Refrigerator Dills

This is the chicken’s way out. Not real cowardice about making cucumber pickles in a crock in the basement like I did with my grandmother, skimming the scum while pinching my nose at the acrid smell, only to be rewarded later with the delicious results. Hardly. I would do that again, but just not now in my way-too-warm cellar. And without confidence in my schedule. So instead, chicken about my ability to produce, I opted for the easy route, a quick pickle that cures in the refrigerator over a couple of weeks, just in time for a certain picnic in August.

I actually made these a couple of weeks ago and now they’re ready for prime time. This type of pickle may be canned using a water bath method, but I tend not to do that. While I like the water bath technique for bread and butter pickles (my “sweet-hots”), I think that dills take on an unpleasant soft texture. Better to go back to the crock method. 

This “refrigerator” method couldn’t be easier. It’s what’s called raw pack, meaning that raw sliced cucumbers, flowering heads of dill, and if you can get them, a raw grape leaf per jar are covered in boiling brine (water, vinegar and salt) and stored in the refrigerator to cure. Grape leaf? There’s some chemical in grape leaves that creates crispness. I recall that, for crispness, my old-world grandmother used alum, a horrible white chemical powder that I associate with childhood torture. Prone to canker sores in the mouth whenever I ate chocolate, I was daubed with the awful substance to cauterize the wound. It’s a wonder that I ever come near chocolate. Would anybody think of that today? Back to the more pleasant thought of crispy dilled cukes within a month.  By the way, you can make this with sliced Kirby cucumbers or small whole ones.

Refrigerator Dill Pickle Slices (for two quarts)

2 quarts small Kirby cucumbers, washed, dried and sliced (or left whole)

2 seed heads of dill

1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced

2 grape leaves, washed and dried

4 c water

1 1/3 c cider vinegar or distilled white vinegar

2 tbsp salt

Clean and “sterilize” two quart jars (pour boiling water in them, let cool for a few minutes and empty them). Pack them with the sliced cucumbers, sliding the grape leaf, garlic and dill head into each jar along the way. Bring the remaining ingredients to a boil and pour into the jars, leaving a little headspace (not so critical since you’ll cure them in the fridge). Insert a chopstick into the jars to release any air pockets. Cap the jars and let them cool before refrigerating for about two weeks until pickled.  (If you use canning lids, they will probably seal, but they should still be refrigerated.)

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Summer Bean Salads

A pot of beans is a summer savior.  Cooked dried beans are so versatile that you can use them in a salad, as a side dish, in soup, pureed as an appetizing spread. I like to cook up a whole pot of them over the weekend, which is hardly a burdensome task, and have them available for impromptu uses throughout the week. These are white cannellini beans, or white kidney beans.

The key to flavorful bean salads, in my view, is the dressing.  For one of my recent salads, I used the Fennel à la Grecque that I made earlier in the month. I chopped the fennel pieces, and combined them with beans that were moistened by the poaching liquid, an unctuous combination of olive oil, white wine and lemon. This was a perfect foil to sautéed shrimp, making this a one-dish meal.

The other  salad uses a garlicky dressing that I’ve been making for a while, based on an internet source I no longer can locate. I heated a crushed clove of peeled garlic in olive oil and let it sit for 5 minutes.  I then placed the mixture into my mini-chopper with a few anchovies (you could omit them and use salt but the depth of flavor is very good and it doesn’t make the dressing taste fishy), a splash of vinegar, and some snipped woody herb, like sage or rosemary. Here I used rosemary since I like it with beans and tomatoes, the vegetable I chose to add to the salad.  I brought the refrigerated beans and their liquid to a simmer, drained and reserved the liquid and tossed the beans with the warm dressing to help the flavors become acquainted. When the beans were cool and ready to be served, I checked the seasonings, added a few chopped tomatoes (good use for the millions of cherry tomatoes that crop up at this time of year), and finished it with rosemary leaves.

I served the bean salad on a bed of small kale leaves that had been tossed in the same vinegar. My garden has been producing great kale from the same plants for nearly a year! That’s crazy but true. I’m about to rip them all out and start over but it’s tempting not to after all the hard work to keep them from bolting. 

