Tomatoes Tossed with Lemon Basil

There were purple tomatoes in our produce box this week -- perfectly ripe and wonderfully fragrant. We cut them up, tossed them with a little extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and then added some freshly ground black pepper and a liberal sprinkling of chopped lemon basil. There's not much you have to do to amazing tomatoes to make them amazing, and so despite its simplicity, this salad was heavenly.

I hadn't appreciated lemon basil until it started showing up in our weekly box, and I can't remember seeing it in stores very often. It seems like the sort of thing that might be worth sticking in a pot on your back porch to have on hand. Use less of it in a salad like this than you would with regular basil.

Squash, and the Zen of Cooking

The school year has started, and with it, the typical fall onslaught of meetings and manuscripts and grant deadlines and teaching and treading in a sea of urgent emails. A few nights ago, I dragged myself to the car after a ten-hour day only to get stuck in a freak traffic jam for an hour, then arrived home and realized I still had six things left to do after all, and my husband was going to be stuck at the hospital until 9. I thought about my sanguine summer self with a kind of wistful resignation. My mind felt vaguely like it had been run over by a truck, I was sleep-deprived enough that my eyes hurt, and the last thing I remotely wanted to do was cook an involved dinner out of stupid, non-microwaveable, time-consuming whole foods. I wanted a packet to open and dump into a bowl, or a can, to open and dump in a bowl, or something hot and salty and deliverable. I wanted to lie on the couch and not move except for chewing purposes.

But, we were out of cream for coffee in the morning. So I at least needed to go to the coop and get cream. And while I was there, I could pick up a less-processed-than-most-processed-things processed thing from the deli. And I could bring it home, and stick a fork in it, and then stick the fork in my mouth. Yes. That is what I would do.

So I went to the coop, exhausted, and I walked in the door, exhausted, and I walked over to the dairy case, except that on the way there I noticed the avocados. And then I got distracted by pea shoots. Plus they have this amazing house made Andouille lamb sausage, which would be pretty easy to cook. And figs. And delicata squash.
In just a few minutes, my basket was full.

I came home, still tired but less so, and started peeling cucumbers, and picking up big fistfuls of pea shoots, and slicing into the squash, and thinking about where these plants came from and how they were harvested, and how before that they sat out in a field eating energy from the sun and transforming it into leaves and shoots and seeds, and how we then take that energy and transform it yet again. And suddenly, instead of feeling exhausted, I felt happy and energized, like when you think you're too tired to go for a swim or a run but then feel enlivened halfway into it. I sliced and chopped and  roasted and pan-fried, and we ate a late feast.

So what I'm saying, I think, is that this food thing is important. I'm going to try, very hard, not to lose it in the shuffle.


Roasted Delicata Squash

Ingredients
Delicata squash, halved lengthwise, with seeds scooped out
Pasture butter
Pine nuts (optional)
Freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place the squash halves cut side down on a large piece of foil on a cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn cut side up. Flake just a little butter into each half, and sprinkle with some pine nuts.


Fold the foil so it covers the squash and continue cooking until tender (about 15-25 more minutes). Grate nutmeg over the top, let cool for a couple minutes, and serve.

Quick and Classy: Fruit-Filled Melon

After our melon with moscato, it was really only a matter of time before we started dunking more fruit into wine. The arrival of miniature honeydew melons in our CSA box gave us the perfect excuse to try again, this time with late season peaches from Ikeda's and some leftover anise hyssop from the produce box. You could use pretty much any fruit here, or even just a different color melon.

Ingredients
A smallish melon, halved
Peaches, peeled and cut into pieces
Moscato or another sweet dessert wine (or champagne -- just don't let it soak so long that it goes flat)
Anise hyssop, chiffonade (optional)

Fill the melon with peaches, then pour moscato over. Refrigerate during dinner to let the wine soak into the fruit a little, then garnish with anise hyssop and serve.

Stir-fried Pea Shoots and Cucumber

West Indian gherkins. Are they cucumbers? Cacti? Alien pod people?
The world may never know.

Regardless, you can use them in this recipe, in place of more boring, humdrum, normally-shaped cucumbers, if you're feeling like your life is in need of a few more eccentric vegetables.

Ingredients
Cucumbers of some variety
Pea shoots
Olive oil
Seasoned rice vinegar
Crushed toasted peanuts (optional, but I suspect they would be great)



Peel and slice the cucumbers, then place in a bowl and douse liberally with seasoned rice vinegar. Refrigerate for 10-30 minutes (to marinate, and because it makes the cucumbers crispy).

 
Heat a little olive oil in a pan over high heat. Add the pea shoots and stir fry until just wilted. Turn off the heat and sprinkle with a pinch of salt.


