Zucchini and Purple Potato Fritters

It's been a summer of fritter obsession. Weeks ago, we fell hard for zucchini fritters and ate them somewhat nonstop for an amount of time that I shouldn't fess up to. There was something about pillowy zucchini fritters with slices of juicy fat tomato on top, and cold beer on the side, that was so right for the endlessly hot days of August. 

Then, a few days ago, I discovered potato latkes and tumbled into another obsession—crispy crispy fried potato with the softest middles. Paired with nothing. Gobbled. And, probably not a good thing, so easy to make with ingredients we have an abundance of: egg, potato. 

We're in a crossover season, the blurring line between two things, the liminal, as I think a poem I loved on England Semester called it. Still tons of zucchini, eons of green tomatoes, and light long into the evening. But the garden is emptying, and all of our potatoes are in the garage, and today it was cool enough inside to want a fire in the wood stove. 

It is relentless and unavoidable, and so I give in. Okay, fall. Welcome. 

But today for lunch these fritters straddled the divide, one foot in summer, another in the season to come. It's zucchini fritters meets potato latkes: soft inside, crispy out. Delicious with cheese and garden tomato, or plum-cardamom butter smeared on top. Warming, and an ode to the zucchini days of summer. 

Two pounds zucchini, potatoes, and onion, grated. Don't fret about the ratio. Make sure the potatoes are amethyst purple, for fun. 

Add two teaspoons salt and let sit over a strainer for 20 minutes. Then press firmly with a spoon or your hands to squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Honestly, I cannot bring myself to dirty a dishtowel by wringing out the veg in it. 

Add two eggs, 1/2 cup flour (I used Bluebird Grains Einka) and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Mix. 

Fry in coconut oil in a hot cast iron skillet, 4 minutes per side. Keep them warm in a 250 degree oven, right on a sheet pan lined with foil, or a sheet pan lined with a wire rack if you prefer. 

Consume twelve 3-inch fritters with summery or autumnal toppings, wherever your heart lies these days. 

Quick Red Wine-Plum Sauce

After I harvested 40 or so pounds of plums the other weekend, I felt done with plums--so over stirring plum jam, content with the amount of plum butter in the pantry, and ready to move on.

But I didn't know that Italian prune season hadn't even begun yet. And seriously, they fall from the sky into the kitchen, and I just can't seem to say no or give them to the pigs.

Italian prunes, happily, are much simpler to process than the clingstone plums we've worked through earlier this summer. They are freestone, which means you make one short slit with a knife, pull the halves open with your fingers, and pluck out the pit.

Lsat night, we started a dehydrator full of them. Today, more plum butter. Both of those are starting to feel routine, but the plum compote Tim suggested we make last night has reinspired my feelings about plums. I do love plums. We used it on salmon, and tonight I think I'll try it again with goat. It's sweet and tart at the same time, and would be delicious on anything from chicken to pork to steak. Best of all, unlike dehydrated plums and plum butter, it takes barely any time to make.

Start by dicing up some plums. Maybe three to four per person. 

Put them in a small sauce pan, and add a glug of red wine, enough to cover the bottom. 

Throw some diced onion and a sprinkle of salt on top. Cover and simmer over medium-high heat for three minutes, until the plums are soft. Take off the lid and simmer for another three or four minutes, until you can drag a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan and the red wine won't rush back in to fill the gap. The onions will be somewhat al dente, which I liked as a contrast to the soft and collapsing plums.

Stir in a pat of butter, and serve.  

Apple-ing, and Quick Preserving Tricks

As we picked apples the other day, I was thinking about a verse in Psalm 1: the one whose delight is in the Lord is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in season.  

That phrasing sounds so modest, until you see a monstrous mature apple tree—and "yielding" becomes heavy with fruit, churning out pounds of it by the hundreds, fruit that is crisp and sweet and flawlessly white when you cut inside. Fruit that you can pick sixty pounds of without too much effort or time on a sunny summer evening. 

We're just now emerging from three evenings of processing the apples, long hot evenings of coring and chunking, cooking and blending, and boiling and boiling water. It's not a bad way to spend a summer night, especially if you blast some Etta James, drink cold beer, and consume massive amounts of zucchini fritters and fresh tomatoes for sustenance.  

For most of the last few weeks, though, we haven't had the time to devote to canning marathons like that; we've had a steady stream of summer guests and activities. Vegetables may be expiring on my counter, but people must also be fed--now, not in the fall! And of course I yield to the call of outside summery things like hiking, river rafting, and plain old relaxing in the front yard with family, dogs, and glasses of fresh iced apple juice. 

But still, those vegetables call to me for help, and I'm loathe to just let them totally expire on the counter. Here's what I've tried so far that is fast and, unlike canning, very easily multitasked: 

Zucchini

Cut the blossom end off, but leave the stem end on for a handle. Grate it up on a microplane (or with a food processor grating attachment, but I lost mine in the move and have found that a microplane takes hardly any time anyway); use the stem end handle with caution so you don't grate off your knuckles. Steam blanch for 1 or 2 minutes. Portion into ziplock bags, zip closed, and immediately dunk in an ice bath to cool. Freeze--and have zucchini fritters year round! 