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Summer Salad of Freekeh, Cucumbers and Beans

I’m not sure which I’m more excited about: lovely yellow and green beans that I grow in our garden, or the slightly nutty, whole grain organic freekeh from a regional (nearly local) source. If you ever have a garden and want to feel like a farmer, grow bush beans. With two eight-foot lines side-by-side in my tiny in-town (in-lawn) garden, we have been yielding a couple of quarts of beans a week for over a month, and we’re not done.  There’s nothing quite like stepping outside the kitchen door, picking something and having it on the plate within 10 minutes. Or less, if you think ahead enough to put the water on to boil.  But those are fleeting moments.

Freekeh, on the other hand, endures year-round and is a staple of the diets of many nationalities, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Maybe further afield. On the East Coast U.S. it is grown by the participants in Cayuga Organics, located in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. It requires less fertilizer than other types of wheat, so I hear, and therefore is a candidate for organic production. Our local health food store stocks it and I became intrigued when blogging about cooking with local ingredients during the dark days of winter. Freekeh comes from slow-roasted green spelt berries (spelt is a type of wheat lower in gluten than most). Freekeh is produced as whole berries and is also cracked. Mine was cracked and cooked in about 35-40 minutes.  I used a ratio of 1.5:1 water to grain, meaning 1½ cup of water to 1 cup of grain, starting them together in a pan (unlike other grains that you add to boiling water) and simmering them until tender.

Freekeh tastes like intense, robust cracked wheat and has none of the slightly pasty quality of its cousin couscous. I like it as a robust and flavorful base for summer salads. Here, I combined cooked freekeh with cubed salted cucumber and diced mint, tossed with light vinaigrette. Surrounded with my oh-so-local beans, this was a refreshing supper on a hot summer day.

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Waste Not Want Not: Beet Stem Broth for Summer Onion Soup, and Beet Soup with Tarragon Cream

I discovered a new vegetable broth, my latest “favorite.” Made with the red stems of beets and the greens of leeks or spring onions, it has all the flavor and color of a light beef stock but it’s entirely vegetarian. Lightly salted, it could pass for consommé. In fact, I tried it out on a few family members who agreed with me. Making vegetable broth is a cinch. I tend to use complementary ingredients, things that might work together in a stew, and then not too many. Here I washed and chopped the stems from a couple of bunches of fresh organic red beets and cut the dark green tops off of two small leeks, washing them well and chopping them coarsely. Covered with salted water two times the depth of the vegetables, the mixture cooked for about 30-40 minutes.  It keeps, refrigerated, for a week or so, which allowed me to make two soups with it.

Our CSA distributed four pounds of large torpedo onions that were light red, juicy and not too pungent They were not suitable for storage and should be refrigerated and used in a couple of weeks. They were perfect, light companions for the beet stem broth and made a terrific light and flavorful summer onion soup. I used two large onions and about two cups of broth. To prepare the onions for soup, cut them in half vertically and then slice them thinly crosswise. Place a combination of butter and oil in a saucepan and slowly cook the onions until they collapse and start to brown, about 20-30 minutes. Stir them occasionally. Be careful to keep the heat low enough so that the onions do not burn. (If you were using yellow storage onions, add a pinch or two of sugar to caramelize them at the end. These onions were sweet so they didn’t need sugar.) Add the broth and cook for another 20 minutes. Serve with cheese toasts. By the way, you could make the vegetable broth in the length of time it takes to cook the onions.

The second soup used two large beets from the weekly CSA haul, combined with a large reddish torpedo onion and the beet stem broth. I served the soup both hot and cold, like a summer-time borscht, marbled with a delicious tarragon cream. To make the soup, cook 1 large diced onion in a little butter and olive oil until translucent and add 2 large diced cooked beets (or grated fresh beets) and broth. If using cooked beets, you will need about 2 cups of broth; for raw beets, the cooking time will be longer so use more broth, about 2½ cups.  Cook until very tender, 30 minutes or so, and puree with an immersion blender or food processor. 

