I realize that a traditional pie is the first dish that pops to mind when you’re gazing on a shiny pile of  fall apples at the market.  Who can resist fat slices of freshly-picked fruit, dusted with cinnamon and tucked into a buttery crust?

But I get bored with the same old dishes and was intrigued by a reference to apple pizza I encountered while casting about for a new recipe.  It was made with puff pastry, though, which really doesn’t qualify as pizza in my book.  So I began experimenting with fresh pizza dough. Continue reading Apples on pizza? Why not? →

Time is running out.

If you want lovely little sugar plum cakes on your holiday table, you’ll need to preserve the fruit now, while fresh plums are still in season.   A few minutes of preparation today will pay off big at Christmas. Continue reading Plum perfect for the holidays →

This was not the greatest tomato season where I live. Until the last couple of weeks, the weather was just too cool for regular size tomatoes to ripen properly.  But the cherry tomatoes have been just fine.

So, more often than not, when I’ve wanted a  quick and easy pasta sauce with the tang of fresh tomatoes this season, I’ve turned to the beautiful little Sweet 100s or orange Sun Golds lined up in baskets at the farmers market.  Not only do they add a bright shot of flavor to every dish, they don’t need chopping or peeling. Continue reading Cherry tomatoes perk up pasta →

Meet one of my favorite kitchen helpers.

If I were heading off for college this fall, a rice cooker is the one appliance I would pack for the dorm.  No one-trick gadget, it can cook everything from macaroni and cheese to pot de creme.

Rice, of course, is what it does best.  I made rice in a saucepan for years and most of the time it came out just fine.  Now, however, everyone in my family can make good rice every time.  We also make terrific polenta, which only requires a few stirs while cooking. Continue reading Rice cooker to the rescue →

California mangoes are back in season at last.  Just in time, too.  I’ve been aching to make this black bean and mango salad but couldn’t bring myself to buy imported fruit.

Not only do imported mangoes travel thousands of miles to get to the local supermarket, they’re picked green and are usually bathed in hot water before they’re allowed into the U.S.  California mangoes, grown in the Coachella Valley, spend more time ripening on the trees. Many are even grown organically. Continue reading Mangoes are back →

2010 is going down in my books as the year of the fig.  Tomatoes may have disappointed, casualties of the unusually cool Northern California summer, but the figs have been magnificent.

Black Mission figs began arriving at the farmers market from the Central Valley a couple of weeks ago and we’ve been eating them out of hand, off the grill, or baked in this cake.  They’ve been exceptionally sweet and juicy.

Then the huge brown Turkey figs and delicate green Adriatic figs showed up and they’ve been wonderful, too. Continue reading Figs shine in Viennese cake →

Zucchini blossoms were the jewels of the market last week, fat bouquets of them piled on a farmers table, glowing green, gold and orange in the afternoon light.

We had come to the Watsonville farmers market in search of Mexican produce and found our share of glossy poblano peppers, leafy ezpazote to cook with beans and crunchy purslane, or verdolaga in Spanish.  But the gorgeous zucchini blossoms, celebrated all over the Mediterranean as well as in Latin America, were irresistible.  They’re only available in the market for a few weeks every year – about the time everyone has hit their limit of the prolific squash.  We went home with two bunches.

Not until we were driving home did I begin to think about what I would do with my treasures.  Continue reading Zucchini blossoms take a stuffing →

As much as I adore homemade jam, I’ve always considered it an enormous gamble.  The more I invested in time and ingredients the higher were the odds I would end up with a runny syrup or a rubbery mass better suited for Gummi Bears than toast.  Perfect preserves eluded me.

Neither the old-fashioned cookbooks I inherited from my mom nor the new crop of canning guides and web sites were much help.   Most of their recipes relied on commercial pectin and called for specific amounts of sugar and fruit, stated in cups.  All advised checking whether the jam had set by watching it drip off a spoon or cling to a chilled plate – imprecise measures at best for the uninitiated.

Then I ran across Russ Parsons’ advice in the Los Angeles Times this summer and everything began to make sense.  He offered a simple ratio for making small batches of jam using equal weights of sugar and whatever fruit you have on hand.  Because you cook a limited amount of preserves at a time in a non-stick skillet, it’s easy to tell whether it’s ready just by watching the syrupy mixture become thick and glossy as you stir.  Flavors are also fresher. Continue reading Jam making for the rest of us →

I didn’t grow up eating eggplant.  In my family, broccoli was about as exotic as produce got.  But I was hooked the first time I tasted the  Mediterranean vegetable in a slow-cooked ratatouille served by a friend.

Properly prepared eggplant is a luscious vegetable with the texture of velvet and a mild flavor that harmonizes beautifully with late season tomatoes and peppers. Throughout the summer, we often grill long, slender Asian eggplants to accompany a piece of fish or meat for dinner.

So I was intrigued by the idea of grilling the ingredients  for a Moroccan vegetable salad when I ran across an old recipe in my files from Jozseph Shultz, owner of the recently resurrected India Joze cafe in Santa Cruz.  His directions called for stir-frying the vegetables in a wok.

After a little research in Claudia Roden’s “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food,” (Knopff. 2000),  I decided to turn up the heat as well by seasoning the dressing with cumin and a touch of harissa, a fiery Moroccan chile paste now in available many markets.

The result is a lively salad packed with all the best flavors of late August.  Grilling adds a nice smoky note to the eggplant and brings out the sweetness of the peppers and onions.

This salad works well as a side dish at dinner but is substantial enough to serve as a light lunch or a vegetarian pot luck offering. Although it can be made ahead and refrigerated, I  like it best at room temperature.   Just take it out of the fridge about half an hour or so before serving to let the flavors blossom.

In the waning weeks of summer vacation, with the days already getting shorter and the first day of school on the horizon, few of us want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  Now is the time to make the most of the incredible bounty of the August garden.

I’m talking tomatoes, here, of course.  As far as I’m concerned, nothing compares to the deep, sun-warmed flavor and chin dripping juiciness of a freshly picked tomato.  Whether it’s a salty, smoky Cherokee Purple or a nicely acidic Early Girl, a good tomato needs very little help to make a good meal.

A couple of slabs of ripe tomato and a sprinkle of salt is the perfect mid-summer lunch.  Add toasted bread and a salty bit of cured pork and you have a simple feast of the season that crosses continents and cultures.  In America, it’s a BLT.  In Spain, it’s pan con tomate, or bread with tomato. Continue reading Bread and tomatoes for late summer feast →