Stuffed cabbage (and a pepper)

Lately I've been looking at the question of how to use my new-found skills to create delicious yet cheap food. It must be cheaper than going to some fast food joint and eating Mystery Meat topped with Mystery Sauce mixed with Unusually Colored Vegetables.

Yesterday, it was eggs on a bed of kale. Yes, I'd if I must abandon junk food the alternative should be healthier.

Today, stuffed cabbage sounded good. The basic process goes like this:

1. Make some sausage meat from pork shoulder, red wine, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, scallions and garlic. Add a bit of powdered milk for protein binding.
2. Blanch some cabbage leaves in boiling water, then shock them by dunking them in ice water.
3. Wrap the sausage meat in the leaves, tuck everything in neatly, and arrange in a baking dish.
4. Throw in a pasilla pepper, too. Stuff it and place in the dish with the cabbage.
5. Sprinkle with a bit of salt, then add some unsalted chicken stock to keep things moist.
6. Bake the stuffed leaves at 350° for about an hour.
7. Use the excess cabbage leaves, along with some stock and garlic to make some cabbage soup (soupe aux choux) while you're waiting for the leaves to be ready. Purée all this stuff to make it feel richer.

There were no tomatoes in this, because they're not in season and I like to work up dishes that are made from things that are fresh and good now, not dependent on canning technology to make them work.

This would probably be better with red bell peppers than the pasilla. It really doesn't need a pepper at all, but I needed to clean out the refrigerator.

Tomatoes 2011: The Good, the So-So and the Zombies

The stars. 
Plants that were worth the effort, or at least let us feel that we saved money by purchasing plants instead of buying tomatoes at the market.

San Marzano.
The first is an Italian tomato great for making sauces. The plants grew strongly, and so fast that I needed to add support. They tend to ripen late, but without complications. I did have some blossom end rot, but it was because I was a bit too vigorous scratching some organic fertilizer into the soil. They did not split after being watered, either.

Sungold.
This is an orange cherry type that produces like crazy and is very sweet, if somewhat lacking in the acidity department. These started producing early on, and are still going. No blossom end rot with these guys, either.

Anonymous reseeded red cherry.
Little water, lots of sun and still a great yield. It will probably reseed for next year, since plants have been coming up here for three years now.

Tomatillos.
These are not strictly speaking tomatoes. Yet, despite heavy infestations of white flies, sometimes looking more like a blizzard than anything else, the tomatillos managed to produce a consistent, usable crop. These were all reseeded from last year's crop, so we had well over the two plant minimum (one tomatillo plant produces nothing since the plants are not self-fertile).

The So-So
These varieties gave mixed results and needed a lot of fussing, staking and fiddling. It's debatable if they were worth the extra effort, regardless of taste. Low yield, lots of labor and tragic disappointment as you find rotted, inedible fruit does not make a happy gardener.

Cherokee Purple.
One of my favorites for flavor, Cherokee Purple was unpredictable and fussy. Some plants bore little fruit. Others dropped their fruit. There was a good deal of blossom end rot, splitting and other reasons for a perfectly good tomato to transform itself into a rotten, mildewed blob. Other tomato varieties growing nearby did not have these problems, or at least not to this extent.

Brandywine.
Supposedly a super tasting tomato, these were not up to the level of the few Cherokee Purples that managed to elude splitting and rotting.

Early Girl.
A fairly reliable performer here. Still, although she might be quick she's not especially tasty.

Beefsteak.
Not a lot of fruit, but when the plant got in the groove toward the end of July we had incredible tomatoes, although not the mega-pounder size you read about in veggie porn magazines.

The Zombies. 
Tomato fail. Rotting flesh, sunburn, strange plant growth. These would be better as worm food than tomato plants. A real waste of time.

Brandywine VF.
Supposedly more disease resistant than the normal Brandywine, these produced few fruits, grew strangely, sunburned since there wasn't a dense canopy of leaves. We were lucky to get three edible tomatoes per plant. 

Big Pick.
Initially a great producer and early, these plants took a trip to Zombieland as soon as the weather got hot. And this wasn't even a particularly hot year. So, the end result was that the majority of the crop looks like it's just going to sunburn and rot on the vine without fully ripening.

Rutgers.
I grew this variety years ago and remembered it as excellent and a good producer. Not here, not this year. Lots of slow to mature fruit, sparse leaf growth, sunburn and aborted fruit littering the ground. Appeared to go zombie when the weather warmed up. Blecch.

Seasoned tomato farmers have all said that this was a bad year for tomatoes. It was a great year for zucchini, but when you want tomatoes that's little consolation. Spaghetti with zucchini sauce? I think not! Yet, there's hope since next year might be better.

A Watermelon by any other color...

J'ai planté six grains vers le fin d'avril, qui sont devenu deux plantes. Qui ont donné deux pastèques. Beaucoup d'effort pour peu de mangeailles.

Mais, ces pastèques sont d'un type assez rare, avec leur char jaune-orange. C'était beaucoup plus orange dans le photo sur le paquet de graines, mais c'est quand même plus couleur soleil levant que le rouge-rose typique.

