August Wasn't Too Shabby

"Let me 'splain... No. There is too much. Let me sum up."
-Inigo Montoya, "The Princess Bride" 

In August, I:

- Learned to sprout, not only alfalfa seeds as pictured, but nuts, grains and legumes. Also learned how to make sprouted wheat flour/bread and taught a class on it. Very fun and educational!

 

- Ate and cooked with loads of Santa Rosa plums from my parents' tree. Here is the second plum cake I made after the Upside-Down one I posted on the blog. This one was based on this recipe from Bon Appetit The bake time was about 5 minutes too long, but the slightly citrus-y flavor was great!

 

- Went to Lake Tahoe and learned to paddleboard.

 

- Hiked to Eagle Falls and got his view of Eagle Lake:

 

All in all, not a shabby way to wrap up the summer!

Summer Highlights

The last time I blogged, summer was just beginning. Now it's (more or less) over!  I can honestly say that it has been a summer unlike any other. Here are a few of the highlights of my summer, beginning where I left off: with tomatoes.

We got so many tomatoes from the garden this year! Here's a picture of one early harvest:

 

 The tomatoes would become salads, like the one below (with basil, peppers, and garlic from the garden, and olive oil, chevre and sea salt from the Farmer's Market):

And, more recently, when we had too many tomatoes to eat them all fresh and wanted to store some for later, we experimented with homemade sun-dried tomatoes on the dehydrator:

 We got an unexpected first harvest of golden raspberries (since we didn't expect any berries until next summer on our still-young raspberry canes):

 

  One fun aspect of maternity leave was having a few (very few) opportunities to experience things that go on during the week when I'm usually stuck at work. For example, the Capitol Farmer's Market, which was scenic and delightful:

 

  Another rewarding aspect of maternity leave was having an adorable baby (see below). This, by the way, was my #30 on my "30 before 30" list. I didn't do much else on the list this summer; this item was a full-time job! :-)

 

 

 Finally, I couldn't let summer end without making a peach pie. We're headed to Apple Hill this weekend, ready to usher in fall with some apple picking! 

Rigatoni with Tomatoes, Eggplant and Mozzarella

From Leite's Culinaria

Some vegetables can be used year-round with similar results, like carrots and beets. Others are special; they must be eaten at their peak because they just don't taste the same out of season. Eggplant, I feel, is special and meant to be used in summer and summer only. I have, in my impatience, made the mistake of buying winter eggplant before....Ok, more than once. I have always found it to be disappointingly tough and mushy.

So when I found some awesome white eggplants at the Farmer's Market, I knew just what to do with them. There's this Jamie Oliver recipe I pinned on Pinterest quite a while back to my Summer Food board. (It's from Leite's Culinaria, an amazing website where famous chefs give you all sorts of cool recipes from their newest cookbooks for free. In other words, a very, very good idea - check it out!) 

 

Jamie describes this dish as one he ate many times while on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, and I could almost picture myself there as I ate it. Easy, unfussy, and ooey-gooey good, the sum of this recipe was greater than the total of its parts. As a bonus, it also helped me use some of my endlessly prolific basil, plus garlic and padron peppers from the garden. Nice one, Jamie! (Serves 6 generously.)

 

Rigatoni with Tomatoes, Eggplant and Mozzarella

By Jamie Oliver, From Jamie's Dinners

1 firm ripe pink, black, or white eggplant
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
Two 14-ounce cans good-quality plum tomatoes
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 fresh or dried chilies, chopped or crumbled, optional
Bunch fresh basil, leaves ripped and stalks sliced
4 tablespoons heavy cream (I used half-and-half)
1 pound rigatoni or penne (I used whole wheat rigatoni)
7 ounces cow’s-milk mozzarella
1 piece Parmesan cheese, for grating

1. Remove both ends of the eggplant and slice it into 1/2 inch slices, then slice these across and finely dice into 1/2 inch cubes. Some people prefer to season their eggplant with salt and let it sit for a while in a colander to draw out the bitterness, but I don’t really do this unless I’m dealing with a seedy, bitter eggplant. This dish is really best made using a firm silky one. 2. Now, put a large saucepan on the heat and drizzle in 4 to 5 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. When it’s hot, add the cubes of eggplant, and as soon as they hit the pan stir them around with a spoon so they are delicately coated with the oil and not soaked on one side only. Cook for about 7 or 8 minutes on a medium heat.

