Grilled Zucchini and Onions

The zucchini plants we grew from seed have started producing, which is exciting. Expect many zucchini recipes to be showing up this summer, because zucchini tends to be prolific. Fortunately there are many ways to enjoy them.

The other day I barbecued chunks of zucchini and slices of red onion. Tossed with fresh mint and thyme from the garden, they made a great dinner alongside corn on the cob, potato salad and homegrown cherry tomatoes. Larry grilled some shisito peppers for us to munch on while the main courses were cooking.

Fresh vegetables eaten in the fresh air — summer is great.

Grilled Zucchini and Red Onions

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp chopped mint
1 tsp finely chopped thyme

1 small clove garlic, finely chopped

salt

3/4 lb zucchini, sliced in 1 inch rounds

1 large red onion, sliced in 1/2 inch rings

In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mint, thyme, garlic and a little salt. Set aside.

Barbecue the zucchini and onion until they're starting to brown. Turn them over and cook another few minutes. Put them in a large bowl.

Pour the dressing over the hot vegetables and toss to coat.

Cover the bowl and let the vegetables marinate in the dressing for about 10 minutes — this really increases the flavor. Toss the vegetables again and serve.

Serves 2-3

Sunday Shopping

The produce at the Hollywood Farmers Market in August is beautiful.

There are mounds of melons, piles of peaches and other stone fruit, a cornucopia of organic corn, and the first peppers are showing up.

The streets around the Hollywood Farmers Market are challenging to navigate — patrons of  tighty-whitey night were spilling out of a club on Cahuenga; we averted our eyes and headed off along Hollywood Blvd. toward the market. As we headed down Cosmo, we passed a homeless father and child sitting up in their sleeping bags and getting ready for the day.

Clubbers and homeless people co-exist in Hollywood on Saturday nights. I don't know what any of them think of us early morning farmers market-ers with our cloth shopping bags. But we all move past each other in our own spheres of existence.

Here's a list of the organic produce we brought home with us:

mini orange and red peppers, a reddish green pepper, tomatillos, cilantro, 4 jalapeños, 3 shiitake mushrooms, 3 cremini mushrooms, 1 bunch collard greens, 4 artichokes, shisito peppers, 12 oz shelled pistachios from Santa Barbara Pistachio Co, green grapes, 4 red potatoes, 2 avocados, cantaloupe, 12 oranges, 4 Williams' Pride apples, 2 zestar apples, and 2 dozen eggs. 

Morning Fruit

Our fig tree is producing a bumper crop this year — probably because of 18 inches of rain this winter. I've started adding them to our morning fruit.

This week we ate the last of our homegrown oranges with the first of our figs and a white melon I don't know the name of.

We really appreciate the diversity of fruit here in Southern California.

Peeling Tomatoes

Peeled tomatoes ready to be chopped and
added to a sumptuous sauce

When I made fresh tomato sauce last Sunday, I took the time to peel the tomatoes. Each time I start to do this, I wonder if it's worth it. But it really is. Little rolls of tomato peel would take away from the soft sultriness of this tomato sauce.

And really, peeling a few tomatoes takes but a minute.

First, bring a pot of water to the boil. Cut an "x" in the bottom of each tomato. Put the tomatoes in the boiling water.

Cook the tomatoes for 3 minutes until the skin

starts to peel back at the "x".

Scoop out the tomatoes and put them in a bowl of ice water

When they're cool enough to handle (30 seconds or so), take them from the water and pull the skin off with your fingers.

Zesty Potato Salad

When we barbecued last Friday, I was concerned the black bean burgers would be dry and boring so I made this zesty potato salad to go along side.

Fortunately the burgers were fine. But this potato salad almost stole the show. It has lashings of tabasco and mustard to make it interesting. I used our homemade keffir in the dressing — plain Greek yogurt is fine if you aren't growing your own keffir.

Zesty Potato Salad

2 lbs yukon gold potatoes
1 1/4 cups kefir

1/4 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

2 tsp tabasco

1 tsp dijon

1 tsp white wine vinegar

1/2 tsp salt

Scrub the potatoes well and cook them, whole, until tender all the way through. This will take 15 to 25 minutes depending on the size of your potatoes. Drain and let cool a little so you don't burn your fingers, then peel and cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces.

In a large bowl, combine all the remaining ingredients. Whisk together well.

Stir in potatoes. It will seem like a lot of dressing, but the potatoes will absorb much of it.

