A Carrot of Any Color

I planted carrots in February, in a bed containing a few rocks. Rocks matter in carrot cultivation, because if the root hits one as it's growing downward, it'll break into two or three parts rather than remain one solid carrot whole. So when I started pulling them up this weekend, I expected to find such shattered roots, some of them twisting around each other like carrot yoga.

What I didn't expect to find was one yellow carrot. The seeds I had planted (using seed tape, the only way to go with carrots), were standard orange, not a fancy multi-colored variety. Had a stray yellow seed found its way into the tape, or was this a genetic mutation, evolution in action in my planting bed?

The yellow carrot tasted a little milder than its orange brethren. But adding it to a shredded-carrot salad, I realized, would make a fine-looking dish. Marcella Hazan features such a salad in her book The Classic Italian Cookbook. It's so easy, I never bother to open the book and follow the recipe.

Peel and shred a couple of carrots. Add enough salt to bring out the flavor, some lemon juice, and more olive oil than lemon juice. Toss, taste, adjust, and serve.

Leaves with Attitude

One Saturday morning in late February, several years ago, I was cruising the farmers market, looking for an interesting fruit or vegetable. I wanted a treat, but I wasn’t finding much. Late winter is not a good time for vendors of produce.

An elderly woman had occupied one of the stalls. She was selling only one vegetable, a green with sawtooth leaves that sprouted small broccoli-like flowerets. I asked what it was and she answered, “Chinese broccoli.”

 “Chinese broccoli,” I’ve noticed, is a catch-all name for any green that takes well to stir-frying, but as it was only 50 cents a bunch, I bought one. At home I searched through my cookbooks and found a drawing in the Chez Panisse Vegetables that matched my Chinese broccoli exactly. It was broccoli raab; a recipe with penne, garlic, and Romano cheese was included. 

I took one bite of the concoction and fell under the spell of broccoli raab. It’s bitter, spicy, pungent, and powerful. Nothing like its tame namesake, broccoli raab lets you know you’re alive.

Since that day, whenever I find broccoli raab at the market, I make the pasta dish. And whenever I see it on a restaurant menu—nearly always as a side to smoked pork or sausage—I order the entrée that includes it. I’ve grown it, too, with limited success. It’s very picky about timing, and the bugs love it as much as I do.

It’s probably not surprising that Italians, with their unabashed zest for eating, introduced broccoli raab to the United States. Brothers Stephen and Andrew D’Arrigo (of the Andy Boy dynasty) started cultivating it in the early 20th century. It now grows in California, Arizona, New Jersey, Ontario, and Quebec and is sold around the country under a host of names: rapini, cima di rapa, Italian turnip (broccoli raab is a distant cousin of the turnip).

Broccoli raab is sometimes available in a regular supermarket; if you can’t find it, try specialty markets or Italian grocers. It’s available year-round, but it’s best in late fall, winter, and early spring. The flowers should not have opened, and the cut end of the stalks should be green and smooth. If you like your vegetables to bite back, go for bunches with big leaves.

Like most people with a strong personality, broccoli raab won’t get along with just any other food. If it’s not the star, it must be accompanied by other brisk ingredients. Spicy Italian sausages and smoked meats will stand up to its assertiveness, as will potent seasonings such as extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar, pungent cheese, and hot pepper flakes.

It won’t take just any treatment, either. Boiling it is the culinary equivalent of a lobotomy—it loses all its punch, becoming insipid and gray. Broccoli raab is best when sautéed in oil.

My desire for other vegetables has waxed and waned over the seasons, but broccoli raab remains a delicacy. That day in the market I had hoped to find an agreeable fruit to toss into a gallette. Instead, I found a vegetable with a big attitude. Perhaps it was the serendipity of it all, but I fell in love.

Broccoli Raab with Penne

1 large onion

8 cloves garlic

2 bunches broccoli raab (1-1/2 pounds)

extra-virgin olive oil

red pepper flakes to taste

salt to taste

3/4 pound penne

red wine vinegar

Romano cheese

Put a large pot of water on to boil. Add the pasta and stir, drain when it’s done, then set aside.