3. Then add the garlic and onion. When they have a little color, add the canned tomatoes and the balsamic vinegar. Stir around and season carefully with salt and pepper. At this point, if you wanted to give the dish a little heat you could add some chopped fresh or crumbled dried chilli, but that’s up to you. Add the basil stalks, and simmer the sauce nice and gently for around 15 minutes, then add the cream.
4. While the sauce is simmering, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and add the pasta, cook according to the package instructions until it is soft but still holding its shape, then drain it, saving a little of the cooking water. I like to put the pasta back into the pot it was cooked in with a tiny bit of the cooking water and a drizzle of olive oil and move it around so it becomes almost dressed with the water and oil.
5. At this point add the lovely tomato sauce to the pasta. By now the eggplant will have cooked into a creamy tomatoey pulp, which is just yum yum yum! Season carefully to taste with salt and pepper. When all my guests are sitting round the table, I take the pan to the table, tear up the mozzarella and the fresh basil, and fold these in nicely for 30 seconds. Then very quickly serve into bowls. By the time your guests start to eat, the mozzarella will have started to melt and will be stringy and gorgeous and really milky-tasting. Just lovely with the tomatoes and eggplant. Serve at the table with a block of Parmesan cheese and a grater so that everyone can help themselves.

The Best Black Bean Tacos

Summer is starting to reward us with wonderful things. Like a variety of tomatoes:

 

And melons, yes, melons! Tiger and Charentais, to be exact:

 

And finally, a wonderful recipe that I got from the book The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with your Kids One Meal at a Time. While I don't have kids myself yet, I love the idea of meals as a form of community. This book had lots of environmentally-friendly, fuss-free recipe ideas as well.

Always on the lookout for new ways to go meatless, I knew I needed to make "Gary's T-Night Tacos", a dish one dad makes every Tuesday for his family. (I am also kind of fascinated by the idea of always eating the same meal on a certain night of the week. It wasn't a tradition in my own family, but it sounds like it could be a lifesaver for busy moms.)

I just LOVED the straight-forward black bean filling, which was quick to make, slightly sweet, but savory at the same time. I couldn't get enough for it, and counted down the minutes till lunch the next day when I could re-heat the leftovers and enjoy them all over again. Bless you Gary, whoever and wherever you are!

Gary’s T-Night Tacos
From The Family Night Dinner

For the Tacos:
Canola oil
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
2 15-ounce cans of black beans, lightly drained (or 4 1/2 cups home-cooked beans)
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons cumin
1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce
2 tablespoons maple syrup
12 corn tortillas

For the Toppings:
1 1/2 cups cheese
1 cup sour cream or Greek yogurt
Chopped avocado
Chopped tomatoes
Chopped lettuce
Salsa

TO MAKE 12 TACOS
Heat a large nonstick pan over medium-high heat and drizzle the bottom with canola oil. Sauté the onions until they start to soften, then add the beans, spices, tamari, and maple syrup. Reduce the heat to medium low and let everything gently cook for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, wrap the tortillas in foil and warm for 10 minutes in a 250-degree oven.

Serve the tortillas with bowls of beans and toppings on the side.

"Apple" Zucchini Crisp

Ah, the eternal summer battle: Man vs. Zucchini. A friend let us come harvest their community garden with them this week, and we left with bags of produce, including lots of zucchini. And then I started wondering if it was really possible (as I had heard) to use a little kitchen alchemy to transform zucchini into filling for an  apple pie or apple crisp. It just didn't seem possible, but I still wanted to take a stab at it. Pie seems fussy at the moment, so I went the way of the apple crisp.

