Fall Fig and Gorgonzola Crostini

Sweet ripe figs and tangy blue cheese make a heavenly pairing for easy and elegant crostini appetizers, or grab a loaf of Village Bakery's walnut levain and make sinfully rich open-faced sandwiches for lunch.

Ripe figs are key here...after you buy them, leave them out of the refrigerator until they feel soft when you squeeze them gently between thumb and forefinger. If you must make this before your figs finish ripening, you could drizzle a little honey over the top to sweeten, but it's worth waiting an extra day for the figs to sweeten themselves.

Ingredients
Small or large slices of bread, toasted
Gorgonzola, Bleu d'Auvergne, or another creamy blue cheese
Ripe figs, halved lengthwise and then sliced into thirds

Spread a thin layer of blue cheese on the toasts, top with figs, and serve.

Roasted Acorn Squash

Looking for some roasted squash to pair with your braised kale for a cool-weather feast? Look no further.

Ingredients
2 acorn squash, halved lengthwise
Olive oil
1/2 tbsp pastured butter
1 smallish shallot, chopped
1 tbsp fresh chopped sage (or thinly slice crosswise into ribbons)
2 tbsp pine nuts

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Brush cut side of squash with olive oil and turn face-down on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake for 45-80 minutes or until tender (the back of the squash should yield a little to a gentle poke with a pot-holdered finger).

About 10 minutes before the squash are done, heat a small pan over medium heat. Melt the butter, add a small glug of olive oil, and then add the shallot. Saute for a minute until they soften, then add the pine nuts and the sage and turn the heat down slightly. Continue to cook for another 1-2 minutes, then remove from the heat and set aside.

Turn the squash right-side up and test them for doneness with a fork or spoon in the middle of the cavity (the flesh should be smooth and soft, not hard or grainy). Add a dollop of the pine nut sage mixture to each half and spread across the bottom, then return to the oven and bake another 5-10 minutes until very soft.

Serves 4.

Braised Kale

Red Russian kale becomes heavenly when roasted. Green kale, it turns out, is meant to be braised, which turns it from obligatory health food to addictive melt-in-your-mouth caramelization with a southern, collard greeny feel.

Serve this alongside roasted squash and lamb or chicken for a richly delicious fall meal.

Ingredients
Olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 small to medium shallot, halved lengthwise and sliced
1 bunch green kale, sliced crosswise into ribbons, washed well, and spun dry in a salad spinner
1/4-1/2 cup chicken broth
Salt

Heat a generous glug of olive oil in a wide saute pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and shallot and saute for 1-2 minutes, until they soften slightly. Add the kale, in batches if the pan isn't big enough to hold it all at once before it starts to wilt, and toss well with the garlic and shallot. Saute, turning occasionally with tongs, until the kale wilts down quite a bit and starts to brown slightly here and there, drizzling with a little more olive oil if necessary.

When the kale is browned in a few places, add about half the broth and a pinch of salt. Cover and turn the heat down slightly. Simmer for about 20-30 minutes until the greens are very tender, stirring every 5-10 minutes and adding a little more broth if the pan gets too dry. (If the pan does dry out and you don't catch it in time, never fear: This is the sort of dish that gets better the more times it caramelizes as it sticks to the bottom of the pan.)

When the greens are very tender and deeply delectable, turn off the heat. Adjust salt to taste, and serve hot.

Serves 2-4.

Dragon Beans with Shallot and Balsamic Reduction

One day in early autumn, while forging through the tulgey wood,* we found dragon beans.
 
Obviously, the name alone meant that we had to buy them. There is, after all, something deeply satisfying about responding to the question "What should we have for dinner tonight?" by yelling "DRAGON BEANS!" at the top of one's lungs. Try it. You'll see.

(Yes, that is your neighbor staring through your kitchen window at you, and yes, he could probably hear you just then as you were gleefully screeching about mythical vegetable beasts, but that wide-eyed look on his face is obviously just jealousy about your dragon beans. He probably wants to steal them. You should no doubt lock the window and then yell DRAGON BEANS again, with emphatic arm movements, just to stake your claim.)

It just so happens that dragon beans are also (a) gorgeous and (b) deeply delicious. They would be lovely kept raw, in a salad, or arranged on a plate as crudité. We cooked ours (after liberal nibbling), which meant that they lost their fancy coloring, but they turned out so sweet and juicy and delectably addictive that we forgot to care.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 small shallot, halved lengthwise and sliced
2 mild chile peppers, sliced into thin rings
1 lb dragon beans (or sub any especially crunchy, juicy green beans)
About 2 tbsp chicken broth (or sub veggie broth)
About 2 tbsp sweet basil chiffonade 
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fresh nasturtium flowers (optional)

Heat a wide saute pan over medium heat. When hot, add a generous glug of olive oil, then add the shallot and chiles and saute for two minutes or so until they soften. Add the beans and toss to coat. Continue cooking for about five minutes, tossing every minute or two.