For the tarragon cream, fold snipped fresh tarragon into sour cream and let it sit for 15 minutes. Add a little tarragon vinegar (or white wine or cider vinegar) to thin it. Stir it into the soup or add a dollop on top. 

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Chard and Walnut Lasagna

Managing the abundance of greens from a CSA or an overflowing garden can be a challenge. Your own garden gives you the flexibility of when to harvest, but a CSA haul challenges your refrigerator, and your ingenuity. As I’ve written before, I’ve learned to prepare the most voluminous vegetables first: spinach, chard, and beet greens, for example. Recently, with a weekly pound or two of chard from our CSA, I have had to stay on top of the situation. And it takes some planning to use it up before the end of the week, despite how many frittatas or tartines or grilled cheese sandwiches with greens or pasta dishes you can throw together impromptu.

Since I had fresh sheet pasta on hand (wish I’d made it but I didn’t), I searched my farm journal for a certain chard lasagna that I once made at this time of year, and turned up nothing. Drat. No master index. But I did find a note about this lasagna, which is a riff on a recipe from Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors. That book had me hooked just by the title. She toured farmers’ markets throughout the country and wrote about what she bought and cooked.  I admit that whenever I travel, I seek out markets and even grocery stores to get a sense of local culture and values. Pretty revealing.

From the marginalia in the book (I write lots of notes in my cookbooks), I seemed to have followed her course pretty closely because I was intrigued with her use of no-boil noodles, apparently novel to me at the time, and the solution to use milk as a moistener (and no eggs in the filling). I’ve noted how to adjust for pasta type in the recipe below.  Here, I used fresh pasta sheets, the stems of chard in addition to the leaves, grated nutmeg for enticing allure, and otherwise so altered Madison’s recipe that I now can attribute only the inspiration. But with her brilliant way with vegetables, that’s a high compliment.

Chard and Walnut Lasagna inspired by Deborah Madison, Local Flavors

For a 6-cup 6×8 inch pan serving 4:

1½ lb chard

½ c walnuts

¾ c ricotta cheese

2 oz mozzarella cheese, coarsely grated

½ c grated Parmesan cheese

Optional: salt and ground nutmeg to taste

5 sheets fresh pasta, trimmed to size of pan (or use boiled noodles or no-boil noodles with ¼ c milk)

Olive oil and milk

Prepare the chard. Wash it thoroughly and cut the leaves away from the stems. Cut the stems into slices or matchsticks, depending on their size and shape. In a large saucepan, wilt the chard with the water that clings to their leaves (or if large or old, add ½-1 cup of water to the pan to shallow-boil them).  Remove to a sieve to drain, capturing the liquid. Add the liquid back to the saucepan and shallow-boil the chard stems. By the end, you should have some liquid, probably less than half a cup. Save this to moisten the lasagna filling.  When the chard leaves are cool, squeeze out the excess liquid and chop them coarsely.

You can prepare the chard well in advance, storing the chopped leaves and stems separately.

When you are ready to make the lasagna, heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Put a large pot of water on to boil (for the lasagna noodles, see notes below). Lightly oil a 6-cup glass pan (approximately 6×8 inches) and sprinkle it with milk (the oil and milk will not mix, but the milk will help moisten the lasagna noodles).

Toast the walnuts in a dry pan and set aside to cool. Chop them medium-fine.

Prepare the filling. Set a few tablespoons of chard stems aside. Combine the remaining chard stems and the chopped leaves with the ricotta cheese and add the Parmesan cheese and half the mozzarella. Add a little chard cooking liquid or milk if using fresh or no-boil noodles. Season with a little salt and nutmeg if desired, remembering that the cheese may contain ample salt.

Prepare the noodles. If using fresh noodles, dunk them in lightly boiling water for a few seconds before placing in the pan. If using no-boil noodles, do the same, but for about 30 seconds. When you place them in the pan, you will need to sprinkle them with a little milk in addition to the filling, or add it to the filling. If using dried noodles, cook them until they just start to become tender. You don’t want them mushy or the lasagna will be watery.

