Well, “Flavor of the Week” has slowed down quite a bit over the last several weeks — busy with all that cooking, gardening and other good summer activities.  The rooftop herb garden here at the restaurant has been going just great this year.  Like everybody else, we’ve survived the dry spell in June (and had to resort to a little garden hose use this year!), and now are enjoying timely periodic showers.

I expanded the garden this year quite a bit, and now have 55 crates of herbs and a few small vegetables.  In order to make this work, I built a 50-foot long PVC pipeline to bring water over from another rooftop air conditioning unit.  It’s a little “Willy Wonka”, but it works!  Amazingly, the 3 rooftop units combined produce over 60 gallons of condensed water per day here, and we only occupy a single story 3000 sq ft space — the extended math on larger buildings around town and the world over is just mind-boggling!

Many of the mainstays of the garden have flourished so well this summer season: rosemary, mint, chives, thyme, lovage.  Spring crops, such as chervil which made such a nice imprint on our Sunday Menus in May, have given way to summer crops like purslane, marjoram and fresh bay leaf which are being used on current menus.  I have so much mint and rosemary that I should probably apply for a vendor’s stall at the Central Square Farmers’ Market!  But we keep finding ways to use it all here, partially thanks to Scott, our bar manager, as he continues to concoct refreshing summer drinks for our guests.

I plant a new crate of french breakfast radishes each week, and since they take 25-30 days to mature from seed I always have five successive weeks in process so that we never run out of these beautiful little gems for use on our vegetable antipasto.  Whenever I see guests pass on the radish, I chase the busboy down into the galley and tell him to take it back out there to that table, or it’s “No Dessert!”.  The hot chilies are going nuts these days, too, and these we use for ceviche on Sunday Menus and on Monday Night Tapas, as well as for making salsa verde.

The rooftop garden also serves as a nursery for restaurant decorations.  I have a couple of crates of dwarf sunflowers growing up there that I will bring down to brighten up the vestibule, and and sometimes do the same with a particularly lively looking crate of  mint to greet the guests with its fresh aroma as they enter the restaurant.  During June, I regularly snipped beautiful lavender blossoms to decorate the front desk for Nicole and Bob.

Every Monday afternoon from Memorial Day to Thanksgiving week, the Central Square Farmers’ Market operates in the parking lot on the corner of Norfolk Street and Bishop Allen Drive directly behind the Blockbuster Video on Mass Ave.  The market is open from noon until 6pm, and is a regular part of my weekly routine.  Since this market is barely a block away from the restaurant, it couldn’t be any more convenient for me.  Also, this time slot fills a gap in our schedule of  farm deliveries, and after a busy weekend here we always have a few needs to fill.  The market is small (about 12 vendors), but the quality is very high, and I’m always thrilled by the displays and find great inspiration for our menus — it is particularly good timing for our Monday Night Tapas Bar.

This market really serves the needs of the community, and a quick glance around the crowds on any given Monday confirms this point.   Regular shoppers there include residents from the surrounding neighborhoods,  employees from the nearby city offices and numerous other businesses in the Square, students and professors, etc. –  the demographic mix is very broad indeed, just like Central Square itself, and you will see familiar faces from the community, foodies, restaurant chefs, parents and kids — all of whom share a desire for fresh, local, nutritious food.  The strategic location makes it accessible to all; most people who shop there come from within walking distance, and it’s also within a block of the subway and bus stops.  In general, the prices for all this superb fresh produce are very reasonable, and many vendors accept food stamps.

It’s true here too what people appreciate about their local markets everywhere: regularly seeing your friends and neighbors in this wonderfully colorful, fragrant and positive setting is a real plus for those of us who live here.  A trip around the market always includes greetings and conversations, catching up on the news, occasional surprise encounters, and sharing excitement and cooking ideas about discoveries in this week’s produce.  Knowing your grower and building a relationship with that person throughout the course of weekly visits builds trust in this system of food distribution, and I really like hearing from them what new items will be coming in next week — a case where insider trading tips can actually contribute to the greater good of society!