Add a slosh of broth, cover, and turn the heat down to medium-low. Let steam for 2-3 more minutes until they are a minute away from al dente. (If the beans are especially crunchy and juicy, like ours were, you might want to stop cooking them on the early side to capitalize on that.)

Push the beans to the side of the pan, add just a bit more olive oil and the basil, and fry for 30 seconds. Push to the side with the beans, tilt the pan toward the empty side, and add the balsamic vinegar. Keep the pan tilted with the vinegar side over the flame as it simmers, until it reduces in volume by about half. Turn off the heat, stir to coat evenly, and serve.

Garnish with nasturtiums.

Serves 4.

*a.k.a. our co-op

Carrot Cake Pancakes with Toasty Pecans and Ginger-Apple Compote

Here's the thing. Let's say the school year has hit, and you're going up for tenure next year, and your calendar is flooded with back-to-back meetings and classes and meetings, and you're not sure which way is up, and you just woke up on a Sunday morning with the disorienting sense that it might be Tuesday.

Or let's say you've been meaning to bake a carrot cake for your husband's birthday. Since, well, technically since last October.

Or let's say you deeply need a nice big dose of delicious.

Or let's say you have decided to dedicate some portion of your life to pursuing the impossible dream of cooking the Perfect Breakfast—one that tastes sinfully like dessert while also magically possessing the nutritional profile of MyPlate's Platonic ideal of a meal, perfectly balancing whole grains, low-fat protein, fresh vegetables, and fruit—like you're some sort of Willy Wonka-inspired, pancake-obsessed locavore whose brain has been stir-fried by lack of sleep and looming deadlines and the early morning hour and a dazzling array of fresh fall carrots glowing orangely from the depths of the refrigerator.

 

Or let's say you're none of the above, and just happen to be reading this.

If so, I have important Life Advice.

Are you listening?

Make these.

(Adapted from this recipe with a glance at this recipe and a persistent personal addiction to toasted pecans and gingery apple-based toppings.)

Ingredients
1/2 cup stoneground whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp table salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
3 tbsp toasted chopped pecans
(toast whole in a pan until fragrant, shaking from time to time, then chop)
1 egg
2 tbsp packed brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger root
2 cups grated carrot (brush well, then grate with the fine hole side of a box grater)

For the compote:
2 apples, peeled and flat-diced (or zanziputted, if you will, which I would and did)
2 tbsp pastured butter
2 tsp packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger root
Generous dash or three of cinnamon
Maple syrup for the table

Mix the dry ingredients (flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pecans) together in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, beat the egg, then mix in the brown sugar, buttermilk, vanilla, and finally the grated ginger. Add the carrots, and mix well.

Gently stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just blended (I'm always hearing that the secret to fluffy pancakes is to not over-stir, and after careful and strenuous empirical tests involving delicately cramming large bites of pancake into my mouth, I have decided that I agree). Let rest for five minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the ingredients for the compote. Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat. Add the apples and stir to coat, then cook, stirring occasionally, for a minute or two. Add the brown sugar, ginger, and cinnamon, and cook for a minute or two more, until the apples just start to release a little juice. Cover, turn the heat down to low, and simmer for about five minutes or until the apples are desired tenderness. Turn off the heat.

While the compote is simmering, start the pancakes. Heat a wide nonstick pan over medium heat. Add a small pat of butter and use a nonstick spatula to spread it in a thin layer over the pan. Add pancake batter by the quarter cup (you can also make these silver dollar pancakes as its ancestral recipe apparently recommends, by dropping the batter in 2-tbsp increments instead). Cook for about two minutes until the sides look a little dry and the bottom is golden brown, then flip and cook 2-3 minutes more until both sides are golden brown and the inside is cooked through.*

Stack the accumulating pancakes inside a piece of tin foil loosely folded in half that you set on the burner behind your pan, or put them in the oven set on low to keep warm.

Serve topped with compote and extra toasted pecans if you have them, with maple syrup on the side for drizzling.

Serves 4.**

*It is perfectly acceptable at this point to taste-test a pancake to make sure it's cooked. Just try to save a few for breakfast. If you're making the slightly bigger pancakes, you may want to turn the heat down just a little after the first batch, so they cook through all the way without turning too dark on the second side.