Assemble the lasagna. Place lasagna noodles in the bottom of the pan to cover. (If using no-boil noodles, distribute 1 tbsp of milk on top of the noodles before you add the filling unless you’ve made the filling a little wet.) Spread 1/3 of the filling on top and sprinkle with 1/3 of the walnuts. Repeat twice and top with noodles. (Bottom to top: noodle, filling and walnuts, noodle, filling and walnuts, noodle, filling and walnuts, noodle.)

Sprinkle the top with the reserved chard stems and remainder of the mozzarella. Bake for about 40 minutes or until bubbly and browned. Cool for 10-15 minutes before cutting and serving.

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Apricot-Currant Preserves

Red currants work magic with other seasonal fruit in the preserving pan. Those tiny translucent red orbs impart a rosy hue and tart flavor to their companion fruit. And they add natural pectin that gels the fruit into jam and preserves without overcooking. Not to mention their nutritional value. Seasonally, red currants overlap strawberries waning in late June and apricots emerging in July. And since they’re sold locally only in tiny amounts, I use them as additives to other dishes. Someday, I’ll get my own bush.

Meanwhile, I was really fortunate to obtain a second week’s worth of fresh local apricots. While these were from the same tree, they weren’t the same variety according to the farmer, since they were propagated by grafting. They were smaller, rosier, and firmer than the previous week’s haul, so instead of reducing them to a puree, I decided to leave the quarters whole, suspending them in clear rosy jelly aided by the addition of the red currants.

The technique is the same as for the apricot-vanilla jam that I recently made, up to the point of final cooking. Instead of boiling the fruit in its liquid, I drained the liquid into a wide saucepan and cooked it to a gel, then added the quartered apricots and cooked them for a short time, again until tested for gel.  This is another classic technique from Christine Ferber and here it produced a jewel-like preserve with a stunning red-orange color.

Apricot-Currant Preserves

2 lb fresh apricots, slightly under-ripe and firm

2 c sugar

½ c water

¼ pt red currants (1 c)

1 c water

Rinse and dry the apricots. Quarter them lengthwise, removing the pits. (You can crack open the pits to reveal a flavorful kernel that you can use for another purpose, or discard them.) Combine the apricots, sugar and ½ cup of water in a bowl, stir well, and let the apricots macerate for an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that the sugar is dissolving.

Meanwhile, remove the currants from their stems and place in a small saucepan with 1 cup of water and bring to a boil, cooking until the currants pop, about 3-4 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool for about an hour, or until the end of the time when the apricots are macerating.  Push the currants and their liquid through a sieve set over a large saucepan, to remove the seeds, pressing down to eke out the precious liquid.

Add the apricots and their liquid to the saucepan containing the currants and bring the mixtures just to a bare simmer and pour the mixture back into the apricot bowl. Let cool, cover with crinkled parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to make the preserves, prepare the canner, jars and lids if you’re going to process them via water bath. Place a saucer into the freezer for testing the gel.

Drain the apricot-currant liquid into a large, wide saucepan, reserving the apricots. Bring the liquid to a boil and cook until the temperature approaches 220 degrees on a candy thermometer and/or the liquid tests for gel when a drop is placed on the frozen saucer. Do not overcook. (The currant liquid contains plenty of pectin so this sets up in around 6 minutes. Apricots foam a lot so you can add a dab of butter to the pot to control that, or plan on skimming the finished preserves before jarring them.)

Add the reserved apricot quarters to the saucepan, stir well, and boil for 4-5 minutes until the liquid once again passes the gel test.

Ladle into hot prepared jars and cap them. Process in a water bath for 10 minutes after the water returns to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and let sit for 5 minutes before moving them to sit on a counter, undisturbed, until cool.

Makes 3-4 eight-ounce jars or 6-7 four-ounce jars. (I made 3 large and 1 small jar. I preferred the larger size because the fruit remains whole and floats suspended in the clear liquid. )

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Filmishmish! Apricot-Vanilla Jam with Apricot Kernels

You think we’re getting apricots this year? Filmishmish! “In apricot season!” As they say in Egypt, slang for “wishful thinking.” Dream on. Thank you, I will. Of course we’re going to get apricots in apricot season, at least locally, if we get them at all. Our season is so fleeting that you might miss an entire year by not haunting the right farmers’ market one week. The farmer who sold me this year’s supply had none last year. Squirrels absconded with them all before he could pick them from the tree.  So, as I do with local cherries in June, I sleuth for apricots in July to put up for the pantry.

