July Recipe Roundup

Today, I did something I don't usually do, which is make two different but related meals for lunch and for dinner. It was mostly because I was home with time to cook and because I spent about $30 on vegetables at the farmers' market on Saturday and was determined to use at least some of them before they'd been languishing in the fridge for too long.

I've written about both of these recipes before, but they are both so good and so perfect for the season, that I wanted to put them in the spotlight again.

The first dish--my lunch, as it were--is early summer orzo, a recipe I mostly made up. It's a mix of vegetables diced into tiny pieces, sauteed in olive oil and then combined with a minimal amount of orzo. I usually make it in the sweet spot of early summer, when both peas and corn are available. I combine these with summer squash, onions, garlic, basil and toasted pine nuts. The key is to have everything cut the same size (i.e., the size of a pea or corn kernel or pine nut or piece of orzo) so that each bite has a little bit of everything in it. The other key is to add the orzo to the vegetables rather than the other way around--this way, the orzo is incorporated into the vegetables rather than the vegetables serving as a complement to the pasta. You could make this with many different vegetable combinations, but I'm partial to the early summer one. Then again, I was amazed that shell peas were still available on Saturday, and I can't imagine we'll see too many more of them after this week's mini heat wave, so I can see making this pea-less, out of necessity. Sprinkle some Parmesan if you like, and you're set for lunch, dinner or a snack. It is equally delicious re-heated.

Here's the recipe, from June 2009: Early Summer Orzo

The second recipe comes from a Mark Bittman "Minimalist" column from the summer of 2004, his Pasta with Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes. I have been making this dish every summer since then, which I think is the definition of a keeper. So, in the early evening, after I'd come inside sweaty and grubby from mowing the lawn and watering the garden, I found myself, once again, chopping onions and garlic, dicing squash and cutting corn off of the cob. And the sauteing starts off the same way. The key difference here is the tomatoes. Tomatoes wouldn't work in the first recipe because they fall apart, and there, you're looking for intact bits. With this recipe, soupy is fine. You add the tomatoes around the time you put the water for the pasta in, and by the time the pasta is cooked, the tomatoes have broken down, and you have a delicious smelling pan of vegetables on the stove, waiting to be dumped upon the hot pasta. This dish might not be quite as pretty as the other one, but it's equally delicious.

Here's the recipe, from July 2008: Pasta with Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes

Now, I have two different kinds of leftovers to eat this week, and while the chard and lettuce are still in my fridge, waiting for their turn, I can feel somewhat satisfied that most, if not all, of those vegetables I schlepped home so hopefully on Saturday are going to end up in my stomach rather than in the compost.

Enjoy!

Rhubarb Ginger "Downside Up" Oatmeal Cake

Much to my surprise, I discovered that in today's "Good Appetite" column, Melissa Clark writes about rhubarb upside-down cake. There must be rhubarb upside-down cake vibes going around in the universe because I made a similar cake just yesterday. I'd certainly think about making Melissa's cake at some point, but that will have to happen later. First, I want to make yesterday's cake again, if only so I can have a bigger piece of it. I brought it to a work gathering and looked on a little bit sadly as wedge after wedge was eaten by my colleagues, including the ones who proclaimed not to like rhubarb. I was selfless enough to take one piece home for Alex, but I left the rest there, and when I came in this morning, it was all gone. Sigh.

I have Food 52 to blame (or, really, credit) for this one as well. When I did a search for rhubarb, the first recipe that came up was the one for rhubarb curd (shortbread). The second was for rhubarb ginger downside up oatmeal cake. I was intrigued. I clicked. I baked.

I've never made a cake quite like this before. First, I don't think I've ever made an upside down cake. And I've never made one in a cast iron frying pan. I may have made a cake with oatmeal in it at some point, but the details are fuzzy. But, having done this once, I would do it again without hesitation. This is really an excellent cake.

First, you melt some butter in a cast iron (or other ovenproof) frying pan:

Once the butter is melted, you take it off the flame and spread a cup of brown sugar across the bottom:
On top of that goes a layer of rhubarb mixed with grated fresh ginger:


And on top of that goes the cake batter:


The cake batter process was interesting in and of itself. You mix rolled oats with boiling water and butter. You mix the dry ingredients in another bowl. When the oatmeal mixture has cooled, you add an egg, some vanilla and more sugar, and then mix in the dry ingredients.

The cake one way:


And the other:


There is little I would do differently. I might think about replacing the fresh ginger with crystallized ginger (or maybe not). I did replace 1/4 cup of all purpose with whole wheat pastry flour. But there's not much else to change. The slight taste of oatmeal is lovely with the rhubarb, reminiscent of a crumble. The cake was moist and flavorful, with a little zing from the ginger, some tart from the rhubarb, mellowed out by the oatmeal and the sweet cake. It really was just all around delicious. My only regret was that I hadn't brought some vanilla ice cream to eat with it. No, I take that back. My only real regret was that I didn't get a bigger piece. I'm not sure I could give it higher praise.

Rhubarb Ginger Downside-Up Cake
from thirshfeld at Food 52

For the rhubarb::

• 2 1/4 cups fresh rhubarb, 1/2 inch slices
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter

For the oatmeal cake:

• 1/2 cup thick cut rolled oats
• 3/4 cups boiling water
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, 1/4 inch cubes
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

1. In a mixing bowl combine the oats with the boiling water. Add the1/4 cup of butter. Set aside to cool.


2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Gently melt the butter in a 10 inch cast iron skillet. Remove it from the heat. Spread the brown sugar evenly across the bottom. In a large bowl mix the ginger and rhubarb. Spread the rhubarb evenly across the brown sugar. Set aside.


3. In the empty rhubarb bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.


4. To the cooled oatmeal add the egg, both sugars, and vanilla. Mix to combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until combined.


5. Spread the cake batter evenly across the top of the rhubarb. Place into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes.


6. Remove from the oven when done and let cool for 5 minutes before inverting onto a cake plate. Let cool for 20 minutes before slicing.

8-10 slices

A Spinach Revelation, and a Failed Experiment

I usually take advantage of my Mondays at home to cook for at least part of the week. Yesterday, however, I got sidetracked. First, I made granola. Then, I made cake (more about that another day). While I was making the cake, I was also making my first batch of rhubarb ginger jam. In the midst of all that, I ran errands, did some work, gardened in the drizzle, did laundry (including the caked-with-dirt-from-gardening-in-the-drizzle gardening clothes). Somehow, I forgot to make dinner. I had the fixings for a nice salad, but it was chilly and damp, not really salad weather.