This weekend marks the beginning of summer in the garden; tonight’s full moon is an important milestone on the planting calendar.  15 more crates of herbs have been added in the last month, among them dandelion greens, sylvetta arugula, cutting celery, purslane, french breakfast radishes . . .   All of these have started sprouting up and growing, and I’ve been harvesting the radishes already for two weeks, with successive plantings timed for continuous harvesting.  These beautiful little gems are used on our vegetable antipasto appetizer.

Just for fun as well, I’ve planted about 25 Red Gold potato plants — more for entertainment and educational purposes really rather than for any notion of bulk consumption.  The cooks and service staff have been fascinated by their beauty and their progress over the last few weeks.  Between the re-planting and subdividing of perennials and the recent seeding of new crops, the garden is now up to 50 containers and still growing.

In these photos you can see that the rosemary bushes have made a successful transition from their winter home inside the cold frame to living outdoors again.  The enormous lavender bush in bloom is also a veteran from last year’s garden, as well as the thyme, mint, chives, lovage, horseradish and lots of volunteer purslane, too!

Before the weather gets too hot to turn on our restaurant AC units, I have relied upon captured rainwater and a few short sprays of the garden hose in the early evening.  But now that summer is upon us, the condensed water produced by the AC units will provide enough drip irrigation for the entire season.

Spring is now in full swing around here, and with it now we are loving the arrival of the early green vegetables: peas, pea tips, spinach, fava beans, asparagus . . .

During this month of May we try to offer several different preparations of asparagus each week:  on our regular menu, a shaved raw asparagus salad with bittergreens, manchego cheese and anchovy vinaigrette; on our Sunday Night menu, roasted asparagus in a warm salad with an olive oil-poached Aracauna egg and black truffle vinaigrette; as a vegetable accompaniment to the skillet-roasted skate on our current menu we use sautéed asparagus tips;  on our Monday Night Tapas Bar menu, grilled asparagus spears drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with grated piave cheese.

These four menu offerings display the versatility of asparagus and three different methods for preparing this wonderful spring treat.  Anyone who has seen asparagus growing in the field understands even better from that experience the exuberant and urgent nature of its freshness and appreciates the tender green and pleasant mildly bitter quality of brand-new spears.  Whenever possible, we try to avoid pre-cooking it in salted water, and as you can see none of these three presentations use that step.

Freshness is a must with this vegetable, and thanks to our farmer friends I usually prefer to serve it raw to give the diners a clean, true impression of this vegetable — not the watered-down version.  Similar to our (somewhat unusual) approach also with shaved artichokes or brussels sprouts leaves, a little salt and lemon juice will bring out the unique flavor qualities inherent in this vegetable.  So, I recommend that you try using fresh, raw asparagus the next time you plan to use it in a salad, and that you avoid pre-cooking it before grilling.

A fantastic month of April weather here has helped things move along nicely on the roof.  Much time spent up there in the last few weeks replanting containers of perennial herbs that survived the cold of winter — chives, lovage, thyme, mint, rosemary, lavender — now all in new crates with fresh compost and already showing lots of new growth.  Two weeks ago, I did my first complete harvest of the chive crop, providing enough for our kitchen use for 4 consecutive days, and then divided all of these plants into 2 and replanted, thereby doubling our crop for 2010 — now totaling 30 separate plants!

Also recently started new seeds and seedlings of annuals  including parsley, chervil, sage, sorrel, dandelion greens and micro-greens.  First little crop of French breakfast radishes went in this week, too.  Now up to 35 crates of herbs, with a plan for 15 more in the next 6 weeks as the weather continues to warm up.

The herbs from the rooftop garden are already making a big impact on the menu here this month.  I am especially fond of the beautiful dish on our Sunday menu of sautéed halibut with a white wine butter sauce flavored with lovage and chervil.  Trimming and re-growth provide just enough of these two herbs to flavor 2 dozen orders for each week’s special Sunday menu during this spring season.

The first time I visited la Boquería, Barcelona’s famous covered market, I was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.  All the hams hanging overhead, the amazing fish and shellfish counters, the fresh mushrooms, those beautiful figs, . . . !!!  But you might be surprised when I say that the display that impressed me the most was the salt cod stand.  Do I remember correctly when I counted 47 different cuts/grades/presentations — is that possible, or just a mild exaggeration to make my point when telling this story?  After all, salt cod is salt cod is salt cod, right?

