Summer zucchini soup

Sauté or steam some zucchini and perhaps also some yellow squash and fresh onions if all in season in the glorious high summer month of July in the Hudson Valley. Then purée with steaming liquid or vegetable stock, add yogurt, some lemon and perhaps some sumac in the sauté, and some grated garlic in the soup to then chill. 

Ingredients:

Fresh onion (optional), 1, sliced into half moons

Zucchini perhaps some yellow squash too, 1 #, soaked in water and then cut into half moons

Sumac, optional

Salt and pepper

Vegetable stock, 1/2 – 1 c

Yogurt, 1-1/2 c

Lemon juice, 1 T

Garlic clove, 1 small, grated

Directions:

1. Sauté onions in olive oil in large sauté pan over medium high heat. Add sumac. Add sliced zukes when onions are cooked pretty much. Add S&P and sauté, then add vegetable stock, cover and steam until done. 
2. Purée zucchini with stock. Put in bowl and whisk in: yogurt, lemon juice and garlic. 
3. Chill. 
4. Strain soup, using spatula to press and scrape. This is optional, such as for company or you’re feeling fancy.
5. Optional garnishments: mint, chiffonade cut; or thinly sliced zucchini, salted and strained for 15 minutes, rinsed then patted dry.

Source: Martha Rose Shulman, New York Times

Penne with zucchini, ricotta and basil

Homemade or fresh locally-made ricotta will handily make its own sauce for summer pasta, thinned with pasta-cooking water. Here’s the start of this summer season, with local zucchini, summer squash and basil.

Ingredients:

Zucchini and summer squash, 1/2 # (2 small), cut into 1/4” slices, and if large, cut into half moons

Penne or ziti, 4 oz for 2 people

Onion, 1/2 small, diced finely

Garlic clove, minced

Ricotta, 3 T

Basil, good amount, ~1/2+ c.

Crushed red pepper, a good pinch

Lemon zest from 2/3 lemon

Parmesan and/or pecorino

Directions:

Soak zucchini and squash in water for 1/2 hour to discourage any grit, if time allows.

Prep:

Cut up onion

Slice zucchini

Mince garlic

Zest lemon

1. Put up pot of water to boil for pasta. Cook until al dente; drain reserving 1/2 c cooking water.
2. In large skillet over medium-high heat, heat 1 T olive oil and cook onions until softened, 5 minutes, keeping heat down to prevent browning. Add zucchini, S&P, and continue cooking for 10 minutes until soft, stirring occasionally. 
3. At end of cooking time, add tomatoes (if using) and garlic 1 minute before done. Turn off heat if pasta is not yet done.
4. Add cooked pasta to zucchini pan, and turn up heat to medium high. Add 1/4 c pasta water, ricotta, red pepper and lemon zest, stirring. Cook for a minute or so. 
5. Mix in basil and cheese. 

Options:

Add toasted pine nuts at end of cooking zucchini

Add cherry tomatoes and cook two minutes in zucchini pan

Use more herbs — e.g., parsley, and experiment with different red peppers and/or spices (harissa, perhaps?)

Make with roasted peppers instead.

Source: David Tanis, NY Times

Cantonese-style stir fry with snow peas and shrimp or chicken

July brings me snow peas from my CSA farm, and this is an excellent way to highlight their light, fresh taste. It’s a stir-fry, but light on the soy sauce — not a dark, heavy sauce — a sauce that is bright with ginger and lets the snow peas shine. The original recipe calls for shrimp; I used boneless chicken breast, cut into larger-than-bite-size pieces. Worked great! You brine the meat for five minutes in salt water to keep it moist in the high wok heat.
Here’s how:

Ingredients:

Shrimp or boneless chicken, 1/2 #

Chicken or vegetable stock, 1/3 c

Rice wine, 2 t

Soy sauce, 1-1/2 t

Cornstarch, 1-1/2 t

Sugar, 3/4 t

White pepper, ground 1/8 t

Garlic, 1 T minced

Ginger, 2 T minced

Snow peas, 6 oz, strings removed, washed and dried

Grapeseed oil, 1 T and then 2 t

Scallion, 1, chopped

Directions:
1. In bowl, mix 2 c water with 1 T salt and stir to dissolve salt. Put chicken (or shrimp) in water and let sit for 5 minutes. Remove and dry. 

2.  In small measuring cup, mix: stock, wine, soy sauce, cornstarch, sugar and pepper.

3. Prepare snow peas. Mince garlic and ginger. Chop scallion.

4. When ready to cook, heat wok over high heat. Swirl 1 T oil around sides of wok. Add chicken or shrimp in single layer, and then stir-fry for 3+ minutes (for chicken) or 2-3 minutes for shrimp until just cooked or shrimp just turns pink. 

