GREEN BEAN AND POTATO SALAD WITH BACON

At this time of the year, I get a little cranky about living in Southern California. It’s fall—school’s started (and with it, the horrific post-Labor-Day traffic), the days are getting shorter (it’s dark when I get up in the morning and nearly dark when I come home at night), the clothing stores are full of wool and fleece, and I’ve even seen a few leaves turning orange (yes, some of our trees do change colors in the autumn, contrary to popular belief). The food blogs are suddenly full of talk of pumpkins, apples, long-simmered soups, and pot roasts. And…it’s 103 degrees in Pasadena. September is traditionally one of our hottest months, not to mention that some part of the Southland is usually on fire. It’s still too hot for me to even make ice cream, let alone start canning and braising and roasting and baking and cuddling up under blankets the way online peer pressure and my own Northern instincts compel me to.

But I’m trying to look on the bright side. At least I get a little longer to say goodbye to summer and perfect all my salad recipes, right? Like the other night I revisited this one from Cooking Light, which I first made a few months ago and enjoyed, but never got around to writing about. I couldn’t get wax beans, my photos turned out sort of blah, and A—who I’d expected to be enthusiastic about anything involving bacon—was skeptical (“the pieces are too big and it’s hard to eat”). So, in the midst of this new heat wave, I thought I’d give it another shot—this time, with wax beans, a little extra bacon, and the beans and potatoes halved crosswise to address A’s objections. The result was a perfectly pleasant potato-green bean salad, heavy on the green beans (I like that), dressed in a simple vinaigrette, and jazzed up with crumbles of bacon. It’s good…but if this doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, it’s because not even the allure of bacon can rival the other potato-green bean salad in my life, the one I discovered a few weeks ago and can’t stop craving. So I’m not sure whether this recipe will quite make it into my repertoire. But I recommend it to you, and I might turn to it every now and again, just for variety, when summer starts feeling a little too long.

¾ pound green beans, trimmed
½ pound wax beans, trimmed
½ pound fingerling potatoes, halved lengthwise
¼ cup white wine vinegar, divided
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ teaspoon kosher salt, divided
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1tablespoon minced fresh parsley
2 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

1. Cook beans in boiling water 5 minutes or until crisp-tender. Drain and run under cold water for a few minutes, then let drain again.

2. Place potatoes in a saucepan; cover with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes or until tender; drain. Return potatoes to pan over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons vinegar to pan; bring to a boil. Remove from heat.

3. Combine remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar, oil, ¼ teaspoon salt, and pepper in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Drizzle beans with vinegar mixture; toss well to coat. Place beans on a serving platter; arrange potatoes over beans. Sprinkle with remaining ¼teaspoon salt, parsley, and bacon. Serve at room temperature.

Serves: 6
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: OK. The vinegar will discolor the green beans, so it won’t be as pretty, but it will still taste fine.

MUSHROOM, ASIAGO, ROASTED GARLIC, AND THYME PIZZA

Eventually, I’m just going to end up cribbing Eggs on Sunday’s entire Pizza category. I can’t help myself! There’s so much variety, and all the kinds I’ve tried have been seriously good. Left to my own devices, I’d just be throwing some tomato sauce, zucchini, mushrooms, sausage, and mozzarella on there and calling it a day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but considering that I make pizza once a week, I feel the need to branch out. And I’m OK at improvising every now and then, but with pizza, the possibilities are so endless that I tend to get overwhelmed and would prefer to seek guidance from a recipe so my little head doesn’t spin too much.

Mushrooms are my #1 default pizza topping, so I knew I had to try this one. It’s simple, but with the big, bold flavors of pungent asiago and sweet roasted garlic (mmm…gaaaarlic…) The flavors pair fabulously, and it’s easy to throw together (for weeknight-cooking ease, I roasted the garlic the night before and kept it in a sealed container in the fridge until I was ready to make the pizza). The only thing I’d change would be to use more mushrooms—I suspect my pizza was larger than the one in the original recipe, and although 1 cup seemed to provide plenty of mushroom coverage at first, I’d forgotten how much mushrooms shrink up once they cook, and in the end they looked a little meager. So next time, I’ll try a whole 8-ounce package. No such thing as too many mushrooms, right? In addition to amping up the flavor even more, I think it’ll help the moisture content—I know I overcooked my pizza a little, but even with the drizzle of olive oil it was a bit dry.

1 whole head of garlic
Olive oil
1 ball of pizza dough (1 pound)
1½ cups grated asiago cheese
1–2 cups thinly sliced mushrooms (I like cremini)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon thinly sliced tops of green onions (optional; I didn’t want to buy some just for this recipe, but if I’d happened to have some on hand, I would have used them)

1. To roast the garlic, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut the top ¼ inch off a whole head of garlic, so just the very tops of the cloves are exposed. Drizzle a little olive oil over the head of garlic, wrap it loosely in foil, and place the foil package in the oven for about 1 hour, until the cloves are soft. Squeeze the soft cloves out and roughly chop them. (Roasted garlic can be stored in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container for several days.)

2. When you’re ready to bake the pizza, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Stretch out your ball of pizza dough and lay it out on a pizza peel or baking sheet that’s been generously dusted with cornmeal.

3. Layer the toppings as follows: grated asiago cheese, mushrooms, roasted garlic, thyme, and green onion slices. Drizzle the pizza with a little olive oil.

4. Bake until the cheese has melted and the crust is golden brown, about 8–10 minutes.

Serves: 4
Time: 1½ hours
Leftover potential: Good.

FRUIT AND BROWNED BUTTER CAKE

I made this dessert with some gorgeous “dinosaur egg” pluots a couple of weeks ago, but even though it knocked my socks off and A’s too, I neglected to write about it. At first I couldn’t figure out why I kept procrastinating, and then one day I caught myself thinking, “Hmm, I seem to have forgotten what this tastes like…how will I describe it on my blog? It’s been so long since I tasted it, I really don’t think I can do it justice anymore. Maybe I should whip up another batch, just to inspire myself.” Yes, I had managed to trick myself into making this again. Sometimes having a food blog comes in handy.

Purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I used nectarines the second time, and it turned out just as amazingly as the first time around. So: versatile, possibly foolproof? Check. Delicious? CHECK. Astoundingly easy, requiring only a few common ingredients (I didn’t plan on making that second batch ahead of time—just gave in to my craving one day and delightedly found that all the ingredients were already in my kitchen) and some fruit that happens to be in season right now? Check, check, and check. Clearly, I can’t in good conscience keep the recipe from you people any longer.

This isn’t really a cake per se, but that’s what the original recipe (from Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax) calls it: Quick Apple Cake. Occasionally, while eating, you do get a chunk that seems cake-reminiscent, where the batter has oozed down to surround a piece of fruit. But on the site where I found the recipe, Baking With Julie, it looks more like a pie, baked in a pie plate and cut into wedges. I don’t own a pie plate, if you can believe it, so I used an 8-inch square Pyrex baking dish, and rather than slicing the dessert (which didn’t have much structural integrity anyway the first time I made it, probably because I used too many of those juicy pluots) I just scooped out spoonfuls into bowls, like a cobbler or crisp or crumble—and indeed it’s put together that way, with lots of cooked fruit on the bottom and just a layer of batter on top. Julie calls it “Browned Butter Bliss,” and that’s certainly accurate, as well as being kind of catchy—and really, if we can have desserts called grunts, slumps, buckles, bettys, and pandowdies, why can’t we popularize the bliss? Still, I’m not sure I can pull it off without air quotes, so in the end I opted for a more straight-up descriptive name, mainly so I don’t have to deal with the “huh?” that would probably result each time I told A we were having Bliss for dessert.

