“I love how we eat this time of year. Everything is so fresh and good we don’t have to do much to it.”
It’s so true. A little salt, good olive oil, and the kiss of a hardwood fire is just about all you need to get the best out of summer’s bounty. Gild the lily with a little balsamic vinegar or lemon, or shards of salty Pecorino Romano, but exercise restraint. Good ingredients need little adornment.
It occurred to me as I started to put this post together that the very first time I prepared this dish was for the first Thanksgiving Mike and I ever spent together. I was still living in Boston at the time, and we had planned to spend the long holiday weekend together in New York as well as to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves and a couple of friends. One of those friends was a vegetarian, so I wanted to prepare something that would serve as both a veggie side for us and a substantial main course for her, and thus my roasted vegetable and gruyere tart was born.
This is almost embarrassingly simple to put together – just cut up a variety of autumn vegetables (I used a mixture of tiny Brussels sprouts, parsnips, multicolored carrots, butternut squash, and crimini and chanterelle mushrooms) into roughly the same size, toss them with salt and a bit of olive oil, and roast them in a 375 degree oven until tender, about 40 minutes. Sprinkle a generous amount of fresh thyme and chopped fresh sage over the veggies and gently toss. Roll out your crust and place into a lightly oiled pie plate, leaving a bit of overlap around the edges (I generally use good quality prepared pie crust or, as I did last night, all butter puff pastry. Feel free to use homemade crust if that’s your thing). Spread about half a cup of grated gruyere cheese on the crust, add your veggies, sprinkle a bit more cheese on top and fold over the loose edges of the crust. Place back into the oven (at 400 degrees) for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden, then slice into wedges and serve. As a side dish or main course, it’s simple enough for a weeknight dinner, but nice enough for company – a real double-duty gem.
I know what you must be thinking: risotto again, Jen? Well, yes. You know I love the stuff, and I guess since the whole bacon & egg risotto thing reverberated around the internet, I’ve been a little risotto-obsessed. It’s such a wonderful carrier of flavors, and you can dress it up or down in a multitude of ways. I guess you could say it’s the food version of the little black dress, and I’m always eager to find new ways to accessorize.
Abby’s sweet potato risotto got me thinking about doing a version with roasted squash, and I can think of little that pairs better with roasted squash than fresh sage. I used leeks as the onion-y component of my basic risotto recipe, and added a cup of mashed roasted squash (the sign at the greenmarket said it was Calabaza) to the pan after I added the vermouth and before I began to add my chicken stock.
I fried a handful of large sage leaves in butter until they were crisp and added the sage-infused butter to the cooked risotto off the heat, just before finishing it with grated Parmagiano Reggiano and a splash of heavy cream. I grated a bit more cheese on top and crowned each serving with a couple of the crispy fried sage leaves. The resulting dish was like autumn in a bowl, the squash slightly sweet, the risotto creamy and comforting, and the fried sage providing a nice contrast in texture as well as a wonderful woodsy aroma and flavor.
Yes, folks, we are in the middle of yet another heatwave. There’s so much haze hanging over the city the air looks grey. This is no weather for heavy meals or for heating up the kitchen.
We still had an abundance of fresh veggies to work with from Mike’s previous trips to the Greenmarket, so I decided to do another meatless dinner - a sort of salad with grilled eggplant and summer squash, sliced raw heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and lots of fresh herbs in a light vinaigrette. I seasoned the vinaigrette with dried Herbes de Provence and fennel seeds, and used it as both a marinade for the squash and eggplant slices, and to drizzle over the tomatoes and mozzarella.
Mike grilled the veggies for just a couple of minutes per side on the cool part of the grill, just to give them a bit of color and smokiness. I sliced and salted the tomatoes and layered them with slices of mozzarella around the outside of our plates, then mounded the grilled veggies in the center of each. I sprinkled a generous amount of chopped herbs from the garden (green and opal basil, thyme and chives) on top, and finished by spooning the remainder of the dressing/marinade over each plate. The grilled vegetables still had a bit of crunch, and I loved how the tomatoes added their flavor to the whole dish as their juices combined with the vinaigrette – this was a delicious medley of colors, textures and flavors.
Yesterday was one of those dank, gloomy days, a rainy Monday which left me feeling particularly uninspired. Mike filled me in on his Greenmarket haul early in the day, and while I knew everything he had picked up would be beautiful, I just couldn’t decide what to do with it. Here I was with an abundance of fresh summer produce, and all I wanted was comfort food. I was stuck, and stayed that way for most of the day, but then I had a thought – a memory of a dish my Grandma used to make (and probably still does) which would give me the best of both worlds. It was a stew of sorts, tender pieces of chicken cooked with zucchini and corn and a light tomatoey broth that she called calabacita.
A quick search of the internets revealed that there are about as many variations of this dish as there are Mexican grandmas, so I felt okay about doing an adaptation of my own. Since we try to eat meatless dinners most Monday nights, I thought I’d omit the chicken and let the veggies play the starring role. I’d cook the vegetable mixture so that it would still be a little saucy but not too much so, and would spoon it into warmed tortillas with a bit of grated cheese and a topping of crema. It turned out to be an excellent use of our summer squashes, sweet corn and tomatoes, a light meal that brought out the best of these vegetables and also took me back to the warmth and comfort of my Grandma’s kitchen.