I wanted my zucchini to look as much like apples as possible, so I peeled mine and cut the seeds out of the middle. Later, I would realize the importance of this step (which wasn't mentioned in the recipe).

Add lemon juice and simmer the mixture to soften up the zucchini. Next, you add spices like you would with apple pie filling.

Cover the filling with your crisp topping ...

and bake until browned on top, bubbly underneath.

Well, it looks pretty darn convincing, don't you think? But don't eat it when it's hot - the flavors haven't fully melded and it is still easily recognizable as zucchini at this point. Neither my husband nor I cared for it hot.

My advice is to wait until it's cool and top it with vanilla ice cream. It isn't exactly a dead ringer for apples, but...it's still pretty good, considering the fact that it's a vegetable. And at this time of year, you could do worse with your leftover zucchini.

Personal Notes: I used whole wheat flour and halved the recipe, baking it in an 8x8 square pan.

"Apple" Zucchini Crisp

8 cups cubed peeled zucchini
3/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

TOPPING:
1-1/3 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cold butter, cubed

In a bowl, combine the zucchini, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg; mix well. Pour into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish.

For topping, combine brown sugar, oats and flour in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over the zucchini mixture. Bake at 375 for 45-50 minutes or until bubbly and the zucchini is tender. Yield: 12-15 servings.

Marionberry Pie: From Farm to Plate

This is a story about a pie. It began last month, with a trip to a local berry patch.

I discovered that the berry farm grew a wonderful seedless blackberry called a Marionberry.

And they just happened to be ripe and ready to be picked that week:

And so it was that I drove home with several baskets of Marionberries (and some late raspberries, for good measure).

Yesterday being the Fourth of July, I retrieved my berries from the freezer and got started on a festive holiday pie.

First, I tossed the berries with 1 c. sugar, 1 tsp. lemon zest, 1 tsp. lemon juice, and 1/4 c. tapioca. I simmered the mixture in a pot for about 5 minutes until slightly thickened. This will make a nice filling that won't get the bottom pie crust soggy. After removing from the heat, I spiked the filling with 1 tsp. vanilla (really good stuff I got in a modest, out of the way kitchen shop in New Orleans). Then I let it cool completely.

After pre-heating the oven to 375F, I put my bottom crust in the pie pan and filled it with my berry filling, then laid the top crust over that. I brushed the top crust with egg white and sprinkled it with coarse sugar.

Next, I baked it for 50 minutes, until the top was golden brown and the filling was bubbling.

I let it cool completely (important, to avoid a runny filling, and it takes about 6 hours to do so) before serving it that night....

With a scoop of vanilla ice cream! It was the best summer pie I've made yet.

Chez Panisse: At Last

This weekend we traveled to the Bay Area in an attempt to enjoy at least one real day of summer. We started our trip at Berkeley Bowl, the most amazing grocery store I have ever seen in my life. By the end of our exploration, we were joking about driving 1.5 hours every week just to do our grocery shopping at this place! I mean, look how many kinds of cucumbers alone the produce section carries:

Need squash or eggplant? Talk about having a variety to choose from:

When it came to yogurt, I haven't seen this kind of a selection since I was in France. I discovered the most amazing small-batch, French-style yogurt called St. Benoit. Produced in Sonoma, it tastes like a cross between yogurt, custard, and manna. I even found out that they carry this product at the Sacramento Natural Food Co-Op, so I can find it locally. Hooray!

For lunch, we fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine by eating at Chez Panisse Cafe. As I walked under the wooden sign into the wonderfully atmostpheric restaurant, I blissfully sighed, "I'm here, Alice!" (Waters, that is.)

The menu changes every day here, according to what is in season and at its best.

Our meal began with a crusty, hearty wedge of artisan bread and yellow, creamy butter.

Here is what my husband ordered Devil's Gulch Fried Rabbit, served over amaranth greens, sweet corn, and green tomatillos. He said that if everyone could make rabbit this delicious, it would be eaten much more commonly in America.

