Summertime Randoms

Yesterday I wrote about how I love the abundance of fruits and veggies that summertime brings. I do love it but it can also be a problem if you go a little too crazy (like me) and buy too much stuff. I cannot stand to let these summertime treats go to waste but as everyone knows you have to eat your perishables in a couple of days or bye bye fruit.

What I have been doing when I have left over fruits or veggies is a couple of different things. 1st I like to drink water. Lately I have been making all manner of fruit and veggie waters and I put it in a big water jug and leave it out on my counter and just refill my glass whenever I walk by. Yesterday I made peach/cherry water. Today it is watermelon water. You can throw your extra cucumbers or cherry tomatoes in. Or make lemon basil water. There are endless possibilities. It also looks nice and tempts you to drink more water.

The second thing I have been doing is making all kinds of pestos and tapenades. These are great to have on hand because they freeze well and then you have an instant go to for soups and sauces. You can put them in your scrambled eggs or on a sandwich or whatever. Again, endless possibilities and it really enhances your everyday food.

I recently had a bunch or Arugula micro greens leftover so I made arugula pesto and added a dollop to some veggie soup and it was delicious.

Here is the soup recipe:

6 or 8 cups chicken broth or whatever you have (homemade is preferable)

1 sweet onion-diced

Cannellini Beans

Canned whole tomatoes

Summer peas

1 clove garlic-smashed

1 parmesan cheese rind

1 handful orzo

Salt & pepper

2 Carrots-diced

Pesto

Bring your broth to a boil. Add onion, carrots, tomatoes, garlic, cheese rind & salt and pepper. In a separate pot cook the orzo. When the orzo is done add the beans to the soup. Spoon orzo into individual bowls and top with the soup. Swirl a little pesto into the soup bowls and serve.

1 other tip that my good friend Margaret recently shared with me is to freeze your leftover wine and then you can use it to cook with and it won’t go to waste. I love this tip and have found it to be really useful!

Sum Sum Summertime!

I LOVE summer! I really think it should be summer all the time. That would make me very happy. For me, summer means cook-outs by the pool with family and friends, camping out at the beach all day long and surfing and playing in the water and going home all salty and tired after a great day of fun.

I also love the abundance of wonderful veggies and produce that summer brings. Living in Northern Cali I am so lucky to have local farms that produce wonderful organic fruits and veggies and I really do take advantage of it.

Today I am having a little pool party and my friends are bringing some wonderful fresh Halibut over to throw on the grill. My sister and I are making sides and dessert.

As I was wandering through our new Whole Foods in Mill Valley yesterday the very first thing that caught my eye was a table filled with wonderful summer squashes. It was beautiful and I had to buy some. I decided I would make squash casserole.

Anyone who has ever spent anytime in the south will be familiar with squash casserole. It is a staple on many southern tables throughout the summer and I love it! My favorite squash casserole is made by our family friend Shirley Ann Turner. I have asked Shirley Ann for her recipe and she has given it to me but mine honestly never tastes as good as hers. Shirley Ann also makes great pickles but that is another blog.

I have been forced to adapt my own recipe and it is pretty good but there is always room to play. I change this in little ways all the time as it is a very versatile dish.

Here is what I did today:

1 large Spring onion sliced & sauteed  in about 1 TBS bacon fat (yum bacon!)

3lbs summer squash sliced and boiled in salty water for about 5 mins

2 TBS Mayo

2TBs Sour Cream

1TBS salt

1tsp pepper (white pepper is good here)

2 tsp sugar

1 cup sharp cheddar cheese

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

2 eggs beaten

Mix all ingredients and put in a buttered casserole dish

Top with 1 sleeve crushed butter crackers and a couple pats of butter

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 mins. Serve and enjoy!

Ratatouille-Not the movie

I am really lucky to have good friends who live on a beautiful farm in Sonoma. They grow all kinds of vegetables and flowers on their property. Recently, my friend dropped by my house and brought with him a big beautiful bag of home grown veggies that he and his wife grew out there in Sonoma. I was so excited! There were peppers and tomatoes and squash and green beans among other things. My first thought was ratatouille. I had everything but the eggplants but that was no problem since it was farmers market day.