Plain apricot jam is very useful in cooking since it acts as a base for glazes applied to sweet and savory dishes. However, I tend to preserve so little that I make specialty jams, like the hauntingly aromatic and slightly mysterious Apricot-Lavender Jam of two years ago, or this delicious Apricot-Vanilla Jam, speckled with tiny black vanilla seeds. Or Apricot-Currant Jam that I recently made.

Just as with other stone fruit, especially cherry but also peaches, I crack open the hard pit to reveal a meaty little kernel that’s reminiscent of almonds. In fact, apricot kernels are the basis of the liqueur Amaretto, which comes from the Italian word for bitter, associated with bitter almonds and often thought of as an almond liqueur. The reason for this similarity is that many of these fruits, and some that we call nuts (almonds, walnuts for example) are “drupes” botanically speaking. They consist of a fleshy outer body surrounding a hard shell, inside of which is the kernel. To free the kernel, you need to crack the hard shell, which I do by covering the nuts with cloth and tapping them strategically with a hammer. You don’t want the hard shell shards to fly and you don’t want to pulverize the kernels. The kernels, like unblanched almonds, have a papery brown skin, which is removed by pouring boiling water over them (i.e., blanching them), and then slipping the skin off.

For this jam, much like the sour cherry jam that I made in June, I buried a little muslin bag of lemon seeds, lemon peel and apricot kernels in the apricots first as they macerate and then as they cook. This boosts the pectin that creates gel, allowing you to cook the jam for a little less time than otherwise.  

I chopped the almond kernels to a fine dice and added a few to some of the jars just before canning.  I also “recycled” the vanilla beans by immersing them with their cousins into a jar of sugar. 

Apricot-Vanilla Jam

2 lb fresh apricots

2 c sugar

½ c water

Juice of 1/2 lemon, pits and peel reserved

2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise

Rinse and dry the apricots. Quarter them lengthwise, removing the pits. (You can crack open the pits to reveal a flavorful kernel that you can use in this jam, or for another purpose, or discard them. If using them, douse them with boiling water to release the white kernel from its bitter brown skin.) Tie the reserved lemon seeds, peel from about half the lemon and the apricot kernels, if using, into a muslin sack. The lemon pits and peel will release their pectin into the fruit to help the jam gel.

Combine all ingredients, including the sack of seeds, in a bowl and stir well. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla beans. Let the apricots macerate at room temperature for an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that the sugar is dissolving.

Add the apricots and their liquid to a saucepan and bring just to a bare simmer.  Pour the mixture back into the apricot bowl. Let cool, cover with crinkled parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to make the preserves, prepare the canner, jars and lids if you’re going to process them via water bath. Place a saucer into the freezer for testing the gel.

Place the apricot mixture into a wide saucepan, bring to a boil and cook until the temperature approaches 220 degrees on a candy thermometer and/or the liquid tests for gel when a drop is placed on the frozen saucer. Do not overcook. Apricots foam a lot so you can add a dab of butter to the pot to control that, or plan on skimming the finished preserves before jarring them. Remove the vanilla bean and sack of seeds. Depending on the firmness of the apricots, the mixture might be smooth or chunky. If you want a smooth jam, use an immersion blender or whisk to break up any chunks.

If you are adding apricot kernels, cut them into tiny pieces and add them to the jam. (I added them only to a couple of jars.)

Ladle into hot prepared jars and cap them. Process in a water bath for 10 minutes after the water returns to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and let sit for 5 minutes

Makes 4 eight-ounce jars or 8 four-ounce jars.

