I’m in commuter hell this week – I’ve had a succession of early or late buses in the morning, consistently late trains, and unplanned cab rides home from the train station which, in addition to being annoyingly expensive and sometimes terrifying, have put me in a big ole cranky mood in the evening, and craving exactly what we’ve been trying to get away from – comfort food.

I sat on the train in my work clothes drenched to the bone after a rain-soaked spin through the Boston Public Market on Tuesday, with tomatoes and fennel and green beans and squash globes and all sorts of other goodies in my totes, and decided a big veg-laden soup was in order. After I got home, I peeled off my damp clothes and changed into something warm and dry, and then I got to chopping: slender leeks, carrots, fresh celery, beautifully ripe plum tomatoes, sweet red peppers, globe zucchini, fresh thyme branches and green beans all went into my pot at various stages, sprinkled with salt and bathed in dribbles of olive oil and a judicious amount of red wine as they cooked down. I added a little bit of orzo to the mix, and when it was tender, added a good amount of freshly grated parm to the soup off the heat. I blitzed up a fresh parsley and fennel frond pistou in the mini chopper to spoon on top, and served up our soup with a few thick slices of Olga’s Pane Francese and some gooey, runny cheese from Farmstead.

As antidotes go, this was just about perfect.

31 dishes, 31 days – I’m cooking my way through Melissa Clark‘s “No-Sweat Cooking” from the August issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray. And to those of you who made your way over here via rachaelraymag.com, welcome!

I’ll be the first to admit that summer squash doesn’t often send me, so I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the prospect of trying this Summer Squash Carpaccio, but to my surprise, it actually really worked for me.

It’s an extremely simple dish, ribbons of summer squash dressed with a drizzle of olive oil and a spritz of lemon juice, tossed with freshly grated parm and toasted pine nuts – just five simple ingredients, but they come together in perfect harmony. It’s particularly nice when you get a bite of everything together – the flavors and textures play really well together, with crunch and a slight bitterness from the pine nuts, the salty, pebbly parmesan, and the perky lemon dressing all jazzing up the mild, tender squash.

Get the recipe: Summer Squash Carpaccio

As weary as I am of the cold weather, it’s not going away just yet, so wintry dishes are still in play. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve amassed quite a selection of root vegetables, and on Monday night, I decided to combine them in a gratin. I was inspired by a recipe in the March issue of Food and Wine for a lightened version, though I used what I had on hand for my own.

Thin slices of peeled butternut squash, carrots, parsnips, turnips and sweet potato all went into a buttered baking dish, each layer sprinkled with salt and a little Herbes de Provence, and every other layer got a dusting of finely grated aged Patty Parker cheese from Narragansett Creamery. I poured in a half cup of white vermouth, and a half cup of heavy cream to which I had added a healthy amount of Colman’s mustard. I covered the baking dish with foil and placed it into a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes, then removed the foil, added a layer of fresh breadcrumbs (a couple of slices of Seven Stars multigrain, pulsed in the food processor), another sprinkle of cheese and a few dots of butter on top, and returned the baking dish to the oven until the veggies were soft and the top crisp and browned (another 20 minutes or so).

The herbs, mustard, and flavorful cheese contrasted nicely with the sweetness of the vegetables, and despite the addition of the cheese and cream, this was not a heavy dish, just a richly flavored, satisfying one dish meal.

It’s time to come clean. Posting has been light because yes, I am still crazy-busy, with my long commute and full, draining days, but also, I feel like I’m in a bit of a slump. I just haven’t been feeling the weeknight dinners, and it’s a combination of the fact that midwinter produce is relatively uninspiring in this neck of the woods, and that we’ve really been trying to scale back on what we spend. The economy, it sucks, and though we are still among the lucky ones with a source of income and a roof over our heads, it is impacting our day-to-day lives in a very real way.

I’m grateful for the squirrel-like impulse I had through the late-summer and fall to stock up, stash stuff away, bolster our freezer and pantry for leaner times ahead, but I feel like a lot of our weeknight meals have been less than blog-worthy lately. They’ve been tasty and nourishing, sure, but how many times can I talk about pasta with Bolognese, or the cabbage and bacon studded spaghetti that was tasty and filling, but lacking a certain “oomph.”

We made it back to the farmers’ market on Saturday after a week away, which was great, but the dwindling stocks of fresh produce were a little disheartening. Butternut squash is far from my favorite vegetable, but when it’s what you’ve got to work with, you figure something out. At least you do if you’re me.

Soup was the obvious choice, but I thought I’d use the squash as a component of a soup rather than as the focus. Since I had cooked a pound of Rancho Gordo Midnight beans on Sunday for a black bean and quinoa salad (lunch for the week), I decided to use half of the cooked beans as the base for my soup. I sautéed a sliced leek in a bit of olive oil, added the beans, the bean cooking liquid, and some homemade chicken stock, and decided to spice things up with some chipotle. I added a whole, canned chile to the soup, and rubbed cubes of butternut squash with olive oil, salt, and ground chipotle powder to offset the sweetness of the squash. I roasted the cubes until they were caramelized and set them aside for later.

The black bean soup had a good flavor, which I brightened up with a splash of sherry vinegar, but it was a little thin, so I decided to puree it with a stick blender until it was relatively smooth but still had a bit of texture. At this point, I let everything cool and then stored it in the fridge overnight. Yes, I actually did all of my cooking on Sunday, which was a good thing: after a hellish Monday commute, culminating in a walk home of a little over a mile, uphill and on ice, from the train station, the most I had in me was to put a pot on the stove and reheat everything. And toast some pepitas. And eat.

“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 cilantro

For 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.