Now, Ratatouille was recently made popular in the states because of the movie by the same name. I love that movie. If you haven’t seen it I recommend watching it for a lighthearted fun movie. Anyway, I grew up eating ratatouille because my mom’s best friend (who is basically my family) is french. Andree makes the best ratatouille! Mine probably is not as delicious as hers but hey, practice makes perfect right?

Here is what I did:

1lb or so of sweet yellow onions diced

6 or 7 cloves of garlic sliced thin

1.5lbs Fresh tomatoes that are very ripe-peeled and seeded

4 eggplants-chopped

4 or 5 green and yellow squash-chopped

Green, Red, yellow, or orange peppers or a combo-chopped

1 big sprig Rosemary

1 Fresh bay leave

Couple of sprigs fresh thyme

1 cup vegetable broth

Olive oil

Salt & Pepper

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees

1st, saute the onions and garlic slices in about 1-2tbs olive oil in a big dutch oven or a pot that can go into the oven. While onions and garlic are sauteeing, place a large saute pan on high heat and add about 1tbs olive oil. Saute the sqaush until browned. Add to dutch oven and then  do the same with the rest of the veggies except the tomatoes.

When all of the veggies are added to the onions and garlic bring the temp up to high heat. Add the veg broth and the herbs. Stir well. 

Put the pot with the veggies in the oven and bake for 45mins-1 hour. It only took me 45mins but I baked on convection.

Remove the Dutch oven and strain the veggies in a colander over a bowl. Save the liquid. Add the liquid back to the dutch oven and reduce to a thick glaze. Add the veggies back and stir. At this point it is looking pretty good.

Next blanche your tomatoes in boiling water and then plunge into an ice bath. Peel and seed the tomatoes and then crush them by hand into the rest of the veggies. Stir well. Season with S&P. Bring to a boil then turn off heat. At this point your ratatouille is ready to serve. I make mine the day before and refrigerate over night. That way all the flavors meld and blend together.

This morning I had an egg fried in olive oil served over ratatouille with some crusty sourdough toast on the side. Best. Breakfast. Ever.

Enjoy!!!

North Carolina Dinner

Every summer I spend a few weeks in the mountains of North Carolina in a little town called Highlands. My family has been going there for 20 years to escape the heat of the Florida summer and I usually fly in from California for a few weeks in July or August.  Highlands NC is a special place. It is very very pretty with waterfalls and lakes and great hiking everywhere. It is also special in the sense that it is almost impossible to get anything that most of us have come to rely on in everyday life working properly. Every year we wrestle with getting the internet connection to work and getting our various computers on the network. The internet connection will just go out and you can have all the techs in the world over to look at it and nobody can figure it out? Huh. This year I just said forget about it and I decided to be twitter,FB and computer free for a couple of weeks. This was hard at first, but then it was like bliss!! I just went dark for a couple of weeks. It was relaxing. Read a lot of books and ate a lot of good food.

Here is one meal I made this summer:

Dusty’s Steaks

Fresh Silver Queen corn from the field up the street

Buttermilk Biscuits

Greek Salad.

Dusty’s grocery store is a small little old fashioned southern market right up the street from our house in NC. The butcher Dusty will cut steaks for you any way you like and the primary reason to go to Dusty’s is to get steaks. My family LOVES Dusty’s steaks, they are the most tender, melt in your mouth, steaks you can get. Of course if you can’t hop in your car and drive to North Carolina any good steak will suffice.

I usually order Filet Mignons cut about  an inch and a half thick. To prepare the steaks, first take them out of the fridge and season them real good with salt and pepper. I use ALOT of salt and pepper. Then I let them sit on the counter for at least an hour so they get to be room temp. which is a good temp for cooking meat on the grill.

After that I sear them on high heat on an oiled grill for 1 minute then turn down the temp to medium and cook for 3 or 4 minutes per side for medium rare.

The silver queen corn we get up there comes right from a field up the street. It is so good it tastes like candy. You can do no wrong with ths corn. I simply oil it with good olive oil then season with salt and pepper and grill for a few minutes until the corn gets some nice grill marks. Serve with butter and you will be happy campers.

I make a traditional florida style greek salad by serving my salad with some cooked small potatoes on the top. This sounds weird but it is how the Greeks in florida make it. Their is a large Greek population in an area called Tarpon springs and this is how they make their salads. Try it, you’ll be surprised.

