Sunday Shopping

It's been too hot to eat. I come home in the evenings and sit out in the garden instead of cooking dinner. I'd rather watch the antics of the birds and the squirrels than think about food.

So we took a short list to the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning.

We also agreed we'd make one more batch of salsa today so we came home with 10 pounds of roma tomatoes from Tutti Frutti farms in addition to our week's organic produce.

Here's what we brought home: 1 kabocha squash, 6 ears of corn, 3 maui onions, 1 red onion, 1 dozen eggs, 1 persian cucumber, bunches of cilantro and parsley, 2 mutsu apples and 3 other excellent apples whose name I've forgotten, 3 mountain-grown peaches (the last of the year), 1 cantaloupe, 1 bunch red amaranth which I'll cook like spinach - a first for us, 16 oranges, 3 limes, 3 red peppers and 4 poblanos - time to start stocking the freezer with roasted peppers, 2 anaheim peppers, 4 habaneros, 3 jalapeños and 7 serrano peppers.

Green Salad with Peaches and Pistachios

When we barbecue in peach season, as we did Sunday night, I like to serve this simple salad dressed with orange juice and scattered with pistachios. It makes a sweet juicy foil to whatever the grilled entrée is, and I can make it ahead and then just toss the salad with the dressing right before serving it. That's my kind of easy summer eating.

Green Salad with Peaches and Pistachios
2 tbsp pistachios
juice of 1 orange (about 1/2 cup)
juice of 1 lime (about 2 tsp)
1/2 tbsp olive oil
red butter lettuce, torn (about 4 cups)
1 ripe peach

Toast the pistachios in a small heavy skillet until fragrant and very lightly toasted. Set them aside to cool.

Pour the orange juice into the hot skillet and let it bubble down until it reduces to about a tablespoon of juice, about 10 minutes. Pour the juice into a heat-resistant bowl and set aside to cool.

Whisk the lime juice and olive oil into the cool orange juice and season with a little salt and pepper.

Just before eating, line a plate with the lettuce. Half the peach and take out the pit. Cut the flesh into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle the pistachios on top.

Either toss the dressing with the salad, or serve it on the side so everyone can add their own.

Serves 2

Sunday Shopping

There is nothing like September at the Hollywood Farmers Market with the piles of red peppers and heirloom tomatoes gleaming in the slanting morning light.

Here's a list of the organic produce we brought home with us:
2 limes, 1 pomegranate, 5 small red potatoes, 1 avocado, 4 red peppers, carrots, 6 plum tomatoes, baby arugula, parsley, cilantro, 6 ears of corn, scallions, 4 mountain-grown peaches, an assortment of apples (3 bramley, 3 blondee - similar to golden delicious-, 2 McIntosh, 1 empire, 2 honey crisp and 1 summerland), 20 oranges, 2 heirloom tomatoes, 2 shallots, 2lb black beans, 2lb black-eyed peas, 1 watermelon, spicy jack cheese from grass-fed Jersey cows in Petaluma, 1 dozen eggs from orchard-raised hens, strawberries, 4 small plain yogurt and 4 mountain-grown peaches.

Sugar-Sweet Peaches

I think peaches are my favorite summer fruit. I remember in the '70s my mother buying Ontario peaches in cardboard trugs - 2 layers of luscious fruit that needed to be picked over daily to make sure none were starting to decay. The picking over included eating, of course, and there was nothing better than a sweet juicy peach with that light downy fuzz as a pick-me-up on a hot humid afternoon.

The peaches here in Southern California are twice the size of the ones I remember from my childhood (isn't everything bigger in America?) but still well-flavored and in need of daily monitoring.

This week, I noticed the peaches I was buying had freckles on them. I've been told that these brown dots are areas of concentrated sugar - sugar spots - that occur when the peach is really ripe when picked. (Most peaches are harvested underripe to give the farmer more time to get them to market. They continue to ripen after being picked.)

I snapped up a few of these freckled peaches, and they have indeed been extra delicious in our morning fruit.

Rice Salad with Eggs and Green Beans

It's been too hot to cook, so I've been relying on salads at dinner time.

This one, with eggs and rice and corn, was a truly complete meal. We ate almost all of it in one sitting, and I took the leftovers for lunch the next day. That is the sign of a good salad.

A note about the rice: Usually I make this salad with brown rice, but I had spent the early evening puttering in the garden so to get this salad on the table in a timely manner, I used white jasmati rice – an organic rice from Texas that my local independent grocery store carries. It has a great flavor, and I had dinner on the table in under 45 minutes.