Tomatoes 

Our tomatoes are ripening so slowly right now, and I'm harvesting just a handful of the paste varieties at a time. Not enough for a big canning to-do, and anyway, I've sworn off tomato canning for the year; I detest seeding and peeling them. My favorite way to small-batch process them is this: Chunk up as many as you have, heat in a pan until soft and juicy (about 10 min), and immersion blend. Cool and freeze. I did just enough for a quart ziplock this afternoon while I made some lunch. No time at all, and the tomatoes are saved! Phew. 

Cucumbers 

I've recently become so obsessed with eating pickles at lunch (with cuts of smoked salmon, slabs of cheese, a hardboiled egg, and cherry tomatoes) that I seriously must can more, or else we will run out in October. But sometimes there's no time for that, so I've been fermenting them. 

You don't even need to chop the pickling cucumbers (or you can, if they are bigger than 5 inches). Just wash them gently, pull off any blossom, and layer them in a half-gallon mason jar with some pickling spice, garlic (don't peel, just cut in half), and grape leaves. Cover in a brine of 1 quart water + 3 tablespoons salt, and make sure the pickles are submerged; a half-pint jar fits perfectly in the mouth of a half-gallon jar as a weight. Place a dish towel over the top. Leave on the counter for a week or so, until the brine is cloudy and the cucumbers look like pickles. Move them to the fridge, where they'll keep for a long time. 

What I love about this is that you don't need a recipe, or any measuring utensils, or any specific amounts of anything. Small batch it, big batch it, do it while you make dinner. 

Celery 

We didn't grow any, but our landlord gave us a bag of beautiful stalks the other day. You can chop and freeze them without blanching--leaves included. The fragrance of celery leaf perfumed the whole kitchen as I bagged them up. Use in soups and stews in the wintertime. 

Berries 

Spread them whole in a single layer on a sheet pan, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze for a few hours. Then transfer to gallon ziplock bags. There will be plenty of time to make loads of blackberry jam in the winter... 

What else? What quick-preserving ideas have saved your veggies this summer? 

Fennel Frond Pesto

It's the time of year I dream about. The other night we made chicken soup with carrots, potatoes, turnips, fennel, and summer squash, and the only ingredient that we didn't grow--counting the chicken--was the tomato paste.

I love fennel, cooked and raw, and so I am slightly sad that the bulbs in this year's crop turned out pretty shrimpy. Not enough sunlight? But the fronds are tall and thick and green and gorgeous. So, since the freezer is nearly out of nettle pesto from earlier this spring, I made some fennel frond pesto.

Smeared on homemade bread and covered with juicy jaune flamme tomatoes and crisp lemon cucumbers, it made the most perfect al fresco summer dinner.

Fennel Frond Pesto 
Makes about 2 cups
When I make pesto, I go by taste rather than by any recipe. I kept track generally of the amounts I used, but keep tasting and blending, tasting and blending as you make the pesto, adding more of anything as you go.

Fronds of 3 small fennel
Bulb of 1 small fennel
1 cup almonds (toasted, optionally; I did not)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese chunks
2 to 3 small garlic cloves, peeled
Juice from 3/4 lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
Pepper to taste
1/2 to 1 cup olive oil

Blend up the fennel fronds and bulb in a food processor for about 30 seconds. Add the almonds, parmesan cheese, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and blend until the almonds are finely ground and don't crunch obviously in your mouth when you try some. With the blender running, add the olive oil until the pesto swirls in a smooth, continuous wave around the food processor bowl (no big balls of green rumbling around). Blend for another minute or two. I found that this pesto needed more blending than a basil or nettle pesto, because the little feathery fennel fronds took a while to not be a feathery texture in my mouth when I tried a bite.

Taste the pesto, adjust the lemon juice, salt, and pepper as needed. Blend some more. Let the pesto sit for at least 10 minutes before you use it for the flavors to meld together.

Serve as a bread spread with tomatoes, cucumbers, and/or feta cheese; toss with pasta; or freeze in an ice cube tray, then transfer to a freezer bag, where it will keep for a few months.

Spring in July

July 5 came and went, and summer forgot to show up. From a distance, the garden looks lush and jungle-like and summery. But from close up, some of it's languishing in this cool damp weather. Time for a sun dance? 

I'm still trying, and generally succeeding, to focus on the positives, what we are eating and enjoying rather than what has done poorly or just plain neutrally. We have more than enough produce, haven't bought vegetables at the grocery store in weeks and weeks. But still, taking a long hard look at everything on harvest days makes me cringe. 

I guess it's just a lot to manage for two people with day jobs (although I feel weird using that word, which probably has the wrong connotations for our jobs). Besides the daily tasks of watering—or not, this month—and every-other-day harvest schedule, there's the monumental job of keeping the weeds down, monitoring the health of everything, and then the constant looking ahead, managing the jigsaw puzzle of what will fit where next. Like, summer hasn't even happened yet and we're already planning the fall and winter garden. Basically, every time I'm out there these days, I feel terribly behind. Also happy, so very happy. It's confusing. 