**These also reheat well the next day if you make extra (just stick in the toaster for about half the length of time you'd use for a piece of toast, and apply liberally as a heavenly Monday morning inoculation against the work week).

Mostly Plants for Breakfast: Pan con Tomate

There is a time for thought and a time for action. And when the evening air turns crisp and cool and the last tomatoes of the season scent the air, one must not pause to think about one's tomato-phobic past, or the sorrow of tomatoless days to come. One must act, and act quickly.

In particular, one must launch oneself tomato-ward at top speed, past any intervening humans, shopping carts, small dogs, and/or cantaloupes, leaping or ducking as needed (depending on the relative heights of all parties involved) until one arrives at the tomato epicenter—then promptly snatch them up, take them home, eat them, and cackle happily.

Here's one of our summertime favorites: pan con tomate. Perfect for an Andalusian breakfast or an evening appetizer or anything in between.

Ingredients
Fresh bread, sliced
Ripe tomatoes (any size)
Fruity olive oil
Salt

Halve cherry tomatoes, or halve and then grate larger ones using the largest side of a box grater, discarding the skin as you go.

Toast the bread, then drizzle with olive oil. Spoon the tomatoes over the top, sprinkle with salt, and serve.

Now on Facebook!

Cook Food Mostly Plants now has a Facebook page! The page makes it easy to view recent posts, leave comments and ask questions, or share photos or suggestions when you try a new recipe.

Click the "Like" button in the top right corner under the banner to get links to new posts on your News Feed, or just to show your support!

Corn Soup with Sauteed Huitlacoche

There's no delicate way to phrase this. My husband is obsessed.

It all started innocently enough. In our Co-op, or in a corn field, depending on how far back you want to go. It doesn't really matter. The end result is still the same.

He returns home one day with An Announcement. "You'll never BELIEVE what I saw at the co-op." I perk up. (This was back at the beginning of September, when I was young and naive and innocently hopeful.) I think he's about to name a new exotic fruit that's shaped like a pear and colored like a parrot, or perhaps a six-foot long vegetable that gets roasted whole over a fire pit in certain areas of the Yucatan. "What??" I say, excitedly. He beams at me, or grins fanatically, depending on how you look at it. He leans forward. 

"There's this crazy mushroom that grows on corn."

"Yes," I say.

"Hyoo-it, hyoot, hwit..."

"Huitlacoche?" I say. (I had encountered it once in a phenomenal quesadilla at Toloache
in Times Square, where I'd learned both to pronounce it—weet-la-COH-chey—and not to think too carefully about what it looked like before it was prepared.)

"That," he says. He leans forward a little further.

"WE ARE GOING TO COOK IT," he says.

"Well," I hedge, "It's kinda..."

"WE ARE GOING TO COOK IT."

"It's like corn mold. I don't know if..."

"I'll cook it. We're cooking it. It's amazing."

He turns to his laptop, starts typing. I think maybe it's a reprieve—he's gotten distracted by email. Five minutes later, he looks up, clearly delighted. "It's also called CORN SMUT," he announces happily.

 
I think that was the moment I knew. It was huitlacoche or bust.

To prepare huitlacoche, which you'll be reassured to learn is a delicately corn-flavored, nutrition-packed delicacy, rather than a fearsome fungal predator, peel back the corn husk and silk and gently pry the "kernels" of the mushroom from the cob either by hand or using a table knife for a little leverage. You can either chop them, slice them, or leave them whole, depending on how adventurous you're feeling in terms of texture and taste (we left the smaller ones whole, just to see what they were like, but I think next time I'd try slicing or chopping to keep the texture a little more even). The mushroom (also known as Mexican truffle) should be fairly firm, like corn itself, and a cloudy, faintly bluish-tinged color when you buy it (slimy means it's over the hill). And despite my initial skepticism, this truly was delicious.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, 1 pressed and 1 smashed
3 ears fresh corn, kernels sliced from the cob
Chicken and/or veggie broth (about a cup)
Pinch ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-2 tbsp cream
1 tbsp chopped Anaheim chile
2 tbsp huitlacoche
1 tsp chopped fresh cilantro, plus extra leaves for garnish 

Heat a pot over medium heat. When hot, add half the butter and a glug of olive oil. Add the onion and a pinch of salt, and saute until soft. Stir in the pressed garlic clove and saute a minute more, then add the corn. Cook, stirring occasionally, for another couple of minutes, then pour in enough broth to just cover the kernels. Bring to a gentle boil, turn the heat down to medium low, and cover. Simmer 5-10 minutes, until the corn kernels taste tender and fully cooked.