The magical ingredient here is the browned butter, which gives the cake a wonderful caramelized flavor (seriously: taste a fingerful of the uncooked batter; the caramel is even more pronounced than in the finished dessert). If you’ve never browned butter before, all that means is melting butter in a pan on the stovetop and then letting it go a shade or two darker—this happens quickly, so you do have to be vigilant, but otherwise it requires no skill on your part. Then you just mix that—by hand; no mixer required—with some sugar, eggs, and flour, and pour the batter over some cut-up fruit you’ve tossed with a little sugar in the baking dish. You don’t even have to peel that fruit! Sprinkle some more sugar on top and bake. One bowl, one baking dish, a few measuring cups, and that’s it. In 40 minutes you’ll have meltingly soft baked fruit, sweetened but still a little tart, nestled beneath a crusty, buttery topping. I’m willing to bet you could use just about any pie-friendly fruit: peaches, plums, apricots, berries, cherries, pears….Obviously I’m going to have to experiment with each and every one. And I haven’t even tried it with ice cream or whipped cream yet—it’s plenty good plain, whether eaten warm from the pan or cold from the fridge the next day. I'd also like to try it with brown sugar, though that might just be gilding the lily.

Even more so than the berry buttermilk cake, my other favorite simple-baked-fruit-dessert discovery of this summer, this is a recipe I can totally envision myself effortlessly memorizing, then whipping up spontaneously at a moment’s notice when guests drop by (of course, guests never really just “drop by” my apartment, but in this fantasy I live in some close-knit, old-timey community with all my friends in easy reach and leisurely afternoons to spend in each others’ kitchens). Or, you know, when I just have some fruit lying around that needs to be eaten.

8 or so small plums or apricots, or 3 large peaches or nectarines, thickly sliced (the original calls for 3 tart apples, peeled and thinly sliced, in which case also add a squeeze of lemon juice to them in the pan)
¾ cup + 3 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon (optional; I didn’t use it)
½ cup butter
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Butter a pie plate or 8-inch square baking dish. Toss your fruit in the baking dish with about 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon, if using; spread evenly over the bottom of the dish.

3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat (I find that a light-colored [i.e., non-nonstick, such as stainless steel] pan works better, because you can see the color of the butter more clearly) and keep cooking it, swirling the pan occasionally, for about 5 minutes or until it turns golden brown (you should see brown flecks in the butter). Remove from heat and pour into a medium mixing bowl.

4. Stir the ¾ cup of sugar into the butter, then the eggs, then the flour. Pour over the fruit and sprinkle with the last tablespoon of sugar.

5. Bake for 40–45 minutes, until golden and crusty, and the juices ooze from around the edges. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or thick vanilla yogurt.

Serves: 4–8
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: High. I was surprised how much I liked the cold leftovers the next day—almost more than the hot-from-the-oven version (though if you wanted, you could just reheat the leftovers in the microwave—which I’d do if I were serving it with ice cream; I love that warm/cold contrast). Sure, the cake topping gets less crisp, but the flavors seem to meld more.

GREEN BEAN AND CHERRY TOMATO SALAD

With just two vegetables in a basic vinaigrette, this salad is almost too simple to talk about. You may note that it’s also suspiciously similar to this salad, but with shallots instead of corn. But it’s plenty tasty, and since it happens to contains the two vegetables I’ve been most obsessed with this summer (as well as following the vegetable + acid + shallots formula that’s worked so well for me in the past), I’m…going to talk about it anyway. After all, you can never have too many summer salads in your arsenal, particularly when the temperature hits the triple digits and forests in your immediate vicinity are on fire.

The recipe is from Chez Panisse Vegetables, via Smitten Kitchen, and I made it for the first time on the fourth of July, when A was out of town and some friends kindly invited me to share in their cookout, so I volunteered to bring salad and we all enjoyed it. But I forgot to photograph it or write about it, so I made it again last week, as a side dish for a hot-weather dinner of hummus and pita crisps. A, being not really a fan of either cherry tomatoes or green beans, politely tried a few bites and then gave me the rest of his bowl, so I guess we won’t be eating this all the time. But I’m fine with making myself a big bowl to eat by my lonesome when the green-bean-and-cherry-tomato craving strikes again.

I made a half-recipe, but otherwise no other modifications. I haven’t added an herb so far, but I do think basil would be tasty.

1 pound green beans (or a mix of green and yellow beans)
1 pound cherry tomatoes
1 large shallot
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Basil or other herb (optional)

1. Trim the beans and cut them into large segments. Parboil in salted water until just tender, about four to five minutes. Drain and immediately spread them out to cool.

2. Stem the cherry tomatoes and cut them in half.

3. Peel and mince the shallot and put it in a large bowl with the vinegar and salt and pepper. Whisk in the olive oil. Taste and adjust the balance with more vinegar, oil, or salt, as needed. Toss the cherry tomatoes in with the vinaigrette. This can sit for a while, but do not add the green beans until just before serving or they will discolor from the acid in the vinaigrette. For variety, the salad can be garnished with basil or some other fresh herb such as parsley.

Serves: 6
Time: 15 minutes
Leftover potential: Low to OK. I did eat some leftovers the next day and they tasted fine, but the vinegar had turned the green beans an unappetizing army green, so be forewarned.

ARUGULA, POTATO, AND GREEN BEAN SALAD

Holy crap, I love this salad. And you know my usual lack of enthusiasm for salads. In particular, I’ve always been an avowed potato-salad hater (detest mayonnaise, don’t care much for mustard, and could never see the point of eating cold potatoes), but for some reason, this summer it’s started to look good to me as I’ve seen it paraded across the food blogs (at least the German-style vinegar-based kinds), and I’ve tried a couple of recipes with decent, if not blogworthy results: one had bacon and was therefore quite palatable, and I’ve been meaning to try it again so I can photograph it and write it up here; the other had pesto and was OK but not something I’m likely to crave again. Both of them had green beans, which I am apparently extra obsessed with this year.

But this recipe from Smitten Kitchen (adapted from Martha Stewart) is just what I was looking for, even though I didn’t really know I was looking for it. It’s not a potato salad, but rather a normal (i.e., leafy) salad with potatoes in it, yet the dressing is a sly allusion to potato salad—a vinaigrette with a tiny hit of mustard (not enough to scare off this Dijonphobe, though I was suspicious) and a bit of creaminess (mercifully provided by yogurt, not mayonnaise). What really made this salad about as addictive as salads can get was the wonderful interplay between contrasting textures: the leafy arugula, the tender potatoes, the crisp green beans, the crunchy walnuts, and the creamy dressing. I was worried it would be bland, just plain boiled vegetables with greens and walnuts and some dressing, but it was far from it, even though I didn’t bother to buy walnut oil. (So expensive! Such a big bottle!) It tasted so great with plain old olive oil that I’m going to advise you not to bother with the walnut oil unless you already have it in your cupboard or have been waiting for an excuse to buy some.

Other than the olive oil, I didn’t make any changes to the recipe. I made a half-recipe (but a full amount of the dressing, just because it was easier to measure and whisk that way; of course, then I had some left over, which I really should have saved to put over ordinary salad) and split it into two big servings, which we ate for dinner with garlic-butter salmon on the side—and I kid you not, the salad outshone the salmon for me; I actually, for perhaps the first time in my life, wished I could just have two bowls of salad for dinner. I did think the recipe called for slightly too many potatoes—I would venture to say 1 pound might do it—but I’ll let you make that call. I didn’t really measure out my arugula, just pulled enough handfuls out of the bag to fill our bowls and then tossed the other ingredients on top. And I flubbed a bit and put all the salt and pepper in the dressing, rather than saving half to sprinkle over the salad. It didn’t seem to make too much difference.