Like the potato in Peru, the closer you get to the source the more variety you witness.  In Spain, they have come up with a staggering number of ways to preserve and use salted cod in their cooking.  At that market, I was in line behind a few women, each of whom purchased several different cuts and qualities of it for use in different dishes to be cooked at home that week.  Some of it resembled the finest halibut fillet, immaculate, pearly-white thick slabs, moist and only very lightly-salted, that looked good enough to slice and eat right on the spot — the likes of which I certainly had never seen before!

These are moments of inspiration for a cook.

And one of my best resulted in a fish stew using salt cod as the base.  Adapting a recipe from Galicia (on the Atlantic coast of Spain, ground zero for salt cod!), I combine minced salt cod with onion, garlic, potato, lots of leeks, escarole, white wine, water and olive oil in a stock pot.  Unique in my repertoire of soup-making, this is the only soup recipe I have that doesn’t follow the typical progression of sautéing vegetables first, adding seasonings then other ingredients and liquids — all of the ingredients go into the pot together cold and at the same time, then the pot goes on the flame to simmer for 90 minutes.   No need for fish stock; in fact I’m making one as the soup cooks.  No need for long soaking of the salt cod; in fact a light rinse is all that I want because its special salty aged flavor helps to season the soup as the vegetables cook and the wine works its magic.  The result is a flavorful liquid tasting of all those vegetables, with a pervasive underpinning of white umami — subtle, light and completely invigorating.

In the restaurant, I use this soup to simmer chunks of fresh cod and littlenecks.  The soup flavors these latter ingredients, and in the case of the littlenecks they return their flavor favor back to the soup.  I was very flattered when Corby Kummer selected this recipe for inclusion in “The Pleasures of Slow Food”, published by Chronicle Books (2002).

Garbure is the name of the cabbage, bean and vegetable stew from Gascony region in Southwest France.  The version that we make here at Rendezvous features lots of savoy cabbage, some smoked bacon, cannellini beans, white wine, chicken stock and a few other vegetables: onion, garlic, carrot and potato.  For those of you who are familiar with our signature dish, Gason-style Duck 3 Ways, it is the stew on top of which we serve the sliced duck breast, the smoked garlic sausage and the joint of duck leg confit.  The pleasure of this dish is in the mixing of the meats with the stew, bite by bite, for a wonderful combination of flavors, the whole thing tasting even better than the sum of its parts!

Some of our guests tell us that this duck-and-garbure combination reminds them of Cassoulet, and I can understand why they might say that, but in my view the dishes are more different than they are alike.   True enough; both of these preparations include meat and beans and come from the same general region of France.  But the garbure itself can stand up very well on its own without any additional meats or garnishes, and in fact I enjoy it regularly for lunch as a hearty soup with a piece of crusty bread.

And here’s how we make it:

2C        dry cannellini beans, cooked until tender

1lb       smoked bacon, cut into lardons

1           onion, peeled and cut into thick slices

4           cloves garlic, chopped

1           savoy cabbage, outer leaves and core removed, sliced 1/2″ thick

1           large carrot, peeled and cut into quarter-rounds 1/2″ thick

1           russet potato, peeled and cut into quarter-rounds 1/2″ thick

1           sprig fresh thyme

1C        dry white wine

2C        chicken stock

kosher salt and cracked black pepper

water to cover

In a 2 1/2 quart saucepan, cook the cannellini beans in water with a 2 cloves of chopped garlic, 2T olive oil and 1T salt, stirring occasionally, until they are tender.  You might need to add more water from time to time in order to keep them covered by 1″.  It is important to use good quality beans and to cook them until they really begin to soften a bit. When the beans are done cooking, there should still be a bit of the flavorful liquid in the pot that tastes like beans, garlic and olive oil.

Very Important Chef’s Note #1: Most people undercook beans — don’t be like them!  Very Important Chef’s Note #2: Don’t drain the beans; keep that yummy liquid!

Meanwhile, in a larger saucepan (@ 8 quarts), render the lardons until they are nicely browned.  Add the cabbage, onion and garlic, and using a little olive oil in addition to the rendered bacon fat, sauté until translucent, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper as you go.  Add the rest of the vegetables and continue to sauté for 3-4 more minutes, seasoning lightly with salt.  Add the thyme, wine and chicken stock and a splash of water if necessary to cover.  Bring to a simmer, check for seasoning, and then cook until the carrots and potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

At this point, add the cooked beans (and their liquid!) to the vegetables and stir in.  Continue to simmer this together for 5 minutes to allow the flavors to meld, checking the seasoning once more.  At this point, you can do as we do at the restaurant and eat this soup right away or use it with other meats  for a more complicated meal.

