Autumn Supper

I planned supper in my head on the way home the other night: cooked white beans in the fridge, a small butternut squash in the cupboard, and a bunch of tiny turnips - greens detached but in a bag with them - in the fridge. That sounded like the makings of a good autumn supper.

I went outside to pick some thyme and rosemary, then started dinner.

I gently warmed some garlic in a covered skillet with butter while I peeled and diced the tiny squash. I added the squash to the pan with a splash of white wine, covered and let it braise until tender, about 20 minutes. I stirred it occasionally to make sure the squash wasn't sticking.

I put the beans in a covered pot with a little water over low heat. While they warmed, I puréed about 2 tbsp of rosemary, 1 tbsp of thyme, a small clove of garlic and a good glug of olive oil in the blender. I added a little water to thin the sauce, then poured it in with the beans. The piny aromas stimulated our appetites.

I turned to the turnips, which turned out to be watermelon radishes. You can see how I cooked them here.

It was a lovely dinner - a contrast of flavors and colors: orange, buttery squash; sharply aromatic beans; and peppery green and red radishes.

Cooking Radishes

Sautéed Radishes

I love getting to the Hollywood Farmers Market early - before it opens at 8 a.m. - and getting all my shopping done before the crowds show up.

A downside is that the farmers haven't completely finished setting up, and their nifty signs aren't always in place next to their vegetables.

Last week I bought a beautiful bunch of tiny turnips. When it came time to cook them, however, I realized they were watermelon radishes.

Have you tried one of these? They're white on the outside, then have a ring of pale green and then are pink on the inside. They really do look like small watermelons.

I decided to cook them the way I had intended to cook the turnips. After all, I was cooking dinner and needed a side dish.

I warmed a little butter in a small skillet, then tossed in the quartered radishes. I added a splash of water and a little salt, covered the skillet, and let the radishes cook until they were almost tender, about 5 minutes. I checked occasionally to make sure they weren't browning too much, adding a spoonful of water as needed.

While they cooked I washed and coarsely chopped the radish greens.

I removed the roots from the pan, added the greens with the water that was clinging to them, and sprinkled on a little salt and pepper. I covered the pan and let them cook over medium-low heat until they were tender. I added the radishes back in to let it all warm through, and served it.

With turnips I usually add garlic to the butter, but the radishes were great with just a little salt and pepper.

Sunday Shopping

It's definitely fall at the Hollywood Farmers Market — we bought the first organic quinces and pomegranates of the season.

We're missing Ha's Apple Farm — we hope they return to the market soon. We actually forgot to buy eggs today. It will be a week of supermarket eggs — we'll never forget farmers' market eggs again!

Here's a list of the organic produce we brought home with us:
3 red bell peppers, 2 jalapeños, 2 grapefruit, red grapes, 2 pomegranates, 2 quinces, 1 green pepper, purple curly kale, 2 zucchini, 2 garlic, 2 onions, 1 bunch of tiny turnips with their greens.

We also bought a hand of non-organic but locally grown ginger root.

Zucchini and Peppers with Feta

It is so easy to make yummy and visually appealing vegetable side dishes during harvest season.

Last night I reheated a bean and rice casserole for dinner. While it was warming in the toaster oven, I made this colorful vegetable sauté.

While a little olive oil warmed in a small skillet, I chopped a small red onion and slivered a half an orange pepper I found in the salad drawer of the fridge. I added these to the oil with a sprinkle of salt and pepper and let them sauté while I chopped a zucchini and diced a half tomato left over from lunch. These went in too with a little more salt and pepper. Then I cooked it over medium heat until the zucchini skin was tender. (Late season zucchini often has tougher skin, I find.)

As a finishing touch, I sprinkled some feta over the vegetables, turned off the heat and covered the pan. I let it sit while I took the casserole from the toaster oven and set the table.

It was a colorful companion to a delicious but brown rice and bean casserole.

Sunday Shopping

It was cool and overcast at the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning. I wore my hoodie for the first time since spring — fall is in the air.