Peut-être ces fruits doivent être plus grande, comme ceux vendus dans le supermarché, que nécessitent presque une grue pour les lever.

Le gout? Assez sucré, mais avec peut-être moins de profondeur d'un pastèque rouge foncé cultivé par un fermier expert dans les subtilités des pastèques biologiques.

____

Six seeds in April. Two plants in May. Two watermelons in September. A lot of effort for not too many victuals.

But, these are rare watermelons. Orange flesh. A lot more orange on the seed package, but still more dawn yellow than the typical rosy red.

Perhaps they should be larger, like in the supermarket where you almost need a crane to lift them out of their bin.

What about the taste? Sweet enough, but perhaps with less depth than a deep red watermelon raised under the expert care of an organic farmer well-versed in the subtleties of watermelons.

Peppers. Eggplant. Peppers. Calzone!

Future calzone. No Papa Whozits here!

Courses 1, 2 and 3

Look at those peppers, right from the garden!

Pimientos de padrón

Aubergines du jardin!

Calzone

Calzone, ready to eat!

Our eggplant was ready! So were the more interesting peppers. Our eggplant hung on the plant, months in the making, finally ready to be cut from the bush and devoured after some culinary transmogrification from pasty, greenish pith to a succulent luscious melt-in-your mouth wonder. OK, it's not the biggest eggplant ever grown, but it's ours. It grew from a violet flower, week by week, despite cool nights and hordes of whiteflies. It was everything I expected from a vegetable anticipated for weeks then slowly braised in water, Vermouth, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and oregano : a tender, succulent, melt in your mouth, wish for more extravagance. The other ingredients stepped in to play supporting roles to the eggplant's main note, adding layers of flavor and complexity like a jazz band laying down overlapping rhythms.

The eggplant wasn't the starter, though. Another plate needed to titillate the audience while the aubergine was being prepped backstage. That role went to the padrón peppers. These peppers can be blazingly, painfully hot. Or not. We were spared the burn this year, perhaps due to the cooler than normal weather - although drinking wine with the peppers set off a tip-of-the-tongue fireball that only ignited in the presence of wine.

Padron peppers are fast. Just a quick sauté and they're ready to plate. Heat some olive oil, throw in the peppers, add finely chopped garlic, dried oregano from the garden and a splash of dry vermouth. Let it simmer and reduce a bit, adjust the salt and serve. I added a bit of butter at the end for a nice finish.

Then for the prime attraction: a calzone bursting with goat cheese, pecorino romano, parmesan, fresh basil, and the star attraction, some red sweet Italian peppers plucked from the bush at their prime. Toss the dough, lay it out, put down a layer of fresh goat cheese, pecorino Romano, a bit of Parmesan, the sautéed peppers, some fresh basil. Throw in a few pine nuts, pour the pan sauce redolent of garlic and the essence of fresh summer peppers over the mixture, fold the dough over the top, seal and put it on a pizza stone in a 550° oven for 10-12 minutes. Find that the oil leaked out and smoke is pouring from the oven. Turn off the oven and open all the windows before the smoke alarm goes off. When the smoke has cleared somewhat, add fresh basil over the top and serve.

Another nice summer dinner al fresco, accompanied with some lightly chilled low tannin red wine. By the time we went back in the house, all the smoke had cleared without a trace.

Zucchini. It's what's for breakfast! (and lunch and...)

It grows faster than a balloon attached to a high pressure air hose. One day it's a yellow flower; the next it's big as a blimp and full of seeds, ready for the compost heap. You might get nine pounds of the stuff per plant. With four plants, that can land you in zucchini purgatory for months.

It does force you to be creative. I can think of few things less appealing than eating boiled zucchini every day for three or more months. My taste buds would crawl out of my mouth and set up a camp outside near the basil, since they would not be needed until the end of zucchini season.

For my plate, I wanted something that nobody else would bring. Something different, yet where zucchini remains the main ingredient instead of buried under so much filler that it can pass unperceived.

Before getting to the recipe, I would like to state for the record that I hate contests. People, however seem to feel they're necessary. At least the people at the community garden. I especially hate competitions for artistic things. Like food.

Our community garden named zucchini as this month's star ingredient for a morning brunch. Yes, zucchini. No, it's not the first thing I think of for breakfast either. There were two or three zucchini casseroles, zucchini fritters, zucchini quiche, zucchini brownies, zucchini bread, zucchini-apple cobbler (this won), and my entry: Turkish Grilled Zucchi Salad. That name was too long, so they just called it "exotic zucchini" or something.

So, a salad, several appetizers or side dishes and a few desserts were thrown together to see which was best. In what sense? Best with a planned meal, sweetest, most zucchini-esque? Least? Least perceptible zucchini? Most quantity of zucchini converted to something in no way resembling the star ingredient? No. Just "best". Judged by someone listening to how much noise everyone made when each dish was named. Although my plate generated some noise, it was not enough to register in the score keeper's head.

Nonetheless, several people told me it was their favorite dish. It also had the advantage of being unique on the table, and even recognizable as zucchini.