5.  Add more oil, ginger and garlic, and just mix in, and then immediately add snow peas, 1/4 t salt and stir fry for 1 more minute.

6. Stir cornstarch mixture, and add to wok, bringing to boil, cooking about 30 seconds more until sauce thickens. Add in scallions. Serve with rice. 

Source: NY Times Cooking

Green Goddess dressing and height-of-summer salad

This is definitely a summer dressing for when herbs are plentiful. I don’t know the origin, but I jumped in successfully using a couple sources. Lots of herbs, perhaps an avocado mashed in, some anchovies — and for me liquid aminos as well — for unami. Here’s what I did and will happily do again:

Ingredients:

Anchovies, 2, cut up

Shallot, minced

Garlic clove, minced

White wine vinegar, perhaps w/ tarragon, or apple cider vinegar

Lemon juice, 1-2 T

Mayonnaise, 1/2 c.

Sour cream, 2 T — or use yogurt

Avocado, 1/2

Parsley, 1/2 c

Basil, 1/3 c 

Chives, 3 T

Tarragon (I had none so I omitted which worked fine)

Optional: Bragg’s liquid aminos, 1 T

Directions:

Put shallot in 2-3 T white wine vinegar and a bit of lemon juice to macerate (e.g, sit for about 15 minutes). Add garlic. This is the start of your dressing.

Put into mini-chopper: shallot and garlic mixture, anchovies, mayo, sour cream, avocado, herbs, S&P. Give it a whirl to chop. Taste and perhaps add liquid aminos, lemon juice and/or mayo to balance flavors.

Amazing on this salad in July:

Boiled shrimp: (Prepare water with Old Bay, coriander seeds, peppercorns, crushed bay leaf, half a lemon or lemon juice, then cook peeled shrimp for 3 minutes; drain and refrigerate.

Potatoes (cut up and put into pot with water to cover by 2 inches, a shallot of piece of onion. Bring to boil, uncover and add salt and cook 5 minutes or until tender. Drain and refrigerate.)

Lettuce

Baby turnips, cut thinly on a mandoline

Carrots, sliced

Cucumber, peeled somewhat, cut in half lengthwise and seeds scooped out, cut into slices

Grape tomatoes, cut in half on the bias cross-wise

Scallions

Snow peas if they are available fresh, cut on bias

Gild the lily: top with pepitas or oven-crisped pita

Sources: NY Times Cooking and Chez Panisse Vegetables (here’s an approximation).

Not a bad way to cook zucchini

I am not a fan of zucchini because it often lacks flavor. (A notable exception is Costato Romanesco — an Italian variety I have grown, which is very pretty with stripes, and also has a bit of a nutty flavor. And more importantly: produces copious male blossoms good for stuffing and frying!)

Having a supply of zucchini and summer squash from my CSA in June — and knowing full well there is plenty more in my future — I did some poking around and found a fine technique from Mark Bittman: Cut into slices, and sauté in butter, and then throw in some herbs. It being June, there was basil, which I cut into chiffonade (a fancy word for cutting into strips) and threw on top of the zukes when cooked. Actually fairly delicious with what became browned butter.

Directions:

Cut zucchini and summer squash into 1/3” strips, crosswise, cutting in half first if not thin. (I try to do as Marcella Hazan directs and soak uncut zucchini/squash in a sink of water for 1/2 hour to loosen any grit that has gotten embedded in the skin. If I don’t have time, I skip it.)

Heat up a sauté pan, add 2 T butter, and when foam subsides, or you feel like you waited long enough, toss in zucchini, add S&P, and cook at fairly high heat, tossing occasionally about 5-7 minutes until it becomes somewhat transparent in which you can see the inside seed part and you see some browning.

Remove from heat and toss in your chiffonaded basil. Can sit for a bit if you have something else to cook like this shrimp dish.

Summer farro vegetable salad

I cannot get excited about zucchini, even freshly harvested by my CSA. Not a lot of flavor. The best thing about zucchini, in my view, are the blossoms from male plants that you can cut in the morning and stuff with cheese and herbs, bread and fry. Those fried blossoms are what makes growing your own zucchini worthwhile, and offsets the nuisance of having to poke around under large leaves no less frequently than every two days or you are going to find a monster-size zucchini since they grow ridiculously rapidly.

Anyway, I have zucchini and summer squash from my CSA. A fine use of them is to cut into medium dice, sauté briefly and mix into a summer salad with farro and other vegetables. This is how I used them in a cousin of a favorite wheatberry salad.

