There was a time when I cooked bulgur several times a month.  The par-boiled and ground wheat was cheap, filling, and a great base for one-pot meals with vegetables and chicken.

I loved the mild, nutty flavor and nicely chewy texture.  But bulgur slipped out of my repertoire when I began experimenting more in the kitchen and homey pilafs gave way to sophisticated risottos.

This winter, though, I’ve rediscovered the simple pleasures of the quick-cooking grain in my quest to put more whole grains on our plates.  Prepared in the style of a risotto with mushrooms, butternut squash and spinach, it makes a terrific entree for Meatless Monday or a side dish for grilled meat.

Bulgur is a staple in the Middle East and  may well have been the first convenience food.   Archaeologists date the cereal back at least as far as Bulgaria in 5900 BC,  where it was pre-cooked and dried before being ground, much as it is today.

You may have eaten it in tabouleh or kibbeh, the meatballs popular throughout Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.  It retains most of its nutrients and is a far better source of protein and fiber than brown rice  Look for it in the bulk bins of natural foods stores or in the supermarket cereal aisle alongside the steel-cut oats and seven-grain blends.

Unlike many whole grains, bulgur cooks in 20 minutes or less.  It can be soaked in boiling water or simmered in chicken broth.  Vegetable broth is a good alternative but makes for a slightly sweeter dish.

I give the grain a risotto treatment — minus the constant stirring — in this pilaf of winter vegetables.  Half a cup of dry white wine, stirred in after the bulgur cooks for a few minutes, makes all the difference in the finished dish.  Baby spinach is added in the last five minutes for the nutritional blessings of greens without all the prep work of kale and chard.

Bulgur has earned a prominent place in my pantry once again.

The poor radish gets no respect in America.  We take it for granted, barely registering its crisp snap and remarking only when it gets a little too spicy for comfort in the scorching hot days of summer.  It’s merely the supporting actor in the garden salad, the splash of color on the crudité platter.

The French, however, have long appreciated the humble roots for their satisfying texture and gentle bite, serving them with sweet butter and sea salt.   Asian cooks treasure the more pungent varieties for pickles and stir fries.

I say it’s time to give radishes their due on this continent.    They’re the stars in this winter salad, which makes the most of what’s in season right now.

Although radishes are year-round vegetables in Northern California, they like cool weather.  They’re at their crunchy best right now with none of the bitterness that sometimes marks summer radishes. Any of the many varieties should work well for this salad.  I used the common red radishes with bright white flesh, which are easy to find.

The English cucumber they’re paired with is a hot house product at any time of the year.  I get mine from the Nagamine family, who grows them in Watsonville greenhouses and sells them at local farmers markets.

Inspiration for the salad came from Nigel Slater’s “Kitchen Diaries” (Gotham Books, 2006).  I made some key alterations, though, substituting lemon juice for red wine vinegar, introducing a bed of peppery arugula and omitting the feta cheese.  Feta is nice, but not essential to the salad.  Feel free to crumble some on top if you have it on hand.

One bite of this salad and you’ll feel like spring has arrived ahead of schedule.

One of the best gifts I received over the holidays was an introduction to this kale salad. I spotted it in the deli case when I was shopping at my local natural foods store a couple of days after Christmas and bought a quarter pound on a whim.

It was an instant hit.  My family and I began nibbling on little bits of sesame seed flecked Kale right out of the carton as soon as we got home and it never made it to the dinner table.

With all the crunchy textures and savory Asian flavors, the dish reminded me of the seaweed salad I always order at sushi bars. Most of the ingredients were readily identified—raw kale, red onion, sunflower sprouts and a trio of pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds. I wasn’t sure about the dressing, though.  It tasted a lot like soy sauce, yet not quite.

After New Year’s, I contacted Naomi Dresser at New Leaf Community Markets, a small chain of natural foods grocers in the Santa Cruz area.  The Coastal Kale Salad is one of the store’s favorites, Dresser said, and she was happy to share the ingredients. But New Leaf does not give out recipes.

