Summertime, and the Pasta is Easy

The first of our CSA tomatoes are in… and as anyone who has ever grown tomatoes (or has ever known anyone who has known anyone who’s grown tomatoes) can tell you, we’ll soon be drowning in them. So, while they’re delicious eaten whole (just like apples), or sliced on sandwiches, it’s good to have a few go-to recipes for using tomatoes up wholesale.

This pasta dish is my family’s summertime favorite, and it takes only as long to make as a pot of penne. Serves 4 very hungry people, or 6 people who have lost their appetites to the heat.

Put a large pot of well-salted water up to boil, and when it’s ready, dump in a box of penne rigatte.

While the pasta cooks, core, seed and dice 6-8 tomatoes. Mix with 1 or 2 garlic cloves, minced fine, and a handful of basil, finely chopped.  Add salt to taste.

When the pasta is ready, drain well and toss with a little bit of good olive oil.

Divide the pasta among four (or five or six) bowls. Mix some of the tomato salad into each, and top with a large dollop of part-skim ricotta cheese. (A one-pint container will give you more than enough.) Stir, so that the ricotta gets warm and a little melt-y.

Top with freshly ground black pepper. Enjoy!

... To a Crisp

Our CSA is vegetables-only right now, and I’m nuts for summer fruits. So the other day, I bought some supermarket peaches…

They were gorgeous.

So voluptuous…

So rosy…

So ENTIRELY disappointing. Sigh...

Oh, well. Into every life, some substandard fruit must fall. But as long as you have the ingredients for fruit crisp on hand, you can always turn disappointment into dessert and avoid wasting produce.

I like to make a big bag of the topping and keep it in the freezer, so that I can use it when I'm stuck with imperfect peaches, not-so-hot nectarines or just waaaay too many blueberries.

Here’s the basic recipe for a big batch of topping, enough for several family-sized fruit crisps:

Cut two sticks of very cold butter into ¼” cubes.

In a food processor on the pulse setting, add in

1 ½ Cups Flour,

1 Cup (uncooked) old fashioned rolled oats,

1 Cup brown sugar,

¼ Cup white sugar,

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

a  6- ounce bag of shelled pecan pieces (1.5 Cups.)

Pulse until crumbly but not dough-like.

If you want, you can use the topping right away, but it will also refrigerate for a few days, or freeze for up to several months. Just keep it in a Ziploc bag with the extra air squeezed out.

To bake the fruit crisp:

Preheat oven to 350.

Cut pitted fruit (peaches, plums, nectarines) into chunks about 1” square, or use whole blueberries or half cherries. Feel free to mix and match depending on what you have on hand. If you're using an 8-9" pie pan or baking dish, you'll need about 6 large peaches, 8-9 plums, or 2 pints or so of blueberries. You can also make just a couple of individual crisps in ramekin dishes, or a giant one for a party in a lasagna-sized baking dish. (That's the beauty of being able to stick your hand into a big bag of topping and use exactly the amount you need.)

Place fruit in dish, filling to just above the rim, and toss with a few tablespoons of confectioner’s sugar. Toss in some cinnamon if you want, too. (My six peaches took 2 Tablespoons of confectioner's sugar.)

Cover fruit with a layer of topping about ¾” thick. Pat the topping down so that it sticks, but don’t compact it into a crust.

Bake for 1 hour (or 45 minutes for little ramekin dishes). If the top seems to be browning too quickly, cover loosely with aluminum foil.

Serve warm or at room temperature, and if you want to top it with ice cream, go right ahead.

Note: leftover crisp should be refrigerated. Reheat it briefly before serving; otherwise it’ll be more of a “sog” than a “crisp.” 

Getting Dressed

The folks who run our CSA are enjoying a bumper crop of lettuce this summer -- which means our weekly boxes (and my refrigerator) have been full of the green, leafy stuff. And while there's no lunch I enjoy more than a fresh-made Caesar salad swathed in creamy, eggy dressing... blanketed in grated cheese and generously decorated with fried croutons... I've got my annual physical coming up, and I'd really like to score lower on the triglyceride test than I did on my SATs.

