In Brooklyn Bridge Park the slender branches of serviceberry trees hang low with ripe fruit early in the month. The little pomes—inverted coronets—taste sweet when red and applesauce-ish when purple. It is easy to browse quietly for a secluded hour here on urban fruit within arms’ reach. At Pier 6 a bus driver waiting for the start of his shift beside his bus asks, as he sees me reaching up for more, Are those things edible? Yes, sir, I say, they are indeed. As I walk up the low hill at the western extremity of Atlantic Avenue and turn down shaded Henry Street toward home, I think about serviceberry pie, a highlight of my foraging year. I think the bus driver might like it. He might like serviceberry pancakes better, though. What is more American? Pie, period? Or pancakes for breakfast?
At Borough Hall in a light rain, behind the small park where lavender and Fairy roses spill wetly through the wrought-iron fence in a sea of green boxwood, the farmers’ market’s stream of strawberries is replaced by raspberries, glistening red currants, and cherries. Slender pink stalks of rhubarb tip from packing cases. The produce comes from farms up the Hudson Valley and across the river in New Jersey, picked in the last few days, packed in the dark mornings, and trucked in across bridges and through long tunnels to the city. I collect a bagful of red currants for jam and infused gin and a bouquet of succulent purslane for lunch.
On my way to collect milkweed near home, telltale sidewalk litter makes me look up. Mulberries! I have stumbled upon a pair of large trees and find myself diverted by the fruit whose purple stains on my hands and feet put me straight back under Mrs. Du Toit’s next-door tree in Bloemfontein, where I was sent to fill a Pyrex bowl to carry home for dessert, to be served with cream. Or better, Mrs. Newton’s tree on Waverley Road, with branches as sturdy as beams beneath my small bare feet, and whose fruit resembled giant, articulated purple caterpillars.
It will be a week of pies.
June brings the scent I have been waiting for. One evening, standing on the terrace, I know that the linden flowers have opened. Four floors up, the air is fruity and soft. The whole city, if it stopped for a second to inhale, would smell this right now. The little-leaf lindens open first, their creamy, furred clusters dropping scent onto the sidewalks. Enormous big-leaf lindens, or basswood, grow on the edge of Cobble Hill Park, half a block away. The bluestone beneath them lies in the deep shade created by their overlapping, heart-shaped leaves. They are a tree with a secret, shared only in June, when their small waxy flowers, hidden and intensely fragrant in suspended clusters beneath the silver-bottomed foliage, open.
On a hot day when the water of the harbor looks blue we embark on an epic walk from Piet Oudolf’s gardens under the plane trees of the Battery Bosque at the southern tip of Manhattan, up, past the trimmed lawns where giant purple alliums lean towards the water, around, past the South Cove where countrified city pigeons feed on ripe fruit in the branches of the serviceberries growing beneath tall locust trees, along the leafy Esplanade with its rows of trees and shade gardens. We skirt the North Cove and its luxury yachts, walk through Teardrop Park, hidden between skyscraping eco-friendly apartment buildings and their green roofs, up along the baking West Side Highway, skirting riverside parks of waving grasses, and the flat wide, milky river, and veer east toward West 12th Street, where the striking Eremurus have begun to bloom in the Chelsea Meadows section of the High Line, the most populous and most glamorous of New York City parks, by far. We walk its length up to 30th Street, elevated above the western edge of Manhattan, before riding the air-conditioned subway all the way home.
The month heats up. The goldenrain tree in Cobble Hill Park is alight with yellow flowers that drop a week later to make bright, right-angled rivers in the spaces between the pavers on the sidewalk beneath. Orange daylilies are open and pushing their day-long trumpets through the black iron railings. In Red Hook the winter-dead garden at Pier 44 has disappeared beneath mounds of blue catnip and tall spikes of creamy yucca.
I walk home along Henry Street and its bike lane, now a long summer tunnel beneath meeting trees. The air is thick. Apricots are ripening on the tree in the playground a block away from home. My big canvas shopping bags are full. I have found black raspberries.