Here’s how:

Ingredients:

1 c farro, cooked with water, salt and bay leaf for about 18 minutes until tender. Drain and spread out on sheet pan to cool.

Vinaigrette:

Put 1/2 onion and shallot in bowl or small jar, and add a couple T apple cider vinegar and let sit (er, macerate) for 15 minutes or more. Add lemon juice, S&P perhaps some garlic. Add olive oil and whisk or shake.

Zucchini and summer squash, 2, cut into dice as follows: Cut off ends. Make 1/3” slices lengthwise. Cut into cubes. Sauté in olive oil w/ S&P for just a few minutes until barely tender. I also used cumin and “Izak” (mixture of sweet chili pepper, garlic and cumin). When cooked and while hot, toss in minced garlic (below). Remove and let cool, perhaps in a large bowl to assemble salad in.

Garlic, 2-3 cloves, minced

Shallot, minced

Red onion, sliced and then cut smaller. Half goes into vinaigrette getting macerated with apple cider vinegar; other half gets cut smaller for salad, raw.

Scallions. Good to cut into pieces and let sit in ice water for 20 minutes to firm up. They hold well for a while in refrigerator this way.

Baby turnips on hand? Peel and slice about 4 on a mandoline.

Spring cabbage? 1/4 head sliced thin goes well in this.

Red pepper, go ahead! Dice and add to the party.

Feta, yes, crumbled when all is cool, probably near end of assembling.

Pine nuts or pepitas

Additional options:

Cucumber

Olives

Carrots

Cucumber salad

When cucumbers are coming in fast and furious in your summer garden or via your CSA, you are going to want to use them fairly quickly. A nice, easy, summery way to use them is to make a light salad. I like to macerate onions in rice vinegar which cuts down their bite. Ali Stafford recommends salting the cucumbers, which makes sense if you cut into substantial slices and want them to retain some crunch rather and not exude a lot of water in the mix. 

Here’s how:

Cucumbers, 2

Fresh onion or red onion, 1/2, sliced

Vinegar, rice or white balsamic, 3 T

Scallions, 1-2

Serrano or other hot pepper (or use pinch of red pepper flakes)

Fresh herbs: dill or mint (cilantro wants a Thai or Vietnamese salad)

Prep:

1. Peel cucumber like zebra stripes, intermittently. Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Cut into half moons or stripes as you like, perhaps a variety. Put into colander and add 1 t kosher salt. Let sit 20 minutes. Squeeze in towel to extract water. Put into bowl.

2. Cut onions and put into small dish with 3 t vinegar. Let macerate at least 10 minutes.

3. Scallions: If time, put into ice water to crisp up. Otherwise, just cut on sharp bias. Use white part only if using red onion.

4. Cut hot pepper in half, deseed, and chop

5. Mince herb

6. Mix: cucumber, onions, vinegar, scallions, pepper and herb. Maybe chill for an hour or not. Best same day.

Ali Stafford simple cucumber salad:

Another cucumber salad Vietnamese-style per Ali Stafford via Samin Nosrat

This is similar to my Celery cabbage Thai salad, which comes by way of Alison Roman

Thai cabbage celery salad

Baby back ribs

When you’re having a summer pool party and don’t want to tend over a hot grill, cook some easy ribs indoors — no sweat!

Game plan: 

Purchase (1) a nice rack or 2 of baby back ribs, preferably humanely raised (Mine came from Honest Weight Food Coop, natch. And the technique came from a coop member who I saw purchasing a bunch o’ ribs); and (2) barbecue sauce.

Steps:

 1.  Remove silver skin from back of ribs with help of a butter knife — yank away from ribs in hopefully one strip and discard. 

2.  Make dry rub and rub ribs the morning you are going to cook ‘em. Wrap in aluminum foil and refrigerate.

Rub for ribs: (for one rack)

Smoked Paprika, hot, 1 T

Smoked paprika, mild, 1 T

Cumin, ground 1 T

Garlic powder, 1 t

Brown sugar, 2 T

Kosher salt, 1 T

Freshly ground black pepper, 1 T or as much as you can stand grinding(!)

Optional: chili powder, 1 T (I didn’t use)

3. Cook in Instant Pot.

Fill instant pot with water almost up to bottom of trivet. Curl up ribs and stuff in.

Cook on regular setting for 26 minutes. Let pressure release naturally. (I was at the pool and let them sit for 33 minutes after finishing. Oops(!), but fine.) These are okay to sit a while after cooked.

4. Heat oven broiler (or charcoal grill), slather barbecue sauce onto ribs, and broil for about 6-8 minutes.

That’s it! Enjoy!

