Debbie's Garden

In the State of Maryland, everybody who doesn't have deer has a garden. Even my sister Debbie, who lives in a lovely ground floor condo, has a garden. She has a patio and grows an amazing variety of veggies, and I am jealous. She has no deer. I do. I have no garden.

When Debbie and Craig came over for a visit and dinner this weekend, they brought some of the harvest from Debbie's garden to share: three varieties of tomatoes, a couple of jalapeno and serrano peppers, and fresh basil. Had I not already started cooking, I'd have used those veggies on the spot. Too bad for Debbie and Craig — dinner was already underway, so the veggies had to wait until the next day.

Don't feel too badly for them. I made them my Ropa Vieja. It wasn't the best batch I've made (sorry guys), but it was still pretty tasty. I sent the leftover stew home with them but kept the pappardelle. I had an idea I'd be able to use it with whatever I came up with for those veggies.

After putting in a few hours in the office Sunday morning, I decided to put the veggies Debbie gave us to good use. I already had a skinless chicken breast thawing in the fridge, so it was time to check the pantry and see what I could come up with. Nothing came to mind immediately, so I asked Claude for some ideas. It gave me a solid recipe for a tomato and basil chicken dish — a good start, and I worked it over. I added a little of this, deleted a little of that, and before long had a concept I liked.

When it came time to cook, I did what I usually do when I'm feeling creative: started with a recipe and changed it as I cooked. I used the fresh veggies from Debbie's garden to make a basil and mozzarella relish (burrata would've been better, but I didn't have any on hand so mozzarella it was). I seared the chicken in a pan, pulled it once it was cooked, and used the pan juices and fond as the base for a creamy chicken and onion sauce. The leftover pappardelle went in right before serving, to rewarm and soak up some of that sauce, then I plated it up with more fresh basil and the smaller tomatoes for garnish. Not an afterthought — a flourish.

Simple, and delicious. The basil was the star, but the tomatoes and peppers held their own. It was good enough that Janet asked if I'd written it down. No dear, I hadn't. But I will now. And I did — every single ingredient and step. I'll probably never make it again, though. Not because it wasn't delicious (it was), and not because I forgot to write it down (I didn't). But because I tailored the dish to the gift my sister gave me from her garden, and I'll never get that same combination of veggies again. Which is one of the many things that makes cooking fun for me. And for Janet, since she gets to eat what I make. It doesn’t always work out as well as it did this time, and that too is part of the fun of cooking. For me, not so much for Janet.

I'll probably get more fresh veggies from other people's gardens, and I'll just have to come up with a new idea for whatever they give me — because in Maryland, when someone hands you fresh veggies from their garden and you don't have one of your own (because — deer), you come up with a dish worthy of the gift.

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