The transition into fall is now in full effect with the start of the cooler weather. Today, at the market, I saw the first signs of the season with yellow potatoes, braising greens, apples and fall squashes all piled in the farmers' bins. This is my favorite season. The produce is so flavorful and versatile. Best of all, we get to braise again! The summer is just to hot for that. So to celebrate the beginning of our fall season, here's a great braised beef shortrib that will go perfectly with those squashes, potatoes and braising greens from your local farmer's market. Enjoy.

Yield: 5 Portions

5 Beef Shortribs (12 oz each)

1/2 Cup Small Diced Onion

1/4 Cup Small Diced Celery

1/4 Cup Small Diced Carrot

1/2 Cup Red Wine

2 Tablespoons Tomato Paste

1 cup of Veal Stock

2.5 cups of Demi Glace (you can make your own or you can buy this from a number of good food stores)

2 bay leaves

Fresh chopped herbs (to taste)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Vegetable oil, as needed



1. Clean/trim the short ribs and season liberally with salt and pepper. It’s best to season the meat 1 hour or so before cooking it to let the seasonings set in.

2. Heat enough vegetable to coat the bottom of a pot or braiser. When the oil heats, place the ribs in the oil and sear until brown on all sides, remove and set aside.

3. Add the onion, celery and carrot to the pot and cook until the onions are golden brown. Add the tomato paste and stir well, scraping the bottom for about 1-2 minutes.

4. Add the wine to the pan, stirring and scraping the bottom and reduce by 1/2.

5. Add the ribs back to the pan with any juices the ribs gave off.

6. Add the demi glace and stock (be sure the sauce mixture covers the ribs by 2/3 or so).

7. Bring to a simmer over low to medium heat, cover the pot. Cook for 1.5 hours, turning occasionally to keep all sides moist.

8. When the ribs are fork tender (you can easily put a fork into the meat and pull it out with little resistance), remove from the sauce and set aside.

9. Skim the sauce to remove the grease at the top and continue to reduce until it reaches the proper consistency.

10. Strain the sauce with a chinois or china cap, season with salt and pepper.

11. Serve the ribs with any number of sides like celeriac puree, mashed sweet potato, root vegetables and braised greens with a good amount of sauce.

We've mentioned tomatoes a lot this season. And, rightfully so as it’s the best tomato season I've seen in a long time. This weekend we're featuring tomatoes on a seasonal menu, used in 4 different preparations from appetizer to dessert. I'm amazed at the different flavor profiles of all the heirlooms. Here's what we'll be using for the different items on tonight's menu:

The Bradley Farm's "Vinny" (named by Ray the owner and a similar tomato to those used in San Marsano): rich, beefy almost stewed characteristic and flavors - we'll use this tonight for the chipotle tomato marinade on the steak and some in the tomato bisque.

Aunt Ruby's German Green: sweet and bright with refreshing acidity - we'll use this as the prominent tomato in the salad and a little in the sorbet for sweetness

Striped Germans: Sweet, fleshy and a somewhat silky texture - this will be added to the salad for some nice color

Rose de Beurre: Delicate with a hint of sweetness a very silky texture - this will be the main variety for the sorbet for texture and sweetness along with the German Green

Black Crimm: deep, dark beefy flavor - this will be added to the salad as an accent to add a more savory profile

Husk Tomatoes: sweet like candy, tiny little tomatoes with a husk around it like a tomatillo - we'll use these as a garnish for the sorbet

I'm very excited about the sorbet tonight, here's how it is made:



Yield: 8 - 4oz portions

4 Tablespoons Sugar

2 oz Water

8 Large Ripe Tomatoes

2 Lemons, juiced

3/4 Teaspoon Salt



1. Bring the sugar and water to a boil and cool.

2. Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water until the skin loosens (only about 30 seconds) and cool immediately in a mixture of ice and water (an ice bath).

