recipes

If you garden, you know the question: How do I make the most of the seasonal selection of vegetables from the garden tonight? In this case, it was finishing up several small Onions, five random Tomatoes in various states of ripeness, a few green Peppers, a half-dozen Tomatillos and some charming little Hot Peppers.

The answer was Chili. I chopped the Onions, Peppers (green & hot), Tomatillos and skinned Tomatoes, adding them sequentially to a sauté pot with a small amount of oil. When the veggies were all in, I added a standard can of rinsed beans (in this case, butter beans), whole cashews and some chili seasoning. The result was three very hearty servings of my best chili ever!

I was intrigued by a recent Terry Gross interview with Sandor Ellix Katz about his book "The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World".  Katz explains that fermented foods and beverages have been prepared by humans for over 8000 years.  Fermentation is the process whereby cultures of micro-organisms (usually bacteria or yeast), often microbes already naturally present in the food or surrounding environment, are allowed to establish and grow in the food, enhancing flavor and, Katz believes, providing numerous health benefits.  (Our own bodies normally contain vast -- VAST -- numbers of living bacteria and other microorganisms, known as our "microbiome", though this fascinating topic is way beyond the scope of this post.)  As they grow in the fermenting foods, the microorganisms digest carbohydrates and produce byproducts that impart characteristic flavors.  (See "glycolysis" in your biochemistry texts.)  For example, both wine and beer are fermented beverages, with sugars converted by yeast to alcohol (and carbon dioxide).  In the case of some other fermented foods, lactic acid is the product contributing to the characteristic flavor and texture.  Lactic acid gives pickles and sauerkraut their sharp sourness, and the extent of acidity can be controlled, for example, by moving the product to the refrigerator to slow bacterial growth. 

 As of a few days ago, we still had some greens in the garden, particularly kale.  Recently, I -- a bit of a "gourmet" potato chip fiend -- learned of kale chips as a healthy way to satisfy our cravings for crispy, salty snacks!  There are many, many recipes to be found online, most calling for oven baking, with a few instead calling for a food dehydrator.  I experimented a bit with the oven methods, since many people don't have a dehydrator and, also, I figured that baking was likely to give more flavor.  

The first step is to cut the heavy stem out from the kale leaves.  While some recipes I found suggested using a sharp knife, it turns out that you can tear the kale away from the stem readily.   Tear the kale into pieces that will be "bite size" once they're dehydrated.  About a 3 to 4 inch dimension seems to work fine. 

I washed the kale pieces thoroughly in water, and dried them as well as possible.  I used a salad spinner and then blotted them with a towel. 

Then, I placed the kale pieces in a bowl, and added some extra virgin olive oil (at least I hope it was EVOO -- mine was from Trader Joes). I massaged the olive oil into the leaves, so that all were as evenly coated as possible.  Then, I seasoned them generously with sea salt and fresh ground black pepper.  The coated kale looks like this:

Right now, the arugula is beautiful in the garden.  There is plenty of it, and it’s still tender, as well as spicy.  Last week, I used my arugula in a salad.  But, tonight, John used our share of  Saturday’s harvest in one of our favorite pasta recipes, “Pesto of Sundried Tomatoes with Arugula”.  The book Pasta Fresca by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman features very simple, delicious pasta recipes and this is one great example, from their section on “Pasta with Raw Sauces”.  Note that, in the printed recipe, John changed the “3/4 cup” sundried tomatoes to “entire jar (8 oz)”.  We use sundried tomatoes from Trader Joe’s, though the cookbook authors urge readers to make their own.  I’ve not done that yet, though I understand that tomatoes can be readily oven-dried. 

As you can see, this dish is very colorful and, with the spicy arugula, sweet sundried tomatoes, dried hot pepper, and garlic, it has a lot of flavor!  It’s also vegetarian, as are many, though not all, of the Pasta Fresca recipes. 

Today my colleagues at the Garden were kind enough to let me take home one of the two kabocha squash that we harvested.  I regret that I didn't photograph it, but my colleague Elisabeth provided this photo of another of our beautiful kabochas (surrounded by tomatillos).  Wikepedia informed me, with its usual degree of authority, that Kabocha squash is also called "Japanese pumpkin".  Indeed, as you see, it is very pumpkin-like.  We also harvested two sugar pumpkins from our "Three Sisters" plot today, and our kabocha looked like they could easily have been their unripe cousins.

Elisabeth reminded me about an amazing soup that uses kabocha, along with tomatillos.  I recalled the recipe, too, the minute she mentioned it yet, inexplicably, it's been over 10 years since I last prepared it.  It's "Tomatillo and Squash Soup" from Anna Thomas' "The New Vegetarian Epicure".  It is probably the best soup I've ever made, or eaten.  How on earth have I lived without it, let alone forgotten about it, for all these years?! I'm quite sure that the last time I made it was in the late 90's.  Kabocha squash and tomatillos were relatively hard to come by back then.  As we reminisced in the Garden today, you had to search for tomatillos at "Bread and Checkbook", and they cost a lot, and even the 12 required by the recipe were not necessarily in stock when you needed them.  Kabocha squash, with its firm very deep orange flesh and unique flavor (and tough constitution...you'd better have a good knife!), was not particularly easy to find either.