Turkish Grilled Zucchini Salad

ingredients

• zucchini, sliced into 1/2" thick squares (the dimensions depend on the size of the zucchini)
• EVOO
• black pepper
• a bit of salt
• lemon juice
• chocolate mint (for garnish), chiffonade
• za'atar: (a blend of toasted and ground sesame seeds, powdered sumac, sea salt, thyme and oregano)
• dry cheese: I used queso fresco, but a crumbly goat cheese or feta would work well, too.

method

1. Toss the cut zucchini in some olive oil, salt and pepper lightly.
2. Grill the zucchini until they've shrunk and browned a bit, yet still are moist in the center.
3. Put the zucchini in a bowl. If you're serving it warm, add the cheese, lemon juice, za'atar and mint. If you're serving it cold, mix the zucchini, the cheese and some of the za'atar in a bowl, refrigerate, and add the lemon juice, mint and the rest of the za'atar at serving time.

It's a simple recipe. You'll probably even love it the first three times you make it.

More ideas for zucchini:

• Candy it.
• Deep fry it, tempura style.
• Make a relish with fresh habañero chiles, parsley and cilantro. Nobody will be bored.
• Add sugar, ferment it and distill it into some strange liqueur.
• Do something molecular gastronomy with it: a foam, a gel, powder it...

I'm sure opportunities will come up over the summer for more exciting plates...

Community garden salad

Clockwise from bottom: watermelon radishes, panzanella, Ronde de Nice squash

Cucumber & chocolate mint water, watermelon radish garnish

The community garden in Sutter Park is starting to produce. The recent hot weather really boosted a lot of crops, notably summer squashes. Our garden is on the verge of yielding some bonanza tomatoes: San Marzanos for sauces, Cherokee Purple for eating and orange cherries for whatever we feel like. Silk is showing on the corn, we have a Bell pepper just about ready for harvest, and we usually get a strawberry or two for a treat. The watermelons, beans and squash have a long way to go yet, but hopefully by then end of summer they'll all be producing.

After our usual Sunday weed and water, I walked around to see what everyone else is growing and how their plants are doing. The result: a conversation leading to a couple of Rondes de Nice squash, a watermelon radish, and another radish with "giant" in the name - long, red and a bit twisted. Combined with an organic cucumber and an heirloom tomato from yesterday's trip to the market, we had everything on hand for a great veggie/salad plate.

The first thing I thought of was a nice panzanella. This is an Italian salad made with croutons, tomatoes, olive oil and whatever else you want to throw in, if you're not being authentic. The gardener who gave me the Rondes de Nice stressed that they're creamier than zucchini (courgettes if we're being French), and to cook them separately to get familiar with their taste. I couldn't resist throwing the radishes in as a garnish, both for the main plate and the drink.

Recipe notes

Ingredients (for everything) 

• Stale bread, cut into 3/4"  to 1" cubes. I used a Chinese cleaver for this, since the bread knife was not liking this task.
• Chicken stock
• Fully ripe summer tomatoes, medium dice
• Cucumber, small dice for salad; julienne for water
• Onion, julienned
• Fresh basil, chiffonade
• Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO to foodies)
• Sea salt
• Pepper
• Rond de Nice squash, large dice (irregular)
• Chocolate mint, chiffonade
• Garlic, fine dice
• Fresh grated Parmesan cheese

 Process

Panzanella
Since it was part of a summer medley, the panzanella didn't get too involved. However, this can be a meal in itself if you add nice fresh cheese, capers, hard boiled eggs and make it bigger. It can have grilled meats, different herbs, whatever you think is appropriate - although I don't consider it a panzanella unless it has fresh, ultra-ripe tomatoes. You could also add anchovies, but in this case I'd hold the cheese. 

1.  Preheat oven broiler
2. Lightly fry the croutons in some oil. 
3. Splash in some chicken stock and add the garlic. This replaces the soaking and squeezing step from the more traditional recipe. Keep stirring so that the croutons don't stick, transfer them to a baking sheet and pop them in the broiler to crisp up a bit. Keep checking them and turn as needed so they don't burn. 
4. Set aside.
5. Assemble the panzanella just before serving time by tossing the tomatoes, cucumbers onions and basil with the croutons in a bowl. 
6. Pour in some strong, grassy EVOO. I skip the vinegar or lemon juice since I don't want it interfering with the acid from the tomatoes. 
7. Once it's plated, grate some Parmesan over the top.

Ronds de Nice
These were done subtly to let the delicate flavor of the squash come forth. 

• Sauté the squash, stirring/shaking constantly so they don't stick. 
• Add chicken stock and some of the julienned onions, salt and pepper.
• Cook uncovered until the liquid has mostly evaporated but things are still juicy.

Radishes
Actually, you don't do much with the radishes. The giant type was julienned and plated under the watermelon, which was sliced into thin rondelles then dusted with salt. The juice from the squash and panzanella will run through the julienned radishes, making them a lot more interesting than simple radishes sitting in a plate as an appetizer.

This was a really healthy lunch, certainly much healthier than some kind of spicy grilled meat just dripping with fat. My cholesterol probably thanks me for eating it. Only one drawback: I'm already hungry again.