎪 Under the Tent
Hey, we had a lovely time hosting Ruth Reichl, Joan Nathan, Francis Lam and you – a wonderful group of Cook the Vineyard subscribers – at the Chilmark Community Center last Thursday. Our reception was a prelude to the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival speaker event that night, where Francis (host of The Splendid Table and editor in chief of Clarkson Potter) chatted with Ruth (food critic, editor, memoirist, novelist - and Substacker!), and Joan (12-time cookbook author and seasonal Chilmark resident) about food, legendary editors, breaking into publishing, and of course, writing.
All three culinary luminaries were happy to arrive early and spend a little time with us. We grazed on a magnificent cheese and fruit table created by Jenny DeVivo, sipped lemonade and seltzer, listened to me talk a bit (okay, maybe more than a bit!) about Cook the Vineyard, and enjoyed the camaraderie and the magical evening.
Our next event is on August 21 with James Beard-award winning podcaster and cookbook author Dan Pashman; tickets are sold out. But we have more events on the horizon; if you are currently a free subscriber and want to be sure of early notification and/or special pricing for events, please take a moment to upgrade to a paid subscription.
As always, feel free to be in touch at cookthevineyard@vineyardgazette.com or leave a comment right here on the newsletter. I hope you are having a magical, delicious August – preferably on the Vineyard!
— Susie Middleton
🍽️ What’s Happening Around the Island
The Vineyard Gazette has a great roundup of new restaurants that have opened up on the Vineyard this summer, some in the last few weeks: El Barco Tacos x Tequilas, Midnight Mediterranean, 9 Craft Kitchen and Bar, La Strada, Wicked Burger, and The Model Deli.
The old Bombay Cuisine space in Oak Bluffs is getting a new life, thanks to Chef Ting and Black Joy MVY. The Black Joy Commercial Kitchen will be a place to develop recipes, an event space, and a place for the founders of the BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) Chef Collective to provide community and education to members of the group.
Don’t forget to put together your entries for the Fair. You can find the booklet and registration online here.
Photos: Cook the Vineyard event, Jeanna Shepard; El Barco, Ray Ewing; Chef Ting, Jeanna Shepard; all others Susie Middleton.
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Freshly dug potatoes are one of life's simple pleasures. I miss the massive garden that my family had in DE. Unfortunately, here on the CT coast, we don't have the space to grow much of anything beyond some herbs and tomatoes. I do have an abundance of fresh rosemary and, with the help of the local farmer's market, I look forward to making the Grill-Roasted Potatoes. They'll be perfect with the Faidley's crab cakes my darling brother-in-law is having shipped to us this week.
BTW, made the Corn, Zucchini, and Pearl Couscous with Coriander and Summer Herbs from Simple Green Suppers last night. I served it with a Caprese salad and it was the perfect summer meal.
So many ideas packed into this post Susie! I can't wait to try some of the corn and eggplant recipes. PS: I loved speaking to Ruth Reichl, Joan Nathan and Francis Lam at the reception. What a treat!