What I did have, I realized as the afternoon edged toward evening, was a lot of spinach. A pound and a half, to be precise. I thought about spinach and green garlic soup; I thought about my tried and true spinach soup, but I wasn't in a soup mood. And then I remembered that Deb at Smitten Kitchen had written a few months ago about baked spinach, which she called, in fact, the "best baked spinach," and that seemed like just the ticket. The full recipe called for 3 pounds of spinach, and I only had half of that, but I figured the recipe was easy enough to halve, which I did. I'm going to send you over to Deb's post for the instructions. Suffice it to say that the spinach is, in fact, delicious. Also easy, though there are several steps (which makes sense, since the recipe is one she pieced together from several Julia Child recipes.) Once the spinach is wilted, you saute it in a bit of butter.

After it's dried out, you add a bit of flour, and once that's absorbed, some stock or cream, depending on how decadent you're feeling. (I used 1/2 asparagus stock and 1/2 1/2 and 1/2.) (I couldn't resist writing it that way.) Then you mix with some cheese, put it in a baking dish and top it with some breadcrumbs and more cheese, and you're done.


I didn't have any baked spinach to compare this too, but it was delicious, and I will absolutely make it again, this time, a full recipe. And I might not even share.

But then we come to the failed experiment.

One of Deb's suggestions was to use the spinach as a bed for a poached egg. This seemed like a fine idea to me except that I can't really make poached eggs. Alex, on the other hand, is a poached egg master, so I just cede the making of poached eggs to him. Last night, however, he wasn't there, and I was on my own if I wanted a poached egg. I thought about just making a soft-boiled egg instead, but then I remembered recently having read something about making poached eggs in the microwave and I decided to give it a try. I found what I had read--a short piece in Bon Appetit. Unfortunately, I began my experiment after I'd read the piece but before I read the comments, which suggested that it might be more complicated than it appeared on the surface. The Bon Appetit method involved putting the egg in water in a cup, covering with a saucer, and cooking on high heat for 1 minute, and voila-- a perfect poached egg was supposed to appear.

My microwave is ancient, however, and nothing cooks in one minute. My general calculation is that something that takes 1 minute in a newer microwave takes at least 3 minutes in mine. As a compromise, I set the timer for 2 minutes. But when the buzzer went off and I checked, the egg was only partly poached. I put the saucer back on and turned it on for 2 more minutes. About a minute in, there was a crash loud enough to send the cats scurrying to the basement in fear. When I opened the door, thankfully I didn't find a smashed dish and egg everywhere. I did, however, find the saucer catapulted to the side, along with some water and a bit of egg. What was left of the egg was closer to hard boiled than soft-boiled. It was rather sad looking, in fact.

Only then did I think to look at the comments, both of which said there were too many variables, and it hadn't worked. I had to agree with them.

Still, all was not lost. A piece of Hungry Ghost eight grain bread, topped with half the spinach, topped with the remains of the egg, turned out to be a delicious dinner.


Two lessons learned: The spinach is a winner.

And, at least for the moment, I will leave the poached eggs to Alex.

Deborah Madison's Spinach Frittata: or, Friends with Chickens

At the beginning of the academic year, I acquired a new office neighbor. This was a good thing, as my office is on the third floor of an old house, tucked under the eaves, and for company, I was reduced to calling across what once had been an attic playroom to my colleague on the other side. But then, the empty office next to mine was suddenly populated, and first, I had a neighbor, and after not very long, I had a new friend. (Hi Beth!)

Beth has been a lovely new friend. (She, in fact, was the one who suggested that I go to Navdanya in January!) But in addition to all of her fine qualities, there's another thing: she has chickens. I heard last fall about the building of the chicken coop and the acquisition of 8 hens. I heard about the months in which those 8 chickens, expensively settled into their expensive coop, showed little interest in laying eggs. But then, at long last, they began to lay eggs, just in time for our winter from hell, and then I heard stories of Beth's 8 year old daughter going out to feed the chickens and coming back with frozen hair while reporting that the chicken's water was also frozen. Ah, the joys of outdoor animals in a New England winter!

But through it all, those intrepid hens kept laying eggs. And some of the eggs laid by Tiny, Chinchilinna, Bindi, Fluffy, Hannah, and Fluffy-Lucky-Dr.Dufenschwartz found their way to me. (I am sad to report that of the original 8, Dora was lost to a skunk and Nemo to a hawk; Beth would probably like me point out that 1) her 2 daughters named the chickens and 2) they will stay away from Disney names in future.)

Over the past few months, I've scrambled the eggs and poached them and made them into egg salad. I've put them in quiche and custard and Deborah Madison's chard and onion torta. And yesterday, I had 3 eggs left from the last batch Beth had given me, and I made this frittata.

This frittata has much to recommend it--it's easy and quick, filling and delicious. And if this happens to be early May and new spinach and green onions are readily available at the farmers' market, even better. Although I always like spinach and cheddar together, I used the goat cheese called for in the recipe and was not sorry. The whole thing was done very quickly. You can mix together the eggs while the spinach is cooking down, and as long as the heat is low, you can go off and do other things for the 8 or so minutes that the frittata is cooking. When the mingled and yummy smell of green onions and goat cheese begins to permeate your kitchen, you'll know it's almost done.

Meanwhile, I brought an empty egg carton to work and left it meaningfully on Beth's desk. I'm already plotting what Chinchilinna and co.'s next offerings will become.

Spinach Frittata
from Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

8 to 10 ounces baby spinach leaves
2 tbsp. butter
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
4 eggs
2 scallions, including 3 inches of greens, thinly sliced
3 ounces crumbled firm goat cheese

1. Put the spinach in a large skillet with a teaspoon or so of the butter, season with a few pinches of salt, and add a tablespoon of water to create a little steam. Cook over medium heat until wilted and tender, about 3 minutes. Drain and chop coarsely.

2. Whisk the eggs in a medium bowl with several pinches of salt and some pepper. Stir in the scallions, cheese and spinach.

3. Melt the remaining butter in a 10-inch nonstick skillet. When it foams, swirl it around the pan, coating the sides. Add the eggs, reduce the heat to low, then cover the pan and cook until golden and puffed, about 8 minutes. If, at this time, it's cooked to your tasted, slide it out onto a serving plate without turning it over. If you like your eggs cooked more firmly, slide the frittata onto a plate, invert the skillet over it, then, grasping both the plate and the skillet in your hands, invert the whole thing. Cook the second side for a few more minutes, then slide the frittata onto the plate, cut into quarters and serve.

Serves 2-4, depending on what else you're serving and how hungry you are.

Melissa Clark's Olive Oil Granola

I have to admit, I was somewhat hesitant to write about this granola. After all, it's not as if it hasn't already received its fair share of attention. Melissa Clark first wrote about it in her Good Appetite column in the NY Times in 2009, and the recipe was reprinted in her excellent cookbook last year. In between, it was blogged about repeatedly.