Meanwhile, thinly slice the onion and garlic. Wash the broccoli raab, cut away the stems, and chop the leaves and sprouts coarsely.

Cover the bottom of a large sauté pan with the olive oil and sauté the onion over high heat. When the onion has begun to brown a little, add the garlic, pepper flakes, and salt. Toss, then add the broccoli raab and a splash of water. Lower the heat and cook until  tender, stirring or tossing frequently.

Taste the broccoli raab and add seasoning as needed. Splash on additional extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. Add the freshly cooked pasta to the pan and toss. Serve with grated cheese.

Turnip Gratin Soup

The Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook failed me last night. I had turned to it when faced with a plethora of turnips, planted more because I had an available half-barrel and the timing was right than because I wanted a pile of turnips.

The cookbook includes a simple recipe of sliced turnips and potatoes baked in cream and chicken stock. I thought the dish would complete my dinner of grilled pork chops and a simple green salad, at the same time exhausting the turnip supply.

The problem is one of geometry. The recipe calls for slicing the roots a quarter-inch thick, then layering them in a baking dish. But because potatoes and turnips don't fit together like Tetris pieces, big gaps lie between them, so I had to double the amount of liquid to fill those gaps and cover the slices, which led to a soupy mess.

If I were to do it again, I'd slice the roots thinly so they'd form a nearly solid layer. But I'm not about to go out and buy more turnips.

The Trooper

During a summer of disappointing crops — mealy, tasteless tomatoes; sullen basil; green pomegranates; and squirrel-ravaged beans — there was one bright spot in my garden. My butternut plants yielded 11 lovely, large fruit. The vines spread all over the patio and invaded their neighboring planter boxes, but I let them misbehave as long as they produced.

For about a month now, I’ve been trying to use up the squash: roasting cubes along with a chicken, adding mashed squash to cornmeal mush, and giving one to our housecleaner, Francisca, who praised my calabazas bonitas and described the cinnamon-enhanced turnovers she makes from them.

But my favorite use for them is a squash cake found in The Victory Garden Cookbook, a lifesaver for gardener-cooks. The only difficult part of the recipe is peeling a squash, steaming and mashing it. If you used canned pumpkin, it’s the easiest cake on the planet.

Butternut Squash Cake

1 & 2/3 cup sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

1 & 3/4 cup mashed squash or one can pumpkin

2 cups flour (or whole-wheat pastry flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

a good grating of nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350° and grease a 13x8x2-inch pan. Mix the sugar and oil together; beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in squash until well mixed. Stir together the dry ingredients and add to the wet mixture. Pour into the pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out dry.

Temptation on a Cactus

I’ve often wanted to pluck off the fruit that grow on my neighbors’ cacti. There they are, right at arm’s length, just on the other side of the fence, looking so temptingly pink and plump. But those spines — and the fact that it would, of course, be theft — hold me back.

So when I found a basketfull at the Redwood City Farmers Market, I snatched one up. This one was pale green, about four inches long, and it managed to lodge several spines in my fingers despite my care in avoiding them.

I cut it in half, according to the seller’s instructions, and scooped out the flesh like an avocado. The fruit is dotted with seeds like grape pips, which were too many to spit out but went down easily enough.

The fruit was mild and lacking acid, much like a honeydew melon. Next time, I’ll buy more than one and make them into an agua fresca, adding water, ice, lime juice, and a little sugar: a thirst-quenching drink, just what you hope a cactus would yield. 

Impossibly Delicious

A favorite dinner of my adolescence was squid and leeks in red wine, a recipe my dad found in Simple French Food by Richard Olney. It strikes me as a feat of creative genius, realizing that those three ingredients would make a succulent stew. Who would ever think?

So, when it came time to harvest my barrel of leeks, naturally I cooked them with squid and red wine. The dish, which simmers for hours, is a meltingly soft stew topped with buttery croutons. The baguette that didn’t become croutons will mop up the broth; the leftover red wine makes for perfect pairing.

The trick is to keep the dish at a bare simmer: you want to preserve enough liquid so the croutons have something to soak up, but cook it at a high enough temperature that the squid and leeks will soften to the butter stage. I’ve had trouble with this, despite the fact that I have two stoves to work with. One day I’ll hit upon the correct stove, the right setting, and the perfect pot; then squid and leeks will be a breeze.