On top of it all, thirty pounds of plums fell out of the sky and into the kitchen this week. Just like that, out of the blue. I conquered my fear of canning jam and even ventured into two-pans-of-jam-at-once territory, and dispensed plums to freezer, cobbler pan, friends, and pigs. The pigs like them just as much as we do. 

There's still a couple of pounds of them ripening in bowls on the counter, but I feel mostly in control again. Although who knows, the same thing might happen again next week. 

Watermelon Mint Sorbet

"It's been a gloomy, rainy June," said Tim the other night. His first really gloomy, rainy June in Washington—the last four Junes since he moved here have been so sunny and warm that he's never believed me that gloomy and rainy are usually synonymous with June, and summer doesn't start until July 5.

I'm ready for the sun to come back now. So I'm trying to lure it back with summery things like this watermelon mint sorbet. I don't have an ice cream maker, but I recently discovered that's so not necessary when you start with frozen bananas. Has anyone else tried one-ingredient banana ice cream? Its worth a try if only to watch the transformation of chunky bananas into smooth and creamy stuff that looks exactly like ice cream, and then to eat it and try to convince your mouth that yes, this is only banana. I found it so rich and sweet that I could hardly finish a one-banana serving. Weird. But it's a perfect base for less creamy fruits like watermelon, and jazzed up with some fresh mint and lime juice, this sorbet tastes just as good on a dreary summer evening as a hot one. 

Watermelon Mint Sorbet

Makes 4-6 servings 

2 pounds de-rinded watermelon (this was a quarter of a giant watermelon for me)

2 bananas, sliced thin

1/2 cup chopped mint

3 tablespoons lime juice 

Slice the watermelon 1/4/-inch thick and cut the slices into small pieces. Line two sheet pans with plastic wrap and lay watermelon and bananas out in a single layer. Cover them with plastic wrap and freeze them for 3 hours, or overnight (the watermelon freezes solid in an hour or less, but I found the bananas needed longer than that). 

In an 8-cup food processor, blend half the frozen watermelon and half the frozen bananas with the lime juice and mint until smooth and sorbet-like, about 4-5 minutes. Add the remaining watermelon and bananas in small amounts and keep blending until super smooth, another 4-5 minutes. 

Mine was the consistency of soft serve at this point. You can return the sorbet to the freezer to harden up again, or eat it right away. 

Mint flecks: I don't really mind the mint flecks, but I think starting by blending just the lime juice and chopped mint in the bottom of the food processor, then adding half the fruit, would get the mint smaller or even make it disappear. 

A Hack Photo Studio, and Attempts at Food Photography

I don't post photos from the kitchen here often, if ever. Food photography has always felt way out of my reach. I can wield my iPhone camera outside when I want to, but I have always been intimidated by the flashy props and chic styling that every food blogger seems to use, and baffled by how to harness the powers of natural lighting. My house is under giant trees. On most days, except perhaps in the summer, there is very little good natural light for taking pictures of food.

But. Recently, I vowed to dip my toes into the ocean. Now I can't even remember how it started, but the other day I found myself deep in the Google hole of food photography tips, mainly just trying to find out how to rig a hack studio for cheap.

My new "studio" is a hack of the hack and cost $23. A 500-watt halogen work light sits behind an eviscerated cardboard box plastered with a cut-up Value Village t-shirt stuck to the box with some double-sided stickies (from a box of stick-to-the-wall hangers that happen to pull paint off my walls and have been sitting on my desk since, um, we moved). Two big white pieces of cardboard act as reflectors.

I was kind of nervous as I set it up, remembering Pinterest art project disasters of years past. But amazingly, it worked--in that it provides a neutral, clean light source. A blank slate. Really, a whole new world: now that I have good light, I can fiddle with shooting photos of the recipes I make at home all the time, and then share them on the blog, which I've avoided doing purely because of the photo barrier.

I'm going to keep it low budget. Maybe I'll take a trip to Value Village for ten dollar's worth of props--some colorful dishes, some simple white plates, some metal measuring cups (mine are plastic and I don't like looking at them in real life, let alone a photo). But that's all. This is an iPhone camera type of studio.

So I like the light, but the whole food styling thing feels really foreign to me. Like, the photo above is so unnatural. That is not how I make eggs. I did not actually even make these eggs. I threw this together as a studio trial run at 8:30 last night and then put everything away in the fridge and went to bed. And because I know that this photo wasn't taken on a sunny morning, with coffee brewing and a pan heating up in the background and someone to enjoy the omelette with sitting at the table, hungry--but rather a cloudy darkening evening and a quiet house and the cat trying to climb into the light box, then scratching on the guest room door when I put him away--it doesn't have much magic to me. Part of the magic of a food photograph is that you're transported into a story--the food entices you into a scene, into someone else's kitchen or patio, which you probably don't even see, but the scene fools you into thinking it's there. The food becomes more than just food.

Happily, this morning, I made these very omelettes and Tim and I ate them while looking out at the misty pasture and drinking coffee. Is that the story this photo tells? I can't decide.