There are meals to plan.
We eat at least one warm serviceberry pie in June. Its distinctive almond undertone, released by the small seeds inside the red and purple berries, is the taste of early summer. As a foreign-born, naturalized American, I regard pie as edible Americana.
My mother and grandmother used this crust for apple pie. I use it now for every kind of pie. The pastry does not have to rest and is surprisingly delicate. The original recipe called for margarine. What can I say? Those were the wonder years. Mid-twentieth century. They believed.
SERVES FOUR TO SIX 
FOR THE SERVICEBERRY FILLING
5 cups (500 g) serviceberries, stalks removed
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
FOR THE PASTRY
3/4 cup (175 g) unsalted butter
5 tablespoons (65 g) sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 cups (250 g) flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
Vanilla ice cream, for serving
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease a 7 1/2-inch (19-cm) round pan.
Make the filling: In a saucepan, heat the berries and the sugar slowly, covered, taking care not to let them scorch. Once the berries start to exude juice, cook them for another 5 minutes, shaking the pan every now then. Remove from the heat and set the filling aside to cool. Strain off the syrup and reserve it for another use (i.e., cocktails! See this page).
Make the pastry: In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, along with a dusting of flour. Beat again. Gradually beat in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Once the dough comes together, divide it into two pieces, one twice the size of the other. The dough can be rolled out at once, or chilled until needed. Roll the larger piece of dough into a thin disc large enough to line the bottom and sides of the prepared pan. Press the dough gently into place. Roll out the second piece of pastry to cover the top of the pie. Fill the pie with the cooled berries and place the top crust over the filling. Crimp the edges by pushing the sides of the pastry top into the sides of the pastry lining the pan. Make several slits in the pastry top to allow steam to escape. Bake the pie until pale golden and crisp, about 30 minutes.
Serve with very good vanilla ice cream.
Beautiful June.
Abraham Darby continues its first flush, the large flowers bowed by the weight of their petals. Beside the rose the pink and apricot spires of Mexican hyssop attract a profusion of small flying pollinators. The basil begins to resemble the mature herb at last: purple and an interesting mottled green. I nip the growing tips repeatedly to encourage full, fat plants.
We eat more strawberries, and I feed the clever plants, hoping for sweet returns on a fishy investment. I use a bottle of diluted fish and seaweed fertilizer on the terrace every month. Then I have to shut the sliding door for a day, or hold my breath. When the next strawberry crop matures the berries are fatter and shining with ripeness.
The gloriosa lilies begin to open. The strange white tubers—like fat pencils—give rise to stems that are already five feet long, each leaf tip equipped with a cunning prehensile tendril that lassoes any support it senses. The buds are green, like sinister little masks, and they turn pale yellow before flaring open. Each day, their color intensifies until the lovely, recurved petals are an intense pink, before they relax, flattening and receding to a dull flat red.
The buds of the statuesque Silk Road lilies fatten and lengthen. One morning I find the first flower open. Its carmine throat is painted with lime, the long, highly suggestive pistil surrounded by five amber anthers which turn dusty and yellow as their pollen loosens. I tether the tall stems to prevent collapse—the lilies are heavy, like perfumed sails in a small breeze. Their pollen is a terrace hazard. After watering the garden I often discover, hours later, permanent acid-yellow stripes on my arms, or neck, or clothes. Nothing removes them. For days I live as one jaundiced.
At night the lilies’ unstoppable perfume spills over the edge of the roof. Slow trails of nectar slide down their broad petals, luring moths who find this small garden among the roofs, sensitive to scent in the dark. The clear syrup is sweet and tastes like cloves.