Calabacitas Tacos
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium white onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large beefsteak tomato, cored and chopped
2 medium summer squash, chopped
2 cups fresh corn kernels
Kosher salt
1 tablespoon dried oregano
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantroFor serving:
12 warmed tortillas (corn or flour, though I think flour tortillas hold up better to juicy fillings like this)
Grated Mexican cheese (I used a mixture of mozzarella-like Oaxaca and salty aged Cotija)
Additional chopped fresh cilantro
Mexican crema, crème fraiche or thinned sour cream
Heat the oil in a shallow pan over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook until softened. Add the garlic and tomato, an additional pinch of salt and the oregano. Stir and cover, cooking until the tomato is very soft, about 5 minutes. Add the squash and corn and another pinch of salt, stir well and cook for another 3-5 minutes, uncovered, until the squash is tender and most of the liquid has reduced. Off the heat, add lime juice and cilantro, and spoon the mixture into warmed tortillas, topping with grated cheese, crema and additional cilantro.
A quick dinner on a steamy night, prepared by my darling husband (who, by the way, shows up in the July/August issue of Imbibe - congratulations, love!). The green beans in the veg mix are the first batch from our little patch of Brooklyn garden, and man, were they good. There’s nothing like growing your own.
When my dad had a garden back home in Detroit, he grew zucchini and made a wonderful stuffed version with cheese, Italian sausage and lots of garlic and onions. Mike brought home a lovely avocado squash a few days ago, and its size and shape made my thoughts turn immediately to stuffed squash.
I’m always looking for good meatless entrees which don’t rely so heavily on pastas or other starches, so I thought I would stuff the squash with a mixture of chopped sauteed veggies and a bit of cheese to bind it all together. What I ended up with was hearty but light, and so tasty it is definitely going into regular rotation while summer squashes are in season.
Stuffed Summer Squash
One or two large summer squash, halved lengthwise and cored
One bunch spinach leaves (probably 4-6 cups raw)
1 cup chopped spring onion
Extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Red chile flakes
1 egg
1 tsp. each dried marjoram and basil
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
4 oz. sheep’s milk ricotta (can substitute well-drained regular ricotta)
1 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese, plus additional to top squash
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Season the squash halves with salt and rub with a little bit of olive oil. Place cut side up in a baking dish and set aside.
Warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a sauté pan. Add the chopped onion and a pinch of salt and cook until beginning to soften. Add a couple of pinches of chile flakes, cook until fragrant, and then add the spinach and another pinch of salt. Toss well, cover the pan, and allow to cook until wilted. Remove the spinach and onions from the pan, squeezing out any excess liquid. Set the mixture on a cutting board and coarsely chop.
In a bowl, beat one egg with the dried marjoram and basil. Add the spinach mixture and toss. Add the breadcrumbs, ricotta and Pecorino and toss until well combined. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Stuff mixture into squash halves, top with additional grated Pecorino, and bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes.
It has really been one of those weeks. We’ve had lots of stressful stuff going on, not the least of which is trying to find homes for our resident kittens, and the weather this week has been completely out of whack. The stress and weather have made my health problems flare up, and unfortunately, the meals I had sketched out for the week after our usual weekend food safari have ended up getting postponed or scrapped altogether.
Our intention was to skewer these dayboat scallops on some rosemary branches and grill them for dinner on Tuesday night. If you were in the New York Metro area on Tuesday night, you probably know why that didn’t happen - buckets and buckets of rain, not to mention temperatures more suited to mid-April than mid-June. It was great for the garden, not so great for my joints, and definitely not the kind of weather you want to linger outside in.
Nothing we had on hand was inspiring me, and I was bone tired anyway, so I tossed a salad, plated up some cured meats, cheeses and olives, and we had an indoor picnic. This is a fine meal in a pinch, but all of the good fresh ingredients we had in the fridge were haunting me. I didn’t want them to go bad before we could use them.
Tuesday was still chilly and overcast, but I was determined to do something with those scallops. I decided that if we couldn’t grill them, I’d sear them indoors with herbs and a little tomato butter. The chill in the air proved to be a plus as far as our side dish went. I sliced up some baby fennel and greenhouse-grown red bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, and a variety of tomatoes and layered them in a lightly-oiled baking dish, seasoning each layer with a generous sprinkling of salt and Herbes de Provence. I splashed about a quarter cup of white vermouth over the veggies, sprinkled some dry breadcrumbs on top, and added a light drizzle of olive oil, then baked the veggies in a 400 degree oven for about half an hour.
I was incredibly pleased with the texture of the vegetables - they were soft but not mushy, and their flavors were sweet and concentrated, accented nicely by the aromatic herbs. As well as we liked this as a side dish, I think it would also make for a great meatless entree.