But then I thought about how I felt recently when I realized that my supply of the stuff was almost gone--panicked. I couldn't imagine the house without even a little bit of the granola around, for breakfast and for snacks, occasionally for dessert. The granola, I decided, was worth my adding my voice to the crowd.

It's not as if I was looking for a new granola recipe. For years, I've been making (and eating) Suzanne's Famous Cashew Granola quite happily. But when I read about this version, I was intrigued by the combination of sweet, salty and slightly bitter that Clark says makes it so delicious. She was absolutely right.

Like most granolas, the recipe for this one is flexible. The original version Clark tasted had cashews and sunflower seeds. She changed this to pistachios--because that's what she had on hand--and pumpkin seeds because she doesn't like sunflower seeds. In my version, I go back to cashews and add some sliced almonds in, and replace half the pumpkin seeds with sunflower seeds, which I like just fine. I also upped the fruit a bit and used 1/2 dried apricot and 1/2 dried cranberries. (One of the other folks blogging about it liked that the original recipe had no almonds or cranberries in it--apparently a granola cliche--but I like them, and in my version, they stay.) Clark uses coconut chips, I used shredded coconut--as long as it's unsweetened, I don't think it matters. The only things not to tamper with are the olive oil, the maple syrup and the salt. Beyond that, tinker to your heart's delight. I have no doubt that it will be delicious. I even saw a Passover recipe that replaced the oats with matzoh--and that was apparently fabulous as well. With this granola, you can do no wrong.


Alas, my current supply is now low again--I know what's going to be on my to-do list for the weekend! I encourage you to do the same.

Olive Oil Granola With Dried Apricots and Nuts

Adapted from Melissa Clark's recipe in A Good Appetite

Time: 50 minutes

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1 1/2 cups slivered almonds and/or cashews (I used toasted almonds and raw cashews.)

1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1 cup coconut chips or other form of dried coconut

3/4 cup pure maple syrup

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom or ginger

1/2 cup chopped dried apricots

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a large bowl, combine oats, nuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, coconut, maple syrup, olive oil, brown sugar, salt, and spices. Spread mixture on a rimmed baking sheet in an even layer and bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until golden brown and well toasted.

2. Transfer granola to a large bowl and add dried fruit, tossing to combine.

Yield: About 9 cups.

Hot Cross Buns, belatedly

Okay, yes, I know my timing is off here. Hot cross bun season is now over until next spring, and here I am posting about it. But by next spring, I will not remember much about my recent experience baking hot cross buns, so I wanted to make sure it was recorded for posterity.

My timing was off in several ways, in fact. Hot cross buns are not a food of my origins, shall we say, and to have made hot cross buns during Passover, no less, appears to make me a very bad Jew. Ah well. There is also the hot cross bun story I always think of when I go by the Bakery Normand in Northampton on an early spring day to see if they have any hot cross buns. Normand's is known around town both for its excellent array of baked goods and for its exceptionally cranky counter staff. Some years ago, I went in during the spring sometime and asked when there would be hot cross buns available. The pierced and surly counter person sniffed at me and said, "I have no idea. I'm not really into religion." And I thought, "You know, I'm not really into religion either. In fact, I'm a Jew who likes hot cross buns. But given that you work in a bakery, it's probably not a bad idea to know when seasonal products are going to be around." But, of course, I didn't actually say any of that because really, what was the point.

I did, in fact, eat a hot cross bun or two from Normand's this year (that counter person having moved on to hopefully less surly climes), but I also wanted to try to make some myself. I saw a recipe in Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, which was intriguing. (Although I own another Cunningham book, I'd never heard of this one until Molly at Orangette posted the ginger muffins from it, which I made and which were delicious.) And then, the lovely Anne Bramley of EatFeed linked on Facebook a Guardian article about hot cross buns, which was quite interesting. This article included Nigella Lawson's hot cross bun recipe, which was also interesting.

In the end, though, I have to admit that I didn't go with any of these. One fact I hadn't known earlier is that the British version doesn't have a sugar-based icing on top. In fact, in the comments of the Guardian piece, people were somewhat horrified at the thought and sniffed at it as being particularly American. (They were even more horrified at the thought of cream cheese frosting, which I've never had on a hot cross bun but sounded like it could be good.) But to me, the icing is half the point! That's the treat factor--the bread and dried fruit and spices part are all well and good, but it's that bit of extra sugar on top that ties it all together.

In the end, I went with Elise's recipe from Simply Recipes. I liked that it had been created from other recipes after a lot of testing. (Always nice to have someone else to test all those other recipes for you!) It turned out that it was fairly similar to Marion Cunningham's recipe with just a few minor differences.

A few comments.

It took awhile for the dough not to be sticky anymore. While the recipe says to use between 3 1/4 and 3 1/2 cups of flour, I used closer to 4. Eventually, it became tacky but not excessively sticky, and that seemed fine.

Don't skip the orange peel! Along with the spices, it really adds a nice flavor.


If you want the X to survive the baking, you need to have a firm hand with the knife before baking.

When I had to take all those IV antibiotics for Lyme, I ended up with a lot of sterile syringes (if that's what they are when there's no needle in them). I tossed most of them, but the nurses told me that some people saved them and used them to ice cakes with. Why not, I thought. After they went through the dishwasher a few times, I stuck them in a drawer and remembered them only when I was looking at the icing instructions for the buns. It worked beautifully--though on the second batch, I just pasted the icing on with a spoon, which gets you more icing per bun, if you're interested in that kind of thing.

And about that second batch. I made half of the buns the day I made the dough and the other half 3 days later. The dough spent those days in the fridge, and if I had to pick, I'd say that the second batch was a bit better. So, if you want to make the dough ahead of time and bake later, they'll still be great.

Chances are that I won't be making hot cross buns again for awhile, yummy as they were. On the other hand, since they're not the food of my origins, perhaps there's no reason not to indulge in a spicy, fruity iced bun before next spring rolls around.

Hot Cross Buns
Adapted very slightly from Simply Recipes

Dough

• 1 1/4-ounce package instant yeast (about 2 1/2 teaspoons)
• 3/4 cup warm milk
• 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I used closer to 4 cups)
  
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons ground spices (for example, 1/2 teaspoon cardamom, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon allspice, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 Tbsp butter, softened
• 2 eggs, room temperature
  
• 3/4 cup currants or raisins (I used 1/2 cup golden raisins and 1/4 cup regular)
  
• 2 teaspoons grated orange zest

Glaze

• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp milk

Frosting

• 1 teaspoon milk
• 3 to 4 Tbsp powdered sugar

Baking Instructions

In a large bowl or the mixing bowl of an electric mixer, vigorously whisk together 3 cups of the flour (reserving additional flour for later step), the salt, spices, instant yeast and 1/4 cup of sugar.

