Summer Swoon

Like a fool, I went on vacation. Why did I do it?! August is my favorite food time of year in Minnesota! Everything is ripe to bursting. All my favorite fruits and vegetables are peaking: corn, zucchini, tomatoes, basil, eggplants, cherries, berries, melons, peaches, and on and on and on.

I came home to an enormous CSA farm share full of impossibly lush corn, beans, tomatoes, peppers, basil, melons, and raspberries. I’m equal parts frantic and ecstatic, so the only reasonable thing to do is faint.

When I pick myself up off the floor, I will go straight to the kitchen and cook this stuff. Summer cooking should, in my opinion, be fresh and immediate. You should be able to march out to the garden in the middle of a recipe and pick something to put in the dish. The prep should be simple and the cooking time short.

Today’s blog is a twofer because I’ve been neglecting you all. I have here a pair of dishes with summer vegetables and their good friend olive oil.

Corn and Radish Salad
This recipe came out of the Southwest Journal a couple of years ago, and I tweaked it a bit. It’s a great thing to do with leftover corn on the cob. Ha! As if there’s ever anything left over of THAT.

Dressing for 4 cups of corn
A jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
Juice of ½ lime
1-2 t honey
¼ t ground cumin
¼ c olive oil
Salt and fresh ground pepper

Put these in the food processor or blender and liquefy them as you prepare the other ingredients.

The salad: Make it by the ear!
4 or 5 ears of cooked corn
6 radishes, halved and sliced (1 or 2 radishes per ear)
¼ c coarsely chopped Italian parsley (1 or 2 sprigs per ear)
1-2 T sliced or minced onion (a scant teaspoon per ear)

Slice the kernels off the cob. You do this by holding the cob on end and sawing a sharp knife down the side of the cob. Don’t dig too deep or you’ll cut into the cob; aim to cut off around three rows at a time.

Put all the salad ingredients in a bowl and toss them with the dressing. That’s all!

Zucchini Stewed with Tomato
Stewing a zucchini is not the same as stewing a chicken. It takes minutes, not hours. You can start this dish and throw it on the back burner while you toss a salad, and they will be done at the same time.

1-2 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
A pound of zucchini and/or pattypan squash, sliced into thick rounds
One or two large fresh tomatoes, chopped, or 1 to 2 cups of canned tomatoes (I found one jar left from last summer)
A handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large skillet and sauté the onion until translucent. Toss in the garlic and stir it around for a minute.

Add the squash and sauté until it begins to get tender, about four or five minutes. Add the tomatoes and, if needed, enough water so that the squash pieces are swimming just a little bit. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cover, stirring occasionally, for five minutes.

Have a look: the squash should be tender and the tomatoes should be thickened, not watery. If it is too soupy in there, uncover and cook off some of the water. Add the basil for the last minute of cooking, then season with salt and pepper.

Parsley Overload? Tabouleh Is the Answer

There's too much parsley!

My garden is full of lush, rich green, glossy Italian flat-leaf parsley. The little sprig from Dehn's Garden that I planted in springtime has erupted into a leafy mound, all but smothering its neighboring plants.

October comes this week, and I'm in a produce panic. If I don't use this parsley, then spiteful frosts will just take it all away from me. I'm madly trying to eat a whole summer's worth of fresh herbs in the dwindling weeks of warm weather that remain. How am I going to manage it?

Tabouleh to the rescue!

If you hunt around, you will find there is no one way to make (or spell) tabouleh. The common elements, though, are finely chopped vegetables, bulgur, oil, lemon juice, and fistful upon fistful of chopped herbs. This is one of the few dishes I know that features parsley instead of relegating it to sideshow status or including it as an also-ran aromatic. In tabouleh, parsley is no mere Miss Congeniality. It gets to stand in the spotlight and sing its own song. Its bracing, clean taste makes this light dish pop with fresh, green flavor and color.

If I were you, I'd march into the garden and scythe down a huge hank of parsley. If you don't, then winter will most assuredly do it soon. Tastes better this way, trust me.

Tabouleh

To measure whole herb leaves, pack as many into the cup as you can make fit. This will be a pretty good measure of how much chopped herb you'll get from them.

2 c boiling water
1 c bulgur
2 ripe tomatoes
1 small onion
2 c parsley leaves (or any giant bunch of parsley you have)
1 c mint leaves
1/3 c olive oil
1/3 c fresh lemon juice
Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Stir the bulgur into the boiling water (off the heat) and cover. Let sit for 1/2 hour.

Meanwhile, chop the onion and tomato finely. Chop up the parsley and mint too. Whisk the olive oil and lemon juice together.

When the bulgur is ready, put it in a sieve and press it to drain off the extra water. Put everything together in a bowl, add salt and pepper to taste, and mix it up thoroughly.

You can serve this chilled or room temperature. You can serve it on a bed of romaine if you are feeling particularly freaked out about summer being over.