Yes, I know the supermarket shelved are full of low-fat dressings, but most of them are full of sugar and chem-lab compounds. And plain oil-and-vinegar is healthy enough... but about as exciting as watching spackle dry. So instead, I’ve been tinkering with different combinations of heart-healthier oils, vinegars and flavorings, and have come up with a few dressings tasty enough that my salads don't have to swim in them to be flavorful. Here are two that I've especially enjoyed. The recipes make about 3/4 of a cup each -- plenty for several salads -- and will keep in the refrigerator for at least a week.

Soy-Ginger-Orange Dressing

In a blender or food processor, combine

½ Cup toasted sesame oil
2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar*
1 Tablespoon mirin (rice wine; Eden brand has no added sugar)*
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon orange juice
1 Tablespoon-size piece fresh ginger (about 1” piece)
1 teaspoon-sized piece fresh garlic (1 small or half a large clove)
pinch cayenne pepper

Strain (so that you don’t end up chewing on apiece of raw garlic) into an air-tight jar or container.

To turn a salad with this dressing into a full meal, add strips of cooked chicken or cubes of baked tofu.
*If you like Asian food, these are good ingredients to have on hand. They’ll keep almost indefinitely in the fridge.



Lemon-Mint Dressing

In a blender, food processor or jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine:
½ Cup olive oil
1/3 Cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
2 Tablespoons mild honey
2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
plenty of freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste

Great on a salad with lots of tomatoes, cukes and red onion. To make it a meal, add some chickpeas and/or a bit of crumbled feta cheese.

“Waste Not, Want This” Tip:
If you buy a typical supermarket-size bunch of mint to make this dressing, you’ll be left over with a good bit of it. Brew up a big batch of tea, let the mint steep in it and chill for refreshing mint iced tea.

Cream of the Crop

Modified food starch.

Hydrolized corn gluten.

Autolyzed yeast.

Dextrose.

No, that's not the answer key to your high-school chemistry final. It’s the ingredient list on a box of Birds Eye frozen creamed spinach.

Makes the 15 minutes it takes to whip up a batch from scratch seem like time well spent, doesn’t it?

But there was no spinach in this week’s CSA delivery, so I made creamed kale instead. Here’s how.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter.

Add 3 cloves garlic, finely minced. Sautee till garlic just starts to turn color, 2-3 minutes.

Add 3 cups finely-chopped kale leaves. (Discard the tough stems.) Cook, stirring frequently, until kale is well wilted, about 5 minutes.

Add 6 Tablespoons (about a 1/3 cup) cream. Cook until kale is very soft and cream is just about all incorporated/evaporated, about another 5 minutes. Add salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste.

Makes two smallish but very rich servings. Recipe size is easily adjusted up or down, depending on how much kale you have. (Each cup of raw, chopped kale takes 1 garlic clove, 1 T butter and 2 T cream.) 

And if you don’t have kale, go ahead and use baby spinach. It cooks even more quickly, and will be ready in just a few minutes more than it would take you to nuke up a box of Clarence Birdseye's Chemistry Project.

The '90s Called. They Want Their Brunch Dish Back.

In the 1990s, I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just a “scone’s throw” (ha!) from a dozen brunch joints with almost identical menus: Waffles, pancakes, or French toast, all drowning in maple syrup and toasted nuts.

After a few hundred sluggish Sunday afternoons, I had to face the fact that the protein in three-and-a-half pecans was not enough to offset the carbohydrate coma of a hubcap-sized pancake, so I looked for a less enervating alternative.

The most balanced option I found in most places was Eggs Florentine – a toasted English muffin topped with sautéed spinach and poached eggs, with Hollandaise sauce (served on the side for those of us who preferred NOT to have to unbutton our jeans midway through brunch). In other words: Eggs Benedict made with greens instead of meat.