Create a well in the flour and add the softened butter, eggs, and milk. Using a wooden spoon or the paddle attachment of your mixer, mix the ingredients until well incorporated. The mixture should be shaggy and quite sticky. Add in the currants or raisins and orange zest.

If you are using a standing mixer, switch to the dough hook attachment and start to knead on low speed. (If not using a mixer, use your hands to knead.) Slowly sprinkle in additional flour, a tablespoon at a time, kneading to incorporate after each addition, until the flour is still slightly tacky, but is no longer completely sticking to your fingers when you work with it.

Form a ball of dough in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit, covered, at room temperature (or in a warm spot) for 2 hours, until the dough has doubled in size.

If you're going to refrigerate the dough to bake it later, do that now. Otherwise, press down on the dough to gently compress it. Roll the ball of dough into a log shape and cut it into two halves. Place one half back in the bowl while you work with the other half. Take the dough half you are working with and cut it into 8 equal pieces.

Take the individual pieces and form them into mounds, placing them 1 1/2 inches apart from each other on a baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and then work the remaining dough into 8 equal pieces and place them in mounds on a baking sheet, again cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough mounds sit at room temperature (or warm place) to rise again, until the mounds have doubled in volume, about 30-40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Prepare egg wash by whisking together one egg and a tablespoon of milk. If you want, you can score the top of the buns with a knife in a cross pattern. You will want to make fairly deep cuts, for the pattern to be noticeable after they're done. Using a pastry brush, brush on the egg wash over the dough mounds. The egg wash will give them a shiny appearance when cooked.

Place in the middle rack of the oven and cook for 10-12 minutes, until the buns are lightly browned. Remove from oven and let cool on the pan for a few minutes, then transfer the buns to a wire rack to cool.

To paint a cross on the top of the buns, wait until the buns have cooled (or the frosting will run). Whisk together the milk and the powdered sugar. Keep adding powdered sugar until you get a thick consistency. Place in a plastic sandwich bag (or handy sterile syringe!). Snip off a small piece from the corner of the bag and use the bag to pipe two lines of frosting across each bun to make a cross

Yield: Makes 16 buns.

Bread and Jam, Part I: Peach Freezer Jam

I should be a person who cans.

It makes sense. I knit, I garden, I bake. I even live in an old farmhouse with a canning cupboard in the basement, out of which I extracted many glass Ball jars (empty, thankfully) when I moved in. Canning should be the obvious next step.

It's not the labor I'm opposed to, or the special equipment. In an ideal world, I can totally envision myself putting up jars and jars of tomato sauce and peaches and jam. The problem, in this less-than-ideal world, is space. As in, I have no space to keep those jars and jars that I might wish to can. My kitchen is somewhat lacking in shelf space as it is. I've tried to make up for this with a set of Ikea shelves, although these now list rather alarmingly to one side, so full of cookbooks and pantry items they are. And that canning cupboard in the basement - - it's blocked by empty boxes and miscellaneous junk. Alas. Someday, in my ideal world--or even maybe in the real one--I will move the junk, toss the boxes and clear out the cupboard. Then, I will buy myself an enormous pot in which to sterilize jars and whatever else I need, and I will learn how to can.

For now, there's the freezer.

Not long ago, I read a blog post titled something like "Five Reasons Why I Don't Have a Second Freezer." And I thought instantly, that I could write a blog post singing the praises of my basement freezer. I'll spare you that. Suffice it to say that buying an upright freezer for my basement was something I was looking forward to well before I moved into this house. And for someone who schleps bagels home from New York and grows multitudes of tomatoes but doesn't like them raw and likes to make ice cream with a rather bulky Kitchen Aid Mixer attachment that needs to stay frozen, a second freezer is a no-brainer. It is also the answer to the canning dilemma.

Each year, in the late summer and early fall, I make vats of tomato sauce to freeze and eat throughout the winter. I freeze ratatouille and soup. A quart of last night's Caldo Verde, made with the bounty of kale from a colleague's garden, is already in the freezer for later. I take the freezer into account with most of my cooking projects. I would not want to do without it.

Still, the one thing that still tempts me about canning is jam. I love the image of those lovely colored jars on the shelves, the jammy goodness restorative in the middle of a New England winter. Somehow, jam in the freezer doesn't have the same appeal. Or, it didn't used to, at least.

I tried my first batch of freezer jam a year ago. That one called for pectin, and I may have over cooked it, as it ended up slightly firmer than I would have liked. I was thinking about giving it another go when I looked in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, in which I found a recipe for low-sugar jam, meant for either immediate eating or the freezer. Bittman's recipe didn't require pectin--just fruit, sugar and lemon juice. I was intrigued.


I started with peach seconds from the farmers' market. I figured that since I was just going to be mushing them up anyway, they didn't need to be pristine. They wouldn't win any beauty contests, but they didn't have to. Once they'd been blanched and chopped up, they just looked peachy rather than mushy.



I mashed them up with the potato masher, added the sugar and lemon juice and let it bubble and boil, while I puttered around the kitchen doing other things. (You need to be in the vicinity to give the jam a stir every few minutes so it doesn't burn.) Bittman says the jam should take 30 minutes to cook down. Mine took more like an hour, but still. It was an easy hour, and by then, the jam looked jam-like rather than sauce-like. I tried it plain and on toast, with butter and peanut butter, and except for lacking the decorative feel of canned jam, it's serving the purpose admirably.

I've since made a second batch, and while the canning cupboard remains empty, the freezer is filling up. There could be worse ways to begin the fall.

Peach Freezer Jam
Adapted from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything

6 cups peaches, blanched and roughly chopped
1 1/2 - 2 cups sugar, more or less
2 tsp. lemon juice

1. Place the fruit in a large saucepan and crush lightly with a fork or potato masher. Add 1 1/2 cups sugar and the lemon juice. Turn heat to medium high.
2. Cook, stirring almost constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture liquefies. Taste, and add more sugar, if necessary. You may want 2 cups or more, total.
3. Turn the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the fruit has broken down and the mixture is thick, 15 - 30 minutes. Taste and add more sugar or lemon juice if necessary, then cool and refrigerate or freeze.

A few things: I used between 4-5 cups of peaches and scaled the sugar down accordingly. 1 cup of sugar for 4 cups of peaches was more than enough. I didn't want it any sweeter.

Bittman says that 6 cups of peaches makes 3 pints of jam. Even though I used fewer peaches, I didn't have anything close to 3 pints.

Still, even in its limited quantities, the jam is lovely and worth making. I look forward to eating it on my toast in February.

Meatless Mondays: Easy Summer Tomato Soup

And this year, there were tomatoes.