Use the pea shoots as a bed on a plate, then arrange the cucumber slices on top of it. Sprinkle the whole thing with a bit more rice vinegar, and top with crushed peanuts.

Dandelion Greens with Golden Raisins and Caramelized Onion

For any vegetable adventurers out there who can't quite bring themselves to like bitter greens, here's a way to try dandelion greens that takes out almost all of the bitterness with the addition of sweet golden raisins, caramelized onion, and toasted almonds.

Ingredients
A handful of sliced almonds (optional)
Olive oil
1/2 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
A handful of golden raisins
1 bunch red-stemmed dandelion greens, chopped, rinsed well, and dried in a salad spinner
Salt & pepper

Toast almonds in a pan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until lightly brown and fragrant. Remove from pan and set aside. Adjust heat to medium-high, add olive oil, then the onion. Saute until golden, stirring, then turn the heat down to medium and cook a little longer until it smells very sweet and starts to brown. Add the raisins and stir a few times, then add the dandelion greens and a pinch of salt and saute until wilted. Sprinkle with a little black pepper and serve, with or without toasted almonds on top.

Serves 2.

Popped Baby Corn

I think I am starting to develop a slight nervousness about corn.

As if the movie "Signs" wasn't enough (which it wasn't, because I didn't see it, but anything about aliens rustling around in corn fields can't help but create a general predisposition to corn-related uneasiness), I finally started reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, the first quarter of which is a deftly-written investigation of how and why an unbelievably large proportion of the calories we consume on a daily basis come from corn. Only the way Pollan writes it conveys quite clearly that it's not so much a story of humanity conquering corn as it is a tale of corn conquering us. Our country, our food chain, and ultimately our bodies have pretty much been colonized by corn. It's slightly unnerving. Still, I managed to hold it together until this morning in the shower, when for some unknown reason no doubt directly related to my as yet uncaffeinated state, I found myself reading the back of my bottle of shampoo. (I know, there are about a thousand more reasonable things I could have been doing with my time, like putting the shampoo on my head, but I tend to move very slowly in the mornings and get overly transfixed by things that are directly in my field of vision, which this was.)

Anyway, here's the thing: There is corn in my shampoo. Or more accurately, there are various processed permutations of corn in my shampoo, and I strongly suspect they are there not because they actually help clean my hair in any way, but because of this crazy system of corn overproduction we've developed that seems to be bad for just about everyone but the corn. And the huge corporations processing it and channeling it into our food and drinks and, apparently, shampoo.

In the face of this increasingly unsettling sense of an invisible and encroaching tide of processed corn everyone around us, I am trying very hard to remember that processed, industrial corn is very different than local, whole corn, a point helpfully underscored by the locally-grown, dried, and poppable (!) baby corn that recently appeared in our CSA box.

After shucking it, we stuck it (one earlette at a time) in a brown paper bag, placed it (vertically) in the microwave, and zapped for 2-4 minutes until the popping stopped. At first, we thought it hadn't worked, because the corn stayed on the cob...but then we bit into it, gingerly at first, and then gleefully. It was amazing. Turns out you can eat both the popped and the unpopped, toasted kernels. (The toasted ones tasted like corn nuts, only way, way better. We rubbed it with just a little pastured butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper.)

So corn, if you're out there listening (no ear puns, please), here's the deal: as a general rule, I refuse to consume you as 40% of my daily calories. But for popped baby corn on the cob, I would make a blissfully reverent exception.

Chickpeas with Swiss Chard

We made this fairly quick-and-easy dish last night, adapted from this recipe, and it was lovely, both taste-wise and looks-wise.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic
1 chili pepper, minced
2 cups cooked chickpeas
2 plum tomatoes, diced
A little vegetable broth
1 bunch red Swiss chard, stemmed & coarsely chopped
1-2 pinches lemon zest (preferably Meyer)
A squeeze of lemon juice
Ñora pepper, salt, & freshly ground black pepper

Saute onion in a generous glug of olive oil over medium-high heat until it starts to brown, turning the heat down a bit if necessary. Add garlic and chili pepper, stir for 10-20 seconds, then add tomatoes and saute for a minute. Add the chickpeas and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for another 4-5 minutes, adding a little veggie broth if necessary to keep it moist (there should be a little liquid -- not too much -- in the bottom of the pan). Next, add the swiss chard, a pinch of salt, and a little veggie broth, and cover the pan to let the chard wilt a bit in the steam. Uncover, and continue to cook for a couple more minutes. Add the ñora pepper, black pepper, lemon zest, and lemon juice, turn off the heat, and serve.

Serves 2 (with something else, if you're making it for dinner).

Melon with Moscato

We found a "farmer's wife melon," apparently from Russia, in our CSA box last week. The insert that comes in our box suggested filling it with dessert wine, which struck us as a brilliant idea (filling things with wine usually does).

