Sometimes naked fresh is the best

What could be better than freshly sliced cucumber on a just-baked piece of bread smeared with your favorite spread and topped with a salt and herb mixture? Having just finished eating that for lunch, I can’t think of anything more satisfying for a light meal. Of course, if I hadn’t eaten my just-cut salad greens yesterday, I could have added that as a side dish. 

As gardening season winds down, I’m reminded of how much I love certain fresh produce when it’s eaten “as is” or only minimally prepared. All of the raspberries never make it into the house as I snack when I pick. Sometimes I just walk to the garden and eat straight from the vine for dessert!  Strawberries, grapes and blueberries are the same; I have to at least taste them as I harvest. Jim loves plucking the warm peach and demolishing the fruit before he bring it inside. He’ll even eat an ear of corn as soon as he picks it.

Some people savor the tomato sandwich. I really don’t care for them freshly sliced in salad or on a sandwich, but I do love making the simple Baked Caprese Salad that puts the reddest slice of a Costoluto Genovese on top of oven-toasted bread then melts mozzarella on the tomato, finishing it with a fresh Basil leaf. I feel the same way about peppers, especially yellow and red ones, in that I lightly saute them in oil, sometimes throwing in greens as well.  

A gardener and cook should always taste the labor of love at as many stages as possible to see how you like it best. Following recipes to the final instruction can result in a fabulous product. But if you taste along the way, you might find a new option for making the dish even better. 

So here’s to enjoying the last harvests of the season. Savor and commit that taste to memory. When February comes, that will be your motivation for another season of gardening.

Tortillas and cheese enliven frozen vegetables

I am beginning to see the end of some of my frozen vegetable supply. I think I used my last package of frozen greens this week when I made a burrito bake casserole based on a more protein heavy recipe I found years ago. This is something anyone can easily make to suit their own tastes.

For my version, I laid out the whole wheat tortillas and topped them with unthawed greens and corn, plus a few carrots we had canned. Then I added a mixture of our canned salsa and tomato puree plus the remains of our roasted chicken and some black beans that I whipped with sautéed onions and sour cream. For more bite, add jalapenos or your other favorite peppers. You can also add sour cream and cheese inside or anything else you think you would like.

Next, I folded them like burritos and put them in a casserole dish then covered with salsa and topped with cheese. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

Alternately, you can prepare tortilla dishes like an Italian lasagna, alternating layers of tortillas with cheese, meat, vegetables and sauce. Of course, you can also make it meatless.

Either way is a relatively quick meal if the meat is leftover and the vegetables have been preserved, and therefore softened, and don’t need to be cooked. Use your creativity and see what you can come up with to tickle your taste buds.

Using the tomatoes, potatoes and greens

This week’s Lexington Herald-Leader food page included a good article about making soup along with a few recipes. It emphasized the importance of sautéing some ingredients to begin the soup. It also pointed out the broth you use is crucial to the taste.

I decided to try the Potato Tomato Soup since we still have plenty of those ingredients, plus the frozen greens the recipe calls for. Those ingredients also make for a nicely rounded nutritional dish. When I was searching through the chickens and bags of veggies that still fill the freezer, I found the greens I needed and some turkey stock. So, being the improviser that I have learned to be in the kitchen, I decided to keep the soup truly homemade by using my own stock.

I think it was a mistake. Although the stock smelled good, it wasn’t very flavorful. Thus, I seasoned and seasoned, but I still wasn’t thrilled with the soup. The next time around, I’ll remember the advice to be sure your broth is extra-good.

Potato Tomato Soup ratings

Jim: 10 (He added red pepper to his soup which might have helped.)
Beth: 7

I will say that as is usually the case, the soup was more flavorful the next day.

Preservation Lessons Round #1

A friend asked that I share some information about freezing greens and preserving tomatoes. Since we’re still eating from a big pot of vegetable soup and I won’t be cooking for a couple of days, I thought this might be a good time to address some of those questions.

I’ll start with the greens. Some people might still have greens growing undercover in their gardens, depending on the weather in your area. Ours gave up for the winter in December, but during those heady growing days a few months ago there were plenty to freeze. It does make me feel good to pull out my own bag of greens to put into a pot of soup rather than using a box from the store.

Freezing greens is one of the easiest things to do. I’ve done it two ways and both seemed to work.

Method #1

1. Wash and chop greens.
2. Heat olive oil in appropriate-sized pan.
3. Saute until just wilted.
4. Remove from pan and allow to cool.
5. Put greens into labeled freezer bags.

Method #2

1. Wash and chop greens.
2. Heat water to boiling.
3. Blanche greens for two minutes
4. Remove from pan into ice water.
5. When cool, squeeze out excess water.
6. Put greens into labeled freezer bags.

I want to emphasize, chop the greens. There were a couple of times when I lazily skipped that step. When I pulled them out of the freezer to use, I didn’t realize until they were unthawed that they still needed to be chopped. It’s much easier to do that when they’re fresh. And when do you ever cook with greens that haven’t been chopped?!

Leftover greens make for a quick quesadilla lunch

The crisp kiss of autumn welcomed me this morning when I went out to check the garden faithfuls. I found a handful of raspberries, a few tomatoes that didn’t get bitten by the frost and are trying their best to ripen on the vine, and the happy greens—arugula, kale and Swiss chard. There’s something so substantial and reliable about Swiss chard. The green leaves are sturdy without being tough. When you grow a variety, you can also discover beauty in the combination of orange, red and white stems with the green leaves. Once I brought it in, even storing it was a pleasure.

Greens can also provide a quick lunch. I had leftover kale and onions in the fridge, so I put a whole-wheat tortilla on the griddle to warm and crisp up while I heated the kale and leftover chicken in the microwave. I shredded cheese and put it on half of the tortilla, added the warmed food, folded half of the tortilla on top of all that goodness, and continued cooking until the outside was nicely crisped. It didn’t take more than five minutes, honest. I find quesadillas especially tasty when I eat them with salsa, guacamole or sour cream.