Anyone who read my blog last summer knows this was not the case a year ago. (Exhibit A: Sauce for a Sad Tomato Season) But despite scattered reports of blight in the area, my garden escaped. And under the endless weeks of hot sun and too little water, the tomatoes produced and produced again. I have 16 plants this year, 12 at the community garden and 4 at home, 8 plum tomatoes and 8 regular tomatoes of mixed varieties. I grow no cherry tomatoes because, since I don't eat raw tomatoes, there's no point. For the past few weeks, I've been using tomatoes steadily and still giving them away generously without feeling any sense of panic. I think the bulk of the production may even still be to come, as the plum tomatoes at the garden have ripened more slowly than the others. (That might be wishful thinking, but there's no shortage of tomatoes at the farmers' market either, which is reassuring.)

Yesterday, a chilly, rainy night here, I made a double batch of my standard summer tomato soup. I discovered the recipe some years ago in Cooking Light. It was in the column where someone sends in a recipe that contains a pound of butter and a pint of heavy cream and asks for a lighter version. I don't remember what the original recipe called for, in terms of fat, but I know that the lighter version is delicious, with no cream or butter in it at all. (It does contain low fat cream cheese and milk; in case you were hoping that it's both virtuous and dairy-free, it's not.)

This was my second batch of soup this season. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of entertaining my British cousin Mim, her husband Tim and their kids (who are named not Jim and Kim but rather Dan and Ros). They were here for lunch, and I wanted to make something kid-friendly that also used ample amounts of local produce. The menu I ended up with included this tomato soup, eggplant Parmesan and blueberry crumble bars. It is true that Ros consumed a large plate of blueberry crumble bars, ending up with blueberry on her nose and eyebrow, but I was even more pleased by how much Dan loved the soup, which he called "super" and complimented multiple times as he worked his way through his bowl. I was even more touched last week when I got an email from Mim--they're back home in London now--saying that Dan was interested in learning to cook, and for his first attempt, he wanted to make tomato soup and could I send the recipe. I'm not sure praise comes higher than that!


A few notes: If you have a food mill, this is the time to use it. (I have an old Foley one from my grandmother's house, and it is one of my favorite kitchen utensils, up there with my immersion blender.) Using a food mill means that you don't have to worry about peeling and seeding the tomatoes ahead of time. With sauce, I rarely peel and seed tomatoes, whether or not it's going through the food mill. But with soup, texture seems more of an issue--I'd rather not be spitting out bits of skin and seed from each sip. I also take the extra step of adding the basil after it's gone through the food mill and then using the immersion blender to chop it up, so that the soup will have bits of basil in it. (Not much basil is left, once it goes through the food mill.) It's an extra step, but since the soup is so easy to make, it seems worth it. The original recipe calls for 4 ounces--half a package--of 1/3-less-fat cream cheese. I've used less than that, and it still tastes good, so you can go lower if you'd like, though the original amount isn't excessive, by any means.

One last note--I discovered last year that this soup is also an excellent candidate for freezing. I've already frozen part of yesterday's large pot (without the milk--I'll add that once I defrost it), and I plan to freeze more. (I usually make a double batch since the recipe is easily multiplied.) This soup is a pleasure when the sun is hot and the days are long. It's even more so once fall or, especially, winter has arrived. And while I now have a dependable winter tomato soup recipe, I'm still partial to the summer version. What could be nicer than a bowl of soup that hearkens back to August days when the zinnias are in full bloom and the tomatoes bountiful and blight-free?

Tomato-Basil Soup
Adapted from Cooking Light, July 2000

Ingredients

• 4 cups chopped tomatoes (about 4 large), peeled and seeded if you're not going to use a food mill
  
• 4 cups tomato juice (I use whatever I can find, sometimes Campbell's, sometimes organic from Whole Foods. I usually don't use low-sodium juice, but you can.)
  
• 1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 cup 1% low-fat milk
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2-4 ounces 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened
• Basil leaves, thinly sliced (optional)

Preparation

Bring tomatoes and juice to a boil in a large saucepan. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 30 minutes.

If the tomatoes haven't been peeled and seeded, run tomato mixture through a food mill to get rid of skins and seeds. Return to pot, add basil, and use an immersion blender to process until smooth. (Obviously, you can do this in a regular blender or food processor as well; but in my role as an immersion blender evangelist, I'll say that it's much easier to do it right in the pot with the immersion blender, rather than transferring hot (red) liquid back and forth.) Add softened cream cheese, whisking for several minutes. Then add milk, salt, and pepper and cook over medium heat until thick (about 5 minutes). Ladle soup into individual bowls; garnish with sliced basil, if desired.

NOTE: Refrigerate remaining soup in an airtight container for up to 1 week. The soup can also be frozen. I freeze it after I've added the cream cheese but before I've added the milk. You can also freeze just the tomato/juice combo and add both dairy products once it's defrosted. Just make a note to yourself about what you have or haven't included.

Meatless Mondays: Height-of-Summer Ratatouille

A few years ago, I realized that I didn't have a go-to ratatouille recipe. So, I began to investigate, looking up recipes in cookbooks and food blogs. Many of the recipes I found called for cooking each vegetable individually, wiping the pan out in between. Others called for baking the ratatouille rather than making it on the stove. As I pored through the recipes, I began to realize that I didn't actually want a lightly cooked ratatouille, with each vegetable maintaining its texture and individual flavor (see Smitten Kitchen for a gorgeous example). I didn't really want to turn on my oven either. What I wanted, actually, was sludge.

Not literal sludge, of course, but I wanted a savory tomato-y stew, with the flavors melded into a medley of high summer. I wanted ratatouille that I could sprinkle with Parmesan and eat over cous cous or heap onto a slice of thick bread. I wanted ratatouille that could double as a thick pasta sauce, if necessary. With summer vegetables at their height of flavor and plentiful, to boot, I didn't really want to treat them delicately, at least not right then.

The one recipe I found that seemed suitable for my purposes was in Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. This is a cookbook I tend to look through more than cook from, but no matter. What I liked about her recipe was that it didn't call for any complicated procedures. It also referenced Elizabeth David, which seemed like a good sign.

In the years since, I've continued to use Nigella's recipe as a template, but I've remained flexible about exact amounts and cooking times. The one thing that's been consistent is that I've added the vegetables one at a time to the pot, starting with the onions and ending with the tomatoes. I also probably cook it longer than Nigella recommends, since after all what I'm aiming for is my delicious vegetable sludge, which tastes even better after it's sat for a day and given the flavors time to meld.

High summer is a fleeting time, I know, but I've decided that it's long enough for several different kinds of ratatouille. I'm tempted by Deborah Madison's version, which contains caramelized onions and roasted red peppers, and by Mark Bittman's baked version (from How to Cook Everything), especially once it cools down a bit and turning the oven on won't cause the kitchen to become an inferno. In the meantime, though, I have already stowed some of my sludgy version in the basement freezer. I know it will cheer me up immeasurably once the plentiful eggplants and tomatoes in my garden are only a sweet summery memory.

