Summer Salads with Whole Grains

Whole grains lightened up with raw or lightly cooked vegetables and chopped herbs make a great centerpiece to summer meals. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve made two, with very different results. The first was quinoa tossed with tiny cubes of raw yellow zucchini (you could lightly steam it instead). It was dressed with lemon juice and olive oil and tiny flecks of lemon peel, parsley and mint. I added the lemon juice and a pinch of salt to the quinoa while it was warm, tossing in the rest of the ingredients right before serving at room temperature. As I found out from the leftovers, this can be made hours or even a day ahead, which is great for summer schedules. Simple and flavorful with just the right amount of tang and crunch.

The second one was inspired by Martha Rose Shulman’s New York Times column called “Recipes for Health.”  I read the New York Times online every day and find that some of the best cooking ideas are not in “Dining and Wine,” as you might guess, or even in the Magazine. They’re in sections like “Health” (where Shulman writes) or in City Room, where urban forager Ava Chin mines the parks and sidewalks for edible weeds.  This salad combines cooked farro with tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, dill and basil. Dressed with a touch of olive oil and red or white wine vinegar and garnished with tiny black olives and a little feta cheese, this was like a Greek salad with grains.  This salad benefited from marinating for half an hour or longer. Again, simple and delicious.   

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Summer Bread Pudding with Berries

I found a bowlful of cubed bread on the kitchen counter this morning, a not-so-subtle hint about Sunday breakfast. So I whipped up a summer bread pudding with the first apples of the season and organic blackberries that I picked at our CSA farm. As I’ve said before, I make bread pudding based on proportions of ingredients: 1 egg per half a cup of milk and one and a quarter cup of cubed bread. I usually add one-quarter to one-half the volume of bread of other ingredients, sweet or savory. I like this approach because we have varying volumes of stale bread at any time.

Summer Bread Pudding with Berries

3¾ – 4 c cubed stale bread (3/4-inch pieces)

1 large apple, peeled and cubed

Handful of berries (I used blackberries)

Dab of butter

3 eggs

1½ c milk

½ c sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the bread and fruit and place it in a buttered baking dish. Lightly beat the eggs and add the milk and sugar, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour over the bread mixture, pressing down lightly to make sure the top bread cubes are moistened.  Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the custard is set. Best eaten warm or at room temperature.

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Pickle Projects: Garlic Scapes, Sliced Dills and Sweet-Hots

Every week for the past 6 weeks, I’ve put up a small batch of pickles and now I have enough for a crowd. Which is perfect since about 150 people or so will show up for a picnic next week and while I’ll still be sweating the rest of the dishes, the pickles are ready. This has been a good year for small Kirby cucumbers and I took full advantage, since I did not want to hear the whining over a bare pickle pantry sometime in the winter. Last year’s sweet hot pickles were a great hit — chunky, sweet, spicy and peppery — and I made them in volume. (Other than canning tomatoes, tomato sauce and salsa of various kinds, I typically make really small batches of everything – sometimes as few as 2 jars. That way, we have variety and can actually eat all of that preserved produce before the next season arrives.)

I had accumulated about 40 garlic scapes from our CSA the weekend that I was making sliced cucumber pickles with dill, so I decided to pickle them too. Garlic scapes are the curling flower stalks of hardneck garlic plants and are typically cut off so that the plant’s energy is devoted to making a plump bulb. This type of garlic is actually called Rocambole but is nicknamed “serpentine garlic” for obvious reasons. I cut off the scapes of our garden garlic when they were younger than the ones from our CSA, so they were eaten raw or steamed. These needed a more aggressive treatment to tame them. 

Simplistically speaking, there are two ways to pickle fruits and vegetables: raw packed with brine poured over them and heated in brine. Brine typically consists of salt and vinegar (and water) but may also contain sugar, herbs and spices. For the sweet-hots, I macerated the cucumbers in salt and ice water before plunging them into hot pickling liquid, which cooks them slightly. Those were packed in jars that were sealed through a water bath canning process. For the dill pickles, I packed them raw into jars with dill and garlic and poured heated brine over the top, waiting until they cooled to refrigerate and let them cure for at least two weeks.