Cover and refrigerate to blend flavors. Add salt and pepper or more tabasco as needed.

Serves 6

Grilled Corn and Tomato Salad

The first few weeks of organic corn season, we simply cook it and munch it straight off the cob. I eat it plain. Larry uses butter, salt and pepper. Nothing fancy. We revel in sweet summer corn.

A couple of weeks in, I'm ready to start using corn in fancier preparations like this salad adapted from Elizabeth Orsini's book Garden to Grill.

I served this grilled corn and tomato salad with homemade black bean burgers on Friday night. It was a great combo — the salad was a juicy sweet contrast to the dense burgers — and the leftovers of the salad were great in my lunch the next day.

Larry grilled the corn and tomatoes, and I stirred them together with onions and lemon from the garden, romaine lettuce and feta.You can't go wrong with that.

Grilled Corn and Tomato Salad
2 medium plum tomatoes
2 ears corn
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 Egyptian walking onion stalk or scallion
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tbsp feta, crumbled into small dice
3-4 cups romaine lettuce, cut in bite-size pieces

Slice the tomatoes crosswise 1/2 inch thick. Shuck the corn. Brush all with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and grill over medium heat (hand held 6 seconds over grate). The tomatoes will take a couple of minutes on each side. The corn will take about 10 minutes — turn it occasionally.

Remove the vegetables from the grill and let cool slightly. Chop the tomatoes in bite-size pieces and put in a serving dish. Cut the kernels from the cobs and add as well.

Snip the Egyptian walking onion stalk into a small bowl. Add the garlic, lemon zest and lemon juice with a little more olive oil. Whisk well and pour over the tomatoes and corn. Toss well. Add the lettuce and feta, toss again and serve.

Serves 4

Black Bean Burgers

I've made many bean burgers over the years, but I've never cooked one on a barbecue because I feared they would fall apart.

Last Friday, continuing the expanding of my horizons inspired by Elizabeth Orsini's book From Garden to Grill, I made these black bean burgers and handed them to Larry to cook over the coals. He was dubious at first, but they did cook up beautifully.

Orsini says that the key to a making a veggie burger hold together is squeezing the vegetables dry before you add the beans: too much moisture and they fall apart. It seems quite obvious once she's said it, but since I spent my life trying to make burgers that were moist on the inside, it never occurred to me.

These burgers did hold together well on the grill, but I thought they were dry on the inside. Larry didn't. (He put our homemade salsa on his burger — maybe that's the secret.)

We didn't use buns. Instead we saved room for the sides: grilled shisito peppers, green beans from our garden, and a great salad of grilled corn and tomatoes also inspired by From Garden to Grill.

We only grilled two of the four burgers this recipe makes. We kept the others in the fridge to eat at another barbecue Sunday night. There's nothing like eating outside on summer evenings.

Black Bean Burgers
2/3 cup black beans (or 1 14-oz can)
1 stick celery
1/4 cup chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 eggs
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp chili powder
1 cup bread crumbs

Rinse the black beans and cook until tender (about 20 minutes in the pressure cooker or 90 minutes simmering on the stove). Make sure they're soft before you drain them. Drain the beans and pour them onto a kitchen towel. Roll them up and press gently to dry them.

Use a food processor to chop the celery, red onion and garlic very fine. Pour them into a strainer and squeeze out the excess water (your plants will enjoy the water).

Put the beans in a large bowl and mash with a potato masher until only a few lumps remain. Stir in the drained vegetables.

Whisk the eggs with the cumin and chili powder. Stir into the bean mixture. Stir in the bread crumbs. The mixture should hold together well.

Divide the mixture into 4 and shape into patties. Put on a plate, cover with wax paper, and refrigerate at least 30 minutes (or up to a couple of days) until ready to cook on the grill.

Grill over high heat (hand can be held over the rack for 4 seconds) for about 8 minutes per side.

Serve with salsa or ketchup. Avocado would be great too.

Serves 4.

Summer Eggs

When we got home from the Hollywood Farmers Market on Sunday, Larry started squeezing oranges for juice while I headed into the garden to pick basil and tomatoes for this brunch dish that is only as good as the tomatoes it's made with.

I poached eggs in a simple sauce of tomatoes and basil, then served it with fresh baguette and butter to sop up the sauce.

Summer on a plate.

Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1 lb ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup thick kefir or Greek yogurt or crème fraîche
1/4 cup chopped basil
4 eggs

Warm the oil in a small skillet. (I use an 8-inch stainless steel skillet.) Sauté the garlic until fragrant, then add the tomatoes. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes have broken down and are juicy. Add the kefir and cook another 3 minutes or so until thickened. (Kefir and yogurt might crack but they still look and taste delicious.) Stir in the basil and season with salt and pepper.

Spread the sauce evenly in the pan, make 4 slight indentations, and crack the eggs into them. Cover and cook until the whites are set but the yolk is still runny, about 5 minutes.

Serve the eggs with lots of sauce and baguette and butter on the side.

Serves 2

(Make sure to eat all of it at one sitting — that won't be difficult. It does not keep well because the egg white moves through the sauce — fine for breakfast but weird to pour over spaghetti later.  You can reserve some of the sauce before putting the eggs in. It's great over pasta or rice. Or on bruschetta. Or eaten with a spoon. Simple is so often the best.)

Sunday Shopping

We drove my new car — a 2014 Nissan Leaf — to the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning. I confess to a little snootiness as we drove past the Prius-es (combustion engine — so yesterday) parked on Cahuenga.

I was so excited to drive my electric car that I forgot to take our grocery money — the ones and fives Larry goes into the bank to get each week because farmers appreciate not having to break twenties. Fortunately Larry had cash in his wallet so we could buy the week's vegetables. As a thank you, I let him drive my car home.

Electric car, cloth shopping bags, re-used plastic produce bags, and lots of organic fruits and vegetables. No wonder we live in LA.

Here's what my excellent car carried home for us:
a small watermelon, 7 early girl tomatoes, 4 red potatoes, a cucumber, a head of garlic, a romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, a green pepper, 2 o'henry peaches, 2 dozen eggs, a demi baguette, 6 ears of organic corn, 2 avocados, 1 pomelo, a bag of limes I bought before I found out Jorge had limes so I bought 3 from him too, 12 oranges,  6 Bramley apples and 4 Williams Pride apples.

The Bramleys (English cooking apples my grandmother loved) and William's Pride were the first new apples of the season. That's a reason to celebrate in itself.

Isn't summer great?

Eggs with Green Chiles

I'm busy using the roasted poblanos from my freezer before this year's crop comes to market.

On Sunday, I added one to our scrambled eggs. Yum — spicy eggs are great with sourdough toast and breakfast potatoes.

Eggs with Green Chiles
2 tbsp chopped onion
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp butter
1 poblano, roasted and peeled
1 tomato, seeded and diced
6 eggs
1/2 tsp salt

Sauté the onion and garlic in butter until tender. Add the diced poblano and tomato and let cook until warmed through.

Beat the eggs with the salt until creamy. Add to the pan and cook, stirring regularly, until the eggs are cooked through.

Serves 2-3

Breakfast Potatoes

While our Sundays start with the stress of driving the 110 freeway at 7:30 a.m. en route to the Hollywood Farmers Market, once we've power-shopped and made it home our morning becomes more relaxed.

Larry squeezes oranges for fresh juice while I cook up some variation of eggs and potatoes. Then we settle down with the Sunday papers for a leisurely meal.

Last Sunday I made breakfast potatoes that were similar to what you'd find at a Mexican restaurant. I served them with spicy scrambled eggs and sourdough toast. I always make too many of these potatoes because the leftovers make great potato tacos.

Breakfast Potatoes
3 large yukon gold potatoes (1 1/4 lbs)
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup coarsely chopped onion
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1 tbsp chopped cilantro

Peel the potatoes and cut in 1/4 inch dice.

Warm the oil in the bottom of a large cast iron skillet. It should shimmer as it coats the bottom of the pan. Add the potatoes and a spoonful of water. Cover the skillet and let the potatoes cook until almost tender, about 10 minutes. Stir them occasionally. They will stick to the pan and create wonderful browned crusty bits.

When they're almost cooked, stir in the onion and green pepper. Season with salt and cook, covered, until the green pepper is tender.

Sprinkle on some black pepper and the cilantro. Serve hot.

Serves 4


Potato Tacos
Combine leftover breakfast potatoes with some grated cheese, a diced roasted red pepper, lime juice, extra cilantro and onion if you like. Season well. Put the filling on tortillas — I used a wheat/corn tortilla the other day — pressing it about 1/4 inch thick. Cover with another tortilla. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Put the tortillas in. (Commercial potato tacos are fried in oil which gives them a crunchy exterior. These are cooked on a dry skillet, more like a quesadilla. But you can still get a decent crunch on the outside.) Cook until they are browned on the bottom, then flip them and cook the other side. Serve hot with salsa or guacamole.

