Back, with a bushel of zucchini

I've been back in the States almost two months now and this is the first free moment I've found to write on the blog. Life has been a flurry, of moving around, job hunting, catching up with friends and visiting all the New York spots that I missed while I was away. But things are finally taking on a sense of normalcy, allowing me some time to tell you about something important: summer zucchini.

When I got back from France, I did two things almost immediately: one, became a member of the Park Slope Food Co-op, that alternately venerated and misunderstood Brooklyn temple of local and organic food; and two, signed up for a CSA share of local fruit and vegetables. Having spent a long time in Europe, where, it seems to me, people are both more passionate and more discriminating than the majority of us Americans when it comes to the quality of their food, I would say that my growing interest in healthy, sustainable produce pretty much reached its peak. I didn't want to go back, upon returning home, to eating ordinary supermarket items flown in from California or Argentina or wherever. And I haven't looked back.

Anyone even marginally familiar with vegetable gardening knows about summer squash and, well, what a beast it is, basically. This vegetable (I suppose it is biologically a fruit) just erupts out of the ground come late June, fruiting and fruiting and producing tons of zucchinis. Gardeners sometimes don't know what to do with all their bounty, giving them away to neighbors, turning them into breads and cakes. There are even numerous gardeners' sayings about zucchini (here's a sample one "Zucchinis, terrific/Like bunnies, prolific!"). I've grown zucchini myself so I know this to be true, and just in case I'd forgotten, my weekly CSA share has certainly reminded me. For weeks now we've been getting bunches of small squash in all varieties: yellow and green; pattypan, crookneck, and everything in between. Fortunately for me, I love zucchini. Not so fortunately, I've been super busy at work lately, leaving little time to cook. So quite inadvertently, a small stockpile of squash began building up in my refrigerator's crisper drawer, until I finally found the time, yesterday, to deploy my arsenal.

Like any true NYC summer, this one, so far, has been humid and blazing hot. So what I wanted from my zucchini was something to cool me down. I improvised a simple chilled soup, first sautéing chopped green onions and garlic (also from my CSA) in olive oil, then adding a whole mess of chunked zucchini. I let that sweat down just a little bit, then added water almost to cover (the zucchini will let out a lot of liquid as it cooks, so you want to be careful not to add too much water). Once the squash was tender, I puréed the soup in batches in the blender, adding a couple of dollops of plain yogurt, plus a few fresh mint leaves and some additional seasoning, as I went. When everything was smooth and light green, I let the soup chill in the fridge before enjoying it with some homemade croutons. Say hello to my new favorite summer lunch:





Chilled Summer Squash Soup with Yogurt and Mint
Serves 8

Ingredients:

- 4 tbsp. olive oil
- 1 bunch scallions, trimmed of any brown or stringy parts, roughly chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- 3 lbs. summer squash of any variety, chopped into rough pieces
- Water
- Salt
- Pepper
- About 1 cup plain yogurt
- A handful of fresh mint leaves, washed

Preparation:

1. In a large, deep, heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over a medium flame. Add the scallions and stir; add the garlic a few minutes later. Season with some salt and sauté for a few minutes, until the scallions start to break down.
2. Add the squash along with a few pinches of salt and a few grinds of pepper and stir to combine. Let the squash sweat for 4 or 5 minutes, then add just enough water to almost cover the squash, about 4 cups. Cover and bring to a boil, then drop to a steady simmer and leave partially covered.
3. Cook soup until squash is just tender, about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and, working in batches, ladle the soup into a blender (you can also leave the soup in the pot and use an immersion blender). Purée, adding a dollop of yogurt, plus a few mint leaves and additional seasoning, with each batch. If the soup is looking too thin, try to leave behind some of your cooking liquid, and if too thick, add more.
4. Check soup for seasoning and allow to chill in the fridge for several hours. Serve, garnishing with additional chopped mint and, preferably, some homemade croutons (see recipe below).


Homemade Croutons
Makes two cups

Ingredients:

- Day-old bread, preferably crusty (ie, a baguette), cut into small cubes and yielding 2 cups
- 3 tbsp. olive oil
- Salt
- Pepper
- Dried herbs, such as thyme, oregano, sage, etc.