Rice Salad with Eggs and Green Beans
1 red pepper
1/2 cup onion, sliced in rings
2 cups cooked rice
4 oz (large handful) green beans
1/2 cup corn (frozen is fine)
2 eggs
1 small avocado
butter lettuce
1 tbsp capers
6 olives, sliced

Dressing:
1  clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp yogurt
1/2 tsp dijon

Cut the red pepper in half. Remove the seeds and membranes. Place cut-side down in a small roasting pan. Add the onion rings. Sprinkle the onion with a little olive oil, then cook them under a broiler for 5-6 minutes until the pepper starts to blacken. Stir the onion a couple of times so it turns golden, not black. Put the pepper halves in a pot and let them steam gently. Cut the onion rings up and stir them into the rice. Put the rice on a large platter.

When the peppers are cool enough to touch, scrape off the skin (as much as you can) and cut them into thin strips.

Pierce the eggs with a pin and put them in a pan of boiling, salted water for 10 minutes. Drain and refresh in ice water. When cool enough to touch, peel off the shells and cut the eggs in quarters.

Cook the green beans in a little boiling water for 2 minutes, then add the corn and cook another 2 minutes. Drain and put in a bowl with the red pepper strips.

Stir together the washed and torn lettuce leaves with the peeled and diced avocado. Pile them on the rice.

Whisk together the dressing ingredients. Put about half into the bowl with the green beans and toss gently. Pile this on top of the salad.

Decorate the platter with the eggs, olives and capers.

Serve the extra dressing on the side.

Serves 3-4

Sunday Shopping

It's cooled off a little in the last couple of days, which makes us happy because this is the weekend we turn 10 lbs of tomatoes into salsa in our annual canning marathon.

Usually this is the hottest weekend of the year and we sweat from the heat as well as the steaming pots and chiles, but this year it's cooler and the salsa-making experience more pleasant. (I've written about our salsa-making in previous years - you can read that post here.)

The market was surprisingly full for a Labor Day weekend. We parked on Cahuenga and weaved our way among the clubbers waiting for their Ubers after a long Saturday night in Hollywood. Usually we carry all our produce to the car at once, but today we had to make two trips because we were so loaded down – a 12lb box of tomatoes will do that to you.

When we got home, a green pepper and an onion went in the pot with the black beans I'd left to soak while we went to the market. We'll be eating them tonight at our Labor Day weekend cookout. (I've written about these black beans – Larry's favorite – before. Find the recipe here.)

And after breakfast we started peeling the tomatoes and dicing peppers for the salsa. It's bubbling on the stove as I write this. Larry's gone to Trader Joe's for organic corn chips so we can sample the fruits of our labor this evening as we sit in the cool twilight on our patio and grill eggplant from our garden on the barbecue.

Here's a list of the organic produce we brought home with us today:
1 red onion, a bag of heirloom spinach, 2 green peppers, parsley, cilantro, red butter lettuce, red sails lettuce, romaine, assorted hot heirloom chilies, 2 cucumbers, 4 mountain-grown peaches, pistachios, 16 oranges, 1 avocado, 1 lb Guatemalan coffee, 4 tsugaru apples, 2 bulbs garlic, red potatoes, 6 ears organic corn, 3 onions, 2 poblanos, 12 lbs early girl tomatoes from Finley Farms, 6 red peppers, 1 yellow pepper, 1 orange pepper, scallions, green beans, asparagus, eggs, 1 cantaloupe.

Apple and Goat Cheese Salad

Even the evenings have been hot over the last week or so. Too hot to even think about barbecuing or turning on the stove for dinner.

So we've been eating a lot of main course salads. Sunday night I combined honey crisp apples, walnuts and goat cheese to make a nourishing meal that tempted our appetites despite the heat.

I added a little honey to the salad dressing, which I don't usually do. But we needed a little sweetness after the heat of the day, and it balanced the lemon and tarragon well. The dressing would be good on any green salad. It will last a few days in the fridge.

Apple and Goat Cheese Salad
5 cups torn romaine lettuce
1/2 Haas avocado
1 honey crisp apple
1 hard-boiled egg
3 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup toasted walnuts

Dressing:
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 olive oil
1 tbsp tarragon, chopped

Arrange the lettuce on a serving platter. Peel and slice the avocado. Core and slice the apple. Peel and quarter the egg. Arrange the avocado, apple and egg on the lettuce. Crumble the goat cheese in the center and then the toasted walnuts on top.

Whisk the lemon juice, garlic, honey, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Whisking constantly, add the olive oil until the mixture emulsifies. Whisk in the tarragon.

Drizzle 3/4 of the dressing over the salad and serve the extra dressing on the side.

Serves 2 as a main course.