Eatwell Recipe 20: Grilled Summer Squash

This week's produce box contained a bag of the season's first summer squash. Although I am sure we will be sick to death of squash in just a few short months, I greeted this first collection of tender, little yellow and green bowling pins with pleasure.

This is my favorite way of preparing summer squash. It's quick, simple and truly delicious. I've loved it ever since my mother-in-law prepared a bunch for a summer cookout a few years ago.

It's pretty easy to throw the squash onto the grill if you're barbequing other things but if you don't have a grill, you can also roast the squash on a cookie sheet in the oven with similarly tasty results.

This is such a simple recipe that I have not really specified any amounts below -- just adjust as needed based on how much squash you have to work with. The garlic is optional -- it will taste good with or without it. You can either eat these as a side or add them to some orzo, farro or quinoa along with some goat or feta cheese and basil for a delicious salad.

Grilled Summer Squash & Zucchini

Ingredients

* Summer squash and zucchini (or one or the other)

* Olive oil

* Sea salt

* Freshly ground black pepper

* Minced or pressed garlic (optional)

Directions

1. Slice the squash into 1/4 inch-thick ribbons length-wise (you could use a mandolin if you have one but a sharp knife will do the trick fine, too)

2. Toss the squash with olive oil to coat thoroughly and sprinkle with the salt, pepper and garlic (if you're using it).

3. Grill over the hottest part of the coals (or gas jets) for roughly six minutes or until black grill marks appear, turning once. Move to a cooler area of the grill and grill another four or so minutes, until fully softened.

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Rustic Plum Tart - A Foraged Treat

It's plum season here in the East Bay and the trees are putting out a riot of small yellow, red and purple orbs. As a result, the sidewalks in my neighborhood are a sticky mosaic of smeared patches and tiny dried pits from the fallen fruits.

I took a walk in the Oakland hills with some friends a few days ago and came home with a bucketful of foraged plums. Aren't they gorgeous? I love the mix of colors from the different trees.

Each variety (and I have to admit that I have no idea what the varieties are) has a slightly different taste and texture but they all have that smooth, dusky skin, followed by juicy sweetness that is tempered by a little sour bite. These foraged plums are definitely "petite" which makes them a bit more work to pit, but they're definitely worth the effort.

I was inspired to make this tart by a recipe in On Rue Tatin, a wonderful book about food and life in France, written by Susan Hermann Loomis. Her recipe called for nectarines but it works equally well with either plums or peaches. I find the process of making a free form tart extremely fun and satisfying -- somehow it feels way more creative than making something like a pie. Hope that you enjoy this lovely taste of summer.

Rustic Plum Tart
Serves 6

Ingredients

Dough
* 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus a bit more to flour your work surface
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 10 Tbsps (1 1/4 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
* 3 - 6 Tbsps ice water

Fruit Filling

* 1 pound plums (or peaches , nectarines, or apricots)
* 5 Tbsps granulated sugar
* 1 tsp of corn starch
* 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
* 1 Tbsp granulated sugar for sprinkling

Instructions

1. Make the dough. In a food processor, pulse flour and salt a few times to combine well. Scatter the pieces of butter over the flour, then pulse until the texture resembles coarse corn meal and the butter pieces are about the size of small peas (will probably take 12-15 pules). Sprinkle the mixture with 1 tablespoon of the ice water and process for 1-2 seconds; repeat until the dough begins to form into small clumps and holds together when you pinch it with your fingers. Turn the dough out onto a smooth, floured work surface. If the dough is too dry and crumbly, you can add a bit more water but add water sparingly -- you can always add more but you can't take any back... Kneed the dough with the heel of your hand until it is cohesive and seems workable (but don't overdo it or the crust will be tough.) Form the dough into a 4-inch disk, wrap it waxed paper or put it in a plastic bag (I hate Saran wrap but you can also use that), and refrigerate it until cold and firm but still workable, about 1 hour.

2. While the dough is chilling, prepare the fruit for the filling. Halve and pit the fruit and cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges. Combine fruit in medium bowl (you should have about 3 cups) and set aside. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.

3. Using a floured rolling pin on a floured surface or a sheet of parchment paper, roll out the dough to make a 12-inch round about 1/4 inch thick. Slide the dough carefully onto a baking stone, insulated baking sheet or just a plain old pie dish (this was my solution) and set aside for a minute. If the dough has gotten too warm while you were working with it, put it in the fridge for a few minutes to cool down. Or if it feels too cold and stiff, leave it out to soften a tiny bit while you finish up with the filling.

4. Sprinkle fruit with sugar, lemon juice and corn starch and toss gently to combine. Mound the fruit in the center of the circle of dough, leaving 2 1/2-inch border around edge. Carefully grasp one edge of dough and fold up outer 2 inches over fruit, leaving 1/2-inch area of dough just inside of fold free of fruit. Repeat around circumference of tart, overlapping dough every 2 to 3 inches; gently pinch pleated dough to secure, but do not press dough into fruit. When you've finished pleating, brush the dough with water and sprinkle the whole thing evenly with 1 tablespoon of sugar.