I can’t wait to make this again. I like that even though it’s perfect for summer—a more vitamin-rich, colorful riff on the old picnic side dish—you could just as easily make this in the winter if you can find decent-quality potatoes and green beans and bagged arugula. Something about walnuts always seems Christmasy to me anyway. But I certainly won’t wait that long…in fact, I might make more this weekend.

1 ounce walnuts (about ⅓ cup)
1½ pounds fingerling potatoes, cut crosswise into ½-inch-thick rounds
6 ounces green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch segments
2 tablespoons white wine or other mild vinegar
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons walnut oil or olive oil
3 ounces baby arugula

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees, place walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet, and toast in oven until fragrant, about 8 minutes (you can do this in a skillet on the stovetop over medium heat, if you prefer). Let cool slightly, then coarsely chop and set aside.

2. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add potatoes and cook until tender, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer potatoes to a colander to drain and cool. Set aside.

3. Return pan of water to a boil. Add green beans, and cook until tender and bright green, about 3 to 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a colander and run under cold water to stop the cooking.

4. Whisk together vinegar, yogurt, mustard, and ½ teaspoon salt in a small bowl; season with pepper. Add oil in a slow, steady stream, whisking until emulsified. Set dressing aside.

5. Arrange arugula, potatoes, and green beans on a platter. Season with remaining ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Drizzle with dressing and sprinkle with toasted walnuts; toss to coat.

Serves: 4 as a main dish, 8 as a side dish
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Low; as with most leafy salads, the arugula will get wilty and slimy if it sits in the dressing for too long.

ROASTED GREEN BEANS

Psst! I realized something important this week: I've been happily making roasted green beans for years now (YEARS, I TELL YOU) and yet have never bothered to post the recipe here. So basically, I've been selfishly keeping roasted green beans a secret all this time, clutching them tightly to my breast in my wizened claws while muttering "Bah humbug! NO ROASTED GREEN BEANS FOR YOU!"

OK, not really. Actually, I just kept forgetting to post the recipe, and then I forgot about it completely for a while and only recently, in the throes of a serious summer passion for green beans, remembered its existence. I'm just trying to sexy this up a little bit, since it's so ridiculously simple it barely seems like a recipe at all. But it's no simpler than roasted asparagus, roasted broccoli, or roasted kale, and just as good, so I suppose it deserves a posting.

Y'all already know that roasting things makes them tasty--browned and delightfully chewy-crunchy, almost addictively snackworthy--and green beans are no different. If you think you don't like a vegetable, I say, try it roasted (it's worked for me with turnips, parsnips, and kale, although I have so far failed to fall in love with roasted beets). And of course, if you love a vegetable, definitely try it roasted. I especially like roasting green beans because--has this ever happened to you? Sometimes you go to the market and you get green beans and they're fantastic, so crisp and juicy you can eat them raw (I actually like raw green beans better than cooked ones; it reminds me of picking them and eating them straight from the garden as a kid). But then other times, even though the beans appear to be just as nice, and you spend an hour carefully choosing the skinny ones and skipping the overmature bulgy ones, you get them home and they're all thick and lumpy and tough and dry and revolting. That happened to me this week, and it was bumming me out until I remembered that roasting is an excellent treatment for non-superstar green beans. High heat transforms all that leathery starchiness back into sweet, sweet sugar (SCIENCE!). For extra excitement, try a mixture of green and yellow beans.

1 pound green beans, trimmed
1 tablespoon olive oil
Coarse salt to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Wash the beans and dry them well. Place them on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with a little salt, and toss well.

3. Roast for 15 minutes, or until beans reach desired degree of doneness, stirring them or shaking the pan a few times so they roast evenly. Season with additional salt, and a little fresh-ground pepper would not be a bad thing either.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Fair. They'll be best right out of the oven, but they're still pretty tasty reheated.

CAVATAPPI WITH BACON AND SUMMER VEGETABLES

Since I already have an embarrassment of pasta recipes, I try to be pretty cautious about acquiring new ones, but when I saw this recipe in this month’s Cooking Light, it called out to me. After all, I rationalized, I don’t have any pasta recipes involving corn, and corn is so deliciously in season right now, and besides, mixing in a little bacon is the best way to get A to eat his vegetables. Not to mention that cavatappi happens to be my favorite pasta shape—although ironically, when I went to buy it for this dish I suddenly couldn’t find it at the store and had to use “cellentani,” which looks pretty much the same to me but is maybe slightly smaller. Then when I was boiling the pasta I scooped out one noodle to taste to see if it was done, forgetting that the pasta was hollow and thus full of 212-degree water, which promptly dribbled out of the corner of my mouth and down my chin, leaving me with an actual burn, a perfectly vertical pink line, that stung like the dickens for the rest of the evening and made people wonder for the next day or so if I’d had some sort of rogue lip-gloss incident.

ANYWAY. I had to futz with this recipe a little, since it was part of the “Dinner Tonight” part of the magazine and thus called for silly convenience items like bottled minced garlic and prechopped onion. Also, I doubled the amount of pasta, because I don’t like to have half-boxes of pasta cluttering up my cupboards and I love having a stash of leftovers to eat from all week long. So then I had to figure out what to do with the rest of the quantities. I straight-up doubled the garlic, zucchini, cheese, basil, and salt, because it was easy to do and I like those things. I went with 1½ times the number of bacon slices, because 8 just seemed like a lot and I was planning to have 6 servings of pasta (I actually ended up with more like 7), so one bacon slice per serving seemed reasonable. I also intended to do 1½ times the amount of corn, or 3 ears instead of 2, but my ears must have been honkin’ compared to the ones Cooking Light used, because they called for 1 cup of kernels and I got over 3 cups. So I’m just saying 3 ears of corn. I didn’t increase the onion (because I only had 1 onion) or the tomatoes (because a pint already seemed like a lot), and it was a good thing I didn’t, because when fully assembled, the pasta and sauce barely fit in my big skillet—this is a ton of veggies, and curly pasta takes up a lot of space. But the tomatoes are so good in the finished dish (I’m really loving grape/cherry tomatoes this year for some reason), I’d maybe increase to 1½ pints if I had them available.

ANYWAY. Since it’s basically just bacon, vegetables, and pasta with a few seasonings thrown in, this recipe is pretty flexible, so do whatever you feel like. The online version even says “use whatever veggies you have on hand,” though I’m partial to this particular combo. I know I’ve been using this word a lot, but it’s just so summery! The only thing I’d change next time would be to actually pour a little of the bacon fat out of the pan before adding the onion and garlic; I had a lot of it, and the finished dish was ever-so-slightly on the greasy side. The bacon fat adds wonderful flavor and keeps the dish moist, but I could have done with a bit less—after all, you can always loosen things up with some olive oil or reserved pasta water after you’ve assembled everything if it looks too dry.

ANYWAY. I loved this. I will make it again, probably within a month. I wish I were eating it for lunch today. You should try it, too.

1 pound cavatappi or other curly pasta
6 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
1 large onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
2 medium-large zucchini, quartered lengthwise and cut into ¼-inch-thick slices
3 medium-large ears fresh corn (remove kernels and discard cobs)
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved if large
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
½ cup chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Cook pasta according to package directions and drain.