I treated the garlic scapes in the same way as the dill pickles but they were more of a challenge to get into the jars. After trimming the most fibrous cut end, I cut fairly straight pieces from the bottom, sizing them to fit into a 1.5-cup canning jar, leaving 1 inch of headroom. I cut off the blossom end and coiled the rest around the circumference of the jar. Into the center void, I tucked a grape leaf, which helps keep things crisp (you can omit this), the straight pieces of garlic scape and a fresh head of dill flower. Let this cure for a few weeks. 

I have started to sample the pickled scapes and think they could be used as a garlicky substitute for capers. More to come.

Pickled Garlic Scapes

Trim the tough ends of the garlic scapes. Cut the straight end into lengths that fit within your jar (about 3 inches). Remove the blossom end and neatly curl the scapes inside the jar. In the center void, place a grape leaf (optional) in the bottom, stack the straight pieces of the scape in the center and push a dill flower head into the top. Make the brine: bring to a boil 4 cups of water, 1 1/3 cup of distilled white vinegar or cider vinegar, and 2 tbsp salt, stirring until the salt dissolves.  Fill the jar with the hot brine, poking a chopstick or other narrow implement in the jar to release air bubbles (being careful not to pierce the vegetables). Set the jar aside to cool. Refrigerate tightly sealed.  The pickles will start to be ready in about two weeks.

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Blueberry Basil Sorbet

We wandered into our amazing local ice cream parlor the other day and sampled delicious and perfectly seasonal blueberry basil sorbet. This particular shop, known for unusual combinations of ingredients, always has something so completely right for the moment in addition to its usual fare, which is anything but standard. I’ve been planning on making blueberry sorbet since the beginning of the month because our local berry season is in full swing and this gave me the inspiration to do it.

 Not far from here is one of the largest commercial blueberry-growing areas of the country and we have an organic farm nearby where you can pick your own, as I typically do. The farm tents the entire blueberry patch with netting, which is intended to keep the birds from devouring the crop. However, the light mesh enclosure filled with tall bushes and climbing with vines, also creates an interesting acoustic environment. So there I am, immersed in the bushes contently fingering clusters of berries to loosen the blue orbs into my palm, and overhearing all kinds of conversations without actually seeing the people speaking! I should make a recording of this since the random simultaneous conversations create quite a palimpsest of messages, cadences and sounds.

Back to the sorbet. I haven’t made blueberry sorbet much, or maybe not even at all, so I googled it and guess what? Up popped a recipe – one of the few ever published — from Gabrielle Carbone, the proprietor of The Bent Spoon, the very shop we visited. She made simple syrup and combined it in a blender with fresh berries. As with the blueberry pie I made for the 4^th of July, I wanted the sorbet to convey the freshness of the raw berries, so making the simple syrup seemed like the right idea. It also would allow me a way to steep basil leaves and infuse the sorbet with the herb. I added fresh purple basil to half the finished batch so that I could test which way I liked it. Honestly, we liked both.  I particularly liked serving the sorbet with sliced cantaloupe, which complemented the colors, complicated the aromas and taste, and lightened the dessert. 

Finally, I got the tip from Carbone’s recipe that I’ve suspected but couldn’t confirm: she adds egg white at the end of the frozen churning process to loosen up the sorbet and keep it from icing up too much. Other techniques that I’ve used include adding alcohol (kirsch or vodka or a liqueur like Grand Marnier) or a little corn syrup. I need to experiment more with the egg white since she says to add it 2- 3 minutes before the ice cream freezer has completed its cycle and mine’s too crude to know how much longer to churn. This little experiment was a great find for a month that’s all about the berries. 

Blueberry Basil Sorbet adapted from The Bent Spoon

1 c sugar

½ c water

Pinch of salt

Handful of basil leaves, green or purple

6 c blueberries (2 lbs, 3 pints)

Juice of 1 lemon (about ¼ c)

2-3 purple basil leaves

1 large very fresh egg white

Bring the sugar, water and salt to a boil and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and stir in the basil. Let cool (15-20 minutes). Remove the basil and transfer the syrup to the bowl of a food processor. Add the blueberries and lemon juice and process until smooth. Chill thoroughly, at least 4 hours.  Shred the basil leaves fine and stir into the blueberry mixture. Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.  Add lightly beaten egg white to the processor 2-3 minutes before the ice cream is done.