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Fennel à la Grecque and a Platter of Hors d’Oeuvres

The second of a two-part series on ideas for using the whole fennel plant – bulb, stalks and fronds – in several complementary dishes… 

We were pretending to be in Provence, on vacation.  Cold fennel à la Grecque. And a platter of fennel-flecked crostini served in the raking light of late afternoon. There were crostini topped with a garlicky mash of beans that had been cooked in fennel frond broth. There were crostini with goat cheese infused with the lemony broth from the poached fennel bulbs and topped with the residual confit of lemon and onion. That was the brilliance of making fennel à la Grecque: not only were there slices of fennel bulb and tender stalks, but also the delicious aromatics and the broth.

The French phrase “à la Grecque” means “Greek-style” and refers to a way of preparing vegetables usually for an appetizer course, although I find them useful as side dishes or salads. The vegetables are lightly poached in olive oil, vinegar, lemon and white wine, and seasoned with a spice like coriander seed. Here I used fennel seed, no surprise for a full-fennel mode, and black peppercorns. I also added sliced onion and garlic. While the fennel was excellent, the lemon and onions stole the show, melting into a confit that was delicious on its own. That was partly because the lemon – peel and all – was sliced super thin and the onions were cut into little half moons. They were simmered in the warmed liquid for 15 minutes before the fennel was lightly poached. The recipe was adapted from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables but I changed the proportions of oil to liquid, cutting the oil in half and increasing the white wine. As it was, it was a little oily for my taste, but the broth made a good base for salad dressing, especially for potatoes and beans.

Fennel a la Grecque adapted from Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Vegetables

1 medium or 4 very small bulbs of fennel

½ c olive oil

¾ c white wine vinegar

½ c white wine

½ lemon, washed and thinly sliced crosswise

½ large onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise

3 small garlic cloves, sliced

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp black peppercorns

1 large bay leaf

Trim the fennel bulb(s) and reserve any tender stalks. If tiny (2½ x 3 inches or so), slice them in half lengthwise. If larger, cut them longwise into wedges.

Heat the olive oil, vinegar and wine in a saucepan. When just simmering, add the rest of the ingredients, except for the fennel, and simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

Add the fennel and continue to simmer until it is tender but still slightly firm.

Remove the fennel from the liquid and let it cool. When both the fennel and the poaching liquid are cool, recombine them into a jar with a tightly fitting lid and let cure, refrigerated, for 24 hours before serving.  Both the fennel and the lemon-onion confit should be used. The poaching liquid makes a great dressing for beans.

Crostini

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Slice a baguette into ¼-inch pieces and array them on a baking sheet. Melt a little butter with olive oil and add minced herbs and a little salt. Brush the bread on one side and bake slowly for about 10 minutes until crisp. Cool and store in an airtight container. They’ll keep for a few days.

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Waste Not Want Not: Fennel Frond Broth for Cooking Beans and Making Soup

The first of a two-part series on ideas for using the whole fennel plant – bulb, stalks and fronds – in several complementary dishes…

One of the great advantages of belonging to a CSA or growing your own food, even in a little kitchen garden like mine, is that you often obtain the entire plant. The bulb of fennel and bushy fronds, beets, radishes and turnips with their edible greens, cilantro with its roots, peas with pods, and so on.  Even though what’s typically offered in the supermarket, or even in the local organic grocery, is trimmed to the most prevalent form of the vegetable, maybe just maybe, that’s because that’s more durable, longer lasting, prettier to display, easier to ship. Personally, I get a lot of pleasure from seeing how vegetables, fruits and flowers grow. And when we have an excess of something, I feel free to experiment.

Fennel from our CSA provided just that opportunity as it came bunched in pairs, with relatively small bulbs and nearly 30-inch long stalks laden with bright green fronds. I say “bulbs” since that’s what the base of fennel resembles. Actually, in so-called Florence fennel, the bulb type, these are thick stalks. Think of them like celery, or even chard. (Fennel, without the bulb habit, is typically thought of as an herb, harvested for its leaves.)

It’s easy to figure out what to do with the bulbs and the tender stalks, but that volume of fronds was daunting.  I’ve gone through a full-fennel experience in the fall, at the beginning of the Dark Days, so I know that successive cooking of various parts is a good idea. Sometime, I will elaborate on my theory – actually a method – of successive cooking, a one-thing-leads-to-another approach, related largely to the use and re-use of water. That’s what started me off .  

