THE SILVERPINE BAY KITCHEN

Recipes from When the Leaves Began to Fall

Four recipes from the counters, kitchens, and community tables of Silverpine Bay.

Nikki’s Honey-Lavender Oat Latte

The One From the Video

Makes 1, or 2 if the day calls for it, and some days call for it.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons culinary dried lavender, the kind you can eat, not the kind from the garden center
1 cup oat milk
1 shot espresso, or ⅓ cup strong drip coffee if that’s what you’ve got
2 tablespoons raw honey, plus more for drizzling
1 teaspoon bee pollen, for scattering
1 small piece of honeycomb, for the rim

Instructions

Steep the lavender in the hot oat milk for five minutes, longer if you need the five minutes more than the tea. Strain it. Nobody wants to floss lavender out of their teeth mid-conversation. Froth what’s left until it holds a shape.
Pour the espresso into the cup first, then the honey, then the milk, slowly, so it layers instead of mixing. Add extra honey if you’re having a day. Add extra honey regardless.
Scatter the bee pollen across the foam like you’re not thinking about it too hard. Set the honeycomb on the rim right before you hand it over, not before, or it drowns.
Drink it by a window. Preferably one with a harbor in it. A parking lot will technically still count. Don’t tell me about it.

~Nikki

Jonah’s Rosemary Olive Oil Loaf

Found in the bottom of the basket. In pencil. Wasting no words.
This makes two loaves on purpose. Bake them the morning you mean to knock on somebody’s door, and carry the second one over while it’s still warm, because the warm does about half the talking.

Ingredients

4 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons fine salt
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1¾ cups warm water
¼ cup olive oil, the one you’d defend out loud, plus more for your hands
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped, plus one whole sprig
Flaky salt for the top

Instructions

Stir the flour, salt, and yeast together. Add the water and oil and mix until there’s no dry flour left. It will look wrong. Cover the bowl and leave it on the counter overnight. It does its best work unsupervised.
In the morning, oil your hands and fold in the chopped rosemary. Divide in two, shape into rounds on parchment, and let them sit for one hour while the oven heats to 450°F with a lidded pot inside.
Lower the first loaf in and press the whole sprig into the top. Put the lid on and bake for twenty-five minutes covered, then ten to fifteen minutes uncovered, until it’s browner than seems polite.
Add the flaky salt the minute the loaf comes out, not before. Repeat with the second loaf.
Cool it just long enough to hold, and no longer, if it’s traveling.

~J.

Nikki’s Maple Pecan Pie

As Served at the Community Thanksgiving. Reviewed by Bill as “Fine.”

Makes one 9-inch pie. Serves eight, or six if Bill came.

Ingredients

1 pie crust, unbaked. Homemade if your morning allowed it, store-bought if your morning was a morning. I will know the difference and I will say nothing.
2 cups pecan halves, the good ones. Toast them dry in a skillet until you smell them across the room, then get them out fast. Burnt pecans cannot be apologized to.
3 eggs
1 cup dark maple syrup. The late-season grade, the dark stuff. It’s been through more and it tastes like it.
½ cup brown sugar, packed like you mean it
4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled, so it doesn’t scramble your eggs, which is a thing I did once, in front of a customer, in my own shop
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon
One serious pinch of salt

Instructions

Whisk the eggs, syrup, sugar, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt until glossy. Stir in the pecans.
Pour the mixture into the crust and arrange the top layer prettier than necessary. People see the top first. This works on pies and Thursdays.
Bake at 350°F for 50 to 60 minutes. Put foil on the crust edge at minute 30, no exceptions. I don’t care how it looks at minute 29.
It’s done when the middle still jiggles like it hasn’t decided. Take it out anyway. This is the part where everybody panics and this is the part where you don’t.
The pie will not look finished when it comes out. It isn’t. Nothing more in the oven will help. Set it somewhere warm and quiet and walk away for two hours. No testing. No hovering. No helpful knife. The middle sets while nobody stands over it. Cut early and everybody gets a mess, and the pie gets blamed.
Serve it to your whole table. Including whoever you’re barely speaking to. Pie only has one message, and the message is: stay another twenty minutes.

~Nikki

White Bean & Rosemary Soup

From Abby’s journal, filed under: recipes, apparently

Ingredients

Olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of the pot, no further questions
1 yellow onion, chopped small. Nobody is auditing your knife work.
3 cloves garlic. Fine, four.
2 cans cannellini beans, drained. Dried beans are for people whose Tuesdays are going differently than mine.
4 cups broth, chicken or vegetable, whatever the cabinet says
2 sprigs rosemary, whole. Mine comes off the plant by the fence that made it through the frost. Store rosemary also works and will not be offended.
1 Parmesan rind, if there’s one in the freezer door. There should be one in the freezer door.
½ lemon
Good salt, at the end. I keep a jar from a beach in California. Use whatever you’ve carried with you.

Instructions

Sweat the onion in the oil over low heat for ten minutes, which is longer than feels necessary. The onion knows what it’s doing.
Add the garlic for one minute, until the kitchen announces it.
Add the beans, broth, rosemary, and Parmesan rind. Drop the rosemary in whole so you can retrieve it later. Rosemary is a seasoning, not a surprise.
Simmer for twenty-five minutes with the lid ajar.
Fish out the rosemary stems and the rind. Mash about half the beans against the side of the pot and leave the rest whole. The soup should contain evidence.
Add the lemon at the end, then the salt, tasting as you go. Go easy, because the rind has already been doing quiet work in there.

Makes dinner for two, plus a mug’s worth for whoever knocks. Around here, somebody knocks.

~A.M.