(You think I thought to take a photo?!!)

_____________________________

Sources: 

1. Coop member and internet for instant pot ribs.
2. Chris Schlesinger, Thrill of the Grill — Barbecued Ribs, Missouri Style: Home Version (p. 269)

That was a good party!

Pasta with roasted eggplant and fresh tomato sauce — a riff on Pasta alla Norma

If eggplant is still available you may want to do as I did and snag the last ones at a farmers market and make a superb pasta dish with roasted eggplant and the last of the tomatoes as well. This is a riff on Pasta Alla Norma. Also I am here to say that cutting eggplant into cubes and roasting is a revelation. The texture and flavor are off the charts. Roast first and set aside for a non-stress cooking experience. Then make a Uber-delicious tomato sauce with fresh and canned crushed tomatoes. (You can even make tomato sauce 2 days ahead.) 

Mix the sauce and eggplant together at the last minute over penne or mezzi rigatoni with some parmesan or ricotta salata and perhaps some mozzarella if you have it. I only had parmesan so topped the dish with that along with toasted (homemade) breadcrumbs and parsley. So very delicious!

Eggplant:

Eggplant, cut into 1/2 dice, about 1-1/2 # or three small-ish

Toss with olive oil and S&P on roasting pan, adding more oil to coat pan surface. 

Roasted at 400 degrees for 20+ minutes. Turn halfway. If not done at 20 minutes, check every couple minutes and remove — can leave on pan — when starting to brown a bit. 

Make tomato sauce:

tomatoes, 3 or more fresh, cut and squeezed to remove seeds and cut into large chunks

Canned tomatoes, crushed, to come to 4 c tomatoes, total

Onion, 1 small, sliced into half moons

Shallot, 1, large mince or thin slices cut into rings

Garlic, 3 cloves, thinly sliced

Hot pepper, diced

Red pepper flakes

Prosciutto, 3 oz, cut into 1”+ pieces, optional

Directions:

Get out sauce pan and heat and add olive oil. Sauté prosciutto for 2-3 minutes until starting to crisp up. Remove to plate and set aside. 

Sauté onion with salt. 

Add shallot, then hot pepper and red pepper flakes. Then add garlic and cook for a minute or so. 

Add tomatoes, bring to a simmer and cook on low heat simmering gently for 20 minutes. Set aside. 

Toast some breadcrumbs if you have some homemade on hand. 

Grate parmesan. If you have ricotta salata, 1 c grated would be traditional, or cut up mozzarella.

Cut up some parsley.

Cook penne. 

In large bowl, mix together: Penne, tomato sauce, cheese (other than parmesan) and eggplant. Top with breadcrumbs, parmesan and parsley.

Good accompaniments:

Garlic bread (cultured butter, garlic, grated parmesan, minced parsley and good sea salt — slathered onto bread loaf and is cut almost all the way down into slices)

Salad: lettuce, roasted beets, sliced salad turnips and carrots, toasted walnuts in shallot mustard vinaigrette.

To assemble: Put some dressing in bottom of salad bowl and place lettuce on top. When ready to head to the table, toss with lettuce, carrots and turnips. Plate nicely, and top with beets and walnuts. A delight to eat!

Sources:

Classic Pasta alla Norma, from David Tanis

Pasta alla Norma Sorta by Colu Henry

Roasted Ratatouille, or how to make a dent in your August vegetable bounty

In August when your CSA share is overflowing with late summer produce, the perfect solution is to throw it all in a pan and roast in the oven. It’s passive and easy and uber-delicious. Here’s how:

Cut up:

Eggplant

Onions — preferably fresh onions — sweet and juicy

Peppers — mostly sweet, cut hot peppers more finely

Tomatoes — cut up and push out seeds to leave only the meaty part

Garlic cloves

Pile up in a large roasting pan. Drizzle on olive oil; salt in layers as you go. 

Roast at 400 degrees. 

First for about 40 minutes.

Then stir and put back for another 30 minutes. Toss in sprigs of fresh thyme or marjoram.

Then again and another 30 minutes until reduced and somewhat jammy. 

This is uber-delicious! A vegetable powerhouse okay with, ok, a fair amount of (delicious!) olive oil.

Serve over pasta with basil chiffonade and a drizzle of olive oil. Serve over farro cold. Pile up on good bread toasted, perhaps grating garlic clove onto bread and drizzling olive oil before piling on ratatouille. 

Thanks Ali!
Last photo is reheated ratatouille (in a pot with a splash of water) sitting atop toasted bread that was scraped with a garlic clove and drizzled with olive oil. A dusting of pecorino would not be amiss.