A web search, however, brought up several mentions of a kale salad with very similar ingredients in “Esalen Cookbook,” by Charlie Cascio (Gibbs Smith, 2006). I used that recipe as a guide for some of the proportions in mine.

The mystery ingredient turns out to be Bragg’s Liquid Amino, a soybean based condiment long favored by health food advocates.  I don’t have any on my shelves, so  I’ve used tamari, a mellow cousin of soy sauce that is derived from miso paste.  Its salty, savory character gets a lift from the lemon juice and olive oil in the vinaigrette.

Although any variety of kale would work in this salad, I like it best with Tuscan kale, known as cavolo nero in Italy.  The leaves are more tender and the flavor a little more mellow than ordinary curly kale.

They’re also easier to handle.  You just fold each leaf lengthwise and strip it from the center stem.  Stack the leaves in thick bunches and slice them crosswise into narrow ribbons, which tenderize more quickly in the lemony dressing.  To speed up the tenderizing process, you also can squeeze and massage the leaves vigorously for a couple of minutes after pouring on the dressing.

Or just let the dressed leaves stand for half an hour or so before serving.  Unlike most salads, this is better when it’s made ahead of time.  The leaves get softer but don’t wilt.  So it’s even good after a night in the refrigerator.

Kale salad is going to be a regular on my dinner menus this winter.

I’ve begun to dread any recipe that starts with cutting up a winter squash.  Every time I slice open a butternut squash, I worry that I’m either going to break a knife blade or slash a finger before I’m done.  Kabocha squash, which I love, is even more of a challenge.

So it was a pleasant surprise when I sliced into a delicata squash for the first time this year.  The knife just slipped right through the thin skin and tender flesh.  The heirloom squash didn’t even require peeling.

The flavor was wonderful, too — a little milder than butternut, but sweet and rich with a creamy texture.  It’s ideal for this beautiful salad I found in one of my favorite new cookbooks, “Eat Good Food,”  by BiRite Market owner Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough (Ten Speed Press, 2011).

The combination of roasted squash and fingerling potatoes with peppery arugula, pomegranate seeds and Parmesan is as delicious as it is colorful.  I’m planning to serve it with a pork roast for Christmas dinner.

The delicata squash looks a bit like a reverse image of its summer cousin, the zucchini.  It’s sausage-shaped and rather small with green stripes on yellow skin.  The flavor is so nice, it needs little embellishment.  Roast the slices with a little olive oil and salt until the edges begin to caramelize and  you’ve got a great side dish .

For this recipe, the squash and potatoes are sliced fairly thin for quick roasting.  Then they’re tossed with the arugula and pomegrante seeds in a vinaigrette made with champagne vinegar and shallots.  A dish this substantial could be served as a vegetarian entree but I think of it as salad and starch in one.  Just add protein, bread and a nice wine for a complete winter’s feast.

We’ve had a harsh introduction to winter in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I live.

Ferocious winds buffeted the redwoods surrounding my house for three days and nights last week, uprooting a huge tree just up the road, knocking down a utility pole and sending a long limb crashing through a skylight in the living room.  The power was out for four days and the DSL just returned.

We’ve lived here a long time and we’re used to the electricity going out in the middle of big storms.  We have a generator to keep the refrigerator, freezer and a couple of lamps running.  But cooking becomes a challenge when the oven doesn’t work and you have to wear a backpacker’s headlamp to see clearly what you’re chopping.

I was grateful to have a beautiful red kabocha squash sitting on the kitchen counter when the lights went out.  With a little curry paste, chicken stock and some coconut milk from the pantry, it made a spicy but soothing soup to improve our mood during a difficult week.

Of course it helps if you happen to have a squash on your counter and some Asian ingredients in your pantry.  But this soup is so simple and flavorful, it’s worth stocking up for future emergencies. The Asian ingredients are commonplace in supermarkets now and hard-skinned winter squashes keep for quite a while in a cool, dry place.

The inspiration for this dish comes from the gardening/cooking journal, “Tender,” by Nigel Slater (Ten Speed Press, 2009).  Slater is a gifted British cook who writes about the down-to-earth food that real people eat.  His book is my go-to reference for interesting recipes using fresh produce.