We took our new shopping cart for a test run. It's big and flat and really should not be used when the market is full of people. But we're there before opening time when there's still space to move, so we felt okay about using it.

I was concerned that I would buy far too much food if I didn't need to worry about us carrying it in our cloth shopping bags. Would the cart make it too easy to splurge on pounds of produce?

Well, I think I did a good job of sticking to my list. The watermelon is probably the one thing I would not have bought if we didn't have the cart. And that would have been sad.

Here's a list of the organic produce we brought home with us: baby spinach, green pepper, orange pepper, 2 bunches of carrots, 2 onions, red pepper, cilantro, avocado, cipolline onions, 3 tomatoes, 9 oranges, watermelon, 6 corn, 1 dozen eggs, crenshaw melon, celery, 3 apples, ambrosia melon, 2 oval zucchini, 1 very small butternut squash, 2 peaches and some (non-organic) feta.

We also bought a basil plant from Logan.

Tofu and Peppers

We enjoyed this simple dinner of Tofu and Peppers last night — simple in preparation yet rich in flavor.

The tofu is marinated in red Thai curry paste for an hour or so — I did this then went out to putter in the garden. A couple of hours later, I sautéed onions and peppers to yumminess. They served as a bed for the fried tofu, and a blender sauce of poblanos, onions and garlic provided the final flavor boost.

With roasted poblanos in the freezer, the meal was a snap to make.

I've previously made this dish with green Thai curry paste — also delicious. The poblanos I used this time were stashed in the freezer late last fall, when the peppers at the Hollywood Farmers Market were fully ripe red instead of the usual green. If I'd used green poblanos, the sauce would have been green not red. Then I might have used green Thai chili paste for color coordination.

Tofu and Peppers
14oz container firm tofu
1 tbsp red Thai curry paste
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, halved then sliced lengthwise in strips
1 red pepper, 1 green pepper and 1 orange pepper (I used a handful of orange lipstick peppers), cored,
seeded and slivered lengthwise
2 poblanos, roasted and peeled
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 shallot, chopped
1/2 cup olive oil
juice of 1/2 lime

Cooking the tofu

Drain tofu and press for 5-10 minutes in a towel with a weight (like a jar of beans) on top. Cut it lengthwise into roughly 1/2 inch slices. Combine the curry paste with 1 tbsp water. Spread it on both sides of the tofu. Let sit at room temperature at least an hour. (2-3 hours is fine.)

Warm 1 tbsp olive oil in a skillet. Cook the onion and peppers until soft and delicious.

Meanwhile, warm the other tbsp of oil in a heavy skillet. Add the tofu and let cook until crispy on one side, then flip and cook the other side. You can also cook the edges if you like.

While these are cooking, put the roasted and peeled poblanos in the blender along with the garlic, shallot, 1/2 cup olive oil and lime juice. Purée until smooth.

Put the peppers on a plate. Top with tofu, then pour the sauce liberally on top.

Serves 2 with extra sauce for another day.

Slow Cooker Red Pepper Soup

I love red pepper season - there's nothing like that fresh sweetness, so during the next couple of months I will be indulging.

On Sunday I made this simple supper of beans and peppers cooked in the slow cooker. A little chipotle in adobe added the heat that played beautifully off the sweet peppers, and the beans made it a good stick-to-the-ribs meal after a day of gardening.

I pre-cooked some pinquito beans (28 minutes in the pressure cooker) for the soup. Other days I've used green lentils instead and added them in raw, adding an extra 2 cups of water for them to cook in. Sometimes I use half cooked beans and half lentils. You really can't go wrong with legumes.

Slow Cooker Red Pepper Soup
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 chipotle in adobo, chopped
2 red peppers, cored and chopped
1 cup pinquito beans, cooked (yields about 3 cups cooked beans - you can use 4 cans of beans instead)

Warm the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Cook the onion until it softens, then stir in the garlic and cook another minute. Add chipotle and cook, stirring another minute. Stir in the red peppers and let them cook 2-3 minutes until they are beginning to soften. Scrape the mixture into the slow cooker, making sure to get all the brownish bits off the bottom of the skillet.