The lilies announce summer, blooming in the best of it, even as the worst lies ahead. The longest day of the year has passed, and every day will begin to shorten even as the temperatures and oppressively damp heat increase. One day I pull the sliding door closed and turn on the air conditioner for the first time. The sound of the world outside disappears beneath its breathy hum. At night we turn on a fan to propel the cold air into our bedroom as we sleep. We are twice-cocooned from the sounds of the Brooklyn summer night. Ambulances, fire trucks, drunks, crickets, the morning robin chorus.
Several breba figs have ripened on the branches of the fig tree. They are huge, pendulous with their weight. I touch their increasingly smooth skins delicately each morning to test for ripeness. I pick the fattest at last, and eat it alone in the late afternoon, standing on the gravel of the terrace and pulling back the soft skin. It tastes like honey. Ten months of waiting are rewarded by the taste of that first fig, which summons and preserves a childhood where I climbed a tree higher than the roof of the house to eat the plump pink fruit, long ago and alone in the branches.
A cocozelle squash—a zucchini with racing stripes—turns almost overnight from a tiny vegetable to a huge bruiser, and we grill it in slices on the fire with squirts of lime juice. Beside it, small round calabacita squash swell, still attached to their flower petals. I have been picking handfuls of black raspberries and transparent white currants. The fava bean plants have made beans. This symbolic crop speaks eloquently of the true cycle of local seasons.
In the heat the shiso leaves, slow to start, are filling out at last but limp with heat. I pick them for wrapping around bites of barbecued short rib.
I pull the first potatoes. The pot yields a dozen new Yukon Golds.
The spring-planted garlic is ready. The new bulbs, with their cloves separated from each other by supple, delicate membranes, are smaller than their professionally grown counterparts but pink skinned and pungent.
We bring picnics up, lay a kikoi on the silvertop and set our places—forks, knives, pressed tin plates. The cat joins us. Sundown is now well after 8:00 P.M. We sit watching the glittering water, the small, slow ferries to Governor’s Island. In the deepening sky above us the chimney swifts swoop. The air is warm well after dark.
I wake to a storm, lightning flickering in the gray morning light and thunder booming above. Hard drops of rain hit the skylights, percussive as hail. When the knitted and heavy sky begins to loosen and disperse, cumulus clumps pattern a perfect blue sky. Every plant on the terrace is defined and crisp, the colors bright. I can tell, standing on the inside of the double-paned glass of the sliding door, that there has been a change. I turn off the air conditioner and pull open the door. The air is cool.
We have been granted a reprieve.
It may be a tart but it resembles a pizza. The difference is the dough, which is a miracle: flour and olive oil, and surprisingly flaky. Easiest thing ever.
I adapted this recipe from one of my most beloved—and most beautiful—cookbooks, Roger Vergé’s Entertaining in the French Style. He makes a Swiss chard tart. I use the pigweed and lamb’s quarters that I collect in Prospect Park or right outside, on the terrace.
SERVES FOUR
2 1/4 cups (280 g) flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup (120 ml) lukewarm water
1/4 cup (60 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 1/2 pounds (680 g) lamb’s quarter or pigweed leaves
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 eggs
1/2 cup (120 ml) heavy cream
3/4 cup (100 g) oil-cured black olives (pitted or not)
Make the pastry: In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, oil, and water and mix quickly. Form the dough into a ball, flatten it a little, wrap it in a very slightly damp cloth, and place in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.
Make the filling: In a large sauté pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the shallots, letting them sweat for 5 to 8 minutes, until they take light color. Add the lamb’s quarter or pigweed leaves and stir. Cover the pan for a minute to help the leaves steam, and then stir them again to wilt thoroughly. Add the lemon juice. Cook until the greens are just tender. Season with salt and pepper, and set aside to cool.
In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream, and a pinch of salt.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Grease a 16-inch (40-cm) baking sheet.
On a floured board, roll the pastry out into a large disc, wrap it around the rolling pin, and transfer it to the prepared baking sheet. Crimp up the edges to form a low border. Distribute the cooked leaves and shallots evenly across the surface of the dough. Scatter the olives over. Pour the egg and cream mixture evenly across the top, and slide the tray into the oven. Bake until the pastry is crisp, about 15 minutes. Eat hot or at room temperature.
