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My son and I are flying to Houston in a couple days, so I’ve been trying to empty out the fridge before we go. This weekend I made several quarts of chicken stock with the assorted chicken necks, backs, and gnawed over bones in our freezer. This also got rid of a 5-lb. bag of organic carrots, a bag of ramp trimmings, and assorted onions. Then I had to figure out how to preserve two weeks of CSA veggies. I turned the broccoli, red onions, and kale into soups and will shred zucchini and kohlrabi for vegetable fritters. We have about three pounds of beets in the veggie bin: if I have time, I’ll turn those into beet jerky. (Don’t knock it — I can put away a pound of beets this way in about ten minutes, flat.)

Tonight I served up a humble meal. We had a pound of grass-fed beef in the fridge, which I mixed up with a pre-made seasoning mix for tacos (my 6-year-old’s favorite meal). These were served with shredded lettuce (from CSA), chopped beefsteak tomatoes (ditto), and shredded Mexican-style cheese (Trader Joe’s — cheese needs to disappear by Wednesday!). I boiled up four ears of corn (today’s CSA basket), and sliced up chilled watermelon and Asian melon, both from last week’s basket.

It was a simple meal, but delicious. The melons were sweet and juicy, the corn flavorful, and the tacos, well, what can I say, were beautiful because I didn’t have to slave over a hot stove for too long.

Sorry I haven’t posted much — I got another case of nasty strep, my third infection this year, and am only recently starting to feel back to my energetic self. My mother-in-law has some food-related sites mapped out for us while we’re in Texas, so I plan to blog during our trip.

I like to make this curry in the summer. It’s not super spicy, although one could make it that way, and the flavors of coconut, fresh curry leaves, and tomatoes simply whisper warm weather to me.

I noticed this recipe on the Boston Globe’s “Dishing” blog last year. I could tell it was going to taste great, what with the coconut and Indian spicing, although I think their version doesn’t include the cayenne. The zucchini is my twist. It’s a good way to slip more veggies into my family’s diet.

You can used canned beans for this; I happen to cook dry beans in bulk with my pressure cooker and freeze them in small containers. Also, I’ve used small white northern beans and kidney beans in this recipe, but earthy black-eyed peas taste best, IMO.

Curried Black-Eyed Peas
Adapted from The Boston Globe

2 tsp. canola oil
1 tbsp. black mustard seeds
12 fresh curry leaves
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. whole cumin seed
1 tsp. ground coriander seed
1/4 tsp. ground cayenne pepper
1 shallot, chopped finely
1 tsp. minced fresh ginger
1 can chopped tomatoes, drained (sometimes I use fresh tomatoes and eyeball the amount, maybe a cup and a half)
1 small zucchini, diced into 1/4″ cubes
1 cup reduced fat coconut milk
1 cup cooked black eyed peas
Salt, to taste

1. In a medium saute pan, heat oil over medium high heat. Add mustard seeds; when they finish popping, about 30 seconds, add curry leaves. They, too, will pop and sizzle. Immediately reduce heat to medium; stir in turmeric, cumin seed, coriander, and cayenne pepper and cook for 30 seconds. Add shallot, stir into spice mixture, and cook for about two minutes until softened. Stir in ginger and cook for another minute.

2. Add tomatoes and zucchini and cook until softened and the tomatoes begin to lose their moisture, about 4 or 5 minutes. Add coconut milk and cook for another five minutes or until sauce has thickened a bit. Stir in black-eyed peas and warm through. Add salt to taste. Serve curry with cooked rice, preferably basmati.

I alluded that we get a lot of greens in our CSA pickup each week, especially at the beginning of the season. And yes, being that I’m in New England, mid-July is still considered early season. Over the next few weeks, the composition of our basket will become less green, and more red and yellow.

And although I love greens, even the bitter ones, it does become tiresome eating them the same old way, which around here is sauteed in either olive oil and garlic, or bacon and onions. So Sunday night I flipped through one of my favorite recent cookbook acquisitions, Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, and settled on a kale and potato soup. It was perfect because it also happened to use up some pantry items. My walk-in pantry and chest freezer are heaving with food and I really must empty both out this summer to make room for the winter.

Have I mentioned how much I love Alice Waters? I know it’s fashionable in some quarters to make fun of her. Like, “Oh, who do you think you are, Miss Fresh, Local & In Season … Alice Waters?” Screw those folks. Alice rocks. Her recipes are simple, and as long as you use fabulous ingredients — not hard to do in the summer — you’ll be rewarded with a dish that’s flavorful, good, nourishing, and totally non-pretentious, so I don’t know where these anti-Alice people get their ideas.

Alice’s kale and potato soup is one of those recipes. It’s so hearty, a meat lover would enjoy it, and although it contains few ingredients, its taste is complex — definitely more than a sum of its parts. I happened to have two quarts of fantastic homemade chicken stock in my freezer, which elevated the soup flavorwise. It would be just as tasty with a homemade vegetable stock — barring homemade, a good quality packaged chicken or vegetable stock would make a decent base. The other winning flavor component is the real Parmesan Reggiano cheese garnishing the soup. It has a nutty, salty flavor that lacks in domestically produced Parmesans. Were I not to have the $15/lb. cheese on hand, I’d probably skip it and garnish with bread chunks fried in garlic oil.

This soup makes the perfect Sunday night supper, even in July.