Squid and Leeks in Red Wine

2 pounds squid, cleaned and sliced into rings

2 pounds leeks, the white and pale green parts cut into 2-inch lengths

1/4 cup olive oil

salt

2 tablespoons flour

1/8 teaspoon cayenne

1/2 teaspoon thyme

1/2 teaspoon marjoram

1 bay leaf

8 garlic cloves, cut into thin slices

2 cups red wine

1 cup water

croutons fried in butter until crisp

chopped parsley

In a heavy, low-sided earthenware or copper pot, simmer the leeks with salt until they are lightly browned. Turn them carefully to avoid breaking them. Set aside.

In the same pan, sauté the squid at a higher temperature until their liquid is nearly evaporated. Add flour and sauté for a minute, then add herbs, cayenne, and garlic. While stirring, slowly pour in the wine, then the water. Let come to a boil, and gently add the leeks back to the pot. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours.

Cover the surface of the stew with croutons, sprinkle on the parsley, and serve in the pot.

Cooking Peachy

Peach pie is one of those foods I just don’t get. Cooking peaches destroys their delicious, fruity essence, so why ruin a batch of the fresh fruit by turning it into a pie?

Still, I have found one recipe that will lead me to sacrifice a peach to the oven: Lee Bailey’s peach cake. While the heat eliminates the peaches’ perfume, the peach-batter interface that results is so good it’s a worthwhile trade. The recipe produces something closer to a pudding than a cake, and its crisp, peach juice–enhanced top is to die for.

I have found good peaches at many markets, but the most reliably excellent ones are sold at the Alemany Farmers Market. I will drive up to city and fight the traffic early Saturday morning just to buy peaches from Regier Farms of Dinuba. I often buy a flat — enough that I’m willing to donate a few to the cake.

Incidentally, this recipe comes from Lee Bailey’s Soup Meals, whose soup recipes are ho-hum while its dessert recipes are fantastic.

Peach Pudding Cake

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup softened butter

2 eggs

3 or 4 peaches, peeled and quartered

1 - 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

Heat the oven to 350°. Butter an 8- or 9-inch springform pan. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Mix the 3 tablespoons of sugar and the cinnamon and set aside.

Cream the butter and the rest of the sugar well, and add eggs one at a time. Slowly add the flour mixture until well mixed, and spread the batter in the pan. Top with the peaches and sprinkle with the lemon juice, then coat with the sugar-cinnamon mixture.

Bake about an hour, until the cake is a dark golden color. Serve warm. 

Too Cute

At the Redwood City farmers market last weekend I came across a bin full of tiny little purple-black eggplants, the variety that must have given the vegetable its name. I had no plans for cooking eggplant, but they were so adorable I couldn’t resist buying a bagful.

They sat around looking cute until the hot weather threatened to deflate them and I was forced to act. I found a promising recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian cookbook, a veritable encyclopedia of vegetable and bean recipes. The recipe was pickled eggplant in Sri Lankan style, and it specifically called for baby eggplant.

I was forced to change a few ingredients, as my local Asian supermarket was bizarrely bereft of lemongrass and I couldn’t bear to buy holy basil when I have five Italian basil plants going to seed in my backyard.

With these alterations it still made a fine accompaniment to a lunch of curried lentil stew. The cinnamon, according to my Sri Lankan brother-in-law, is an essential ingredient of Sri Lankan curries.

Pickled Eggplant in Sri Lankan Style

1 pound baby eggplants

salt

pepper

turmeric

oil for frying

1 cinnamon stick

small handful of basil leaves

half an onion, chopped fine

2 jalapeños, sliced

1 tablespoon ground brown mustard seeds

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons sugar  

2 garlic cloves, peeled and pressed

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger

2 tablespoons vinegar

Slice the baby eggplants cross-wise and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and turmeric. Let them sit for half an hour, then pat them dry. Chop each slice into quarters.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large frying pan and sauté the eggplant until it’s reddish-brown. Remove from the pan and drain.