(We ate them all before I remembered to take a photo.)

Grilled Romaine

I've heard of grilled lettuce but I've never eaten it. So while I was expanding my horizons with grilled spaghetti squash, I thought I'd try lettuce too.

We had a big beautiful romaine lettuce from Finley Farms. I cut it in half lengthwise and sprinkled the cut side with salt and pepper and some Jerk seasoning I found in the cupboard.

Then I placed the lettuce on the grill cut side down, put the lid on, and let it cook a few minutes until it was slightly wilted and charred.

I let it cool a little and then chopped it. It made a lovely side salad — rich and smoky with some crunch from the ribs and soft warmth from the leaves.

I'm learning that barbecuing vegetables can be quite fun.

Expanding our Barbecue Horizons

Larry recently brought home a fun book on barbecuing vegetables. It's called From Garden to Grill by Elizabeth Orsini.

The conceit is that each recipe can be altered slightly to make it vegan or paleo or gluten-free, so the cook can feed a diverse group with minimal difficulty.

I browsed through it for inspiration before we took our weekly trip to the Hollywood Farmers Market.

There, at one of the organic farm stalls we frequent, I noticed the first spaghetti squash of the season. I told the farmer that I was going to barbecue it. He allowed as to how grilled banana squash is one of his favorites, so he wasn't taken aback at the idea of grilling spaghetti squash.

Larry was. He buys me a huge beautiful book on barbecuing vegetables and I find a spaghetti squash recipe! But I promised him corn and potato salad, and he agreed grilling squash would be an interesting experiment.

Well, I have to say, grilled spaghetti squash is awesome. We use charcoal briquettes — the regular kind from the grocery store — not gas. I don't know if that was the difference, but the squash was smoky and mellow and somehow rich - completely different to the oven-baked kind.

It was simple to cook. I washed the outside of the squash, cut it in half lengthwise and scooped out the seeds. I rubbed the cut part with olive oil and sprinkled on some hot paprika, salt and pepper. Then I placed it skin side down on the grill, put the lid on, and let it cook for 20-30 minutes until it was tender. (Fortunately Larry came home partway through and showed me how to adjust the air vents on the grill to increase the heat.)

While it was cooling enough to handle, I warmed some halved cherry tomatoes with olive oil and garlic in a skillet on the grill. Then I scraped the flesh from the squash into a bowl, tossed in the cherry tomatoes and sprinkled some basil on top.

Of course, food eaten outside always tastes better. But I think this spaghetti squash was the best I've ever eaten. Even Larry had second helpings.

Safe Travels

Most of the stone fruit we buy at the Hollywood Farmers Market is not completely ripe. It transports better that way, and at home I ripen it at room temperature for a couple of days before we eat it.

However, the tiny peaches at Mud Creek Ranch are ripe and fragrant and delicate. They are wonderful to eat but difficult to carry through the market in our shopping bags without crushing a few.

Fortunately, Larry came up with a great solution. He washed a cardboard container with a nice lid (from the Whole Foods salad bar) and now carries it to the market with bubble wrap and an elastic band.

At the stall, I line the box with bubble wrap, carefully arrange the tiny peaches inside, and secure the lid with the elastic band.

Larry puts the box in the bottom of a cloth bag where it will stay upright as we jostle our way through the market buying more food.

The peaches arrived home in great shape.

Shopping at the farmers market is a little more difficult than pushing a cart around a superstore, but the produce selection is worth it. And with a little forethought, all the produce can arrive home looking as great as it did on the farm stands.

Sunday Shopping

As we were walking towards the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning, I asked Larry to make sure I did not buy any melons. We still have 2 small ones and half a watermelon in the fridge from last week's unrestrained melon purchasing.

It's tough not to buy melons when there are so many beautiful ones at the market, but with Larry's help I resisted. Here's what we came home with:

8 yukon gold potatoes, 1 red onion, kale, 2 roma tomatoes, 2 early girl tomatoes, 6 corn, 3 small avocados, 2 pink lady apples, 9 oranges, cherry tomatoes, shisito peppers, Elberta peaches, 3 nectarines, 2 yellow peaches, feta, eggs, 1 green pepper, broccoli, little gem lettuce

Lemons

There was a lemon tree in our backyard when we moved in. We don't know what variety it is, only that it produces lots of flavorful lemons.