2. Meanwhile, cook bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat 5 minutes or until crisp. Remove bacon from pan with a slotted spoon, reserving drippings in pan. Add onion and garlic to pan; sauté 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add zucchini; cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in corn and tomatoes; cook 5 minutes or until tomatoes begin to break down, stirring occasionally.

3. Add pasta to vegetable mixture; toss. Cook 1 minute or until thoroughly heated, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Add ½ cup cheese, bacon, basil, salt, and pepper; toss to combine. Serve sprinkled with remaining cheese.

Serves: 6–8
Time: 40 minutes
Leftover potential: High

FRUIT SALAD WITH MINT

On Tuesday night, I had to pick A up at the airport at an awkward hour of the evening: several hours after the end of the workday (I work right next to the airport), but too early for me to drive all the way home in rush-hour traffic and then all the way back. Luckily, my friend M, who lives on the airport side of town, graciously allowed me to impose on her family’s hospitality and spend the post-work/pre-airport time at their home. They even fed me a tasty dinner. I owed them big time—but luckily, at least the fruit salad I brought turned out to be delicious.

A fruit salad is always a nice option to have at a potluck, barbeque, or picnic (although as a non-eater of most melons, I always feel conspicuous as I try to pick around the omnipresent cantaloupe and honeydew therein), but I never crave fruit salads in my everyday life. Good fruit doesn’t require any adornment, and eating a single fruit at a time is fine by me. Fruit is usually the easy side dish or afterthought in our meals, requiring no more preparation than washing and cutting, and I don’t see the point in complicating things. But then I saw this recipe, originally adapted from Giada de Laurentis, on Cheap Healthy Good, and it sounded so good, with the mojito-like flavors of mint and lime plus the intriguing addition of almond flavoring, which I love. I could make it with three of my favorite fruits—strawberries, blueberries, and peaches (I would have added watermelon, which is frequently paired with mint, but I was at the farmers’ market alone and already had too much to carry without the addition of a huge, heavy melon). I could make it ahead of time. And making simple syrup, prepping the fruit, and whirling the dressing ingredients together in a blender sounded like a manageable amount of work for a Monday night.

I was not wrong. The salad was a little soupy when I served it the next evening (I blame a bunch of the blueberries, which turned out to be squishy right out of the package), but I loved it and it was well received. I had been a little worried that so much mint would dominate the fruit, but it didn’t—blended into the dressing, the mint added a bright, fresh flavor without tasting like a stick of gum. The dressing was sweet, but not too sweet. The salad was supposed to yield 10 servings, but we three adults and two kids pretty much polished it off (well, I had also set aside about a bowl of it for A at home). I will definitely be making this again, and not just for parties, but for regular old home eatin’. What a perfect, refreshing dessert for a hot summer day.

You can use just about any summer fruit you want in this salad (the original version had watermelon and the dreaded cantaloupe, while Cheap Healthy Good’s included mango), but here’s what I did:

1 pint strawberries, sliced
1 pint blueberries
3 peaches, peeled and cubed
⅛ cup simple syrup (1 part sugar to 1 part water; see instructions below)
¼ cup lime juice (about 3 limes)
½ cup fresh mint, chopped
⅛ teaspoon almond extract

1. To make simple syrup, bring water to a boil in a small pot (I used ½ cup, because any smaller amount just seemed unmanageably tiny even for my smallest saucepan; leftover simple syrup can be refrigerated in a glass jar for up to 1 month, either to make more fruit salad later or to make beverages such as lemonade or cocktails). Stir in an equal amount of sugar until dissolved completely. Remove from heat and allow to cool (if you’re in a hurry, stick it in the fridge) while prepping fruit.

2. Wash, peel, and chop fruit as desired.

3. In a blender, combine simple syrup, lime juice, chopped mint, and almond extract.

4. Toss dressing over fruit.

5. Chill (overnight is good) and serve.

Serves: 5-10
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good.

GREEN BEANS AND CORN WITH TOMATO-HERB VINAIGRETTE

This recipe, from Jack Bishop’s Vegetables Every Day, tastes exactly as you’d expect, and I mean that in the best way possible. If you have sweet corn, tomatoes, and green beans at the peak of their fresh summer perfection, you don’t need to do much to them beyond a few minutes of cooking and a quick toss in a light vinaigrette. I quartered the recipe, and the big bowl of delicious veggies, served with a quesadilla on the side, made a perfect it’s-too-hot-to-stand-over-the-stove weeknight meal for one—particularly since I had already-cooked corn kernels ready to go, cut off an ear I’d boiled the night before while making myself some corn on the cob, which enabled me to skip Step 1 and part of step 3. I used some mixed heirloom cherry tomatoes, which always seem to work more neatly in salads than chunks from a bigger tomato, and just one herb (basil), since I needed such a small quantity. I’m looking forward to making more next time, with a full array of herbs, as a light side dish for me and A, and a full batch would also make a great salad option for a picnic or cookout. It just tastes like summer.

4 medium ears corn
2 medium ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound), cored and cut into ½-inch cubes
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
¼ cup minced fresh herbs (especially basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, and cilantro)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pound green beans, ends snapped off

1. Remove the husks and silk from the corn. Cut the ears in half crosswise with a chef’s knife, stand each piece on its cut end, and slice downward several times to remove all the kernels (discard the cobs). You should have about 2½ cups kernels.

2. Bring several quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. While waiting for the water to boil, combine the tomatoes, oil, vinegar, herbs, and salt and pepper to taste in a large serving bowl. Set aside.

3. Add the beans and salt to taste to the boiling water. Cook for 3 minutes. Add the corn and continue cooking until the vegetables are tender, 2 to 3 minutes longer. Drain, shake dry, and then spread the vegetables over a clean towel so they dry quickly. Let cool to room temperature.

4. When the beans and corn are just barely warm (this will take about 10 minutes), toss them with the tomato mixture. Adjust the seasonings. Serve at room temperature. (This salad can be covered and set aside for up to 2 hours.)

Serves: 4–6
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: I didn't have any leftovers, but I imagine this would be fine the next day.

SUMMER CSA: WEEK 6, PLUS A LITTLE ROADFOOD

Sorry my posting’s been spotty lately; I’ve been hot, busy, and a little uninspired. My love affair with my ice-cream maker fizzled during the summer’s first real heat wave, when the warmth of our un-air-conditioned apartment combined with the feebleness of our freezer to produce honey ice cream that tasted spectacular but had the consistency of a cool beverage. (I’ll try again when temperate weather returns and write a proper post about it.) A’s been out of town twice, leaving me cooking for one or subsisting on leftovers, and then for 10 days I was away from my kitchen, on a week-long Midwestern vacation that included a roadtrip through Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas (to visit three presidential libraries: Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower).

We spent less than 12 hours in Kansas City, during at least 8 of which we were busy sleeping, but I made sure our visit included dinner at Arthur Bryant’s, made famous in Calvin Trillin’s classic food book American Fried, which my father started reading to me while I was practically still in the cradle (I believe I even tried to an excerpt as a speech piece in middle school, but was persuaded to switch to The Call of the Wild or some such malarkey instead). Here is my glorious pulled-pork sandwich:




The next day, in Independence, I discovered a new taste sensation thanks to Harry Truman:


That’s the Harry’s Favorite, chocolate ice cream with butterscotch sauce, at Clinton’s Soda Fountain, where Truman worked as a teenager. I’m a big fan of butterscotch sauce and try to order it whenever I see it offered, in order to encourage its continued existence; it seems to be gradually giving way to the more preferred contemporary non-chocolate, non-fruit sundae topping, caramel. But I’d never had it on chocolate ice cream, and I must say I was impressed. Truman had good taste.