Add more oil if needed; sauté the cinnamon stick for a minute, then add onion, jalapeños, and basil leaves. Fry until the onion is translucent. Let cool.

Mix the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and add the eggplant and onion mix. Let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. Serve cold or at room temperature.

North Coast Apple Country

This past weekend found us in Gravenstein apple country, near Sebastopol, where farmers cultivate small orchards and sell apples out of their driveways. We turned on the advice of a sign and drove along a back road until we found a truck full of apples next to a hand-lettered sign.

Unlike many apple varieties, Gravensteins don’t require freezing during the winter, so they grow happily in our climate, and they do fine in the cooler coastal areas. They’re cute apples, too, with a vivid green background and red dashes running along the longitude.

We bought a 15-pound box of organic from the grower for $1 a pound. He had suffered a disappointing crop, but he was selling what he could. A fungus had invaded the orchard in the fall and thrived all through the rainy winter. The fungus left marks on the apples, which he called “scab,” which is easily cut off, but makes the fruit harder to sell.

I hardly cared about the scab; the tart Gravensteins are cooking apples. They turn to mush almost immediately unless they’re refrigerated, which means that they melt into smooth, delicious applesauce and rich pie filling. I have a busy week ahead of me.

Spiny Dining

Last weekend I traveled to Stockton via the delta, wetlands that years ago were fashioned into a maze of sloughs and islands. These islands, rich with peat from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, provide some of the most fertile farmland in California, producing huge quantities of asparagus, strawberries, and other crops.

Naturally, we had to stop at a roadside farm stand, where we purchased some of that asparagus and strawberries, as well as pads of the prickly pear cactus, or nopales. These fall into the “whatever made people try to eat this vegetable?” category, along with thistle and fungi.

But as Mexican cooks well know, nopales, once rid of their spines, are hardly famine-only fare. They have a slightly tart flavor reminiscent of green beans and a pleasantly firm texture.

I’ve eaten nopales before, but had never prepared them. Scraping off the needles seemed easy enough, except that I didn’t think to wear gloves, and the spines have a way of leaping off the pads and stabbing you in the finger. Once they were tamed, julienned, and boiled, I tossed the nopales strips into a salad with roasted red pepper, tomatoes, avocado, pickled jalapeños, and feta, loving their firm-but-squishy texture.

Alex, who woke up to find nopales in the kitchen and ask, “Cactus for breakfast?” had me thinking they’d make a fine omelet. 

Garden Limits

In May my gardening smugness changes to wistfulness. It’s planting month for summer crops — tomatoes, squash, corn, beans, melons, peppers, and eggplant. These vegetables start taking root now, if they haven’t received a head start on sunny windowsills. But our temperate climate, which allows me to grow crops all through the winter, is a tad too cool for some of summer’s best.

In San Mateo I can grow tomatoes, which won’t produce in many neighborhoods of San Francisco. Beans perform well, as do zucchini (where don’t they?), pumpkins, and jalapeño peppers. Not so for corn, melons, bell peppers, and eggplant. As much as I’d like to pick my entire ingredient list for ratatouille from my garden, or bite into corn boiled less than a minute after it was picked, I can’t.

I also can’t grow those lovely green, yellow, and striped heirloom tomatoes that crowd the farmers market tables in August. My garden harbors a fungus causing any tomato plant that isn’t disease-resistant to whither and die. But plain-vanilla tomatoes, ripened on the vine, are still really, really good.

Backyard Caldo

Several weeks ago, my housecleaner, Francisca, stopped me as I was clearing out of the house. It was 7:45 a.m., and my Spanish isn’t what it used to be, but I tried hard to concentrate, listening for words I recognized such as “sábanas (sheets),” “vacuum,” or “Comet.” I heard none of these, but I did catch the phrase “sopa de pollo.” Chicken soup?

Francisca led me into the backyard, to my sugar pea plot. Fingering the delicate, new shoots, my Guatemala-born housecleaner explained that the leaves make a tasty chicken soup. I’ve had pea shoots stir-fried, but for the first time I sampled the young pea shoots raw. They’re tender and sweet, tasting mildly of sugar peas. It’s no surprise that birds will eat the plants down to their stems if I don’t cover them. As the plant matures, the older leaves grow tough and bitter, and I no longer have to worry about protecting them.