5. Bake until the crust is deep golden brown and fruit is bubbling, 50 to 55 minutes. If you baked the tart on a baking stone or cookie sheet, carefully slide it onto a wire rack and cool slightly before cutting into wedges and serving (hint, hint: this goes very well with ice cream...)

More recipes you might like:

• Apple Pie
• Fresh Peach Cobbler With Biscuit Topping
• Wild Blackberry Sorbet With Lavender & Garden Mint
• Harvesting Wild Ramps

Eatwell Recipe 19: Curried Potato Salad

Since the season for new potatoes has arrived here in Northern Cali, I figure this is a great time to bust out some new takes on old 'tater favorites.

Although I've often made curried chicken salad, for some reason, I had never made curried potato salad before yesterday. I have no idea why I waited so long, since it's totally delicious!

I used the other pound of Desiree potatoes we received in our produce box to make this yummy side salad.

I've included rough amounts below but you should feel free to adjust based on your tastes -- it's all pretty flexible.

Curried Potato Salad

Ingredients

* 6 potatoes, boiled, peeled and cut into cubes
* A handful of fresh cilantro, washed, dried and chopped plus a bit more for garnish
* 2 Tbsps (roughly 1/4 of a medium-sized onion) red onion, finely chopped or sliced (that part is up to you)
* 1 Tbsp capers
* 2 Tbsps of sour cream or plain yogurt
* 1 Tbsp of mayonnaise
* 2 tsps whole grain mustard
* 1 Tbsp mango chutney or apricot jam
* Sea salt to taste
* Freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 2-3 tsps curry powder or garam masala (you can use more if you like)
* 1-2 tsps warm water, as needed to think dressing

Directions

1. Combine all the ingredients (except for the potatoes) and mix well. Add warm water as needed to thin the dressing.

2. Add to the dressing to the potatoes and toss well to coat.

3. Garnish with fresh cilantro and serve.

More recipes you might like:

• Chicken Salad With Fresh Herbs
• Chopped Summer Salad
• Cucumber & Yogurt Salad With Herbs (Tzatziki)
• Curried Egg Salad
• Herbed Farro Salad
• Lemon-Scented Quinoa With Tahini & Chickpeas
• Roasted Delicata Squash & Caramelized Red Onions With Farro & Arugala
• Wilted Russian Kale Salad With Balsamic Vinegar & Orange Zest

Like this recipe? Click here to browse through more Eatwell Recipes.

Eatwell Recipe 18: Roasted New Potatoes With Fresh Rosemary & Sea Salt

I am a potato fiend! Something about their slightly sweet, starchy flavor really thrills and satisfies me. So, naturally, I get very excited when new potato season rolls around. No more greening skins and growing eyes, these babies are tender and fresh - straight from the dark, moist earth.

Our most recent produce box contained a paper bag full of the season's first new potatoes, a variety called "desiree." Since we received two pounds of taters, I roasted half and saved the other half to make potato salad (post coming soon).

This is a simple (one might call it "classic") and delicious way to prepare new (or old) potatoes. These potatoes make a good side for a meat or fish dish or go well as one of several veggie dishes for a non-meat meal. I recommend one of the waxier varieties such as Yukon Gold, Russian Banana Fingerling, Yellow Finn, etc., since they have such a sweet, subtle flavor. Since our house is surrounded by rosemary bushes (see the photo below), it's my herb of choice though I'm sure this would also be very tasty using thyme or sage.

I'd also recommend using a coarse-grained salt that will stand on its own better than fine-grained salts - you want it to be just coarse enough to add some salty crunch to these sweet and herby little tubers. I used some coarse-grained Celtic sea salt on this batch of taters.

Roasted New Potatoes With Fresh Rosemary & Sea Salt
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

* 1 lb small new potatoes, scrubbed of all dirt and with any blemishes cut out. If the potatoes are different sizes, cut them into equal-sized pieces as you want them to roast at the same rate
* 2-3 tsps fresh rosemary, washed, dried and chopped
* 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
* 3-4 Tbsps olive oil
* 2 tsps coarse sea salt
* Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the potatoes, herbs, oil, garlic, salt and a few grinds of black pepper thoroughly. You want each potato to be coated in oil.

2. Spread them in a single jumbled layer on a thick-bottomed cookie sheet or in a glass or ceramic baking dish and roast for 35-45 minutes (this will depend on how large your 'taters are). Do not forget to check them after 15-20 minutes and turn them all to prevent burning. If your oven heats unevenly (as mine does) you may want to check and turn them earlier twice while they're roasting instead of just once.