(I've noticed that ratatouille is much more photogenic in its raw form (above) than cooked. Ah well.)

Ratatouille
(loosely adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat)

Please note that the amounts really are flexible, depending on your taste and what's available.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium onions, sliced
  
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
  
• 1 large or 2 medium globe eggplants, sliced or cubed
  
• 4- 5 smallish zucchini and/or yellow squash, halved and sliced
  
• 3 large sweet red peppers
• 4 large tomatoes
  
• 2-6 tbsps olive oil (Nigella recommends more, but I usually don't use more than a few tablespoons)
  
• 1/2 to 1 tsp ground coriander or coriander seed (I skipped this)
• fresh basil and/or fresh parsley

Instructions

• Slice the onions into thin half-moons
• Mince garlic
  
• Chop eggplant and zucchini into slices or small chunks
  
• Cut the peppers in half, remove cores & seeds, cut into thin strips
  
• Skin tomatoes by plunging into boiled water for a few minutes & then slipping the skins off. Halve them scoop out seeds & cut into chunks (I skipped this step and just chopped the tomatoes up.)
  
• Cook in this order: onions first, then eggplant, zucchini, garlic, peppers and finally tomatoes
• Heat the oil in a thick bottomed wide pan
• Cook the onions until soft but not brown
• Add the eggplant and cook several minutes until they start to shrink down and then add the squash,
• Continue on like this with the peppers and garlic (add more oil as needed)
• Cover the pan & cook gently for 40 mins, checking to make sure the bottom isn't sticking. Stir as needed.
  
• Add the tomatoes, coriander (if using), salt & pepper
• Cook for another 30-40 minutes until all vegetables are soft but not mushy
• Stir in the basil or parsley
• Eat, preferably at room temperature. Ratatouille keeps well in the fridge for up to 5 days; it also freezes well.
  

A few things

So, it turns out that if I blog every day in May, it means I don't blog at all in July. Hmm.

I didn't mean to take a summer break, but I guess I did. It's not that I have a great excuse either, although I'd like to blame it on the heat and humidity sucking all coherent thought from my brain. The next post I'd planned to write was the second part of my summer reading series . . . except that I haven't read much this summer. I did listen to the two most recent Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries, The Language of Bees and The God of the Hive, as well as the very charming Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. I liked The God of the Hive more than The Language of Bees, but they are all part of one story, so you really need to read/listen to both. Just yesterday, I gave in to peer pressure--or popular reading pressure, or something--and began the audio book of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (So far, so good.)

Meanwhile, I'm not sure what to do with all my previously ambitious summer reading plans, which have gone by the wayside for reasons I can't quite understand. Last summer, I was sick for most of my break and thus needed ample amounts of comfort reading--my summer reading consisted almost entirely of a re-read of the entire Harry Potter series and nearly all of Noel Streatfeild's "Shoes" books. This summer, I feel just fine, but all the books I'd lined up to read have remained unread. Still, I have a few more weeks before I go back to work, so there's still some time. A library copy of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists, which received staggeringly positive reviews in the New York Times Book Review AND the daily NYT a few months ago, is now in my hands, so that's first on the list. I also have a library copy of Josh Kilmer-Purcell's The Bucolic Plague, which also received a good NYT review (especially the bit where the reviewer was laughing so hard while reading it on the train that her seatmate demanded that she read aloud the bit that was so funny). And Emily, just returned from a few weeks in the UK, is going to lend me her copy of One Day, which she devoured, she said, and which seems ideal summer reading for someone who hasn't read much this summer.

One thing I've done while not reading (and not cooking much of anything) is spend several days up at Lonesome Lake Hut, near Franconia, NH. (The photo above is a view of Franconia Ridge in the clouds from the hut.) Lonesome Lake is one of the 8 mountain huts run by the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), which are run as "full-service" huts in the summer, meaning that guests can stay overnight and are fed breakfast and dinner. The huts are run by mostly college-age hut "croos," and many years ago, I aspired to be one. Alas, my hut career was cut short by a terribly timed broken leg (just days before I was supposed to head up to Mizpah Spring hut for the summer). My consolation prize, after a miserable summer, was getting to be the fall caretaker at Lonesome Lake. The hut is less than 2 miles from the road, making it a relatively easy hike for someone with a still gimpy leg. As the caretaker, I didn't have to cook for anyone, but I kept the hut tidy, greeted guests and attempted not to clock the guest who kept putting his feet in the oven with a cast iron frying pan. (Yes, it was cold, but still.)

This time, Alex, his friend Charlie Kellogg and I went in for about 48 hours, while the croo got to go off on a joint set of days off. (Usually, they go one at a time.) The hut was thankfully not full, and while there were moments of stress--the vast quantities of leftover lasagna, the sound of my pan of gingerbread hitting the floor--it was mostly lots of fun. (For a view of our trip, with an emphasis on flora, fauna and cool underwater photos of the lake, see Alex's rather exhaustive blog post here.)

One highlight for me was baking bread two days in a row and remembering how easy it is, even with no Kitchen Aid mixer dough hook in sight. Another was an unexpected reunion with a friend of a friend. It took us about 17 seconds to make the connection that had met at her wedding 5 years ago. She was there with her family, and we gabbed happily whenever we had a moment. Even more heartening was the message she sent after she came home, that her family liked us better than the actual croo (who were there their second night at the hut). I was quite tickled by that.

Still, hut crooing is definitely not a job for the middle-aged. There was not a single chair with a back on it in the entire hut, and I could feel it. I also felt terrible having to tell day trippers who were up that it cost about $100 a person, not $100 a room, to stay there. Yikes.

On the way home, Alex and I stopped at Slick's for ice cream. Things to know if you ever happen to be near Woodsville, NH, and in the mood for ice cream.

1. The ice cream is delicious. Alex and I both got Grapenut (hard to find outside of NH, so I always feel compelled to get it when it's around), but there were a number of other tempting flavors.
   
2. The servings are GARGANTUAN. A small is 3 scoops (for $1.75!). A large is 5. Be prepared. Although it wasn't explicitly listed, they will make "baby" cones, which seemed to be a more reasonable 2 scoops. I think if you have an actual baby with you, you might have to ask for a newborn cone.

I have no idea when I'll get back to Woodsville, but I'm already thinking about my next visit to Slick's.

In the meantime, there's always my local ice cream joint, Mt. Tom's, and even closer to home, my own ice cream maker, as yet unused this summer. That will definitely need to be remedied.

And now that the heat has abated a bit, I've made tentative forays back into my kitchen. I feel like I spent most of July consuming nothing but fresh lime sodas made with ginger simple syrup (highly recommended!). But in the past week or two, I've made eggplant and summer vegetable gratin and my first peach-blueberry crumble of the summer. The plan is to have another recipe, heavy on summer vegetables, up here soon.