Although we were cruelly denied a meal at one of Kansas's famous fried-chicken destinations, the trip did include some other non-photographed food highlights, including my first tastes of cherry jam and blackberry wine (yum and yum), and excellent peach cobbler and beer at Free State Brewing in Lawrence, Kansas. But during my trip, I missed a CSA delivery, forcing P to singlehandedly dispatch three heads of lettuce and thirtysomething small zucchini. I returned just in time for this, the last box of the summer quarter already!


The cast of characters:
1 bunch arugula
1 head lettuce
1 head…some other kind of lettuce?
1 bizarre, alien-looking cucumber
1 head broccoli
5 zucchini
2 tomatoes
2 onions
6 Yukon Gold potatoes
3 Valencia oranges

I'm mystified by that one bunch of greens on the left. The leaves are a darker green, like spinach, but not as thick. I'm sure it's just some sort of lettuce, but I haven't come up with anything to do about it yet. Everything else, though, I'm on top of: The oranges can be eaten as snacks, and the onions can sit in the cupboard until I’m ready for them. I’ve already eaten the ruffly head of lettuce on a BLT and in salads, accompanied by slices from the weirdo long, skinny, curvy cucumber (I’d forgotten how good cucumber is on a BLT). Last night I made a tomato sauce from the tomatoes, mixed in the arugula, and served it over linguine (recipe coming later this week). When A gets back we’ll have roasted broccoli with Parmesan and lemon, zucchini fritters, and maybe some oven fries—after all, we need something we can dip into the barbecue sauce I brought back from Arthur Bryant’s!

The last CSA box was so long ago, I’ve already forgotten what I did with the contents, so I won’t bore you with the recap. I’m sad to see the season end and am not sure whether I’ll be signing up for the fall quarter yet—P may be out of the country for a month, and I just can’t handle a whole box on my own, particularly since I work from home on the days the box is delivered and rely on P to pick it up. I must say, though, that the veggie selection just wasn’t as interesting as it was in the winter. I adored the honey and am so happy to have discovered Italian flat beans, and that one week we got avocados was lovely and the oranges were nice, but everything else was pretty standard, and about comparable to what I get at the farmers’ market anyway. The thrill was much more in the suspense and the surprise, and the challenge of having to plan a menu around certain preassigned ingredients.

APRICOT-GLAZED SRIRACHA GINGER CHICKEN

Oh, yum. And also, YUM. This is my favorite kind of recipe—the kind that packs a huge flavor punch and will wow the hell out of anyone who eats it, but has a dirty little secret: it’s dead easy, laughably simple, and super-cheap to make. Without having to buy many special ingredients or expend much effort to speak of (just blend, then bake), you can bask in the glow of feeling all fancy and awesome and enjoy as much sticky-sweet-salty-spicy-saucy chicken as your stomach can hold. It’s a win-win!

When I saw this recipe (loosely adapted from Gourmet) at Sassy Radish, I knew it would be a slam-dunk with A, a Sriracha devotee, but was less sure how I’d like it myself, considering my feelings about all the separate ingredients don’t rise much above neutral. When I was mixing up the marinade, I started to worry that the chicken would just taste like soy sauce, because that’s about all I could smell. But I kept telling myself that the flavors would change in the oven, and I was right: the chicken emerged transformed. The sauce was amazingly addictive, with just the right amount of spice (enough to make my lips burn just a little, but not so much that a cold beer didn’t quench the fire). I licked my fingers, licked the plate, and wanted more. This is definitely going into constant rotation, especially in the summer.

The only change I made was to use chicken drumsticks instead of whole chicken legs, because I can buy a package of 6 drumsticks for a pittance at Trader Joe’s, whereas for whole legs I have to make a special trip to Whole Foods and spend about four pittances. Plus it seemed like a saucy glaze like this was tailor-made for casual, family-friendly finger food like drumsticks (or even chicken wings, but I’ve never been a fan of them—so much work for so very little meat). The drumsticks worked great, but I ended up with way more sauce than chicken—not a huge problem when the sauce is so tasty, but a little wasteful, and the sauce didn’t cook down enough to get really glazy. I could probably have used twice the drumsticks and cooked everything in a 9-by-13 dish instead of drowning my drumsticks in several inches of sauce in a 9-by-9 dish. I’ll try it next time and report back. It wouldn’t hurt to have leftovers—A ate ours the next day, and he reported that they were even tastier then.

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 (3-inch) piece peeled ginger, finely chopped
⅔ cup apricot preserves or jam
⅓ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons Sriracha
4 bone-in chicken legs (drumstick and thigh) or an equivalent quantity of drumsticks, washed and patted dry

1. Place garlic, ginger, preserves, soy sauce, water, and Sriracha and in a food processor or blender and pulse until sauce is combined.

2. Place sauce and chicken in a plastic bag or a glass bowl with a lid (if your baking dish has a lid, that would be extra-convenient) and let marinate for an hour.

3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

4. Place the chicken and sauce in a baking pan and bake for 30 minutes, at which point you should check for doneness. If red or pink juices are running when you cut into the chicken), cook some more at 350 degrees (check after 15 minutes and then at 5-minute intervals—mine took about 45 minutes total).

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour, plus 1 hour for marinating
Leftover potential: I haven’t tested this myself yet, but A testifies to their goodness.

SUMMER CSA: WEEK 4

3 yellow zucchini
1 bunch of teeny-tiny radishes
2 leeks
2 onions
6 Yukon Gold potatoes
½ bunch sage
½ bunch basil
1 head lettuce
11 carrots
Italian flat beans (forgot to count them)

Hooray, more Italian flat beans! That’s the most remarkable part of this week’s haul; there’s not even any exotic Californian fruit to liven things up. While I was unpacking the bag of produce last night, A and I agreed that the summer CSA selection has been pretty tame compared to the winter one. That makes it less work to fit the produce into our menu, but it takes a little of the thrill of adventure away, too.

I’ll probably serve the flat beans with shallots and lemon again; they were just perfect that way before. The carrots and radishes will be snacks (I had some this morning, in fact; the carrots are sweet, while the radishes are remarkably spicy, belying their wee, cute appearance). I’m not sure about everything else. The lettuce is just begging me to make BLTs again, and the potatoes and basil make me think of pesto-potato pizza...although penne with potatoes and arugula would be good, too; are there enough potatoes for both? I'm stumped on the leeks--I wonder if I could sub them for the red onion in the potato-arugula pasta recipe? Otherwise, I'm tempted to just make this seductive leek confit and then figure out what to do with it later, like throw it into eggs or on sandwiches or something. Yellow squash salad would be a natural use for a couple of the yellow zucchini. The one item that looks likely to defeat me is the sage; I think of it as more of a fall/winter herb and don’t think I have any recipes that call for it that don’t also involve butternut squash. Maybe I can freeze it.

Here’s what happened to the last box:

• Leek: Used in pasta with bacon, leeks, and mushrooms
• Carrots: Eaten as snacks
• Rosemary: Thrown away, sadly, after I failed to use or freeze it
• Potatoes: Used in a pretty tasty pesto-potato salad with green beans, which I failed to post here because I felt like maybe my execution was a little flawed; I overcooked the potatoes, which made me feel like I was eating cold mashed potatoes, and I don't think I had enough pesto, and although I really liked having the pine nuts whole in the salad rather than blended into the pesto, it was odd to have shredded Parmesan in there--it might have been better off blended in. I'd like to try it with my pesto recipe (minus the pine nuts), because parsley really brightens things up. If I do attempt it again and improve upon my first attempt, I'll post it.
  