Those Manhattan brunches are a distant memory now, and I haven’t had Eggs Florentine in ages. But when I found myself staring at a bunch of about-to-wilt beet greens in my fridge earlier today, I wondered if I could make an updated brunch dish with them.

Here’s what I did to serve just myself, alone in the kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon. You can double the recipe for a two-person brunch, but don't plan on serving this to a crowd. It'd be hard to make in a non-commercial kitchen without starting from scratch with each couple of servings. 

Updated Eggs Florentine

Wash and dry 3 Cups chopped greens (beet greens; chard; kale or good ol’ spinach)

Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in a skillet. Add 1 garlic clove, minced, and a few gratings from a whole nutmeg or a tiny pinch from a jar. (If you hate nutmeg or don’t have any on hand, just skip it.) Sautee over medium-high heat just until the garlic starts to color. Careful not to let it burn.

Add greens and a pinch of salt and sautee until cooked through, 3-5 minutes depending on what greens you're using. The tougher the raw leaves, the longer they'll need. 

Toast 2 slices good whole-grain bread (I like Chabasso’s Raining Grains Ciabatta; if you buy it at Stop and Shop, the bakery-counter folks will be happy to run the loaf through the slicer for you so that you have thin, even pieces.)

Meanwhile, poach two eggs.  (To poach eggs in the microwave, put  ½ Cup water in each of two tea cups.  Gently break an egg into each of the cups. Nuke for a minute. If the egg whites don’t look opaque yet after a minute, microwave for another 10 seconds at a time until ready. Drain into a bowl with a slotted spoon, discard water and, ta-da! Poached eggs!) Or, you can fry the eggs sunny-side up, if you prefer.

Put toast on a plate. Top with the sautéed greens and then the eggs. If you want, you can grate a little parmesan cheese on top – but skip the Hollandaise. When you puncture the egg yolks, they become their own sauce, anyway.   

What "retro" brunch dish would YOU like to see made healthier? Let me know, and I will give it a whirl…  

Beet This!

Last night’s CSA box contained a small bunch of small beets. (That’s small beets squared, for you math types.)

I love roasted beets -- served hot as a side dish, or cooled and sliced on top of arugula with crumbled goat cheese and pecans. But I really didn’t feel like killing this unusually crisp and cool summer day by running my oven at 450.

So I thought maybe I’d just keep the beets around for a while… but we all know how THAT turns out. Seven months from now, I’d find them at the back of my produce drawer, growing fifth-generation penicillin.

Instead, I decided to use them raw. (Uh-huh, yes you can. You wouldn’t want to eat big ol’ chunks of uncooked beets, but if you shred them, they are delicious in cold salads.)

My favorite cold-shredded-beet recipe is a wheat berry salad I found in a free booklet from Whole Foods a few years ago. But I can only get wheat berries back at Whole Foods (so much for “free” booklet…) and I didn’t feel like battling their bumper-car parking lot this morning. And besides, wheat berries have to be soaked overnight and contain gluten, which a growing number of my Very-Most-Favorite people cannot eat. So I just went ahead and made the salad with brown rice, and it came out really well.

It’s a little chewy and a little zingy; sweet and savory.  Because the beets are so finely grated, they don’t have that beet-y taste that a lot of people hate… and they turn the whole dish a delightful shade of magenta. Beware, though: They will turn your hands and your clothes a much LESS delightful shade of magenta, so wear gloves and something other than your favorite white shirt when handling the beets.

Brown Rice, Beet and Citrus Salad

Cook 1 C (raw measure) short-grain brown rice according to package directions. (Short-grain rice is nuttier and chewier, so it more closely resembles wheat berries.)

Toss cooked rice with 1 Tablespoon canola oil, and let cool.

Meanwhile, wash, peel and then finely grate two  2-3” beets.

Add the beets to the rice, along with 1 Cup raisins or currants and three scallions, thinly sliced.

Add 1 or 2 carrots, grated, and the grated zest and juice of one lemon and one small orange.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Serves 6-8 as a side dish. To make this into a main dish for 4, just add some cubes of cold roast or poached skinless chicken, and serve on a bed of lettuce.