Til then, keep your fingers crossed that my tomatoes--so far looking unblemished and plentiful--stay healthy long enough to give me the boatloads of tomatoes I will then grumble about. I hope to be so lucky.

The Blogathon is Contagious!

So, on June 1, the very day after the May blogathon came to its blessed close, Ms. Hannah Hart Sullivan, with no previous knowledge of the blogathon whatsoever, decided to pay some attention to her blog--Noted and Well-Fed--and blog every day in the month of June. My only conclusion is that the blogathon is somehow contagious.

And although Hannah is now a grown up editorial assistant in NYC, I have a long lasting soft spot for her as I first met her when she was not quite 5 in my first year in grad school at the University of Oregon. Her fabulous mother--Ms. Sarah Hart, now proprietor/chocolate maker extraordinaire of Alma Chocolate in Portland--was in one of my classes, and I spent most of the semester thinking how cool she was and wishing she were my friend. It was one of the highlights of that semester when I found out that she was thinking the same thing! Almost 20 years later, most of it spent on opposite coasts, we're still friends.

Next year, I'm going to encourage Hannah to blog with the gang in May, if she's feeling so inspired, but in the meantime, go pay her a visit. I am already eying her blueberry muffin recipe . . .

p.s. the above photo is from June, 1992 and was made digital by Sarah's low-tech method of holding it up to the photo booth on my Mac and taking a picture of it. Therefore, the picture is backwards, but it's still all of us in our 18-years-younger versions.

Guest Post Day: Lisa Peet of Like Fire

Lisa Peet usually blogs over at Like Fire (and sometimes still at Mappa Mundi). Today, however, I'm delighted to have her here.

Goodbye and Thank You

I wonder if with all the press and airtime it’s been getting, hoarding isn’t becoming the ADD of the 21st century, with everyone running to locate themselves and their friends on the spectrum. The media saturation hits just the right notes of assurance in between No, I couldn’t possibly be as messed up as those people and Gee, that explains a lot. This was a major topic in a group conversation last week: How we relate to our stuff, the behavior and subtexts involved, how much is too much.

I moved to a good-sized house six years ago, after living in apartments my whole adult life, and it’s been luxurious to relax and let crap collect a bit. I have all my son’s stuffed animals and some baby clothes in big black trash bags in the attic, and five boxes of my father’s scratchy classical albums from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. None of these are things I’d miss for a minute if I got rid of them, but the act of taking them downstairs and putting them out on the street would feel like some obscure kind of betrayal. I’m fortunate in that I don’t have to worry about them for the time being. They can sit where they are.

But I don’t think of that as pathological, really, just sentimental. I’m truly hoardy in only two areas: books, including literary journals and periodicals, and paper goods—stationery, blank books, fancy paper, postcards, stickers. None of it falls into the realm of weird, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t save newspapers I’ve read, or little scraps of used wrapping paper or pens that have run out of ink. Nothing has taken money out of my pocket that I couldn’t afford to spend; none of it takes up more room than I have to spare. I read a lot of books and I write a lot of letters (though sadly, far fewer than I used to before email). What qualifies it as hoarding, in my opinion, is how much joy I get from the process of acquisition. I’m not much of a shopper otherwise, but the pleasure I get from blowing $10 on weird Japanese stickers on Etsy or finding a beat-up paperback of a book I’ve wanted at a secondhand store is completely separate from the pleasure I’ll get using them. It’s an end in itself. And I definitely own more than I consume.

Which is OK. Nobody puts your kid in foster care because you have a lot of books. But the conversation got me thinking about where, exactly, I could draw some lines in the sand. And my gaze fell squarely and somberly on my bookshelf of cooking magazines.

I learned to cook in my mid-20s. I had been a picky eater as a kid and spoiled, and as a consequence never got much beyond pasta and scrambled eggs. But then I found myself broke and pregnant, and the idea of living on Chinese food, Snickers bars and beer didn’t appeal much anymore. So with fierce determination and no real idea what I was doing, I subscribed to Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and Gourmet, and proceeded to cook my way through every issue for the next 10 years.

It was a good plan. A year in, once the panic subsided and I started to feel a bit more comfortable in the kitchen, I realized that I loved cooking. A bit further down the line and I realized I’d gotten good at it. There was a certain exultation in that learning curve, that feeling of mastering something slowly by sheer perseverance. And in the same way that you always remember your first forays in a new neighborhood, before everything becomes commonplace, I remember each of those hard-won meals:

• The spinach pasta with salmon cream sauce—how I blanched at the price the fishmonger quoted me until I found out it was for a whole poached salmon, whereas I politely inquired how much for just the half pound the recipe called for, and he politely suggested I buy a salmon fillet and poach it myself.

• The first meal I ever cooked for company, a crusty lemon-herb veal roast with scalloped potatoes and green beans in a shallot vinaigrette on New Year’s Eve, 1987.

• My first pie: crimson pie, with blueberries and cranberries and a tangerine. I still use the first pie crust recipe I ever tried, made with equal parts butter and shortening and a little more than a quarter cup of sour cream, and it’s never failed me once.

• Lasagna from my mom’s crazy two-meat, three-cheese, sauce-from-scratch recipe, which over the years I’ve managed to get down to a couple of hours of prep. The first time took me half a day.

• The Jamaican seafood stew that was so phenomenally delicious I called my best friend up and made her come over to taste it right that minute.

• The mango-orange mousse cake I surprised another good friend with on her birthday, how the filling glowed in a way I’d never seen on a dessert except in Wayne Thiebaud paintings, and how it made me understand that food could be unexpectedly as beautiful as a work of art.

And hundreds of others—triumphs, failures, elaborate projects that left me exhausted and the kitchen devastated. All the memories, even the worst of them, tinged with affection some 20-odd years later. But the memories didn’t reside in the magazines, certainly. And there they were, a long low bookcase crammed with years and years’ worth of cooking glossies that honestly, I was never going to use again. The recipes I liked best had been transferred to 5x8 recipe cards in the grease-speckled box sitting by the stove, and most are available online via a quick Google or Epicurious search. These days I go to food blogs and Tastespotting.com for inspiration, and it should surprise no one that I’ve amassed a healthy collection of cookbooks. With the magazines gone I could shelve my floating books, and even better—the sure sign of a hoardy mind—give in to the pleasures of organizational fussing.