Meanwhile, heat the rest of the butter and a glug of olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the smashed garlic and the Anaheim pepper, and saute for a minute or so until they soften, pressing the garlic into the olive oil to flavor. Add the huitlacoche and a pinch of salt, and saute for about two minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the garlic clove, and sprinkle in the cilantro.

When the soup is done, puree with an immersion blender until smooth or desired consistency. Add a dash of cumin, a slosh of cream, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle soup into bowls. Place a dollop of the huitlacoche in the center, drizzle the soup with a little of the extra oil from the pan, and garnish with cilantro leaves. Serve hot.

Serves 2-3.

Amador County's Taste

I've been meaning to wax lyrical about Taste.



There's this tiny little town called Plymouth, you see. A dot on the map in Amador County. And inside the tiny little town is a tiny little main street. And on the little main street is a little wooden porch, with two men sitting on what may very well be rocking chairs next to an old white ice box. And down the road a ways from the porch is a door, and on the door there is a fork.



  The fork, unlike the town, is large.

If you see it, pull it toward you. Because inside the door is this:

 

Local hand-labeled wine flights (try it, like it, visit the vineyard tomorrow)

 

Corn soup with prawn, chorizo, and chive

Fresh-caught sablefish with Del Rio Farms heirloom cherry tomatoes,
black pepper, watercress

...alongside giant raviolis stuffed with shrimp and crab and yellow corn

 

Rack of lamb, blackberries, sweet corn, barley, thyme, arugula, watercress,
blackberry puree, corn puree, food coma, mental elevation of chef to demi-god.

Chocolate sponge cake on a chocolate-painted plate, dark chocolate mousse,
honeycomb, chocolate-covered honeycomb, caramel

In other words, go there. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Worth a trip just for dinner, or go for the day. A picnic in wine country and a few hours of tasting is a decent way to wait for culinary bliss.

 

Orzotto with Ripe Tomatoes, Bacon, and Red Wine

I am not fanatically obsessed with bacon.

Watch. I will talk about other things. Spinach. Mushrooms. Tomato. Bac....bacalao. Yes. As in the Spanish fish. And bac...ardi. See? Lots of other things on my mind.

This recipe just happens to have bacon in it. Incidentally. A casual observer might not even notice it. Until they, you know, tasted its rich bacony wonderful goodness.

Despite the depths of bacony flavor here, there's actually very little bacon per serving, and tons of whole grains and vegetables. And the entire thing is a cinch to throw together, if you're cooking for two. (A recent reprise for four reminded me that doubling recipes is often trickier than I expect, because it's not just the ingredient numbers that change but also the cooking times. Double the orzo here, and you have to make sure to stir it a couple times so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot while it cooks and extend the cooking time by a minute or so. Double the tomatoes, and suddenly a pan that had very little liquid and could boil off a slosh of wine in 10 seconds gets a little soupy. The solution? Keep an eye on the depth of your ingredients...if you're doubling a recipe that calls for sauteing, it's good to also use a wider pan so the ingredients don't get too crowded. And, stay flexible. If something is soupy, you can always boil off a little liquid to fix it. If something isn't cooking evenly, give it a stir from time to time. And when in doubt, reassure yourself that it really doesn't matter if something is overcooked or undercooked or soupy...all anyone will notice once they start eating is the awesomeness of the bacon.)

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups broth
1 rounded cup whole wheat orzo
3 oz frozen spinach, microwaved for 2 minutes and drained
Olive oil
1 strip Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon, sliced into strips
(you can substitute another kind of bacon, but you'll probably need to use twice as much and it still won't taste as roundly delicious.)
1 small to medium-sized shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt
Several ripe, fragrant tomatoes, cut into chunks
Lots of basil (to taste), chiffonade or chopped
Slosh or two red wine
About 2 oz grated Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground black pepper

Sprinkle the tomatoes lightly with salt and let sit while you start cooking, to bring out the flavor.

In a smallish pot, bring the broth to boil. Add the orzo and stir once, then cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 9 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a wide nonstick pan over medium heat. When hot, add the bacon and cook for 2-3 minutes until it starts to turn lightly golden in a couple places. Add a little olive oil, the shallot and garlic, and a pinch of salt, and saute for a minute or two more until the shallot softens. Add the spinach, using two spoons or spatulas to separate clumps if needed, then add the tomato and saute for a minute till just warmed through. Toss in the basil and a slosh or two of red wine. Stir, let simmer for a minute more, then turn off the heat.

Fold the orzo into the tomato mixture, stir in the Parmesan, and sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper. Serve hot.

Serves 2.