3. Peel and seed the Tomatoes

4. Puree the tomatoes in a food processor and combine with the sugar mixture, lemon juice and salt - puree until smooth.

5. Process in an ice cream maker or follow the next set of directions for the old fashioned way.



Old Fashioned Ice Cream Procedure: One of our chefs showed me this when our ice cream maker broke. He said this is how he did it with his family as a child in Mexico.



1. Get two bain maries, one larger than the other so they nest inside one another but not too tight (a bain marie is a tubular shaped metal vessel of different sizes)

2. Fill the large bain marie half way with a mixture of half ice, half water and 1 cup of salt so a slush forms. Set the smaller bain marie inside so the sides are in contact with the ice mixture. Adjust the amounts as necessary. What is important is that the water ice mixture is ice cold and is in contact with the small bain marie on all sides.

3. Add the sorbet mixture to the smaller bane marie and mix with a rubber spatula. You will see sorbet starting to form against the walls of the bain marie, scrape these with the spatula so new solids form.

4. Continue this until you have a nice creamy texture and then put in a container in the freezer.

With all the fuss over the tomatoes this season, I overlooked one of the best summer treats of them all: squash blossoms. These are the blossoms where the actual squash will form. They are beautiful yellow-orange flowers and delicious. I find actually I love the texture more than perhaps the actual flavor which is very delicate. I find they are great stuffed with a little goat cheese, pan-fried and served with or without a fresh sauce like tomato or roasted red pepper coulis.

Crispy Squash Blossoms with Goat Cheese & Ricotta

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp minced garlic

1/2 cup fresh ricotta (high quality ricotta, try Salvatore from Brooklyn, NY)

1 tsp fresh chopped parsley

1 tsp fresh chopped thyme

1/2 cup fresh goat cheese

Salt and Pepper as needed

12 squash blossoms

1 cup vegetable oil


1. Heat a sauté pan with 1 tbsp of olive oil

2. Add the garlic and sweat

3. Add the herbs and goat cheese and mix well until the goat cheese has softened

4. Add the ricotta and mix well

5. While the cheese mixture is warm (no hot), place in a piping bag and fill each blossom with about 1.5 tbsp of the cheese mixture. Twist the open end once full to seal.

6. Once all the blossoms are full, heat the vegetable oil until it just starts to smoke slightly.

7. Fry the blossoms on both sides until golden brown

8. Set on a paper towel for a minute before serving

9. Serve hot with a light tomato sauce, roasted pepper coulis or other light sauces

Does anyone remember last year's tomato blight in NY? It was awful. In August when everyone was expecting to see the beginning of great tomatoes, we had nothing. It wasn’t until September that I even got 1 tomato I thought was worthy of having on our menu, and that only lasted about a week. Well, no blight this year. With little rain and a hot summer, we started seeing great tomatoes in July and today, there were so many heirloom varieties at the market it was hard to choose between them. Of course we'll have them on our menu tonight. Here's a great recipe for a ranch style herb dressing that is just perfect with these flavorful tomatoes:



Tomato Salad:

Pick some great heirloom tomatoes, the uglier the better, as many colors as possible, slice and cut them in different shapes and sizes.

Add some of your favorite vegetables for garnishes: thinly sliced red onion or scallion, cucumber, julienne bell peppers, radish - just not too much, let the tomatoes stand out

Drizzle with the following dressing recipe.



Summer Herb Ranch Dressing:

1 cup sour cream

1 cup mayonnaise

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 lemon, juiced

4 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon minced parsley

1 tablespoon minced thyme

1 tablespoon minced chives

1 tablespoon minced shallot

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon celery seed



Combine all ingredients and mix well. Best made 24 hours prior to using the dressing.

The egg is one of my favorite foods, and it is quite possibly the most important food. It’s used in so many recipes from mayonnaise to custards, pastas, cakes and, of course, on its own. Until recently, I didn't realize the importance of the source of the egg. I always just kind of thought an egg is an egg. This is simply not the case. Today I bought some eggs from Bradley Farm, amazingly different from the typical grocery store variety. The yolk is so silky and dark orange. They add the perfect texture to salads, not hard boiled and crumbled but rather poached, fried and still creamy in the center so it breaks open over the salad and coats the bitter greens, add a little salt, and this is a life changing culinary experience.