Sometimes, it grows an extra-large lemon, like the one on the right. The fruit will have thicker peel and pith than a regular lemon, but will have the same bright tart flavor we enjoy.

Most of its lemons are normal size, like the one on the left which looks just like the regular Eureka lemons you can buy at a grocery store.

And others from this tree are more globe-like, like the one in the middle which fell to the ground this morning.

All from the same tree. Nature really does deplore uniformity. Good thing I do too.

Morning Fruit

This week we've been eating a lot of melon in our morning fruit. Here is a mixture of pink grapefruit, green melon, white melon, watermelon and some tiny peaches.

Organic Celery

When I see organic celery at the Hollywood Farmers Market, I always grab a bunch.

Celery is one of the vegetables which contains heavy pesticide residue if not grown organically. There are months of the year I don't use celery because it disappears from the organic stalls at the market.

When I get a bunch home, I cut the leaves off so they don't draw juiciness from the stalks. Usually I add the leaves to the compost heap. I never feel bad about composting organic vegetables — my own vegetable garden appreciates the food.

However the other day I tried something new. I rinsed and dried the leaves, double-bagged them, and threw them in the freezer. I'll use them straight from the freezer in soups and stews. They'll add the celery flavor — a slight bitterness — although not the texture of the celery stalks.

And when I make vegetable stock this week, I'll use some of the frozen leaves in place of the precious stalks of celery I usually add.

Risotto with Kale

Arborio rice, white wine, rich vegetable stock — risotto is a simple supper that requires good ingredients and a little patience. Served with a crisp salad, it's a lovely meal to linger over on these long summer evenings.

The other night I added shredded lacinato kale to the risotto. It added a slight kale flavor and lovely deep flecks of green.

It's hard to make risotto for 2 people. I always make extra and serve the leftovers the next day as risotto patties (squashed together like burgers — with a beaten egg if the rice falls apart too much— covered in bread crumbs, and fried in a little olive oil).

The key, of course, is a good stock. I recommend making your own. I have a couple of recipes on this blog. You can find them here and here.

Risotto with Kale
3 1/2 cups vegetable stock — I used 1 1/2 cups of my best roasted vegetable stock and 2 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
1 bunch lacinato kale (also called dinosaur or Tuscan kale or cavolo nero)
1 1/4 cups chopped onion
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp unsalted butter
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup grated parmesan

Bring the stock and 3 1/2 cups water to a boil in a large pot. (This will be a total of 7 cups of liquid.) Add a sprinkle of salt. Cut the thick stems from the kale and throw the leaves into the boiling stock. Simmer it until tender, about 5 minutes. Lift out the kale, squeeze it well, and let it cool. Chop it coarsely.

Keep the pot of stock simmering gently, covered.

Cook the onion in the olive oil and 1 tbsp butter over low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Raise heat to moderate and add the garlic. Cook, stirring, one minute. Then add the rice and cook, stirring, until all the grains are coated with the oil.

Stir in the wine and let the risotto simmer a couple of minutes while the rice absorbs the wine. Then start adding the simmering stock, stirring in about 1/2 cup at a time, letting the rice simmer gently as it absorbs the liquid. Don't stir so much the grains of rice become pasty. Let it simmer and keep an eye on it, stirring in more liquid as needed. You might not use all the stock. The rice should be creamy-looking but still al dente. This will take under 20 minutes.

Stir in the kale, parmesan, and remaining tablespoon of butter. Let it all heat through, then season with salt and lots of pepper. Add more broth if necessary to thin it.

Serve in heated shallow bowls.

Serves 4

Sunday Shopping

It was overcast at the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning, but boy was it ever crowded. I left 3 knives with Russ to sharpen as we power-shopped. We bought a watermelon at our first stop. Melon season is good for the arm muscles. And the Koda Farms stand was there, so 5 lbs of their heirloom organic brown rice went into our shopping bags. A few melons and pomelos later we were ready to stagger to the car.

This is the organic produce that weighed us down:
corn on the cob, eggs, romaine lettuce, avocados, pomelos, early girl tomatoes, yukon gold potatoes, watermelon, white nectarines, yellow onions, pink lady apples, spaghetti squash, cantaloupe, white Japanese melon, pia solis melon, tiny peaches, brown rice