Since the red kabocha, often called Japanese pumpkin, is an especially sweet and meaty winter squash, I was pretty sure it would work in the “pumpkin laksa for a cold night,” based on a traditional Malaysian soup.  Butternut squash would work, too, although the flavor is not as rich.

To save time and energy, I steamed the flesh unpeeled.  It was much easier to cut away after it had softened in the steam.  I also added baby spinach leaves to give the soup enough substance for a one-dish meal.

Slater probably would be appalled that I’ve substituted jarred curry paste for the homemade version in his recipe.  I’m sure his would be far better, too, but I didn’t have those ingredients on hand.

The first time I made this soup, I wildly overestimated the appropriate amount of commercial curry paste and produced an almost inedible concoction.  Even my husband, who loves fiery food, found it hard to finish a bowl.

I may have erred on the side of caution with this recipe, so feel free to add more if it’s too mild for you.  The spices add a warming tingle to the creamy soup accented with lime.

When temperatures drop and winds blow, this is just the soup to have in your repertoire.

I know I’m taking a risk here.  Many a Thanksgiving dinner guest insists that the only true cranberry sauce comes out of a can in a jiggly cylinder, ridges and all.  Even those who prefer homemade sauce expect a sweet dish.

But I say there’s just way too much sugar on the menu for Turkey Day.   Something bright and savory would be a much better counterpoint to the mild bird and all those carbs.

This year, I’m offering cranberry salsa as an alternative to the desserts masquerading as side dishes.

It’s a sassy, festive dish designed to perk up appetites overwhelmed by so many sweet offerings. Chopped ginger, chile, onions and red peppers bring lively flavor and subtle heat to the familiar fruit.  And there’s still a bit of sugar to take the edge off the berries’ tart bite.

Adding to its appeal, this dish comes together quickly in a food processor and tastes even better if it’s made a day ahead.

Obviously, switching this salsa for the usual sauce probably isn’t a good idea if your family clings to every tradition. But you might try putting it on the table, too, to shake things up a bit.

At the very least, try this salsa with leftovers.  Turkey sandwiches will never be the same.

Pie season is upon us.  For the next couple of months, even cooks who live in fear of pastry will be putting holiday pies on the table to satisfy their families’ taste for tradition.  Far too many of those pies will be baked in crusts that come from the supermarket freezer.

As a recovering pastry phobe myself, I’m going to share a secret here.  Homemade pie crust is truly a snap if you let the food processor do most of the work.  I rely on a foolproof recipe we found in an old cookbook dating back to the early days of those amazing machines.  It’s been used so many times, the book’s broken spine automatically falls open to “Easy-As-Pie Crust.”

This dough is a miracle.  It’s simple to throw together, rolls out with very little fuss and bakes into a buttery crust that works for every kind of pie from apple to pumpkin.  I used it to make the cranberry-apple turnovers in the photo.

This crust is so good that my mother-in-law, who was legendary for her apple pies, always asked us to make it for her when she visited.  She filled each crust with a mountain of sliced tart apples and folded the sides up over the top like a galette.

The  key to the recipe is an  egg and a little lemon juice.  The egg binds the ingredients together for strength, which is important for these hand-held pies, and acid in the lemon juice keeps the crust tender and makes it easier to handle.  Although many cooks swear by shortening for a really flaky pie crust, I gladly sacrifice a little flakiness to get real butter flavor.

Just be sure to keep your ingredients cold and don’t process the dough too long.  As soon as it begins to clump together in a shaggy ball, it’s ready.

Since this crust isn’t that delicate, you don’t have to worry too much about overworking the dough when you roll it out.  Let it warm up a little after you take it out of the refrigerator, lightly flour a pastry board or counter and roll out from the center to about 1/8-inch thick.  It’s easiest to roll the pastry over the pin in order to lift it into the pie pan.

For these turnovers, I piled raw fresh cranberries and little cubes of  tart Newtown Pippin apples onto one side of a pastry circle, folded the crust over the top and sealed it before brushing with a little milk.  They puffed up and turned golden brown in the oven.