Greek Salad:

Romaine Lettuce

Fresh summer tomatoes or heirloom tomatoes

Pitted Calamata olives

Cucumber

Red Onion Sliced thin.

Feta Cheese, crumbled

2 or 3 small yukon gold potatoes

Parsley

Lemon

For the dressing:

1/3 cup redwine vinegar

2/3 cup olive oil

S&P

1tsp Dijon mustard

3 garlic cloves minced

1tsp sugar

 

To make the salad combine all the ingredients in a large bowl except potatoes. Boil potatoes until tender but not mushy. Slice and put in a small both. Squeez the juice of 1 lemon and some olive oil over them and chop some parsley up and add to potatoes.

Make the dressing:

Combine all ingredients and emulsify with a fork or whisk.

Add potatoes to top of salad and cover with dressing. Toss. Taste and adjust seasoning. Add S&P if needed.

Dinner Party

So my friends Serge & Stef are coming in from Russia tonight. I am so excited to see them. We used to get together all the time and cook and hang out and then they moved from Oakland to Russia! Not just a hop, skip and a jump away. Anyway Sege emailed me and said he was sick of beets and cabbage and was looking forward to some good fresh food!

I thought about the menu. What could I make that they wouldn’t be eating in Russia, and what would say welcome home to Sunny California? All the produce is so delicious right now. It’s really warm here right now so I want to make something light but still delicious with a lot of variety. I also want each bite to be bursting with flavor!

I don’t, however, want to be cooking the whole night while they are here. So I need to make something easy that I can do ahead and then just pop in the oven or grill.

The menu I came up with is:

Fresh black figs stuffed with blue cheese (St. Agur), wrapped in prosciutto, grilled and then drizzled with a bit of balsamic.

Fava bean crostini (I know, again with the favas!)

Locally grown cherry tomatoes that are so sweet they almost taste like candy

Grilled white american shrimp from louisiana with salt & pepper and grilled lemons

Wild organic arugula from Marin with lemon juice, olive oil and shaved parmesan cheese

And for dessert there are home made blondies that I made using a recipe from Gyneth Paltrow’s site Goop and Tahitian vanilla bean gelato from Ciao Bella.

I am serving  Champagne with the Hors D’oeurves and Rose and White Bordeaux with dinner.

Here is what it looks like now. I’ll post more pics when everything is cooked.

Swiss Chard

When I first moved to the San Francisco area about 12 years ago, I encountered many new foods for the first time. Swiss chard was one of those foods. Having grown up in the south, I was very familiar with greens and the southern ways of cooking them, but my 1st bite of chard was bliss. I was addicted from that first bite and had serious cravings for the stuff.

However….I did not know how to prepare it. Should I remove the big rib that runs thru the center? Leave the rib in and just chop it up? I soon learned that with fresh locally grown chard it is hard to go wrong no matter how you cook it.

One of the first meals I ever cooked for Tom was in November (about 10 years ago-wow we are getting old!). It was the 1st day of Dungeness crab season and it was a wednesday and the Marin county farmers market was on at the civic center. I got beautiful crabs, swiss chard & a baguette.

I made the crabs and served them with garlic butter but they were so sweet  we didn’t even need the butter. But in the name of decadence and wooing Tom I made the butter anyway. I also made swiss chard and served vintage champagne. It was the perfect meal. Tom said he never even liked crabs before that meal (too much trouble to deal with). That meal changed his mind and he absolutely raved over the chard. We are married now so I guess it worked.

This is how I like to cook chard:

Buy fresh farmers market chard-do not buy the bagged stuff that is already cut up

Wash it thouroughly

Remove the bottom part of the stem-or the whole stem if you like. I usually don’t bother removing the stem from the top of the leaf.

Dry thoroughly

In a very hot wide and somehwhat deep sauce pan heat olive oil

Slice garlic and just brown in olive oil

Remove garlic chips

Add dried chard in bunches adding more as it wilts

Saute on high until wilted

Add garlic chips back in

Cover and saute until wilted all the way, it will be reduced by about half if not more. It really cooks down

Squeeze a fresh lemon on it

Drain the excess liquid off

Serve immediately and enjoy!