Anyway, many people ask me how we make our crispy poached eggs that we serve here on our salads at Bistro Ten 18, so I thought it would be a good idea to give everyone the technique. It's very simple:

Crispy Poached Egg (4 servings)
6 large organic eggs from a great farmers market stand

1 tsp of chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, rosemary, or any other flavors you may want to impart)

1 cup of panko bread crumbs

pinch of salt and pepper

1/2 cup of all-purpose flour

vegetable oil, as needed

water as needed

1 tbsp vinegar

ice as needed




1. Crack two of the eggs in a bowl and beat well
2. Mix together the herbs, and place aside in a container

3. Mix together the flour and a pinch of salt and pepper

4. Set up a standard breading procedure line with the flour, egg and breadcrumb mixture

5. Heat the water until it boils. Once it boils add the vinegar and turn down the heat enough to just keep the water from bubbling (this is the perfect poaching temperature)

6. Make an ice bath in a bowl, 3/4 water and 1/4 ice.

7. Crack the remaining 4 eggs in separate containers then slide each one in the water individually until the egg is just poached. It is important here that you don’t over poach them. Just cook them long enough so the whites coagulate around the yolk then remove them and put them into the ice bath to cool rapidly.

8. Once the eggs are cool, bread each egg handling them very carefully: flour, coat with egg and then coat with bread crumbs - be sure entire egg is well coated. Set aside.


9.Heat the oil to about 365 degrees (if you don’t have a thermometer that goes up that high, heat the oil and test the temperature by dropping a piece of bread in the oil - it should brown nicely in about 60 seconds or so) - fry each egg until golden brown and serve immediately over your favorite salad and a little sea salt.

The market was bustling early today as people were rustling through corn, the first tomatoes, zucchini, squash and just about everything else you could imagine. We are definitely in full swing and have come a long way since the early spring.

I always like to keep an eye out for interesting stuff. Last year I was introduced to purslane, a sort of weed with a crispy watery texture that grows wild all over the place and used a lot in Mexican cooking. Today, at Bradly Farm's stand I was introduced to Callaloo, similar to spinach and used a lot in Jamaican cooking. We'll be serving it tonight with a number of our dishes, and I provided a great simple recipe below to enjoy it with chicken, steaks, fish or just about anything. Its best enjoyed simply sauteed with a little garlic and onion. You can keep a lot of the stem on or remove it. I found I like to keep about half of the stem intact.

Sauteed Callaloo
1 lb Callaloo, stemmed and cleaned
3 tablespoons of thinly sliced garlic scapes
1 tablespooon of minced shallots
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of butter
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Sweat the garlic scapes and shallots in the butter and olive oil over medium heat.
2. Turn up the heat and add the Callaloo leaves
3. Sautee until tender and fully wilted (be carefull not to overcook, you will want to keep the nice bright green color and some texture).
4. Season with salt and pepper.

I love watching the summer unfold. It starts in the Northeast with asparagus. It's monumental every year; it marks the beginning. Then, each week a new fruit or vegetable appears, and I wonder what it will be the following week. This week, it was the end of strawberries but the beginning of blueberries. These blueberries are like candy, they are so sweet but still a little tart; they are addictive. At Bistro Ten 18 we have to hide them, so they don't disappear throughout the day. Just on the trip from the van to the prep room we must have lost a couple of pints as everyone clamors to try the season's first pick.

Here's a great simple recipe for bread pudding using blueberries. Enjoy!

Blueberry Bread Pudding
4 cups of fresh blueberries
1 qt large diced bread (baguette, brioche, white bread)
1 cup milk
.5 cup cream
2 oz rum
1 tsp vanilla extract
.5 tsp nutmeg, ground
.5 ts cinnamom, ground
6 each eggs
butter as needed

1. Beat eggs
2. Mix all ingredients together well
3. Butter 8 - 8oz ramikens
4. Fill each ramiken with mixture
5. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes and rotate and bake another 10 minutes

Serve with vanilla ice cream