I hesitated to take Francisca’s suggestion, as I so love sugar peas, I was loath to steal any shoots and curb the plants’ production. But now the peas are nearly spent, so there was no harm last night in plucking leaves from the few remaining shoots of new growth.

I made a classic caldo—a popular Central American soup of chunks of vegetables and meat in a simple broth—and tossed the pea leaves in at the last minute. Barely cooked, they remained sweet, fragrant, and pleasantly chewy. We improved the broth with Meyer lemons, as that’s what’s in the backyard, and Iguana golden habañero pepper sauce, which has been sitting in the pantry since it appeared in a stocking Christmas morning. Both were great additions.

Caldo de Francisca

1-1/2 quarts chicken stock
6 chicken thighs
1 chopped onion
6 small potatoes, cut in half
1 zucchini, cut into large chunks
1 large carrot, peel and sliced into large coins
2 ears corn, broken into sections
a handful of young sugar pea leaves

Bring the stock to a boil and add chicken thighs. Simmer 10 minutes, skimming off any foam. Add vegetables and simmer another 10 minutes. Add pea leaves and simmer another minute. Serve in large bowls with warmed tortillas, lime or lemon wedges, and hot sauce.

Radish Fail

Last October I sowed radish seeds in a half-barrel, and, being radishes, they sprouted immediately and grew quickly. Through December and January I plucked a few here and there. They came in a rainbow of colors — magenta, purple, pink, and white — and added a crisp bite to my navel orange and mixed lettuce salad.

But things changed in February. I set out to pull a couple for crudités and found that the radishes still standing in the barrel had turned into a mini-forest: They had grown over a foot tall, with wooden stems like little tree trunks — too hard even to cut with a knife. The colorful roots were bulging out of the soil, overgrown and misshapen, some of them split open.

I had left them too long. But I had a flash of brilliance. Remembering an article in Saveur about a cooking class featuring roasted radishes, I decided to bake the little devils. They may be woody and overgrown, but 45 minutes in the oven would render them tender and delicious — like beets, I reasoned.

I sawed off their stems, cleaned them up and baked them along with potatoes and chicken for dinner. Only upon sitting down to eat did I find that woody raw radishes, when cooked, become woody cooked radishes. There was no saving them.

But now I was curious about roasted radishes, so I purchased a few bunches and baked them. Sweet, juicy, and mild, with a texture not unlike baked beets, they were a great addition to a table of finger foods. Next year I’ll be sure to harvest them more aggressively.

Cherimoya: Animal or Vegetable?

I indulged myself in California smugness recently when I bought a cherimoya at the farmers market. Only in our geographically diverse state do we enjoy such a vast selection of fruit, from tropical cherimoyas to mountain-loving pears.

The farmer had brought them up from Santa Barbara, where it’s warm enough to cultivate the fruit. Cherimoyas originated in the mid-elevation Andes; they can’t handle temperatures much below freezing, but they don’t like sultry weather either. They prefer the climate in Southern California, like so many humans.

With its round shape and markings reminiscent of scales, the cherimoya looks like a pangolin, a mammal related to the anteater, especially when it’s curled into a defensive position or taking a nap. The pangolin wouldn’t eat a cherimoya if it found one, and not because it might think the fruit was Uncle Frank: The pangolin eats insects.

California cherimoyas are in season in the spring. You’ll likely find them when they’re firm: Two or three days at room temperature softens them to their delicious, most edible state, when the fruit feels like a ripe avocado. If you want to keep them longer, store them in the fridge while they’re still hard.

Choose cherimoyas that are green rather than brown, have no cracks and are not overly soft. Cut the cherimoya in half and scoop out the flesh, avoiding the seeds, which release a poison when they’re crushed. I ate my first cherimoya with a spoon, right out of its own skin-bowl. It tasted a little like a pear with a tropical perfume.

A subsequent cherimoya became an agua fresca:

Flesh from 1 cherimoya

Juice from half a lime

2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 cup crushed ice

1/2 cup water

Blend until smooth.