Preparation:

1. In a bowl, toss the bread cubes with the olive oil, a generous amount of salt and pepper, and a sprinkling of the herbs. Make sure each cube is coated in oil.
2. Place bread cubes in a large wide skillet set over medium-low heat and cook, tossing occasionally, for about 6 - 10 minutes, or until bread is fragrant, golden, and crunchy. Let cool completely before serving.
3. Alternatively, you can bake the croutons in a 325° oven. Set bread cubes on a sheet tray and bake, stirring occasionally, for about 6 - 10 minutes, or until bread is fragrant, golden, and crunchy. Let cool completely before serving.

A Pesto for Printemps

That's spring, for you non-Francophones out there. As I discussed in my last post, spring, glorious spring has sprung in Toulouse--as I write this, my bedroom windows, which open on our huge, overgrown garden, are flung wide, allowing soft, cool breezes and lazy sunlight to gently filter in.

















I really lucked out with this garden. You see, I set up my housing here in Toulouse before I left New York, taking a gamble on my room, housemates, etc. I'm happy to say that the place I live is truly better than anything I could have imagined: situated at the end of a quiet block, it's a big, two-story house with a large, well-stocked kitchen, and of course, the garden that I just mentioned. As I talked about in some of my container garden posts from 2009, I've been growing more and more interested in gardening and agriculture--as someone who's obsessed with food, it's natural to want to understand more about where it comes from, and especially gratifying to be able to grow it yourself. Serendipitously, my housemate Ben is an experienced jardinier, having lived on a farm for a while last year, and he's been maintaining our fruit and vegetable plants this year. When I first arrived, in September, I benefited from the last of the season's ripe, juicy tomatoes, and harvested some small cauliflowers and cabbages this winter. Right now, though, it's all about the early-spring crops of lettuces and tender green spinach:






















The spinach we've got just grows and grows, so I've been trying to take advantage of it by mixing it into nearly everything I cook: tossing some into a bowl of warm pasta; sautéeing it with mushrooms; folding it into rice. Because there's so much of it, the thought occurred to me to try to make something that would call for a lot. And then it came to me: pesto! I love pesto, and I love that you can make it out of nearly anything green (arugula, as well as fresh herbs like parsley and cilantro come to mind)--not just the basil that most people associate it with--and that you can incorporate nearly any type of nut, and not just pine nuts. What I happened to have on hand were some flaked almonds, so I decided to use those. To tie it all together, I added just a little bit of something that goes wonderfully with both spinach and almonds--lemon. If you've ever eaten the classic Italian side dish of some quickly sautéed spinach finished with a refreshing spritz of lemon juice, you know what a natural pairing the two ingredients make. Same goes for almonds and lemon: many dessert recipes--like this one for pound cake, this one for madeleines, and this one for cookies--call for both. So for my pesto, I added a touch of freshly grated zest. The fresh spinach, the subtle almonds and the tart lemon combine to produce a pesto that's a lot lighter and brighter than the ones you might be used to. Spring in a bowl!




Spinach and Almond Pesto with Lemon
Makes about 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients:

- 1/2 c. flaked or slivered almonds, or use slightly less whole peeled almonds (if your nuts are fresh, there is no need to toast them. If they're not, toast in a pan or low oven until fragrant and allow them to cool.)
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 tsp. grated lemon zest
- 1 tsp. salt or more to taste
- About 6 oz. or 4 c. packed spinach leaves, washed and roughly torn
- 1/2 c. olive oil or more as needed
- 1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preparation:

1. Place almonds, garlic, lemon zest and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until nuts are ground, but not too finely.
2. Add spinach, in batches if necessary, and pulse to combine. Once all spinach is added, leave the food processor running as you drizzle in the 1/2 c. olive oil. If mixture remains too thick, add more oil.
3. Scrape pesto into a bowl. Add parmesan and some grinds of black pepper and stir to combine. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt or pepper as needed. Store in the refrigerator for one week or in the freezer for one month.

Hasta luego, à bientôt

Later tonight, I'm getting on a plane and flying to Madrid, Spain. From there, I'll travel to the region of Asturias in the northwest of the country, where I'll be volunteering on a small-scale vegetable farm that I found through the organization called WWOOF. After a month there, I'll pack up and head to a different farm, located in the southeast of France, where I will remain for one month before flying home.

As I've made evident on the blog, I've been getting pretty into gardening on my deck lately. So I thought I'd take a little time on some actual farms to see how this growing thing really works. I figure it will only serve to expand my knowledge of food and its production. What I learn will no doubt be relevant to what I usually write about here on the blog. So I'm going to try to do my best to update here, when I can, with some photos and observations. Wish me luck!