And here was my selection: Romanesco de Peix, a bowl of squid, mussels, clams, and shrimp cooked in a tomato-leek broth. It was simply perfection.

Finally, I couldn't resist dessert, especially since I desperately wanted to compare the apricot galette with the version I make using the Chez Panisse recipe - just to see how close I come in replicating the taste. Result? Because their galette is cooked in a wood-fired oven, the top gets a bit blacker and the bottom a bit browner and crisper, but other than that, it's definitely the same recipe - and a wonderful one.

Finally, we ended our trip with a stop at Stinson Beach. The smell of eucalyptus and fog and sea air always stirs something deep and moving inside of me. When the clouds quickly blew away, the sun was surprisingly hot and we moved on to exploring a little bookshop in town. It was a wonderful memory for this quickly fleeting summer of ours.

Summer Reading List 2012

June means school is out and it’s time for summer reading again. Last summer’s reading list got truncated quite a bit by a little something called “moving into a house that needs a lot of work”. While I still have lots of house projects to work on, this summer feels more stable and I feel more capable of finishing a few of the books that I didn’t get around to reading last year.

Also exciting, by way of book news, is a new development in my life: a book club! Last month I did something I have wanted to do for many years, but always been afraid to try. I hosted a book club, complete with a Paris-themed party and lively discussion of The Paris Wife. After a great turn out and a positive response, I am planning my next book club party already. This time we will be reading The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom and doing a Southern theme. (See plot description below!)

Here are some of the books that I plan to read this summer, all written by female authors (unintentional), with plenty of history to stimulate the mind, rich settings to satisfy the most hardcore escapists, and a sprinkling of magic for the dreamer inside of us all. What is summer for, if not for a bit of much-needed indulgence?

Blackbird House/ Alice Hoffman: An evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years. I am reading this at the moment and completely immersed in the gorgeous prose, magical realism and vivid sense of place. Summer on Cape Cod? Sounds lovely, thanks!

The Kitchen House/ Kathleen Grissom: Set on a Southern plantation in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia in the early 1800's, the story is told from the perspective of a white Irish orphan, Lavinia. While working as an indentured servant in the kitchen house of a plantation, Lavinia discovers the dark secrets of the white family members and slaves alike. She finds herself torn between two worlds: one of the white plantation owner and his family, with whom she shares a racial identity; and the Negroes with whom she works, associates and shares a vocational identity.

The Kitchen God’s Wife/ Amy Tan. Like The Joy Luck Club, this novel focuses on a dysfunctional relationship between a Chinese-American mother and daughter. Dying matriarch Winnie shares with her daughter the story of her upbringing in China in the 1920-1940s, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to her immigration to America. No doubt family secrets will be revealed and new understanding will be built between the two, but it's the journey that makes it all interesting.

Daughter of Fortune / Isabelle Allende. Historical fiction relating the story of a pregnant Chilean woman who follows her beloved to the rough streets of San Francisco, California in the the Gold Rush era of the 1850's. Can you believe it used to be a hard-knock collection of greedy bachelors, prostitutes and East Coast outcasts? Perfect prerequisite reading for a day trip to my favorite foggy coastal city!

The Giant’s House: A Romance / Elizabeth McCracken. In 1950, a small-town librarian meets a 11-year-old giant and the two loners eventually find their lives intertwined in ways that neither one could have predicted. Also set in Cape Cod with magical realist elements, this quirky read has received a lot of praise from other readers and made me curious enough to pick it up myself (finally, since I didn't get to it last year).

The Flavors of Asia Cooking Class

Mai Pham with her cooking assistant, shown
behind her cookbook and signature sauces

I joined the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op this year, after admiring from afar for a long time and even taking a few outstanding classes there in the past. (Like this one on Pie Making, and another on Raised Bed Gardening.)