Heaven in a Can

When I was a kid, my dad had a kind of mental block about cat food. He could never remember to check whether he needed to buy it, so he always bought more just in case. It got to the point where there were cans and cans of cat food spilling out of a cabinet.

Coconut milk is my cat food. For the past couple of years, whenever I’ve come across a can of coconut milk, I’ve bought it. I happen to love coconut, so while there may not have been anyone at home yowling for lack of it, I feel there must always be at least one can in the house. Because my use of coconut milk had been fairly limited—amounting to little more than coconut ice cream and Thai curries—these cans multiplied until nearly an entire pantry shelf was devoted to coconut milk.

Then, one morning while making muffins, I found I didn’t have enough milk. Searching the pantry for a can of the evaporated variety, I noticed the coconut milk and decided to add some to the batter. It was just a small portion of the recipe, so I didn’t detect any difference in flavor, but it gave me some ideas.

I made a batch of pancakes with coconut milk, which came out rich and tropical-tasting. I poured some over day-old pound cake to moisten it and discovered it’s even better for this purpose than whipped cream or ice cream. I stirred some into cooked rice to add an instant Caribbean touch to dinner. I drowned chocolate chips in the milk and ate the classic combo with a spoon.

But the best use of all was in coconut lattes. Equal parts strong coffee and gently heated coconut milk, plus a touch of sugar, was heaven in a mug.

As for those cans for cat food, eventually my dad remembered he had purchased too much and stopped buying it altogether. So, of course, we ran out of cat food and had to hear about it from the cats for days. My resolve is to keep buying coconut milk—and continue using it up. 

In the Land of Artichokes

On our way back from a memorial service in Monterey this weekend, we drove north along the bay, first by seaside towns and sand dunes, then through fields of artichokes shrubs, their silver-green, thorny leaves extending in every direction. We were in Castroville, the self-proclaimed artichoke capital of the world.

Until 1922, Castroville farmers were scraping a living off sugar beets and other sundry vegetables. Then landowner Andrew Molera decided to try artichokes. The giant flower bud, prized by ancient Greeks and Romans and savored throughout southern Europe today, had arrived in California decades or even centuries earlier, but it had just begun to attract attention—and fetch good prices.

Molera found that the ’chokes thrived in the climate, similar to that of southern Europe where they evolved, and in the rich soil fed by the Pajaro and Salinas rivers. By 1929, the vegetable ruled the region, and the area now supplies the United States with the vast majority of its artichokes.

Castroville, naturally, hosts an annual artichoke festival (Marilyn Monroe was crowned the first artichoke queen in 1947) in spring, a time when ’chokes are abundant, though the plants produce year-round. Because artichokes are a favorite in our family, we picked up a bag of minis at a roadside stand and steamed them for dinner. The few left over became part of a potato and artichoke salad the next night: the potatoes were almost sugary, a reaction to artichokes’ aftertaste, which makes everything taste sweeter.

We also stopped in Moss Landing to buy live Dungeness off a boat. They weren’t as tasty as the ones we bought in Half Moon Bay. Was it the long drive home? Or are Half Moon Bay crabs simply better?

Contemplating Navels

We were fortunate to inherit a mini-orchard along with the house we bought in San Mateo several years ago. When we moved in during the summer, the dwarf Gravenstein apple tree was wrapping up its season, a load of Meyers dotted the lemon bush, pomegranates were just beginning to form, and another citrus tree was covered in little green globes.

I didn’t know what sort of citrus until December, when the deep-orange fruit with a big belly button clearly indicated navel orange. But it’s a different fruit from anything I’ve purchased at a store or farmers market. Though it smells and looks like a navel, the flesh is tart—halfway to a lemon.

Some friends say the fruit is sour because it’s out of its element, that the Bay Area is too cold for oranges to develop their sugar. Others say the fruit is cross-breeding with the lemons. I think the tree just has an attitude.

I’ve found that, while my navels make for a rather bracing breakfast drink, they are ideal for other uses. As with Meyers, which are too sweet for many recipes, using these oranges requires a little rethinking.