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Cooking with Color: Tomato-Calendula Salad and Blue Potatoes with Beets

Okay, I admit that I play with my food. I love compositions and juxtapositions on multiple levels — color, taste, texture, size, cut and so on – with intuitive, spontaneous, of-the-moment combinations of ingredients on hand. Summer’s bounty provides a wide palette, a basketful of opportunities to compose. There are amazing chefs throughout the world who’ve made their reputations on this technique (think of Michael Bras and his signature salad of micro greens, mini veggies and flowers). I love that stuff but I’m usually feeding a different crowd and have more limited means. I can be artful but informal enough to avoid the look I call “contrived casual.”  (Since my photos are taken quickly, full frame and with available light, they definitely are casual and immediate. Like the food. Always room for improvement if I would take the time.)

 On Saturday mornings, I go to our CSA farm to pick up the week’s allotment and frequent the local farmers and farmers’ markets. Some produce gets bagged and refrigerated pronto but inevitably, I have little still life compositions of flowers and fruit and vegetables all over the house, at least for a day or two. That’s the inspiration for cooking with color. Sometimes, I find myself combining colorful combinations: green broccoli with yellow squash, purple onions and red peppers. Or yellow peppers, green and white cucumbers, and dark red beets. Here, however, two days in a row, I had the inclination to stay within a color palette. 

First I composed young “blue” potatoes and dark red beets, each cut similarly, steamed, dressed lightly in olive oil and homemade tarragon vinegar, and sprinkled with tarragon leaves. Then delicious sweet yellow-orange cherry tomatoes halves, combined with tiny cubes of mozzarella, dressed in olive oil and salt, and garnished with the diminutive leaves of spicy globe basil and (yes they’re edible) calendula flowers. Both dishes were pretty and despite the similar colors, the ingredients had a contrasting burst of taste that was good, very very good.

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Summer Squash, Chard and Leek Tian

The hot, humid, seemingly unbearable cloud of oppressive summer weather makes us seek simple and light vegetarian dishes that use seasonal produce and minimize effort.  Mostly, there are fruits, salads and chilled foods on our table these days but other than grilling, an occasional simple baked dish seems just right.

 I have a penchant for vegetarian dishes made with eggs, milk and sometimes cheese, as they are nutritious, delicious, pretty quick, and adaptable to whatever you have on hand. For me, this is a technique and not a formula since I use a proportional model. This particular go-round uses non-fat lactose milk with the gorgeous eggs from a local organic farm but cream or regular milk would work.  Also, the vegetables could vary widely. And you could add bread or rice to make a more substantial meal. But for me, summertime begs for simplicity …and seasonal flavor.

Summer Squash, Chard and Leek Tian

2 medium leeks, cleaned and thinly sliced

Olive or vegetable oil, or butter

1 stalk green garlic or 1-2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 yellow zucchini or summer squash, thinly sliced

1 lb chard cuttings, green part only, washed and drained (reserve stems for another use)

1-2 tbsp snipped herbs (such as dill, lovage, or parsley)

2 extra large eggs

½ c milk or cream (lactose-free and nonfat milk are fine)

Optional: ¼ c grated cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Sauté the leeks slowly in oil or butter until tender. If using green garlic stalks (as I did), sauté them with the leeks. Otherwise, add the sliced garlic cloves at the end of the leek cooking cycle. Set aside to cool.

In the same pan, with additional oil or butter as needed, sauté the squash until lightly browned and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, cook the chard in a small amount of water until tender and remove to a colander to drain. When cool, squeeze to remove excess water and chop finely.

Lightly beat the eggs, add the milk, reserved vegetables, herbs, optional cheese, and salt and pepper. Pour into a baking dish that has been buttered or oiled.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until set but not dry. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

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Thai Basil Chicken

Basil of all varieties epitomizes summer for me. It’s persnickety about cold, so I start growing it in June when the weather warms, and between my garden and our CSA, we are harvesting it from June 21 to September 21, quite literally the summer season. I freeze basil pesto in little tubes to add to soups and braises throughout the rest of the year and I make a terrific jelly with lemon basil, which I promise to post as soon as I make another batch.

Because there are so many varieties, with differences in texture, color, flower habit and taste, basil is actually a very versatile addition to the summer repertoire. Of course, there’s the classic tomato and mozzarella salad with Genovese-type basil, as well as pasta and vegetables with basil pesto. But among my favorites are the dishes made with the varieties associated with Asian food: Thai basil of several types, cinnamon basil, holy basil, and so on. The aroma that rises from a few fresh leaves tossed into a hot stir fry is alluring and memorable and addictive.