For a meal as spicy as this one I allow myself to slum it with the wine: I consolidate the contents of two or three bottles that have been lurking in the fridge. A New Zealand sauvignon blanc, a Red Hook rosé, a viognier from Oregon.
Trust me.
I pour them into a carafe and add thinly sliced, very good peaches, as well as a tall stalk of mint. This is covered and chilled for a couple of hours, long enough for the peaches to give up some of their juice.
Fruit turns into something quite different when treated with fresh herbs, salt, and spice. This is healthy eating at its delicious best.
SERVES TWO
1 ripe Hass avocado, pitted, peeled, and cut into small chunks
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 large mango
Juice of 1/2 lime
Fresh cilantro, leaves only, washed and dried
1 fresh jalapeño, sliced into very thin rounds, with seeds
Pile the avocado into a serving bowl or plate. Season it with salt and pepper. Slice the mango thinly and top the avocado with the slices. Squeeze some of the lime juice over the fruit. Add the cilantro leaves and thin slices of jalapeño. Squeeze the rest of the lime over the salad and season again with salt and plenty of pepper.
I love the strong flavors of Southeast Asia, with tart and hot and sweet all bouncing off one another in a single mouthful.
Head-on shrimp are best for grilling but they are very hard to find unless I go to Chinatown. The next best thing is to keep the tail shells on. If you can buy whole shrimp, all the better: The heads pack all the flavor.
Grilled shrimp cook quickly, needing only a small fire, or a flash in the pan if you have no fire. Perfect summer food.
SERVES TWO
24 medium shrimp, deveined but shells left on
1/2 cup (10 g) finely chopped cilantro stems
1/4 cup (60 ml) fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon finely chopped jalapeño
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons coconut oil (optional)
In a bowl, toss the cleaned shrimp with the cilantro, lime juice, fish sauce, jalapeño, and sugar. Cover and marinate in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour or up to 3 hours.
Build a small fire in the grill. When the coals have formed a fine layer of gray ash, cook the shrimp for 4 or 5 minutes a side, until they are pink and opaque, periodically spooning the leftover marinade over the tails. (If you are cooking on a gas griddle or on the stove, heat the coconut oil until rippling and cook the shrimp, tossing, for about 5 minutes, until pink.)
Place the cooked shrimp into a bowl and eat at once, using your fingers.
Our meals are now almost always eaten outdoors—on the terrace at the stone table, on the roof, or at a nearby park, catching the breeze off the water. On warm days I avoid the kitchen and cook outside, the hot coals glowing beneath the coils of garlic scapes, asparagus, and the first summer squash from the roof, alongside a serious porterhouse, or the sizzle of a roadkill chicken.
Or these delectable short ribs. I like to wrap morsels of them in fragrant shiso leaves (known as sesame leaf in Korea).
Beef Short Ribs and Garlic Scapes
The scarlet syrup that oozes from serviceberries destined for pie (see this page) is the perfect excuse to mix an early summer evening cocktail with my go-to bubbly, prosecco. Strain the syrup from the pie berries and decant it into a small bottle. Keep refrigerated. It will last for months.
MAKES ONE DRINK
1/2 ounce (1 tablespoon) serviceberry syrup
Prosecco
Measure the serviceberry syrup into a Champagne flute or coupe. Top with ice-cold prosecco.
The first tender beans have begun to appear at markets. When I have blanched them, for this salad or for salade niçoise, I tend to gobble them greedily, straight from the strainer where they are draining, leaving too few for the designated salad. Fresh green or wax beans are delicately sweet and are easily a simple meal in themselves, heaped in a bowl and drizzled with good oil or a little pat of butter. How often do we feed ourselves that simply? Not often enough.