The rind is excellent, perhaps because it’s so fresh. I scent cookies and salad dressing with its zest. I turned some of the juice into a lovely agua fresca by adding sugar and water. Also, slices of the fruit are more than edible—perhaps the pulp tempers the tartness. They toss into a green salad without adding too much sweetness and provide a less-sweet element to a fruit salad.

Winter Greens

The beauty of winter is that it lets me be a negligent gardener. The rains take care of watering, I don’t need to fight bugs (the most destructive one apparently take the cold months off), and I’m not constantly picking beans or cucumbers to keep the plants producing.

I do little more than pick kale, pull radishes, or behead a cauliflower plant when I’m ready to cook. But my favorite is the lettuce patch (the background for the header, above), a mix of arugula, mizuna, oak leaf, Bibb, and romaine lettuces. I sprinkle the seeds in a planter in September, water until the rains start, then leave it alone. The lettuce patch grows slowly through the cold months, providing ready-to-go salad until May’s heat renders the leaves too bitter to eat. It never runs out, no matter how much of it we eat. And it makes an excellent salad, tossed with nothing but a bit of vinegar, good olive oil, and salt and pepper. 

Fun Food Finds

I first met Castelvetrano olives at a dinner party in Bernal Heights, and immediately fell in love. Grown in Sicily, where they are harvested young and cured in a light brine, they sport a beautiful, vivid green hue. But their greatest attribute is their complete lack of bitterness. Buttery, relatively salt free and bursting with oil, they’re the milk chocolate truffle of the olive tray.

Without the edge that other cured olives give to a sauce or stew, they’re best eaten plain, as part of an appetizer tray. They’ll appeal to people who don’t normally warm to olives.

In September, faced with a box of Bartlett pears that were fast turning into mush, I searched for a recipe that would use up a bunch of them. I found one by Maida Heatter: a pear crisp that called for candied ginger. I’d never used candied ginger before and wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I found it easily in the baking section—a tin of chopped young ginger preserved in sugar.

 

The ginger gave the pears (whose quiet personality all but disappears when cooked) a pleasantly spicy kick. And the little bits made a great snack: because they’re so potent, just one or two wake up the tastebuds. I’ve added them to ginger snaps for extra heat, and I’ve stewed them in milk for a soothing, sweet ginger chai.

I spent a cold Saturday morning in Berkeley sealing bag after bag of za’atar mix for the International Solidarity Movement. I messed up the first bag, so I had to buy it; because it was in my kitchen, I had to use it.

The complex, slightly bitter mixture of wild thyme, sumac and sesame seeds is used in the Middle East as a topping for labneh, or yogurt cheese; it’s also mixed with olive oil and spread on flatbread. I used it to coat squares of feta cheese and found it brought the mild cheese to life. I plan to use it as a dry rub for chicken breasts.

Canned-Pumpkin Pie

Several Thanksgivings ago, I headed down a path of twisted logic that went something like this: Fresh berries make a better pie than frozen berries. Therefore, fresh pumpkin will make a better pie than canned pumpkin.

Because I had won the annual family fight over who brings pie to Thanksgiving dinner, I had an opportunity to showcase the best pumpkin pie ever. I announced to everyone that I’d be making a real pumpkin pie. This meant, of course, that I’d need to buy a pumpkin and process it myself.

I purchased a cooking pumpkin at the farmers market and went through the hell of hacking it up, scraping out the seeds, steaming the flesh, and mashing it to a pulp. I then added the usual ingredients—evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, and spices—as I’ve always been fond of the recipe from the pumpkin can label and didn’t see a need to monkey with it any further.

I proudly transported the pie, which came out a lovely burnt-orange, to my parents’ house. When the main course was finished and it came time for dessert, my sister produced another pumpkin pie. She diplomatically explained that her children, being kids, preferred the canned variety.

Alas, my pie was a bust. The pumpkin was stringy, and raw-tasting, and altogether too squashy. I set my slice down and fought for a sliver of my sister’s pie. My nieces and nephews knew the truth all along: Canned is the way to go. I haven’t veered from that path since.

I’d include the recipe for best-ever pumpkin pie here, but you can find it on the can label. If, that is, you can find one during the expected canned-pumpkin shortage. I’m going to stock up.