But I wasn’t in the mood to take them all at once and tie them into bundles for Tuesday-morning recycling. The magazines that taught me to cook deserved something a little more epic, a project to honor them. So I began pulling: Every magazine with an April or May date on its spine came out, a foot-high stack. And then I sat down at the kitchen table with the magazines, a stapler, and an exacto knife. I didn’t linger, but ran quickly down the index pages of each, and any recipe that looked appealing I cut out. It wasn’t hard, as I’d put neat check marks in front of everything I thought sounded good at the time—I was so organized back then!—and I could dismiss a lot of them out of hand. I was no longer stuck at home with a toddler and the days stretching out endlessly, needing to be broken up with stroller-laden trips to the farmer’s market, the butcher, the grocer, the cheese shop, all channeled into long, complicated assemblies with the boy on a stepstool at the counter. These days I’m interested in easy weeknight meals, slow cooker recipes, maybe something more involved for the weekend that will last a few days. No more homemade chicken samosas, no 25-ingredient paellas. If I suddenly craved either I could find them online.

It was a fun project, skimming and cutting, like something I would have done as a kid on a rainy weekend afternoon. I ended up with a thick pile of pages, enough to stock a month’s worth of grocery lists easily. Of course . . . this is only May. And the corollary here is that if I keep up with this, I’ll be doing it for a year, freeing up shelf space inch by hard-won inch. I very well may lose patience and toss them all at once. But in the meantime it’s fun revisiting that part of my life, the education that stretched over years. These days cooking is something I can relax into; I may be worn out at the end of the day, but as soon as I take my place at the counter with knife and cutting board I get that small secure rush of knowing what I’m doing, the comfort of muscle memory and proficiency. And while I definitely need those magazines a lot less than the shelf space, it’s nice to take a little time to say goodbye to them, and thank you.

Asparagus Soup, redux

Before I get to today's post, a brief announcement. Tomorrow is guest blogger day for the May Blogathon. Last year, I had the pleasure of swapping with Vera Marie Badertscher at A Traveler's Library. This year, I'm swapping with a blogathon alum--my buddy Lisa Peet over at Like Fire. I told Lisa to surprise me with her post, so I don't know what you'll find here tomorrow, but I, for one, am looking forward to it. And my post will be over there for the day, so please go visit! And now on to today's regularly scheduled post . . .



Today, I bought my first bundle of Hadley asparagus. If you don't live in Western Massachusetts, you might not know that the small town of Hadley (mostly known for the seemingly endless corridor of Route 9 that goes between Northampton and Amherst) is famous both for its soil--Hadley loam--and for the asparagus grown in that soil. Still, Hadley asparagus has gotten a decent amount of press, from articles in Saveur to Yankee Magazine to the Boston Globe. The Saveur article is particularly interesting--apparently, Hadley and the surrounding areas were one of the country's premier asparagus growing regions until the 1970s when a strain of Fusarium, a soil-borne fungus, decimated the crops. (Fusarium is what caused last summer's tomato blight as well.) On a more cheerful note, I also learned that Flayvors of Cook Farm, a local restaurant and ice cream place, makes asparagus ice cream every spring. I had no idea.

I've seen the occasional sign for local asparagus over the past week or two, but it wasn't until today, when I was driving the back way from Amherst that I saw the table outside a farm stand with bundles of asparagus standing in a shallow tray of water. I handed over my $4 and took a bundle home. It's going to be a couple of years (if all goes well) until I have a reliable crop from my own asparagus bed, so I feel lucky that I live so close to the former asparagus capital of the world. (Apparently, signs in Hadley used to say that. I'm not sure if any still exist.)

I didn't have to dither at all about what to make with my first bunch of Hadley asparagus; there was only one choice--the asparagus soup from the Greens cookbook (written by that soup genius, Deborah Madison). For me, this is really spring incarnate. What's especially lovely about the soup is that it has so few ingredients--asparagus, leeks, a potato, a bit of parsley, some lemon zest, a sprinkle of Parmesan if you want it. And that's basically it.

The other nice thing about it is that it uses all parts of the asparagus and the leeks. First, you make a stock out of the tough asparagus ends and the leek greens. Then, you saute the white part of the leeks and the middle section of the asparagus in some butter with a potato, if you'd like. You add the stock and boil until everything is just tender and still bright green. Then you puree it, add the lemon zest and Parmesan, and you're almost done. The final step is cooking the asparagus tips for a minute in boiling water and garnishing the soup with them.

I've made this soup several times already this season, but I feel like it doesn't really count since I used California asparagus. Today's soup was really the inauguration of local spring produce, a harbinger of the day soon to come when I will pick strawberries from my garden, strawberries a fraction of the size of the gargantuan ones from California that have been in the stores lately but that much more satisfying because I barely had to go anywhere to get them. Hadley isn't quite my backyard, but it's close enough.

I wrote about this recipe in the first weeks of this blog, but it's so good, and tis the season, after all, that it seemed worth repeating, and it's definitely worth making, whether or not you have Hadley asparagus at your disposal.

Asparagus Soup

Barely adapted from the Greens cookbook

The Stock

1 lb. thin asparagus, lower ends only

1 cup leek greens, roughly chopped

1 bay leaf

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

4 parsley branches

½ tsp. salt

8 cups cold water

Snap the lower ends off the asparagus where they break easily when bent. Rinse the ends well and roughly chop them into 1-inch pieces. Combine all the ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20-25 minutes. Strain.

The Soup

1 lb. thin asparagus (about 12 oz. after the ends are removed)

3 tbs. butter

2-3 leeks, white parts only (about 8 oz.), sliced

½ tsp. salt

1 large potato, peeled and cubed (optional)

1 tbs. parsley, chopped

5-7 cups stock

¼-1/2 cup light or heavy cream (optional)

Freshly ground pepper

½ to 1 tsp. grated lemon peel

Parmesan, grated, for garnish

Cut off the tips of the asparagus and set them aside. Roughly chop the stems into 1-inch pieces. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the leeks and cook them over medium-high heat for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring as needed. Add the asparagus stems, salt, potato (if using) and parsley. Pour in 5 cups of the stock and bring to a boil, then cook at a simmer until the asparagus are just tender, about 6 minutes. Blend the soup well, then work it through the fine screen of a food mill or through a chinoise to remove any fibers.

Return to the stove, stir in the cream, if using, and thin it with more stock, if necessary. Season to taste with salt, freshly ground black pepper and the lemon peel.

In another pot, bring a few cups of water to a boil with a little salt. Cook the asparagus tips, 1-2 minutes until they are done, then pour them into a colander.

Garnish the soup with Parmesan and a few asparagus tips in each bowl

A few notes:

It’s really worth it to make the stock, which give it an extra essence of asparagus.

I usually use the potato to thicken it a bit, but I’ve never added cream—it’s delicious as is and doesn’t really need it.

I usually use the zest of a whole lemon, partly because it’s easier than measuring and partly because it seems like a good amount.

I have strained it occasionally, but you don’t really have to if you’re not serving it at an elegant dinner.