• Oranges: Eaten
• Arugula: Used in corn, arugula, and bacon salad
• Spinach: Thrown into the pasta with bacon, leeks, and mushrooms when I realized I didn’t have anything else to do with it. It was a tasty addition that added some nice color; I would actually consider doing it again in the future.
• Celery: Eaten as snacks
• Cucumber Used in fattoush
• Honey: Not used yet, but honey ice cream is in my plan for this weekend.

STRAWBERRY FROZEN YOGURT

When A and I took our first taste of this frozen yogurt after churning it in the ice cream maker, we both looked at each other and said, “Strawberry Julius.” My version may be a little fresher, but it took me right back to the treat I’d always order at mall staple Orange Julius when I was a kid, my reward for behaving myself after what then seemed like an interminable session of shopping with my mother. I gather from its Web site that Orange Julius has now become just another Jamba Juice/Robek’s clone, offering a wide variety of fruit smoothies with names like “Strawberry Xtreme” and “Tropical Tango,” but back then there were just two flavors, orange and strawberry, and you could get a raw egg blended in if you wanted to. (Ah, the ’80s, when we didn’t care about food safety, didn’t wear bike helmets, and rode in the back of hatchback cars without seat belts!)

Nostalgia aside, this is another great recipe from David Lebovitz (I got it from A Perfect Scoop, but you can also find a version on his blog)—pretty similar to the blueberry fro-yo I made a couple of weeks ago, only you macerate the strawberries with the sugar and alcohol to get the juices going, and you don’t have to press the mixture through a sieve (it’s an option, but I like the little crunch of strawberry seeds). It didn’t taste quite so magically revelatory to me as the blueberry one did, but it was still insanely delicious enough to shatter all my expectations about what frozen yogurt should be, and you can’t beat that brilliant shade of pink. Also, now that we finally have hot weather like the rest of the country, I can testify that this (fairly) light frozen treat is just about the best refreshment I can think of after a stroll on a warm summer night. Considering how plentiful and beautiful Southern California strawberries are, it’s a recipe I’ll make again and again.

1 pound (450g) strawberries, rinsed and hulled
⅔ cup (130g) sugar
2 teaspoons vodka or kirsch (optional, but recommended; I used kirsch)
1 cup (240g) plain whole-milk yogurt (I recommend Greek yogurt)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1. Slice the strawberries into small pieces. Toss in a bowl with the sugar and vodka or kirsch (if using) until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours, stirring every so often.

2. Transfer the strawberries and their juice to a blender or food processor. Add the yogurt and lemon juice. Pulse the machine until the mixture is almost smooth. If you wish, press the mixture through a mesh strainer to remove any seeds.

3. Chill for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Time: 3 hours 15 minutes, mostly hands-off, plus processing time
Yield: 1 quart (6-8 servings)
Leftover potential: Good

SUMMER CSA: WEEK 3

This week, the lovely Grover Cleveland will undertake the Vanna White role in showing off our CSA bounty:


My share of the box contained:
1 leek
4 carrots
½ bunch rosemary
3 Yukon Gold potatoes
4 Valencia oranges
½ bunch arugula
½ bunch spinach
½ head celery
1 cucumber (I took this in exchange for P getting the cauliflower)
1 jar honey! (I was super-excited about this, so P was generous enough to let me have the whole jar)

Grover is a particular fan of the spinach (he actually took a tiny bite right after I snapped this photo):


Beyond the honey, everything here is pretty tame and should be easy to use up. As usual, the carrots, celery, and oranges will be snacks. I plan to use the arugula in a salad with corn and bacon, the potatoes in a new pesto-potato salad, the leek in some pasta with bacon and mushrooms, and the cucumber in fattoush. The spinach will just have to be a salad or something, and I guess the rosemary gets left out again—I’ll probably throw it in the freezer. As for the honey, I can always use it in granola (I go through a lot of honey that way), but I’d like to use at least a little in something special, where you can really taste it. I’m thinking honey ice cream!


That’s right, Grover; I said “honey ice cream.”

Here’s how we dispatched the last CSA box:

• Onion: Used in pizza sauce
• Celery: Snacked upon (a little too skinny and bitter, though; would have been better in soup)
• Spinach: Used on pizza bianca instead of arugula (which was really good!)
• Lettuce: Used on BLTs and as salad
• Leek: Used on pizza bianca instead of onion
• Strawberries: Eaten straight up
• Round zucchini: Eaten in vegetable tortilla stacks (They might have been better stuffed, after all—they were a little disappointing texture-wise, with the dry mealiness typical of zucchini that grow too large, though they tasted fine mixed up with other ingredients.)
• Italian flat beans: Eaten with shallots and lemon (These beans were a wonderful discovery—so tender, velvety and delicious! I’ll definitely look for them at the farmers’ market in the future and hope they show up in future CSA boxes.)

DILL, RED ONION, AND CHEDDAR DROP BISCUITS

This just goes to show that sometimes you should disregard advice, even when it’s your own. Over the years, I have periodically been suckered into making drop biscuits and other savory quickbreads, lured by the promise of freshly baked bread for dinner on an ordinary weeknight. But I’ve never met one that didn’t disappoint me; in the end, no matter what seasonings were involved, they just tasted dry and baking-powdery, not like real bread. Finally, about a year and a half ago, after another unsatisfying attempt, I wrote, “Remind me to stop trying non-sweet quickbreads. I just don’t like them that much.”

Luckily, I didn’t listen to myself, and when I saw this recipe at Everybody Likes Sandwiches, it looked so good I bookmarked it and made it despite my previous pronouncement. And it was so good! I don’t know whether the strong flavors of the onion, dill, and cheese just blocked out the usual baking-powdery taste or whether the recipe was just better constructed than others I’ve tried—or did my use of real buttermilk (rather than the more convenient milk + lemon juice substitute) have something to do with it? (I am so proud of myself—between making blueberry buttermilk cake [twice!], ranch dressing, and these biscuits, I have nearly used up an entire carton of buttermilk before its expiration date, for once.) All I know is that I made the recipe as written (though I substituted fresh dill for the dried originally called for), it was very easy, and the biscuits turned out just lovely, savory and moist. I snuck a tiny bite of one off the cooling rack, just to taste-test, and ended up eating the whole thing right there, standing over the counter, without butter or anything. Then I ate two more at dinner, dipped into carrot-potato soup, which they went perfectly with. I froze the remaining biscuits to eat with the leftover soup, but I imagine these would also make great snacks or breakfasts. I assume I’ll find out, because I can tell these little gems will be something I’ll turn to again and again. Not only will they be a great boon to my menu planning, because A is much more happy to eat soup if there's something to dip into it, but they are also infinitely adaptable with different herbs, cheeses, and other add-ins—though at present I see no need to deviate from the perfect marriage of cheddar, onion, and dill.

At last, quickbread victory is mine!

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup red onions, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (or 1 tablespoon dried)
A hearty grind of black pepper
A large handful of grated cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk (my mixture looked a little dry, so I may have added just a splash more)

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, red onions, dill, black pepper, and cheese. Stir in the buttermilk and oil and mix lightly until combined.

3. Using a tablespoon, drop heaping blobs of dough on a parchment-covered or silicon-lined baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until lightly golden.