3. Once tender, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.

More recipes you might like:

• Curried Potato Salad
• Perfect Oven Fries
• Potato Latkes
• Potato Leek Soup With Fennel & Herbs
• Roasted Delicata Squash & Caramelized Red Onions With Farro & Arugala
• Roasted New Carrots
• Steamed Potatoes With Herb Butter

Like this recipe? Click here to browse through more Eatwell Recipes.

Gardening in the Ghetto -- a Review of Farm City

If you liked Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my guess is that you will love Novella Carpenter's new book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. 

Carpenter's writing is both gritty and funny and generally a pleasure to read. The book chronicles Carpenter's somewhat unintentional experience of creating a "squat garden" in the vacant lot next to her apartment building in Ghost Town, which is what she and the other residents call their rundown neighborhood located near downtown Oakland.

Carpenter starts out with vegetables but ends up with bees, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, geese, turkeys and even two pigs! Along the way, she and her boyfriend Billy befriend their new neighbors -- a motley crew including Bobby, a homeless man who sleeps in an abandoned car on their block, a woman named Lana ("it's 'anal' spelled backwards," Lana points out when she first meets them) who runs a speakeasy out of her apartment, and a temple-full of Vietnamese monks.

She also makes new friends including Willow, the pioneering urban farmer who started City Slicker Farms and local chef, Chris Lee who teaches her how to turn the two pigs she and Billy raise entirely on scraps from green bins throughout Chinatown and from food foraged from local dumpsters into delicious hand-cured meats.

Along with the journey from gardener to urban farmer, Novella takes us soul-searching on topics like the divisions between races, classes, and rural and urban dwellers, what it means to be a carnivore, and how raising your own animals for food changes that dynamic. All the while, she pours her heart into growing something green, beautiful and nourishing that feeds not only her and Billy but their friends and neighbors in Ghost Town, as well.

Novella attended UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism where studied under Michael Pollan and her training as a journalist has not gone to waste. Her writing is excellent -- evocative, quirky, funny and brutally honest. My interest in her story never waned and I even found myself laughing aloud at times as I read.

Give Farm City a read -- I don't think you'll regret it. You can keep up with Novella's adventures at her blog -- Ghost Town Farm.

You might also like:

Review: The Dirty Life: a Memoir of Farming, Food & Love
Review: The Urban Farm Handbook
Finding Our Way Back To Food, An interview with Ann Vileisis, Author of Kitchen Literacy
For more delicious recipes, gardening ideas, foraging tips, and food-related inspiration "like" the Garden of Eating on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter and Pinterest.

Thick & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ever since my son was born four weeks ago, I've developed a full-blown chocolate chip cookie addiction. I'm not sure if it's because I need a jolt of sugary energy to counter the sleep deprivation, or because the taste is comforting and familiar at a time when everything seems very new and VERY challenging, or because they just taste good, but I've gotta have 'em!

I've specifically been lusting after thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies. There is a store near our house that makes some pretty tasty cookies but, unfortunately, said store also charges roughly a dollar a cookie - a slightly more expensive habit than I'm comfortable with. So I decided to do the frugal thing and bake a batch of my own cookies while my husband bounced and rocked our little boy who seems inclined to be kinda colicky. Luckily for me and my son, his dad has both patience and stamina.

A quick internet search yielded this recipe for Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Cook's Illustrated. According to the crazy over-the-top testers at Cook's Illustrated, the secret to making chewy cookies is brown sugar which apparently contains something called "invert sugar" - a mixture of fructose and glucose - which draws moisture from whatever is around it, (primarily, the air) unlike granulated white sugar.

Though I had never heard of "invert sugar" before, I tend to trust the mad kitchen scientist types at Cook's Illustrated and I can personally attest that these cookies are tasty. I hope you enjoy every chewy, decadent bite! I recommend eating them with a glass of cold milk if you're one of the lucky few who is not lactose intolerant.

-- print recipe --Thick & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 1 1/2 dozen 3-inch cookies

Ingredients

* 2 1/8 cups flour
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 1/2 cup granulated sugar
* 1 large egg
* 1 egg yolk
* 2 tsps vanilla extract
* 1-2 cups chocolate chips or chunks
* 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips (and nuts if you decide to use those.)

3. Using a spoon or icecream scoop, form balls of dough and place them onto a heavy greased cookie sheet (you'll need at least two cookie sheets), roughly nine dough balls per sheet.

4. Bake, reversing cookie sheets’ positions halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes (start checking at 13 minutes). Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in airtight container.

You might also like:

• Coconut Almond Chocolate Chunk Cookies (grain and gluten-free)
• Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies
• Mandarin Orange Coconut Cookies (vegan yet delicious)

For more delicious recipes, gardening ideas, foraging tips, and food-related inspiration "like" the Garden of Eating on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter and Pinterest.