With the right crust, any form of pie is easier than you might think.

California olive oil has held a place of honor in my pantry ever since I attended my first olive oil tasting in 2006 and discovered an emerging community of producers in the Golden State.  It’s a key  ingredient in this great quinoa, pistachio and cherry salad, which I’ll get to later.

Five years ago, the best-known California oils were produced by small growers raising Tuscan varieties for artisanal oils with high prices.   I saved them for special dishes and salad dressings.  For everyday cooking, I still relied on supermarket brands of extra virgin oils from Italy.

That changed when I tasted my first mass produced oil from a large California grower that uses modern methods of harvesting and pressing. Here was a fruity, fresh tasting oil at a price low enough for everyday use.  Imported oils were banished from my shelves.  Most probably don’t meet strict international standards for extra virgin oil, anyway, according to a University of California, Davis study released last year.

My olive oil education took another step forward last week, when I was invited to experience the harvest at California Olive Ranch in Artois, nearly 100 miles north of the state capital in the heart of the Sacramento Valley.  The Ranch was a pioneer in the U.S. when it planted its first high-density orchards of semi-dwarf olive trees on 75 acres near Oroville in 1999.  It followed a modern Spanish model for planting trees along trellises and harvesting them mechanically, similar to the way wine grapes are handled.

Today, the company is the biggest olive oil producer in the nation and its moderately-priced oils are sold in supermarkets and specialty grocers from coast to coast.  It grows Spanish and Greek varieties of olives on three ranches with a total of 5,000 acres in addition to contracting with other farmers for fruit grown on more than 5,000 acres.  Its olives go from tree to extra virgin oil in a few hours, thanks to high tech mills. Every truckload is tracked from ranch to bottle.

I jumped at the opportunity to tour the orchards and see those mechanical harvesters in action — not to mention taste oil fresh off the tree.  The harvest starts in early October, when the olives begin to hit their peak oil content, and continues into November most years.

From a distance, the Artois orchard looks like rows of neatly trimmed hedges stretching toward the horizon.  Only when you get closer is it apparent that the hedges are actually closely planted trees, their tops trimmed flat at about seven feet tall, arranged in rows about five feet apart. Some 650 trees are planted per acre compared with 125 in traditional planting patterns.

Ungainly yellow harvesters, looking for all the world like sheds on wheels, roll up and down the rows at the pace of a brisk walker.  As they pass over the rows, the machines squeeze and shake the trees, harvesting all but a few olives without breaking the branches.

As a treat, ranch manager Adam Englehardt offered five other bloggers and me a chance to ride on one of the harvesters.  It was noisy, dusty and great fun to watch the olives collect in bins then move up a conveyor belt to be dumped in a trailer traveling alongside in the next row.

“It’s still a pretty new technology and it’s still being refined,” says Englehardt, who notes that only three varieties are suitable for this process now.  They’re the Spanish Arbequina and Arbosana varieties and the Greek Koroneiki.

Once they’re picked, the olives are rushed to the nearby mill, where they’re washed, sorted and pressed.  The oil emerges from the press in a brilliant green stream before being piped to 55-foot tall stainless steel tanks, where it settles before bottling.  It’s never filtered.

Much of the oil is blended into the company’s Everyday California Extra Virgin Olive Oil or the Miller’s Blend, which won best of class in the Armonia Olive Oil competition in Italy.  The rest goes into single variety Arbequina or Arbosana oils.

The majority of the olive oil pressed last week won’t see market shelves until next March.  The exception is a small Limited Reserve bottling of new oil—the olio nuovo prized by Italians — that will be shipped later this month.   In our tasting, the new Arbequina oil was grassy and fresh with a nicely aggressive pungency — that tingling sensation you sometimes get at the back of the throat when you taste extra virgin oil straight up.  If you’d like to try it, you can sign up for the waiting list.

My favorite of the standard bottles is the Arbosana, a complex oil with citrus undertones and a peppery kick.  It was perfect for the salad, pictured above, that I was tipped to by Kirsten Wanket, the California Olive Ranch’s marketing manager.