Yield: The original recipe says 6–9 biscuits; I got 10.
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: OK. They’re best when fresh from the oven, but I stored one on the counter in a plastic bag and ate it the next day and it was still good (if anything, the flavors had deepened). Then I threw the rest in a freezer bag, froze them for about a week, and heated them up in the microwave; those were fine with soup, but not the same as the fresh ones.

BLUEBERRY FROZEN YOGURT

(I wish the lighting in my kitchen were better, because this frozen yogurt was the most beautiful shade of blue-purple.)

I never knew I could feel this way about blueberry frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt always seems a little sad to me, like the consolation prize of desserts—something you eat if you’re dieting or if there’s no ice cream around. Yes, I know that “real” (i.e., actually yogurt-tasting) frozen yogurt is all trendy nowadays, what with that Pinkberry all the kids are talking about, but I haven’t jumped on board. All I think of when I think of frozen yogurt is (a) the 21 Choices frozen yogurt store in Pasadena that always has a line of tourists halfway around the block while the insanely good gelato store hidden 100 yards away is usually abandoned; and (b) the bland TCBY-style soft-serve-frozen-yogurt-with-many-toppings craze of the early 1990s. And blueberry? An actual fresh blueberry may be tasty, but as a flavoring, it’s hardly on my top-five list (for fruits, I generally gravitate toward strawberry, raspberry, lemon, lime, and cherry, in case you were wondering). In other words, if presented with a menu of frozen desserts, blueberry frozen yogurt would not be the first thing I’d order.

But of course, blueberry frozen yogurt homemade by me, with blueberries I picked with my very own hands and a recipe from the genius David Lebovitz, is another story entirely. Of the four desserts I’ve made in my ice cream maker so far, this may actually be my favorite. I can’t even tell you exactly why I love it so much. It’s tangy, but not too tangy, It’s deeply blueberry-flavored, but not too intense. Maybe it’s the little bit of kirsch, which adds a hint of almost almondy flavor (to me, cherry and almond flavors taste similar somehow, and I loooove me some almond flavor, so when I say something tastes like almonds, that’s a good thing—which is why even though I’m not much for fruity beers, I cannot resist Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer; it’s like what drinking almond extract should be like). Whatever it is, I’m smitten. We don’t have enough blueberries left to make more of this (yes, that means we ate about 6 pounds of blueberries in a single week!), but I’m definitely making strawberry frozen yogurt ASAP, because dear god, I might like it even more than this, if such a thing is possible.

Oh, and what’s more, this was really easy to make, except for the momentary messy annoyance of pushing the blueberry mixture through a fine-mesh strainer.

1½ cups plain whole-milk yogurt (I recommend Greek yogurt for extra creaminess)
¾ cup sugar
3 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 teaspoon kirsch
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. In a blender or food processor, blend together the yogurt, sugar, and blueberries.

2. Press the mixture through a strainer into a large bowl to remove the seeds and skin.

3. Stir in the kirsch and the lemon juice and chill in the fridge for one hour.

4. Freeze in your ice cream maker per the manufacturer’s instructions

Yield: 1 quart (6-8 servings)
Time: 15 minutes, plus 1 hour chilling time
Leftover potential: Good

BLUEBERRY BUTTERMILK CAKE

On Saturday morning, A and I picked over seven pounds of blueberries. Last year when I did this with my friend J, the weather was unbearably hot and sunny and the blueberries were small and relatively picked over. This year, it was cool and cloudy and the blueberries were big, ripe, and plentiful, so I was able to pick nearly a pound more in what felt like half the time—and then come home with double that amount, thanks to A lending an extra pair of intensely blueberry-loving hands. Here is what 7.25 pounds of blueberries looks like, in case you were wondering:


So we have been decadently devouring fresh blueberries by the bowlful, but of course, I wanted to make something special with our bounty. This berry-studded buttermilk cake recipe was published in Gourmet this month and has been making the food blog rounds: I first saw it, looking delectable in its original raspberries, at The Smitten Kitchen, then at Sassy Radish, and then again, with blueberries this time, at The Food Librarian. I’m not much of a cake eater or baker, but these simple single-layer no-frosting “everyday cakes” always look so cozy and charming to me, I couldn’t resist this one—and I’m so glad I didn’t. It was easy and so good—light, moist, not too sweet, with the tang of buttermilk, the irresistible (especially when paired with blueberries) zip of lemon zest, and an addictive crispy-sugared top. It’s the kind of thing you could whip up at the height of summer without breaking a sweat and bring to a picnic or barbeque.

The Food Librarian noted that all her blueberries sank to the bottom, so I dusted mine with flour before setting them gently atop the batter and they didn’t sink quite as uniformly as hers—but they still sank; I guess they were just too plump not to. This wasn’t a problem until I went to flip the cake out of the pan and of course, it wouldn’t release at first, then splatted out onto the cooling rack in a heap. I might have been too impatient, it’s true—maybe I should have let it cool in the pan just a little longer—or maybe that soft, juicy, berry-laden bottom was just destined not to hold up (though I noticed the Food Librarian’s came out just fine, darn it). So my cake was extra “rustic”-looking and I had to work hard to salvage a non-mangled slice for photographic purposes, but it tasted so good, who cares? We ate it for dessert, we ate it for breakfast, I’m going to go home and eat the rest of it right now, and I’m making it again later in the week (still at least 3 pounds of blueberries left!). I’d also love to try it with strawberries.

I’m including the weights for all the ingredients because, thanks to my cute little kitchen scale, I actually used them this time! Precision!

1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon (2 grams) baking powder
½ teaspoon (2 grams) baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup (56 grams) unsalted butter, softened
⅔ cup (146 grams) plus 1½ tablespoons (22 grams) sugar, divided
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 large (57 grams) egg
½ cup well-shaken buttermilk (you can substitute 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice stirred into it, but really, if the word “buttermilk” is in the title of the recipe, don’t you think you should spring for the real stuff?)
1 cup fresh blueberries (about 5 oz) (dust them with a pinch of flour if you’re worried about them sinking)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees with the rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat butter and ⅔ cup (146 grams) sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about two minutes, then beat in vanilla and lemon zest. Add egg and beat well.

3. At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Mix until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter blueberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1½ tablespoons (22 grams) sugar.

4. Bake until cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

Yield: 1 9-inch cake
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: High, assuming you don’t eat it all in one sitting. I kept it in a covered container in the fridge and found that I really liked eating it slightly chilled. It stayed moist for days.

SUMMER CSA: WEEK 2

This week’s haul:
1 onion
1 bunch celery (mine in exchange for P taking the head of cauliflower, a vegetable I haven’t yet learned to appreciate)
½ bunch spinach
1 head lettuce
1 leek
1 pint strawberries
3 round (“eight-ball”) zucchini
10 Italian flat (Romano) beans

The “entirely new to me” award goes to the Italian flat beans. I was suspicious of them at first sight, so huge and tough-looking, but the Internet assures me they are just like green beans but even more delicious and actually more tender. I think I’ll try them with shallots and lemon this weekend.

Aren’t those little zucchini adorable? I’m stumped on what to do with them, though. The normal treatment for round zucchini seems to be to stuff them, but I haven’t been a huge fan of stuffed zucchini recipes I’ve tried in the past, and besides, these are so wee, they would end up like canapés. I do have some stray leftover ricotta nearing its expiration date in the fridge, though, so maybe a snack-sized version of this recipe would be just the thing. Otherwise, of course, I can just use them like normal zucchini. We’ll see how next week’s menu plays out.

I’m not sure how I’ll use the leek, spinach, or onion yet, but they shouldn’t be too hard to dispatch. The lettuce will go for salads and the celery for snacks, and I’m actually eating the strawberries right now.

