Summer Salad

One of my favorite cookbooks is A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop. He has a gentle way with vegetables, making them tasty enough for his children to enjoy, yet allowing their flavors to come through.

His peach and lettuce salad tastes of summer and is great eaten outside with a dinner cooked on the barbecue.

It's also very healthy. A reduction of fresh orange juice replaces most of the oil in the dressing and enhances the flavor of the peaches. This recipe doubles easily.

Sometimes I use pumpkin seeds, and sometimes cashews. I like them both with the peaches, but last week I opted for the buttery crunch of cashews to enhance the soft crunch of the tender lettuce from Finley Farms.

Peach and Lettuce Salad
2 tbsp cashews
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (from 1 orange)
2 tsp lime juice
2 tsp olive oil
4 cups lettuce, torn into bite sized pieces
1 peach, halved, pitted and diced

Put orange juice in a small saucepan and cook until syrupy and reduced to about 1 tbsp, about 10 minutes. Let cool.

Toast cashews in a dry skillet until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate.

Whisk lime juice and olive oil into orange juice. Season with salt and pepper.

Combine lettuce, peaches and cashews in a salad bowl. Toss with the dressing just before serving.

Serves 3-4

Dry-farmed apricots

If you find dry-farmed apricots, snap them up.

Dry-farmed apricots are grown with minimal additional water, generally just the winter rains. So as the fruit is ripening, the flavor and sweetness get concentrated in the tissues. They actually taste of apricots, rather than the overly-plump and flavorless apricots that are commonly available.

I found some of these wonderful apricots at the Flora Bella stand at the Hollywood Farmers Market yesterday, and we ate them for breakfast with some sweet strawberries from Finley Farms.

Wow.

The Jamie Oliver effect

I wrote a few months back about Jamie Oliver's adventures with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

He came to LA to try to get better food in the schools' cafeterias, but was hitting roadblocks with the administration. In frustration, he staged an event where he poured 57 tons of sand from a dump truck onto a school bus to show how much sugar LAUSD students drink in flavored milk each week. (See here for Larry's re-creation of the event.)

Yes, LAUSD students consume 57 tons of sugar in flavored milk alone each week. Mind blowing.

The LAUSD ignored him.

But then a new superintendent was hired. One of John Deasy's first acts was to join Jamie Oliver on Jimmy Kimmel Live and announce his proposal to get flavored milk out of the schools.

In mid-June, the Board of Education voted on a new dairy contract which calls for no flavored milk.

The Los Angeles Times reports that this is just the beginning. Other unhealthy foods like corn dogs are being eliminated too, and more vegetarian options will be available. LAUSD is hoping to be the national leader in healthy food reform in schools.

Thank you Jamie!

Romantic Risotto

We took a spring trip to Paris. Then we watched Woody Allen's love letter to the city, Midnight in Paris. I was having Paris withdrawal, so last Friday night I decided we would have a romantic dinner under the stars on our fireside patio.

I planned to make Larry's favorite risotto. It's more work than most recipes I cook, but the flavor is worth it. And cooking risotto together, standing by the stove and stirring, with a glass of wine in hand, is a lovely way to start an evening.

But northeast LA is not Paris.

As Larry was preparing the asparagus purée that flavors the risotto, I looked out the window and saw black oily smoke. I rushed to the street and saw that a van down the block had caught fire. We joined the neighbors lined up on the street to watch. Two fire engines. Eight police cars. The obligatory police helicopter circling overhead.

It wasn't a hostage situation, but it was definitely a two-hour stand-off of some sort. We wandered in and out, cooked a little, turned off the stove and went out to check on the action, cooked some more. I learned that risotto is much more tolerant of abuse than I realized.

With the helicopter continuing to circle, we decided not to eat outside. We sat at the dinette, enjoying our risotto, but distracted by the noise and commotion. As we put down our forks, the helicopter went away, the police tape was taken down, and the neighborhood returned to normal, except for the burned out van and the scorch marks on the house it was parked in front of.

This is a good meal even without the show.

Risotto with Asparagus
1/2 lb asparagus
1 small potato, peeled and chopped
2 cups vegetable stock, approx.
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 small clove garlic, minced
3/4 cup arborio rice
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tbsp butter
parmesan

Snap ends off asparagus. Cut off the tips and set aside. Chop the stems in 1-inch pieces.

Place the potato and stems into a saucepan, add 1 cup of water and a pinch of salt, and cook until tender, 10-15 minutes. Purée in blender.

Place the reserved tips in a saucepan, add 1 cup water and a pinch of salt, bring to a boil and cook 2-3 minutes. Drain and set aside for garnish.

Heat vegetable stock until barely simmering, keep covered.

Heat oil in a heavy saucepan. Add onion and cook gently until translucent. Stir in the garlic. Add the rice and cook, stirring, about 5 minutes. Add the wine. Allow nearly all of it to evaporate, then begin adding the asparagus purée about 1/4 at a time, adding more as the liquid in the pan evaporates. When you've added all the asparagus purée, start adding the stock a ladleful at a time. Cook, stirring regularly but not continually, until the risotto is plump and offers a little resistance to the bite. The risotto should be very moist. You might not need all the stock.

Stir in the butter and serve at once, garnished with the reserved asparagus tips and parmesan cheese on the side.

Serves 2-3