This week I got to attend a cooking class on the Flavors of Asia taught by Mai Pham, an expert in Vietnamese and Thai cuisine. Mai teaches at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, owns many restaurants all over the country, has published a cookbook, makes her own line of sauces, and is a bit of a local celebrity. She has been on Martha Stewart and kicked off her class by showing us a segment she did on the Food Network to give us a feel for the cuisine of Southeast Asia.

Mai was very professional and pleasant, and even brought her 86-year-old, very spry-looking father to the class with her. Her grandmother, she confided, lived to be 105 years old and credited her longevity to a vegetarian diet and lots of coconut milk, which the Vietnamese associate with high immunity levels.

Mai also stressed the importance of moderation in all things, confessing that she has to work hard to keep balanced. For example, if she wants to eat ice cream for dessert, her family will eat a simple, light dinner such as stir-fried vegetables and brown rice before indulging.

Mai demonstrated and let us sample several dishes during the course of the class, as well as teaching some basic techniques like assembling and rolling salad rolls, and cutting herbs and vegetables gently to avoid bruising. She showed us how to make:

* Salad Rolls with Shrimp and Pork, with a Peanut Hoisin Sauce

* Yellow Curry with Tofu and Eggplant

* Singapore Noodles Topped with Stir-Fried Asian Greens

* Caramel Pork with Egg and Daikon

My favorite dishes were the Yellow Curry and Singapore Noodles, but I enjoyed them all. Before heading home, I hopped around the corner to the Co-Op to pick up a jar of Lemongrass Kitchen brand Yellow Curry Sauce, a concentrated base which makes 3-4 batches of curry. I can't wait to try my hand at this at home!

Here is Mai Pham's recipe for the Yellow Curry with Tofu and Eggplant. It's crazy good; I've never liked a vegetarian curry so much! It also taught me one thing I've done wrong in the past - adding raw vegetables to my curry has added too much water and diluted the flavor, so that I never felt that my curries at home matched up with the restaurant versions. Blanching the vegetables ahead of time solves this problem. Also, she explained that frying the tofu ahead of time so that it gets a "skin" allows it to absorb sauces better. This recipe would be perfect for summertime, when eggplant, tomatoes, green beans and zucchini are all in season.

1/4 c. Lemongrass Kitchen Thai Yellow Curry Sauce
1.5 c. coconut milk
1/2 lb. firm tofu, pan-seared or lightly fried, cut into 2/3x2"x1/12" pieces
2 c. eggplant, Japanese preferably, halved lengthwise then cut into 1/2 " half moon pieces
3 Roma tomatoes, cut into 8 wedges
1/2 c. green beans, 1" lengths, blanched
1/2 c. zucchini, bite sized pieces, blanched
2 tsp. Thai chilies, cut on the diagonal into thin slices (optional)
1/2 c. frozen peas
10 Thai basil leaves (optional)

1. In a saucepan, combine LGK Thai Curry Sauce Concentrate with coconut milk and cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a low boil.
2. Add tofu, eggplant and tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Add remaining ingredients and simmer until all vegetables start to soften, another 2-3 minutes.

One Last Summer Meal from the Garden

This picture is a harvest from 2 weeks ago - tons of squash, tomatoes (not all pictured), even small bell peppers! This Saturday it will officially be October and I will admit that I'm officially tired of zucchini and squash. Thank goodness, they - along with almost all of the other plants in the garden - appear to be winding down for the season.
With the last of the tomatoes, we enjoyed a fresh salsa for dinner tonight, along with a tiny baby melon:

The melons may be tiny because they went in very late compared with the rest of the things we planted this year, in our attempt to grow as much of our own food as possible. Now, the freezer is full of bags of frozen tomatoes. Once the pumpkins finish turning orange (soon, I hope!), the garden we planted over at my parents' property will be ready to put to rest for the winter.

Now that the experiment is coming to an end, I am full of reflections on what grew well and what didn't.