SERVES SIX
2 big handfuls of green beans, trimmed
FOR THE LEMON AND SESAME VINAIGRETTE
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon sugar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, leaves only
In a pot with a lid, boil water to which you have added 1 teaspoon of salt. Add the beans when the water begins to bubble. Blanch for 2 minutes, remove immediately and drain and refresh under cold water. Pat dry.
Make the vinaigrette: In a large bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste until the sugar is dissolved. Whisk in the oils until emulsified, then whisk in the cream.
Add the beans, onions, and parsley to the bowl and toss well. Season with additional pepper. Arrange in a serving bowl.
It took me years to realize that short ribs could be grilled and remain succulent. They are one of my favorite things to eat.
SERVES SIX
6 big beef short ribs, on the bone
1/3 cup (80 ml) soy sauce
1/4 cup (60 ml) fresh lime or lemon juice
1 tablespoon sugar
1 bunch scallions, finely chopped, green and white parts (about 1 1/2 cups / 150 g)
1 thumb-size piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
1 bunch garlic scapes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Make the ribs: Combine the ribs, soy sauce, lime or lemon juice, sugar, scallions, and ginger in a large bowl and allow the meat to marinate in the fridge for as long as you can, preferably 6 hours, turning the ribs a couple of times.
Make the scapes: Wash the scapes, dry them, and nip off the tough ends and any wilted heads. Toss them with the oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.
Make a fire in the grill. When the coals have formed a fine layer of gray ash, place the ribs on the grill bone side down and grill for about 12 minutes. Watch for flames as the fat starts to drip, and move the ribs to the edges of the grill if there is a conflagration. Spoon the chunky bits of the marinade over the meat occasionally. Turn the ribs to cook the other side. Leave for another 10 to 12 minutes until the sides of the meat are no longer soft to the touch and the meat is dark brown.
While the ribs are cooking arrange the garlic scapes around them and turn frequently to prevent too much scorching. I never quite manage this. The scapes turn tender and sweet.
Remove the ribs to a plate and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Place the scapes on a serving platter.
Cut the meat from each bone and slice—do not lose the good juice. Plate and serve with the scapes and the delicious bones alongside, for primitive gnawing.
This tender log stuffed with whipped cream looks clever and complicated. Clever it may be, but complicated it ain’t.
SERVES SIX
5 eggs, separated
6 tablespoons (75 g) granulated sugar
5 tablespoons (27 g) cocoa powder
1 tablespoon flour
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons milk
FOR THE FILLING
1 cup (240 ml) whipping cream
1 tablespoon superfine sugar
6 tablespoons (90 ml) red currant jam
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter a rimmed baking sheet and line it with parchment paper, also lightly buttered. The paper must come up and just above the sides.
Make the roll: In a large bowl, whip the yolks with 4 tablespoons (50 g) of the granulated sugar until pale and thick. Stir in the cocoa powder, flour, salt, and milk. In another very clean bowl, whip the whites until softly fluffy and add the remaining 2 tablespoons granulated sugar. Continue whipping the whites until they form soft mounds.
Take a quarter of the whipped whites and cut them into the cocoa mixture with a spatula or large spoon. Add the rest of the whites, blending well but gently.
Pour the mixture into the prepared baking sheet, spreading it to touch all sides of the pan. Bake for 10 minutes and then check it. If the center is still very moist, give it another 2 minutes and check again. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the baking sheet.
Loosen the edges of the parchment from the sheet with a butter knife. Cover the baking sheet with a damp dishcloth. Flip the baking sheet and cloth over in one smooth motion. Place the cloth and sheet on a work surface, cloth side down, and lift off the sheet. Peel the parchment paper from the cake.
Whip the cream with the sugar until stiff. Spread the cream evenly over the cake, and then dab the jam evenly over the cream.
Starting at one shorter side and using the lifted end of the dishcloth to push it along, start rolling the cake. Once the cake is in a log shape, transfer it very gently to a flat dish, seam side down, cover, and keep it cool until you need it.
Dust with confectioners’ sugar at the last minute.