The recipe comes from Fran Gage’s “The New American Olive Oil” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009) and it more than lives up to Kirsten’s billing.   Gage toasts the quinoa before cooking, which brings out layers of flavor I’d never before found in the tiny South American grain.  My only change was substituting the dried cherries I had on hand for the dried cranberries in the original.  Both bring a bright, tart note to a salad that only gets better as it sits in the refrigerator for a day or so.

One of the delights of shopping at the farmers market is the baby lettuce I’ve been getting from Blue Heron Farms.  These small heads of Little Gem lettuce look like miniature romaine. They’re just as crisp and crunchy at the heart, too, but the leaves are tender and sweet.

Lettuce this good cries out for a simple treatment.  It should be the star of the salad bowl.

I’ve been serving it in a Caesar with a garlicky dressing made with Greek-style yogurt in the place of eggs. Normally, I don’t like to mess with classic recipes. But Caesar salad has been subjected to so much interpretation that I don’t feel too bad cheating on the dressing as long as the end result is as good as this one.

It’s not that a traditional Caesar dressing is that hard to make, but I’d rather not use raw eggs and barely coddling them is a little tricky.  A moment too long in the simmering water, and the yolks get too firm to whisk with the oil.

Yogurt solves that problem.  It also reduces the fat in the dressing and makes a nice emulsion. The key is to use non-fat Greek-style yogurt, which has the right texture, neither too thick or too thin.  It’s fairly easy to find in ordinary supermarkets now.

The dressing whirls together in a blender or food processor in no time.  I like it with the traditional anchovies, although Asian fish sauce is a good substitute in a pinch.  If you absolutely cannot abide the taste of salty fish, however, add a bit more Worcestershire sauce.

Use just enough dressing to lightly coat the salad.  You don’t want to obliterate the great fresh taste of the lettuce.

I can’t believe I nearly missed the best figs of the year.  I was out of town on family business during the height of the fabulous fruits’ late summer season in September. When I got back, the local harvest was almost over.

With any luck, however, luscious fresh figs should be available for another week or so in farmers markets and through the fall at specialty grocers. Let’s hope this week’s rains don’t wipe them out.  It would be a shame to miss at least one more opportunity to enjoy this easy fig tartlette.

The little tart is so simple that it hardly requires a recipe. The combination of buttery puff pastry, jammy figs and salty Gorgonzola is irresistible and works as well as an appetizer as dessert.  The figs soften and become even sweeter in the heat of the oven, so no sugar is required, although a little drizzle of honey after baking is a nice touch.

I’ve made these tartlettes with an almond cookie crust, which is quite nice, but frozen puff pastry is very good, too.  It’s also a frugal choice right now, when Trader Joe’s is selling boxes of all-butter pastry again for $3.99.

Just roll the sheet of pastry out, cut into squares and line a little tart tin or large muffin cup. Add quartered figs, crumbled blue cheese and a little cream, then bake.  That’s it.  No one will believe it was so easy.

Black mission figs

I’m such a big fan of figs now, it’s hard to believe there was a time when I wouldn’t even taste one.  My loathing stemmed from the squishy, sticky orbs we found rotting on the ground in a friend’s family orchard every summer when I was a child.  They were far better suited for missiles than for food.

As an adult, though, I finally screwed up my courage and took that first bite.   I was stunned by the soft, yielding texture and delicately sweet flavor with hints of honey and vanilla.  It was depressing to realize what I had been missing all those years due to my childish stubbornness.

More than most fruits, figs must be perfectly ripe or they  aren’t worth eating.  The fruit should be soft, moist and heavy for its size and feel a bit like a water balloon in your palm. Some cracking along the sides, slight wrinkling at the neck and a drop of syrupy juice at the blossom end are good signs.

Figs of every variety have two seasons.  The first small crop in late spring grows on branches that sprouted the previous year.  The main crop ripens in the long, hot days of August and September, producing more voluptuous fruit with richer flavors.

If you can’t find fresh figs for this tart, you might try making it with pears, which will be around for months.  The flavor will be more subtle but delightful nonetheless. Every fruit is best in its season.