Chef’s note: you can make this stew one day ahead, but just make sure to cool it down completely before storing it in the fridge.  It’s the kind of stew that somehow seems to taste even better the next day!

A little background and history: early experiments with various herbs and vegetables led me to focus almost exclusively on growing herbs for use in our kitchen. I’m lucky to occupy a one-story building with a flat roof, and access in easy (if you don’t mind steep ladders!). In spite of our urban setting, Cambridge’s low scale allows us abundant broad daylight and plenty of direct sunlight up there. The garden is built entirely of readily available recycled materials: bean crates and bushel baskets from our vegetable suppliers that are lined with slats cut from cardboard boxes from other deliveries, filled with dirt and organic compost provided by some of our farmer friends. The natural irrigation system during the summer season comes from the condensed water that drips from the large air-conditioning units on the roof as it puddles and meanders in a slow river across the roof to the gutter; I simply place the containers in the way of this river and the plant roots are able to “capillate” according to their needs through the slats in the crates and cardboard. Amazingly, between the drip irrigation, periodic rains and captured rainwater, there’s no need to use the garden hose ever between Memorial Day and Labor Day all throughout the height of the growing season — not even one single time!

I’ve done plenty of little experiments over the years: tomatoes, etc. But vegetables have too many specific requirements — soils variations, sunshine and water. But herbs are generally a bit more tolerant and forgiving, and I stand a much better chance with them of coming closer to obtaining yields that can actually supply our needs here at the restaurant.  The best successes I’ve had in this department: hot chilies for use in our ceviche and French breakfast radishes for our vegetable antipasto.

The usual members of this culinary herb garden include: rosemary, thyme, sage, wild marjoram, parsley, lovage, cilantro, basil, purslane, mint and chives. Several of these herbs are perennials that survive the harsh New England winters in their frozen containers and come back to life each spring in amazing fashion. I divide the roots of the chives and mint every new growing season and have doubled the number of these plants each of the last couple of years. The thyme, sage and lovage struggle in this setting and have had mixed results in bouncing back. The rest are annuals that I purchase from catalogs or from an herb farm at the Central Square Farmers’ Market and plant new each summer. In all, I had 35 containers of herbs up on the roof last summer.

The rosemary bushes are my special pride and joy, and I have 14 of them. They require the most work for me to keep them alive throughout the year, but they’re worth it! The last couple of years, I’ve moved them down from the roof to inside the restaurant during the winter months — we’re also very lucky to have the big glass atrium that provides lots of daylight inside throughout the winter. But now after several years they’re getting just too big and heavy to carry around.

To solve this problem — and to get back to the subject of why this year is different and better — last fall I built a cold-frame on the roof out of cedar lumber and old windows (from an architectural salvage warehouse in New Bedford) to house these large plants and keep them warm (enough) to survive the frigid cold of winter here in New England. My strategy worked! The rosemary bushes survived; they didn’t love it, but they were protected and they got just enough warmth (roof vent from the restaurant’s bathrooms!) and sunlight from December through March to make it. During the rare occasions that we would get a break in temperature and some relatively warm rain, I could hop up there and remove the windows for them to soak it up. And now with the warmer weather and increased daylight they are starting to take off again, well ahead of their usual spring schedule!

In addition to the cold-frame, I also built a large compost bin on the roof last fall and started making more of my own dirt. This is also home to my earthworm collection, at this point now numbering somewhere between 2000-3000 by my most recent calculations.

Now that the cold-frame has served it’s purpose for the rosemary plants, I’m ready to use it to start seedlings for this year’s garden. The chives have started growing already in there, and in April they’ll be followed by other herb seedlings that I recently purchased (ahead of the growing cycle for this zone) from an online organic supplier. It’s only the end of March here in New England, and my urban rooftop garden is already well ahead of schedule in 2010 — it’s going to be a fantastic year!