Stir in the cooked beans and 3 cups water.

Cover and cook on low for 7 hours.

Season with salt and pepper. Drizzle a little red wine vinegar in if needed to balance the sweetness, or a little olive oil for richness.

Serves 8

The red peppers and onions before going in the slow cooker.

Chickpea Salad

Bean salads are the ultimate portable vegetarian lunch. They are high in protein and fiber from the beans, vitamins and minerals from the vegetables and herbs, and don't need to be kept refrigerated — although an ice pack in the lunch bag is a good idea.

This week, we're taking this chickpea salad with cilantro and celery to work. It doesn't have a lot of dressing on it, so we're less likely to drip oil on our shirts, and it's full of fresh flavors and crunchy textures that make it a pleasure to eat.

You can take this recipe as a guide and switch out ingredients depending on what is in your fridge: parsley and mint for the cilantro, green peppers and radishes for the celery, scallions for the red onion. With bean salads, the possibilities are endless.

I particularly like the munchiness of chickpeas, but I've yet to find a dried bean that doesn't make a good salad. The key is to cook them until they are tender, not mushy. You can use canned beans, of course, but they don't taste quite as good.

Dried beans are worth getting to know. If you have a pressure cooker, you can cook up a batch of chickpeas in under half an hour. Or you can cook them in the slow cooker overnight. Or simmer them for a few hours on the back burner of the stove. Extra beans can be frozen, although when they're defrosted they're better in stews and soups than in salads — the freezing makes them a little mushy.

Once the beans are cooked, it's a snap to toss them with dressing and vegetables for a mouthwatering dish that will fill the lunch box for a few days.

Chickpea Salad
1 cup dried chick peas (or 2 cans)

1 1/2 cups chopped celery

1/3 cup chopped cilantro leaves

2 tbsp chopped red onion

salt and pepper

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

Cook and drain the chickpeas. Put them in a bowl and add the two vinegars and plenty of salt and pepper. Let come to room temperature.

Stir in the celery, cilantro and red onion. Toss well. Pour the olive oil over top and toss again.

Serves 4-6.

Sunday Shopping

It was warm even in the early morning at the Hollywood Farmers Market today. Many stalls were surrounded by netting, and others have it draped over some of their produce in efforts to discourage the foreign fruit fly. It added to the strangeness of the shopping experience.

Here's a list of the organic food we came home with:
1 shallot, 2 onions, 1 red onion, 1 green pepper, 3 red peppers, cherry tomatoes, Mike's Firehouse pepper jack cheese, 2 potatoes, 1 garlic, watermelon, ambrosia melon, orange lipstick peppers, radishes, celery, cilantro, 12 oranges, 2 dozen eggs from Rocky Canyon Farms.

Butternut Squash Risotto

We harvested our two ripe honeynut squash yesterday, and turned them into this delicious risotto for dinner.

I don't think I've ever eaten such fresh winter squash — 3 hours from garden to table — and they were sweet and yummy.

In the past I've made this risotto with older butternut squash and it was great too.

Of course, it is hard to go wrong with risotto, especially if you use excellent vegetable stock.

Butternut Squash Risotto

1/2 cup finely diced onion

3/4 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded and chopped in 1/2" pieces (about 1 3/4 cups)

1/2 tbsp butter

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 cups arborio rice

1/4 cup white wine

3-4 cups vegetable stock

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground white pepper
few grinds black pepper

1/4 cup parmesan

Melt the butter and olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion and squash. Cook over medium heat until the onions are translucent.

Bring the stock to a boil and keep it warm over low heat in a covered saucepan.

Add the arborio rice to the onions and squash and let it toast slightly, stirring a few times, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in the salt and white pepper.