Ingredients

A farmer's wife melon (or another smallish melon)
Moscato (e.g., Trader Joe's 2009 late harvest Moscato)
Berries
Mint (optional)


Halve the melon and scoop out the seeds. Fill each half with Moscato and let sit in the fridge for a few hours. Garnish with berries and mint, and serve with a spoon (or add the berries into the moscato-filled center, as we eventually did with ours, which was amazing).

Wild Rice and Tomato Salad

We made homegrown chickpeas the other night to revisit this recipe (which was fortunately just as delicious the second time, or I would have had to sorrowfully revoke its title), and had a few left over in the fridge, along with some wild rice and the lemon basil from our CSA box last week. And a basket of grape tomatoes. Clearly, the thing to do was to throw them all in a bowl and eat them. We didn't particularly expect it to be good enough to make again, but we would...if you have leftover chickpeas and wild rice (or probably even brown rice) on hand, this is very fast to make, and was surprisingly addictive. You could also add a little cucumber for crunch.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1/2 onion, cut into wedges and sliced into thin, 1-inch strips
1 clove garlic, pressed
A basket of ripe grape tomatoes, cut lengthwise into quarters
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice
About 10 lemon basil leaves, chiffonade
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A little goat cheese or feta

Saute the onion in a little olive oil over medium-high heat until it starts to turn golden. Add the garlic and a little more olive oil if necessary, turn the heat down to medium-low, and saute for another minute or so. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Combine the chickpeas and tomatoes in a salad bowl. In a separate, small bowl, whisk together a few glugs of olive oil and about a third as much balsamic vinegar. Add salt and pepper, then pour about two-thirds of the dressing over the chickpeas and tomatoes, and stir to coat evenly. Add the wild rice, pour in the rest of the dressing, and stir again. Add about half of the basil chiffonade and the onion-garlic mixture, stir, and adjust salt and pepper to taste. Crumble a little cheese over the top and sprinkle with the remaining basil before serving.

Serves 2 (it's lighter than it looks, so you'll want something else with it).

Beluga Lentils with Yellow Squash and Mushrooms

Found in our CSA box this week: Mystery squash, which were small and round and yellow and apparently a type often used in Indian cooking. This dish was not Indianish at all, but the squash were stars nonetheless.






Ingredients
Olive oil
1 yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
3 + 1 cloves garlic, pressed (divided)
1 spoonful of Aleppo pepper (or a bit of hot pepper, minced)
1 cup beluga lentils, picked through and rinsed
1/2 cup vegetable broth
1 tsp sherry vinegar 
8 unidentified small yellow squash (could use pattypan squash or any summer squash), sliced into thick, half-inch pieces
1/2 lb crimini mushrooms, brushed clean and cut into quarters
1-2 handfuls baby arugula
1 large handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Salt and black pepper, to taste

Heat a glug of olive oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add the onion, and saute until reddish brown, turning down the heat a bit if necessary. Remove from pan and place on a paper towel to dry. Quickly add three of the garlic cloves (pressed) and the hot pepper to the pan with a bit more olive oil, stir a couple times, and add the lentils, broth, and 2 cups of water. Cover, bring to a boil, and turn down heat to simmer rapidly for 20-35 minutes or until tender.

Meanwhile, heat a nonstick pan over high heat, add a little olive oil, and lay the squash slices out in a single layer on the bottom of the pan. Cook until browned, shaking the pan from time to time to make sure they're not sticking (if they do, you can add a little more olive oil). Turn the slices over, turn the heat down to medium, and cook until the second side is well-browned and the slices are just tender (you want them to be browned without being at all mushy. If they're browning too quickly, before they've had a chance to cook through, you can either turn the heat down a little or cover the pan for a couple minutes). Remove from pan and set in a bowl near the stove so they stay warm.

Add just a little olive oil to the same pan, adjust heat to high, and add the mushrooms. Saute until browned on all sides, turning down the heat a little if necessary and adding a little more olive oil after they've started to brown, if they look a little dry. (To get your mushrooms to actually brown, make sure not to crowd them too much in the pan -- they should only be a single layer thick -- and don't add salt until after they're done cooking). When they're nicely browned and tender but still firm, push them to the side of the pan, turn the heat down to medium low, add a little olive oil on the empty side, and saute the last pressed clove of garlic in it for a minute or so until it softens. Stir into the mushrooms. Add a bit of the parsley and the arugula, stir once, and turn off the heat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and stir a couple more times as the arugula wilts.

When the lentils are tender, sprinkle in a couple liberal pinches of parsley and turn off the heat. Add the sherry vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste.


Serve in layers: lentils at the bottom, then some caramelized onions, then a layer of squash, then mushrooms, then a few more onions and a sprinkle more parsley if you'd like.


Serves 2.