Here, I made a Thai Basil Chicken dish, served with rice or with rice or bean thread noodles. This week I also made zucchini and noodles with Thai curry paste and coconut milk, again with the basil leaves tossed in to wilt and lend their wonderful flavor and aroma.  Though it was maybe “gilding the lily,” I served the Thai Basil Chicken with a refreshing cucumber salad dressed with rice vinegar and sesame oil and garnished with slivers of Thai basil.  

Thai Basil Chicken

½ or 1 whole boneless chicken breast

Vegetable oil

2 tbsp Thai fish sauce

2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce or wheat-free tamari

1 tbsp brown sugar (I used raw turbinado sugar)

2 shallots, slivered

1 clove garlic, coarsely chopped

½ small hot pepper such as jalapeno, minced

1 medium zucchini, cut into matchsticks

1 medium red bell pepper, cut into matchsticks

1 c Thai basil leaves, including flowers but not stems

Place the chicken in the freezer for about ten minutes to make it firm enough to slice into thin strips. Cut into pieces about 1 x 2 x ¼ inches.

Combine the fish sauce, soy sauce and brown sugar and set aside.

Heat a little vegetable oil in a wide sauté pan large enough to hold all ingredients.  Saute the chicken slowly until it turns white and is nearly cooked through. Remove to a plate.

Add a little more oil to the pan and add the shallots, garlic, hot pepper, zucchini and red bell pepper and stir fry for a few minutes until still crisp. Add the reserved sauce and cook for a few seconds. Add the chicken and stir to heat it. Add the Thai basil and let it wilt. Serve immediately with rice or rice noodles. (If it’s too dry you can add more fish sauce and soy sauce to taste.)

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Zucchini and Noodles in Green Curry Sauce with Thai Basil

Long strands of yellow and green zucchini lighten up a pasta dish, whether combined with spaghetti seasoned with lemon juice and zest, or here, served in a delicious, spicy and creamy Thai–inspired coconut milk sauce with green curry and Thai basil. The strands are also good as a salad lightly dressed with olive oil and vinegar, or steamed as a vegetable dish. If your zucchini is big and seedy, shredding the edges down to the core eliminates those less desirable sections, which can be stewed and combined with a vegetable stuffing. 

Zucchini Noodles in Green Curry Sauce with Thai Basil

1 14 oz can unsweetened coconut milk (I used light)

1 tbsp green curry paste

1 lime, peel removed with a vegetable peeler, and juiced

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp fish sauce (optional)

Asian noodles (I used wheat lo mein noodles, but rice or soba noodles would be good)

2-3 scallions, white and light green sections, slivered vertically

1-2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

Vegetable oil

1 green zucchini, shredded lengthwise

1 yellow zucchini, shred lengthwise

½ c Thai basil leaves

Place the coconut milk, green curry paste and lime peel in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring to dissolve the green curry paste. Remove the lime peel and add the lime juice, brown sugar and optional fish sauce. Meanwhile, cook the noodles until al dente, drain them and add them to the warm coconut milk sauce. Lightly sauté the scallions and garlic and add to the noodle mixture. Reserve some of the raw zucchini, and add the rest to the coconut milk sauce, stirring to combine and lightly cook the zucchini (this can be done off the stove since the liquid should cook the vegetables. Add the Thai basil to wilt and, just before serving, add the reserved shredded zucchini.

Serves 4

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Peach and Raspberry Sorbet

This is like the famous dessert Peach Melba but without the ice cream. “Peach Melba” was invented by Auguste Escoffier in Paris and named after a singer named Nellie Melba. It typically consists of a peach and raspberry sauce served over vanilla ice cream. The first white peaches of the summer and the first red raspberries made a delicious, aromatic sorbet, which was stunningly gorgeous in color from the white peaches tinged with rosy hues and the addition of just a few raspberries.

Peach and Raspberry Sorbet

6 medium white peaches

Lemon juice

1 c water

1 c sugar

1 vanilla bean

1/3 c raspberries

2 tbsp corn syrup

Peel the peaches by plunging them one at a time into a pot of boiling water for a second or two, then running them under cold water. The skin will slip right off. Cut them into chunks and sprinkle them with lemon juice to prevent discoloration.

