Apple Picking and Finally a Decent Lunch

I have blogged before about our annual fall sojourns to Apple Hill, but this year we wanted to do things a little differently. Going earlier in the season to avoid crowds and finding a decent place for lunch were at the top of our priority list. See, Apple Hill does anything apple-related extremely well.

Case in point: Apple Cider Donut-

Or the perfect Apple Fritter with chunks of fresh apple, laced with cinnamon:

Apple pie is always a winner-

Along with Apple Dumplings, Apple Crisp, Apple Strudel, Caramel Apples, Apple Cider and...  you get the picture.

But while the desserts are superb, over the years we have been subjected to one horrible lunch after another at Apple Hill. Grisly hamburgers, cold and tough tri-tip sandwiches on squishy white buns, and puny pulled pork sandwiches (all overpriced) had slowly drained us of any hope of finding a meal that was equal to the apple desserts.

But Crystal Basin Bistro finally has us excited about lunch again.

Located next to a winery of the same name, the sunny and open space of the bistro is inviting, modern and offers a dog-friendly patio. (We didn't take our chihuahua this time, but would love to in the future.)

Lunch plates are affordable ($8 per plate with meat, $6 for a vegetarian plate) and more sophisticated than anything else in the Apple Hill area. We opted for an antipasti plate, a beef brisket and gorgonzola sandwich, and...

The ridiculously gooey and probably very fattening cheesy artichoke dip. What can I say? We lost our heads for the day.

All fueled up after lunch, we headed to Denver Dan's for some apple pickin'.

I find apple orchards to be incredibly picturesque.

Last year we were disappointed when the U-Pick option here was cancelled after a bad apple season. This year obviously the trees were making up for lost time and were heavy laden with fruit.

Customers are encouraged to taste as they go to ensure ripe apples. Besides allowing us to buy the freshest apples possible, we get access to interesting varieties not often seen in grocery stores. We stocked up on King David and Northern Spy apples in particular.

Before leaving, we found this amazing deal - $2.99 for a basket of figs. In our area, figs almost never sell for less than $5 or more a basket, so I was in fig heaven when I saw this.

Weekends like this, you wish Monday would never come.

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.

Another Labor Day in Ashland, Oregon

We spent another Labor Day weekend in Ashland, Oregon this year (after enjoying it so much last time), and enjoyed some fine Shakespeare Festival delights. I always feel a rush when I first glimpse the Elizabethan stage. We saw "As You Like It" (and we liked it), "Troilus and Cressida" (based on "The Iliad", and I can see why it isn't performed much!), and "Henry V" (perhaps the Bard's most inspirational piece).

We also saw lovely vistas of the Rogue Valley:

And ever so many well-kept gardens, including many vegetable gardens and gorgeous flowers:

Of course, no trip would be complete without me picking out my favorite thing I ate. I loved this Rogue Cheese Sampler from Pasta Piatti, featuring local cheeses from Rogue Cheeses, served with crostini, and paired with roasted garlic and onion, fresh pear, red grapes, caper berries, olives, tomato/basil, and spiced walnuts. Whew! What a mouthful (pun intended)! We hardly needed dinner after polishing off this plate.

Now we have returned, well fed, well rested, and ready to take on the last dog days of summer. My tomatoes are starting to really ripen, but I'm already getting my fall seeds in. I also found this kind of extreme but also really cool book called "Food Not Lawns" in a little indie bookstore in Ashland. It's all about how to rid of useless huge lawn spaces and convert them into food-producing gardens. I'm all ears, sister!

Brewing Comfrey Tea

Have you heard of Alys Fowler? To me, this young, pretty, hip British television star is to gardening what Jamie Oliver is to cooking in the UK. She makes it fun, fashionable and interesting with her shows and books set in picturesque, lovely locales. 

Watch her show "The Edible Garden" here - I'm in love with the way she makes her urban Victorian backyard both beautiful and delicious! A few years ago, I happened to purchase her book Garden Anywhere, and was captivated by her description of comfrey tea, a liquid fertilizer you can make at home from the leaves of the comfrey plant.

Alys writes, "Once [comfrey] is established, you may never need to buy commercially made plant food... Comfrey is a deep-rooted, hardy perennial... Its leaves are high in potash, a source of potassium important for cell division, and also have good levels of nitrogen and phosphate".

Due to her glowing description, comfrey was the first plant I chose for my backyard when we landscaped, and it has done extremely well. Though I have trimmed it down several times, it is still huge and overshadows the rhubarb and chives it borders.

 

Large-leafed and hardy, comfrey has pretty purple blossoms when it flowers, though they have dried up at the moment, here in August.

The leaves are supposed to "kick start" compost bins, so I had added them to ours, but hadn't yet attempted to ferment the tea. She recommended putting the leaves in a plastic bucket, covering it, and allowing them to decompose for 10 days at least, then using the liquid to fertilize. Alys notes that the comfrey tea smelled bad. I have smelled some bad smells in my time (like a bad composting attempt when the smell of dead bodies permeated our apartment), so I was curious what level of "stink" I'd be dealing with after the 10-day mark.

The finished compost tea was a murky brownish liquid, which I ladled with a bowl over all the plants in my backyard. The scent was like a baby diaper left to sit for several days- unpleasant to be sure, but not unbearable. My plants look healthy and strong, with some new blooms on some of my vegetables when I thought they were finishing up.  It's a project I would do again.

Note: It's important to keep the bucket covered to avoid attracting flies, as the moment the lid was off, they were all over that bucket. Also, Alys doesn't recommend using the comfrey tea on houseplants due to the smell.

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.

Last Summer Trip to San Francisco

One thing I adore about San Francisco: Every trip there is unique, with new discoveries... and usually a few beloved things to which I'm irresistibly attached. Case in point: Primavera's Chilaquiles for breakfast at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market:

Summer is a glorious time to walk the market. There is so much beauty and color and flavor bursting from every corner and each stand. The sight of these vibrant peppers, for example, made me swoon and convinced me that life would not be complete without a basket of sweet Italian peppers for roasting.

Golden Gate Park was our next destination, the Botanical Garden specifically. We were amazed how the air could feel so still and quiet in the middle of a huge bustling city. Also stunning were the hundreds of varieties of trees, plants, and flowers. Towering redwoods like these, for example, always make me feel small- but in a good way. A humbling way. A comforting way.

The fact that poppies were in bloom simply made my day. Poppies are my favorite flower, red ones in particular, which I fell in love with last year in Vancouver.

Just a short walk from the Botanical Garden, we ate the best Chinese food I have ever had at San Tung. I've lived in China and eaten tons of Chinese food in my time, and I can honestly say that this place was legit. At 2pm in the afternoon, it was still jam-packed with Chinese families, which I usually take as a good omen for the food to come.

Despite the loud level and the distinct impression that they want to get you in and out of your seat ASAP, how can you argue with green beans so good you'd swear they're laced with illicit goodness of some kind? We literally could not stop eating these:

And if they can can make vegetables taste good, try their "dry-fried chicken". Best chicken ever. I can say no more. You have been informed.

"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.