Just the Bill, Please: Eating Out of the Garden

It’s hot as blazes and everything is out of whack, so I thought this time, why not indulge ourselves with something pleasant for a change? A momentary distraction. Something reliable and familiar.

“Eating out of the garden,” a phrase I grew up with down East, came to mind. It’s high summer in North Carolina — and that means corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches, blackberries, butter beans and summer squash. When I was young, those words were a promise that no one ever grew tired of hearing. I can happily make a supper of corn-on-the-cob, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and onions and fried squash several times a week. It’s a quick dinner with scarcely any cooking or cleaning up.

I don’t have a kitchen garden to pick from anymore, but fortunately both of our Farmer’s Markets are going great guns. Social distancing rules apply, of course, and sometimes because of that it’s hard to figure out the lines. If you forget something, you’re not supposed to backtrack. All the same, this summer there is a bounty in both Carrboro and Chapel Hill. We had a mild winter and plenty of rain. It seems to have been a really good year for potatoes and melons, for example. I’ve been buying little cartons of golf-ball-sized potatoes from Perrywinkle Farms. They can be steamed or baked in next to no time. All they need is butter and salt. As for melons, it’s hard to choose which is better. Sun-warmed or ice-cold out of the fridge. The flowers are glorious right now and since I can’t go out to the clubs like I used to, my house is now full of bouquets bought with bar money.

Tomatoes are just kicking in. I made (and videoed) the tomato tart from my first cookbook for the first time since I retired. The video of this was part of the virtual Tomato Day Celebration the Chapel Hill Farmers Market held in place of it’s usual tasting event last week. The tart was pretty, and delicious and good both hot and cold. Having it on my kitchen table was sort of like running into an old friend.

I also had the production crew from Our State Magazine’s online newsletter in my kitchen for a morning. You can hear me holding court about tomato sandwiches and stirring up another fight over mayonnaise if you visit them online. About that same time I went on a cobbler tear using blueberries and peaches from the markets, and blackberries that I picked along the railroad tracks that run behind the Cat’s Cradle.

One small silver lining to this lockdown is the fact that I’ve begun to reexamine cooking in a way that I would have been too busy to do in ordinary times. I doubt it would have even crossed my mind, since I really disliked suddenly having to cook for one after I left Crook’s Corner. Now, however, I find myself fondly returning to old cookbooks, looking for projects. Right now I’m especially drawn to things French that I remember from my first days in a serious kitchen. I feel rum babas coming on.

“Just The Bill, Please” is a regular column on Chapelboro.com penned by local culinary legend Bill Smith. Born and raised in New Bern, Bill Smith spent 25 years heading up the kitchen in Crook’s Corner — and over the years, he accumulated the accolades to match his incomparable takes on classic Southern food.

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Just the Bill, Please: Eating Out of the Garden

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