Add the white wine. Stir a few times until it is evaporated. Add a ladleful of stock. Stir. Let the stock absorb into the rice, then add more stock. Keep adding stock, stirring, and letting it simmer until it's absorbed by the rice. Then add more.

When the rice is tender, add a few grinds of black pepper and the parmesan, and serve.

Serves 2-3

Spaghetti Squash Tacos

The most surprising thing I've learned in this summer of broadening my barbecue skills is that spaghetti squash cooked on the grill is mouthwateringly delicious.

So when I saw barbecued spaghetti squash tacos on the menu at 38°Alehouse and Grill on Saturday night, I had to give them a try.

(It's too hot to sit outside and eat, let alone grill, so this was our Labor Day barbecue. Larry had a burger.)

The spaghetti squash was cooked, shredded, and dowsed in a lot of spicy-sweet barbecue sauce. It actually looked a little like shredded pork, but not enough to gross me out.

Pickled onions, guacamole, salsa — they were great tacos. I'm going to have to do more experimenting with spaghetti squash.

Sunday Shopping

It was hot and muggy at the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning. We rushed our shopping and left by 8:15 a.m., feeling bad for the farmers who'll be there all day.

It's too hot to sit around a grill so we will forgo our traditional Labor Day barbecue. We stocked up on salad items and on fresh ginger root for refreshing cold ginger tea.

Here's what we brought home with us:
2 onions, 1 cup cremini mushrooms, 5 shallots, 1 red onion, 4 large tomatoes, 2 lbs ginger root, 1 cucumber, 3 red chiles, 1 muskmelon, 3 orange lipstick peppers, cherry tomatoes, 2 gala apples, 1 dozen eggs, feta, 3 grapefruit, 1 romaine lettuce, 12 oranges, 3 yellow onions.

Heirloom Tomato Risotto

The risotto is almost cooked.

With this excessive heat, the leaves on our tomato plants are turning brown and crumbling, the eggplants are wilting and the zucchini have stopped flowering. I head out in the evening to spray water on their leaves, but it evaporates almost as soon as it lands.

Last night I picked all our remaining tomatoes — ripe and almost ripe — and made this risotto. It's one of our favorites, and I only make it in late summer when the tomatoes are rich and lush. I add some less ripe ones to get a little acid in the mix. It's truly scrumptious.

Usually I peel the tomatoes, which is easy — see how I do it here. But I'd just gone outside in 100° temperatures to pick the tomatoes. I had no desire to stand over a pot of boiling water. So we had barely noticeable little rolled up pieces of tomato peel in our risotto.

Of course, as with all risottos, an excellent stock is necessary. My favorite is one I make in the slow cooker — first roasting the vegetables to create a wonderful deep flavor. You can find my recipe for it here. I always have a few cups stashed in the freezer. It's so deeply concentrated that I use half stock and half water in risotto, and an even smaller proportion of stock in soup.

Heirloom Tomato Risotto
1 lb 8 oz heirloom tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil, divided use
1/2 tbsp butter
1/2 onion, chopped
3 - 4 cups stock (or combination of water and stock)
1 1/4 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 tbsp chopped basil
1/4 cup parmesan

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 1/2 tbsp butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and a dash of salt and cook until the onion starts to turn golden, 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a separate saucepan, bring the stock to a gentle simmer.

Add the rice to the onion, stirring until each grain is coated with oil. Pour in the wine, stir, and let simmer until the wine is absorbed. Then start adding stock, 1/2 cup at a time, letting it absorb before adding more. Stir a little, but not constantly.

Meanwhile, peel the tomatoes if desired. Then core and chop them into 1 1/2 inch chunks, saving the juice. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a small skillet. Cook the garlic a minute until fragrant, then add the tomatoes and their juice along with some salt. Simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring only a couple of times. Set aside until you're ready to use it.

About 15 minutes after adding the rice to the skillet, pour in the cooked tomatoes and their juices. Stir and let cook until the rice is tender and the risotto is moist and loose.

Remove from the heat and stir in the basil and parmesan.

Serve with extra parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.

Serves 2-3