Bring the water and sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the vanilla bean and the peaches and poach at a simmer until the peaches are cooked. Do not overcook. Let the peach mixture cool and remove the vanilla bean. Process the cooled peach mixture, raspberries and corn syrup in a food processor until smooth and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until well chilled. Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Makes 1 quart.

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Paper Chef 59: Barbecued Quail with Cabbage Cucumber Slaw

July here on the East Coast U.S. means hot days with long lasting light, when we often cook outdoors for informal gatherings of friends and family, with meals served in our garden. As the sun goes down, the oil lamps and candles are lit, and we watch fireflies flitting across the flowers and grass.  These can be lazy days, when spending too much time in the kitchen just doesn’t seem quite right. It’s the season when casual menus mean quick-cooking meat and vegetables on the grill and make-ahead wilt-proof salads from the fridge.

So when Paper Chef announced the theme of “July” and three ingredients – quail, cabbage and lime – it was obvious what to do. Lime epitomizes the refreshments of summer, being grated and squeezed to lend its citrus tang to all manner of dishes and drinks. Just-harvested cabbage too is a staple of summertime entertaining, with so many possibilities raw or cooked — even grilled. Quail is an interesting choice, and certainly lends itself to the grill but ever so quickly and gently since its tiny frame can cause the meat to dry out in the blink of an eye. I considered making the quail indoors in a sauce since it’s surely the smallest bird I’ve ever cooked. Even smaller than a Poussin. It measures 2 x 4 inches and at that is considered “jumbo.” A quail makes a Rock Cornish Game Hen look like a turkey! 

I happen to live near Griggstown Quail Farm, an environmentally friendly producer of poultry that ranges from quail, pheasant and partridge to chicken, duck and turkey.  Outside of our community, people would recognize the poultry by the name of its distributor D’Artagnan, also local. According to the website, the 75-acre farm accommodates 70,000 quail, 35,000 pheasants, 150,000 chickens as well as, seasonally, Mallard and Muscovy ducks, turkey and partridge. They’re all grain-fed and allowed to range freely. The processing is supposedly meticulous and happens onsite, a good thing.  So for me, with a quick trip to the farm (or farmers’ market), I had four little quail. I prepared a marinade and basting sauce of honey, lime juice and ginger and cooked the little birds over a medium low grill for less than 5 minutes a side or until a tiny cake tester showed the juices running clear. Stay right next to them or they will burn, or petrify.

I served the quail with a shredded cabbage and cucumber salad — coleslaw – tossed with a miso-lime dressing. Raw, crunchy and slightly sweet, tangy with the lime juice, a good counterpoint to the gamey deepness of the quail. To balance things, I roasted some potatoes with a little oil combined with lime zest, salt and chili pepper. The texture of the potato, soft and yet crunchy and slightly hot from the peppers, contrasted beautifully with the slaw, and both worked with the morsels of tender quail meat.

Cabbage and Cucumber Salad with Miso Lime Dressing

½ head small cabbage

1 Taiwan or other small cucumber

1-2 scallions

Miso Lime Dressing

Core and shred the cabbage finely. If using a small cucumber with tender skin, slice it in half lengthwise and cut into half-moon slices. If using a larger cucumber, partially peel it (stripes), remove the seeds and slice finely. Slice the white, light green and a little of the dark green portions of the scallions. Toss with the Miso Lime Dressing and set aside for about ten minutes before serving.

Miso Lime Dressing

3 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice

1 tbsp brown rice miso

1 tbsp brown sugar

½ tsp mustard powder

1 tbsp light olive oil or other vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients and set aside for a few minutes before using.

Grilled Marinated Quail

4 quail

2 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp honey

1 tsp lime zest

1 tsp grated ginger

½ tsp chili powder

1 tsp rice vinegar

Optional: a few drops of sesame oil

Prepare the quail by tying them into little bundles. Combine the rest of the ingredients and pour over the quail in a bowl to marinate for about 10 minutes. Do not marinate too long or the lime juice will “cook” the quail. Grill over medium-low coals for 3 minutes a side (3 sides – right breast, left breast, bottom), watching them carefully so they don’t burn. Test for doneness with a sharp cake tester or turkey truss. They’re done when the juices run clear.

Lime and Chili Roasted Potatoes

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Slice the potatoes and toss them with a sprinkling of olive oil. Sprinkle on chili powder, a little salt and lime zest. Roast, turning  once, until both sides are brown, about a total of 12 minutes.

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