What I made with what I grew

Summer may be winding down, but my container garden is in full swing. This year I planted all hot-weather plants--tomatoes, bell pepper, zucchini and eggplant--and each one is loving this August heat. The tomatoes I've harvested have been the best-tasting I've eaten in a long time; the eggplant is tender and delicate in flavor and, best of all, extremely prolific; but the zucchini hold a special place in my esteem because they found their way into one of the freshest, easiest and most delicious summer side dishes I've made.

But first things first. To set the scene, let me show you a photo of what the zucchini looks like growing on the plant:


















When I harvested the first fruit, I didn't quite know what to do with it. The zucchini was small, so I didn't really want to cook it down; that would cause it to lose all its bulk. I decided, first of all, to leave it raw; I assumed that, owing to its diminutive size, it would be sweeter, in this state, than most market zucchini. When I spied a container of Greek-style yogurt in my refrigerator, I had it: a zucchini-yogurt salad. I make this dish all the time with cucumbers, adding lemon juice and salt and not much else, and I wagered that it would be even more delicious with my fresh, home-grown zucchini. But just to make sure, I took one extra step: I salted the zucchini judiciously ahead of time, then drained off the water that accumulated in the bowl. This process, traditionally used on eggplant to remove its bitter juices, accomplished the same feat with the zucchini and, moreover, rendered it a bit more pliable and "cooked"-seeming than it would have had I skipped that step. Slicked with cold, creamy yogurt and pepped up with a few slices of raw onion, plus a scant handful of chopped fresh oregano, this zucchini salad was the perfect antidote to the type of hot, sweaty summer day that (ordinarily) causes me to lose my appetite.



















Zucchini Yogurt Salad
Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 small green zucchini
Half a small white or yellow onion
1/2 cup plain Greek-style yogurt
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Slice the zucchini into ribbons that are about 1/8" thick. Use whatever method is easiest for you: I sliced the zucchini lengthwise, creating a flat surface, then lay the halves down and sliced each portion crosswise into thin strips.
2. Place the ribbons in a bowl and then salt them generously, with about 1 tsp. kosher salt. Chill the bowl in the refrigerator until the zucchini has given off a fair amount of liquid, about 15 - 20 minutes. Remove the bowl from the fridge and drain the zucchini well. (Drain--not rinse. You'll want the remaining salt as seasoning.)
3. Slice the onion into thin half moons. Break up the strips of onion and add them to the bowl.
4. Add the yogurt to the bowl, then squeeze the lemon over. Season with pepper and, if needed, salt, add the chopped oregano, and mix well. Taste for seasoning. The salad is best served very cold; if necessary, place the bowl in the fridge for a few minutes to chill everything down.

The fruits of my labor

Back in June I showed you some photos of the herb garden on my deck and some examples of dishes I made with my bounty. I mentioned that I was also growing some vegetables in containers, but didn't share any pictures of them because they weren't producing much yet. Well, all that's changed. Spring wasn't kind to the hot weather crops--tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and bell peppers--that I planted. It was long, rainy and cold, whereas those plants thrive in hot, sunny weather. So their growth was stunted for a while. They have, more or less, rebounded of late, and it's fun to check on them every day and note their progress. It's even more fun to cook and eat what they provide me. Here's a little tour of my garden:






















Tomatoes: a compact "Better Bush" variety that yielded me my first ripe tomato, shown here.























Tomatoes: a larger, leggier "Celebrity" variety that did poorly when I first planted it; I uprooted it, tossed it into a corner of my deck, and forgot about it. Miraculously, it survived and produced flowers; when I noticed, I re-planted it and it's been doing well ever since.

















Zucchini squash: all the yellow blossoms you see here are male blossoms; the female ones, from which the zucchini fruit grows, haven't arrived yet. When they do, bees (or, if there aren't enough on the deck, I--with a Q-Tip) will visit both the male and female blossoms, thus pollinating the female blossoms and ensuring good fruit production.

















Cucumber: a close relative of the zucchini plant, it doesn't look much different, huh? Again, all these blossoms are male; the female ones develop later in the season.