First, I soaked dried baby lima beans in water overnight and drained them, discarding the water. (This was hardly necessary because they turned out to be young beans that would cook relatively quickly.) I covered the drained beans with fresh water, added salt and a giant handful of fennel fronds, and lightly simmered them stovetop for an hour or so. I separated the beans from the liquid to cool, and then re-combined them to store. The beans became infused with the anise/licorice flavor and aroma of the fennel and the resulting broth was amazing. From the beans, the broth had the viscosity of chicken stock and, from the fennel, an alluring herb flavor and greenish hue.

Fennel and Bean Soup

I made soup from the beans, broth and separately braised fennel, sprinkled with fresh fennel fronds. A little freshly ground black pepper is all the extra flavoring it needed.

Mixed Bean Salad

I also made a delicious, garlicky mixed bean salad by combining the cooked limas and yellow wax beans and green beans that were cooked until tender in fennel-bean broth. Dressed with a clove or two of garlic mashed to a paste with salt and doused with olive oil, as well as a few chopped fennel fronds, this was a very flavorful salad that would be great to take to a picnic.

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Zucchini, Peas and White Fish in Thai Red Curry Sauce

We were hot and hungry. We wanted quick and simple comfort food in the stunning heat of summer, something seasonal and light but spicy, done in 10 minutes, 15 tops. With the last of the shelling peas, young zucchini, a local white fish called hake, and Thai basil in my garden that needed pinching, I figured I could throw together a quick curry. My pantry provided the rest: coconut milk, fish sauce, raw cane sugar, bottled Thai red curry paste and some of its ingredients to give it oomph. The ingredients for red curry are no mystery and are attainable. I just didn’t have them all on hand and didn’t feel like venturing into the heat to find them. I thought the bottled red curry paste was a little flat, so I added dried lime leaves, lime juice and a little ground hot red pepper. I have ginger (though not Thai ginger called galangal) and lemongrass growing but not ready to eat. Otherwise, I could have done the curry from scratch.

This curry couldn’t be simpler or more immediate. You can prepare the vegetables while the curry paste and coconut milk are simmered to the point of getting acquainted, so to speak. Other seasonings are added and then the vegetables, in order of the length of time it takes to cook them (here, peas first, then cubed zucchini). After a couple of minutes, the fish (or shellfish) is added to poach gently for a couple of minutes and the mélange is finished with a handful of Thai basil leaves that wilt almost immediately. I like to serve this on rice noodles or bean threads, which soak in hot water while the curry is being cooked. Rice works too but you have to start it before everything else.  

Zucchini, Peas and White Fish in Thai Red Curry Sauce

1 14-oz can coconut milk (light is fine and is what I used)

2 tbsp bottled Thai red curry paste

Optional or alternatively: chopped lemongrass, lime leaves, galangal (Thai ginger), hot red pepper (i.e., the ingredients of Thai red curry)

2 tbsp Thai fish sauce

2 tbsp brown sugar (I use Demerara or organic raw cane sugar)

1 c shelled peas

1 small zucchini, cut into ¼ to1/3-inch cubes

½ lb white fish (cod, hake etc.) or raw shrimp or even scallops

Optional: soy sauce or salt or additional fish sauce

Optional: red pepper

Optional:  freshly squeezed lime juice

¼ c Thai basil leaves or to taste

Rice noodles, bean threads, or rice

Place half the can of coconut milk in a large sauté pan and whisk in the curry paste to blend well. Add the remaining coconut milk and the optional extra curry seasonings if using them and blend well. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the fish sauce, brown sugar, and peas. Simmer for 2 minutes and add the zucchini. Simmer for 2-4 minutes or until the zucchini softens just slightly, then add the fish. Cook for 2-3 minutes until the fish is cooked through. Taste the broth and add something salty, something hot or something citrusy. This will largely depend on the flavors of the Thai curry paste or its ingredients. Add the Thai basil leaves to wilt and serve immediately over rice noodles, bean threads or rice. Note that the rice noodles and bean threads can be soaked in boiled water while the curry is being assembled and will be ready at the same time.  Rice needs a longer cooking time and should be started while you assemble the ingredients.

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