Here’s a quick rundown of what ended up happening with the last CSA box:

• Lettuce: Used in BLTs, tacos, and salad
• Carrots: Eaten as snacks
• Rosemary: After some Internet research, I actually ended up freezing it for later!
• Onions: One used in Shrimp Boil, the other in Pasta Ascuitta
• Oranges: Two eaten as snacks, three still in my fridge
• Strawberries: Eaten as a snack
• Avocados: Two used in Guacamole My Way, one used in Pasta With Tomato, Avocado, and Oregano (and the fourth one, as I mentioned, bartered to Carpool J, which I now regret slightly, considering how good they were)

Everything was delicious, but on a par with what I usually get from the farmers' market. The avocados stood out as the most remarkable, or maybe it was just my triumphant improvised guacamole that impressed me so much. Runners-up were the oranges, which were consistently sweet and juicy, if not as sexy as the blood oranges we'd gotten the week before.

ROASTED BANANA ICE CREAM

I’m not a big fan of raw bananas (in fact, overly ripe ones kind of gross me out), but they can be really good in cooked desserts—particularly when any sort of caramelization is involved. So when I opened up The Perfect Scoop for the first time and saw this recipe, I immediately knew it had to be one the first I tried. Bananas cooked with brown sugar and butter? Yes please! The smell of them baking was amazing, and if they hadn’t been as hot as molten lava when I pulled them out of the oven, I would have been powerless to resist cramming them into my mouth right then and there instead of throwing them into the blender with the rest of the ingredients. I’m not sure the resulting ice cream is quite as delectable to me as those caramelized bananas seemed, but it’s unique and plenty delicious, with a concentrated banana flavor that seems almost more banana-y than real bananas. A little of it goes a long way for me; I nearly couldn’t finish the two-scoop bowl pictured above and have found that the ice cream actually tastes best when you sneak just a spoonful or two straight from the container. It lasts all week that way, too!

Despite its intense flavor, this ice cream is actually relatively light, made with whole milk instead of eggs and cream (or even half-and-half, like the first two ice creams I tried). But the bananas lend it a deceptive creaminess and heft, as the peanut butter did for my first ice cream (whereas my second ice cream, the lemon one, turned out fluffier and grainier). It doesn’t matter much to me one way or the other—taste is more important to me than texture in this context, and I’m still just so amazed that I can create anything resembling ice cream in my own kitchen that I’m not concerned with attaining that “real” ultra-creamy ice-cream texture; if I were, I’d switch to custard-based recipes—but it’s interesting to see how different ingredients affect the outcome. Kitchen chemistry!

Like the others I’ve tried, this non-custard-based recipe is ridiculously easy to make, especially considering all the deliciousness it yields—just bake, blend, churn, freeze, and eat. Better still, it cost next to nothing to make: I rescued the ripe bananas from being consigned to the trash in my office kitchen on Friday (the company provides us with fresh fruit and there are always leftovers at the end of the week), the whole milk was 99 cents at Trader Joe’s, and I already had the sugars and a lemon. With its rich flavor and use of an always-available fruit, this will make an especially nice wintertime ice cream (perhaps with a tablespoon of rum added to the mix?). I’d also be interested to try it with chocolate chips or chocolate sauce to cut/complement the banananess.

I now have my very own copy of A Perfect Scoop in my hot little hands (it's on sale on Amazon, ahem), so expect my ice cream experiments to continue until the weather gets too hot for our freezer to keep ice cream frozen!

3 medium-sized ripe bananas, peeled
⅓ cup packed light brown sugar (I used dark, because that’s what I had)
1 tablespooon butter, salted or unsalted, cut into small pieces
1½ cups whole milk
2 tablespoons granualted sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ teaspoon coarse salt

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Slice the bananas into ½-inch-thick pieces and toss them with the brown sugar and butter in a 2-quart baking dish. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring just once halfway through, until bananas are browned and cooked through.

3. Scrape all the contents of the baking dish (the bananas and the thick syrup) into a blender or food processor. Add the milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt and puree until smooth (be sure you close the lid tightly first!).

4. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If the mixture has thickened during chilling, just give it a little stir to thin it back out before pouring it into the ice cream maker.)

Yield: About 1 quart (6–8 servings)
Time: 50 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good

GUACAMOLE MY WAY

Our favorite guacamole comes from a vendor at our farmers’ market, but lately it’s been getting too expensive to justify buying. Over $6 for a small container is pretty exorbitant, especially in a city where avocados literally grow on trees (my friend Editor A has one in her backyard). So, last time we had steak tacos for dinner, I decided to make my own guac, using a recipe from my files I hadn’t tried in years. A few of the details gave me pause (lemon juice instead of lime juice? tomatoes? cumin?), but I forged ahead and discovered that apparently my tastes have changed, because the resulting guacamole was...not very good. I mean, we ate it and it didn’t taste bad or anything, but it didn’t hold a candle to the pricy farmers’-market guacamole I’d had fantasies of effortlessly surpassing with my homemade version. FAIL.

So when I was presented with a mess of beautiful avocados from the CSA last week, I was a little worried about doing right by them. I promptly scrapped the old recipe and searched for a better one, but after scrolling through the comments of numerous blog posts and Epicurious entries, I realized that everyone’s guacamole ideal is different—garlic or no garlic (or garlic powder), onions or no onions, cilantro or no cilantro, tomatoes or no tomatoes, lemon or lime or orange juice, peppers or Tabasco sauce or cayenne or no spice at all, not to mention all the other crazy things people confess to adding, including sour cream, cream cheese, and Miracle Whip! In the end, I decided simplest was best. I chose the ingredients I considered to be indispensible—avocado, lots of lime juice, a little garlic (some people find raw garlic too overpowering, but I like it while I’m eating it; admittedly, however, when my mouth tastes like garlic hours later even after I’ve brushed my teeth, I have some regrets), cilantro, and plenty of salt—and concocted my own version. And cripes, it was one of the most delicious guacamoles I have ever eaten, rivaled only by the ur-guacamole I ate on my first trip to Mexico that got me liking guacamole in the first place. We ate the entire bowl for dinner, with just some corn chips for dipping and some corn fritters on the side. And I’m crossing my fingers for more avocados in the CSA box this week, because I can’t wait to make this again.

2 medium, ripe avocados
1 medium clove garlic
Coarse kosher salt to taste
Juice of 1 lime
1 handful minced fresh cilantro (maybe 2 heaping tablespoons?)

1. Peel, seed, and dice the avocados and place them in a medium glass bowl (preferably one that has a lid), but don’t mash them yet.

2. Mince the clove of garlic and sprinkle the garlic with a pinch of coarse salt. Let it sit for a minute or two, then mash it well with a fork until it makes a paste. Scatter the paste over the avocados in the bowl.

3. Add lime juice, cilantro, and coarse salt to taste to the bowl. (At Andy’s behest, I added a few drops of Tabasco sauce—most people use green Tabasco for guacamole, but I only had the red—but I’m not sure it really added anything, and I didn’t miss the spiciness.) Toss everything well, then mash with a fork to desired consistency. Taste for seasonings, adjust as necessary, and mix well.

4. Cover surface of guacamole with plastic wrap to prevent browning (some people, including me, perhaps superstitiously, also put one of the avocado pits in there), cover the bowl with a lid, and refrigerate for at least a few hours so the flavors can blend. I like to take it back out of the fridge about 15–20 minutes before eating, though, so it’s not ice-cold.

Serves: 2 or more
Time: 15 minutes
Leftover potential: Unknown