Bell pepper: this plant is so pathetic it hardly merits sharing, but at least it does have one pepper. This plant is the one that suffered the most during the spring. It had lots of little baby peppers, but all but one of them fell off due to excess rain and lack of sunshine. This hardy little pepper continues to grow and mature, though, and as of today had a little patch of yellow on its shoulder. First it will turn yellow, then finally red when it is ready to harvest.























Eggplant: this variety, known as Asian or Japanese eggplant, is what I prefer to cook and eat. While Italian eggplants are often huge and full of bitter seeds, Japanese eggplant are slender and rarely grow to be more than 7 or 8 inches long. They have very few seeds and more sweet, creamy flesh. This is how my first ripe eggplant looked yesterday before I harvested it: it was about 4 or 5 inches long and could have matured more, but it was weighing the plant down so I removed it and cooked it:
















Sauteed, very simply, with olive oil, salt and red pepper flakes.


Allow me to show you, too, how I ate my first ripe tomato:















Sliced and sprinkled with salt and pepper, no more, no less. That basil--purely a garnish--is home-grown too, of course!


It's obvious that my vegetable garden brings me a lot of pleasure. But the question is, does the produce taste any better than what's available in stores? So far, my answer to that question is a resounding yes. The tomato I grew was sweet, firm and vibrant-tasting; full of that true tomato flavor that is so often missing from store-bought tomatoes these days. The eggplant I cooked came out creamy and sweet, with a pleasant hint of bitterness from the deep purple skin. I don't do anything special to my plants--I water them when the soil is dry, and occasionally--like, once every month occasionally--feed them with a weak Miracle-Gro solution. That's it. So the moral of this story is that you, too, should try your hand at vegetable gardening and see if your thumb isn't green. It may be too late in the season now, but there's always next year!

Edible Brooklyn

It's been too long since I've written on here, and you know what's to blame? Spring. It arrived in full force about 2 weeks ago--around the same time I made my last blog post--and I've tried to be outside as much as possible since. I'm blessed to have a deck that's about the size of my tiny apartment, effectively doubling my living space once warm weather comes to town. I'm taking full advantage of my own private urban oasis by growing a variety of flowers, herbs and vegetables in containers.

I've always enjoyed gardening. As dorky as that sounds to say, the hobby fits right in with my other domestic inclinations like cooking, baking and thrift/dollar store shopping; I guess I'm just an old Jewish grandmother at heart, huh? Anyway, when I was growing up in Brooklyn Heights my parents had a similarly beautiful and peaceful deck, and from the time I was small I loved the springtime ritual of shopping for flower seedlings and transplanting them into their summer homes with my father. My dad was the master gardener of the house and took on this task every year; he still does, and the result is without fail a lush, green, cool and colorful little corner hidden away above the hot Brooklyn pavement. And so although I would occasionally lay claim to a pot or two in which to plant my own tomatoes or herbs, I pretty much left the green thumb-ing to my dad (as did my mom, who sometimes seems to possess whatever would the opposite of a green thumb--a brown thumb?) (Hi, Mom!)

Well this spring, things have changed. Now that I have an outdoor space all my own, I've gone crazy for gardening. I've lined the deck with planters full of petunias and pansies. I've sown nasturtium, zinnia and poppy seeds, and I'm patiently waiting for the flowers to mature. But what I'm most into are the edibles that I've planted. An herb box contains fresh parsley, lavender, thyme and cilantro; next to that is a pot of basil; and finally another mini-planter that holds chives and Greek oregano. They're thriving; take a look:
















Left to right: cilantro; lemon thyme; lavender; parsley

















Basil
















Chives, Greek oregano

I don't think I need to tell you how drastically the constant availability of fresh herbs improves my cooking, but I will. Having these plants around makes me want to make fresh, flavorful, summer-appropriate food that will showcase their bright tastes. It's easier to cook off-the-cuff, because so many of the ingredients that I previously would have had to shop for are right there for the taking. And my food tastes better because I'm layering in many more flavors than I sometimes manage to during the cold, flat winter months. It's a sweet deal all around, really. Here are just of the few of the things I've made with my bounty:
















Guacamole

















Caprese salad

















Cheese ravioli dressed with a puree of olive oil, garlic, thyme, parsley and chives

















(The makings of) pico de gallo


Stay tuned for updates on my garden (which also includes tomato, bell pepper, Japanese eggplant and zucchini plants not yet ready for their close-ups)--and for more of the dishes it's inspired.