Great:
Delikatesse cucumber
Buttercrunch lettuce (but matured just as the weather got hot so it nearly all bolted)
Tom Thumb lettuce (same)
New England Pie pumpkins (took over the garden)
Danver’s Half Long carrots (but tasted like dirt - how do you grow sweet carrots?)
Sugar Ann snap peas (Some grew even when it got hot)
Dill - so easy to grow
Fennel
Ruby Red swiss chard (But aphids and cucumber beetles have made it inedible since summer hit - how sad!)

Not so great:
Black Valentine Bush Beans
Arugula
Mache (corn salad)
America spinach

Major fail (to germinate):
Mountain Sweet Yellow watermelon
Yarrow, Hyssop

Challenges this year included weeds, insect pests, and bad weather back in April. I have an enormous appreciation for farmers, especially those who find methods to do it organically. As for me, I have all sorts of ideas for next year, including starting my own seeds at home, doing raised beds at our new place and space-consuming crops at my parent's plot, and using companion plants to attract good insects and detract bad ones.

Oven-Baked Ratatouille

I remember one particular meal when I was living in France. The elderly lady with whom we did our home stay prepared a simple meal of baked fish with a wonderfully flavorful sauce of some kind. I had never tasted it in America and begged her for the recipe. Like many Parisians, my host knew a shortcut or two, and after some coaxing, she revealed the - gasp - jar her sauce had come from. It was nothing more than store-bought ratatouille, which I now know to be a famous Provencal vegetable stew and a great way to use up summer garden produce.

The version I made at home this week in an effort to recreate that moment comes from the popular Chocolate and Zucchini blog, the author of which lives in Montmartre, one of my favorite parts of Paris. It was a great use not only for our homegrown herbs, tomatoes, zucchini and farmer's market eggplant, but a fantastic excuse to use my Le Creuset. We served it over couscous for a light, flavorful dinner.

Ratatouille Confite au Four
- 2 onions
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 eggplant (if you want to make the traditional ratatouille from Nice, hold the eggplant)
- 1 zucchini
- 2 green peppers
- 8 small tomatoes
- 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 3 sprigs fresh thyme
-1 T. chopped basil
- olive oil
- salt, pepper
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Peel and slice the onion and garlic. Rinse the remaining vegetables, trim and slice them. Rinse the herbs. Combine everything in an oven-proof dish. Season with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil (about two tablespoons). Toss a little more to ensure even coating.
Cover the dish with foil and bake for 45 minutes. At this point the vegetables should be cooked but not colored, and there should be cooking juices at the bottom of the pan.
Remove the foil and bake for another 30 to 45 minutes, keeping an eye on the progress, until the cooking juices have evaporated and the vegetables have taken on a nice roasted aspect.
Remove the sprigs of herb, and serve immediately, or at room temperature, or cold. It gets even better the next day and the day after that.

What Would Alice Do?

Source: norecipes.com via Stacy on Pinterest

Despite the fact that summer is in full swing, I found myself uninspired in my menu planning today. And I found myself wondering, What would Alice Waters do?

I found the answer on Chez Panisse Cafe’s website: A menu inspired by Deborah Madison, whose wonderful cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is a welcome presence in my own collection.

I love how the menu focuses on the best organic produce, like zucchini, greens, corn, sweet peppers, rosemary, and tomatoes. Sample dishes from the menu:

Salads:

- Blue Heron Farm Little Gems lettuce with mustard dressing, spiced beets, egg, and chives
- Shaved fennel and parsley salad with black pepper and Parmesan

Entrees:

- Pizzetta with zucchini, bottarga di muggine, and mint pesto
- Sheeps milk ricotta and greens cannelloni baked in the wood oven with porcini mushrooms
- Grilled Riverdog Farm chicken breast with succotash and sweet pepper relish
- Pizza with Flammé tomatoes, pancetta, and rosemary

And for dessert, the simplest one I saw was a bowl of Frog Hollow Farm Santa Rosa plums! The fancier options included a peach, nectarine, and berry cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream.

Alice: Consider me inspired.