For the pizzas, we roll out small balls into flat rounds and grill them over a hot wood + charcoal fire. They puff up and blister slightly, get lightly charred in spots and crispy around the edges but remain pleasantly chewy.

For the flatbread, we roll the dough out very thin, brush it with some extra olive oil and sprinkle it with salt. Then we bake it on a large sheet pan in a convection oven at a relatively high heat with the fan on. This method results in a golden flatbread the Sicilians call “carta musica”, or sheet music, and each one is 18X30 inches.

Chef’s secret: we infuse the olive oil used in recipe with fresh rosemary and thyme from our rooftop herb garden, along with cracked fennel seed and black pepper. This produces an especially flavorful and fragrant bread whichever the selected use.

Here’s the recipe:

1/4C good quality olive oil
3T fresh rosemary and thyme leaves, lightly chopped
1T cracked fennel seeds
2t cracked black pepper

1 1/2C warm water (100F)
1T white sugar
1T dry yeast

@4C all-purpose flour
1T kosher salt

In a small saute pan, gently warm the olive oil with the herbs and pepper (@120F). Remove from the heat and let cool slightly before using.

Meanwhile, dissolve the sugar in the warm water in a big mixing bowl. Add the yeast and proof it until foamy (4-5 minutes). Add the flour and salt and the infused olive oil. Mix with a rubber spatula until the dough comes together well enough that you can remove it from the bowl. Place it on a lightly-floured work surface and knead for 4-5 minutes until the dough is smooth and shiny. Note: Depending upon the conditions (dry weather, high humidity, etc), you may need to add another couple of small handfuls of flour to the dough to get it right.

At this point, you can proceed with making it into pizza dough, crispy flatbread or focaccia. Or, you can portion the dough and freeze it for later use.

About the time that we opened Rendezvous in late 2005, there was quite a bit of discussion among the dining public and the food media about the issue of bottled water versus tap water in restaurants.  The boom-times in the restaurant business during the late 90’s coincided with the  gaining popularity of bottled water  as a beverage of choice and as a sort of social status symbol.  Fusing these two trends, restaurants of a certain caliber worked hard to sell expensive bottles of water to their guests, using a variety of strategies, and this usually occurred during the first point of contact that guests would have with their server upon being seated at their table.

Barely having had the chance to unfold your napkins or take out your reading glasses, you’d be forced to make the first big decision regarding your dining (and spending) experience.  “Will you be drinking bottled water this evening, or should I take this bottle away?”  This question was often accompanied by attitudes or implications . . . .    Restaurant-goers complained about this treatment, and articles were circulating in the press — it was a hot topic at the time.

Months before we opened the doors to our first guests in November 2005, Nicole and I discussed this specific point as a part of our overall hospitality plan, and we determined that we didn’t want to participate in this aggressive behavior.   Instead, we let the servers pour bottled Poland Springs water (that we bought in 5-gallon jugs and transferred painstakingly into nice unmarked carafes) into the glasses as they came over to greet the guests — all this  at a considerable expense for us . . .  and completely free to the guests!  Slightly fancier bottled sparkling water was kept on hand for purchase by those who specifically requested it.

In our view, the first 5 minutes are very crucial to the restaurant diner’s overall experience.  Addition by subtraction; we wanted to help folks settle in and feel welcome among us by removing this jolting reminder that they had just entered a place of commerce.  Let them ease into their seats,  let go of the worries of the world, and focus on each other for a few minutes at least!  This approach contributed to the friendly, relaxed — yet professional — vibe that we were trying to establish here.  Our guests noticed, and they appreciated the gesture.

We even got a little attention in the press about it — a bonus!  This gentle hospitality strategy turned out to be a critical as well as popular success!  But then, guess what happened . . . .

About a year after we opened, bottled water started drawing lots of criticism for environmental reasons.  This lovely little aspect of our hospitality plan had soon put us on the wrong side of another, more profound issue.  Convinced by the carbon footprint argument, it was easy for us to adapt; we decided to install a water filtration system for the restaurant.  Today, the same, easy welcoming atmosphere exists, water still comes to the table in carafes, and fancy bottled water is still available to guests (but in limited quantities!).  It just goes to show that even if  you have a good, original and well-intended idea, it’s very hard to predict trends in this business.