Kale and Potato Soup
Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch of kale, tough center stem removed and leaves sliced into thin shreds
1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ rounds
2 quarts homemade chicken broth
Kosher salt, to taste
Fresh nutmeg, to taste (optional)
Shaved Parmesan Reggiano cheese, for garnish

1. In a heavy soup pot or enamel cast iron Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, stir to coat with oil, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, until soft and just starting to caramelize. Stir in garlic and cook for another minute. Add kale and potatoes, and stir to coat with oil. Cook for a couple minutes, then add broth. Bring broth to a simmer, reduce heat and cook for 30 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through.

2. Taste the broth. Does it need salt? I don’t salt my homemade broths, so here I add a teaspoon or two of salt, tasting as I go. Store-bought broths tend to contain lots of salt, so taste first! Serve soup in large bowls, scrape some fresh nutmeg over each dish, and top with shavings of Parmesan cheese.

I’ve been on a bit of a bender with the new cookbooks. A couple weeks ago, I’d heard some good things about Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes From a Modern Kitchen Garden by Jeanne Kelley. I’d flipped through it a couple times at Anthropologie, but it just didn’t grab me. Then my dear virtual friend and fellow food writer Monica Bhide picked this cookbook as her top three of the week, and so I had to have it. (If Monica says something is good, who am I to argue?) With a fruitful kitchen garden of my own coupled with a generous share in a local CSA, I know I’ll be cooking a lot from this book.

I’d also had my eye on a cookbook called Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales From a Southern Cook by Martha Hall Foose, who is the executive chef of Viking Cooking School. A couple things grabbed me: first and foremost, it’s southern cooking. Although I come from an unbroken line of born-in-New-England Mayflower descendants, I feel kinship with southern cooks. I adore grits, White Lily flour, okra, field peas, and yes, sweet tea. Not sure why I’ve developed this love for all foods southern, except that — and I’ve discussed this with my southern mother-in-law — I grew up in rural northern New England, where food traditions run pretty deep, as they do down south. I grew up eating church potlucks, biscuits, and homemade pickles and relishes. The other thing that got my attention is the tomato on the cover is stuffed with lady cream peas. I have two 1-lb. bags of dried lady cream peas in my pantry, which I’d like to use over the next few months.

At any rate, I had these two books on my list and so was thinking of running down to New England Mobile Book Fair a/k/a Mom’s Crack Den in Newton Highlands to pick them up. Then I started thinking about the 40-mile round trip (yikes) and how gas is almost $4 a gallon (egads!) and did I really need two more cookbooks (um, yes). Then I thought, “Well, maybe they can send them to me.” What many people don’t realize is Jessica’s Biscuit is the mail order division of New England Mobile Book Fair. A quick check online and I discovered that by spending $50, I could get 1-year subscription to Bon Appetit, a half pound of coffee beans, and free shipping to boot. Not bad! The two cookbooks were 40% off list price, so I added a Chez Panisse cookbook to the order and was good to go. Everything arrived within a week.

This weekend I made the Blackberry Limeade from Foose’s cookbook and it was mighty good. A little sweet, even with half of the simple syrup called for (I’m wise to these southerners with their sweet teeth — I automatically cut the sugar in half for any drink!) but The Oyster and I managed to put away a whole pitcher. Since blackberries aren’t in season up here in Massachusetts, I used a pound of frozen blackberries, which produced plenty of purple juice. I couldn’t find fresh key limes either, so I used Persian limes. The other “odd” ingredients were Kaffir lime leaves, turbinado sugar, and a cardamom pod, which added a subtle flavor to the drink.

This was my first try cooking from Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift’s How to Eat Supper. It includes so many recipes I’m dying to try for our family meals. My goal this summer is to empty out our freezer and pantry, so I want to use recipes where I don’t have to go out and buy a lot of stuff, save meat and produce. Of the two recipes I tested last night, one was a winner, the other a dud. But let’s start with the good:

Cabbage Slaw with Orange-Pumpkin Seed Dressing

From the pantry: EVOO, garlic, white wine vinegar, spices/salt/pepper, an orange, and a carrot

Had to buy: napa cabbage, pumpkin seeds

This was a straightforward slaw with napa cabbage and carrots as the starring vegetables, seasoned with a dressing made from roasted pumpkin seeds, orange juice, cumin and coriander. I made this slaw as a side to go with the Tamarind-glazed Pork Chops, and unlike the chops recipe, this turned out well. Surprisingly well, considering I generally detest coleslaw. I liked the quiet flavor of the cabbage with little bursts of sweetness from the carrot. I had screwed up by buying raw unsalted pumpkin seeds — the recipe called for roasted & salted — but all was remedied by pan roasting the seeds and salting by hand. I made the dressing ahead in the food processor, then a few minutes before dinner, I used the slicing attachment to shred the cabbage and carrot directly into the dressing. Kasper and Swift recommend adding smoked tofu or tempeh to the salad, something I’ll do next time — smokiness would have been an excellent addition to this delicious salad.

Next time: Use a finer grained salt in the dressing and shred the cabbage with a knife for a more uniform appearance. Also, the two servings of raw cabbage I devoured gave me terrible heartburn around 2:30 a.m. Ouch!

Tamarind-glazed Pork Chops

From the pantry: Aleppo pepper (yeah, can you believe it?), garlic, fish sauce, sugar, white wine

Had to buy: pork chops, tamarind concentrate

I had high hopes for this recipe since I love the sour flavor of tamarind, but things got off on a bad footing when I discovered my small jar of tamarind concentrate in the ‘fridge had disappeared. I hoofed it over to the local Indian market, got my Tamcon, and came back home to make the glaze ahead of time. I could tell The Oyster wasn’t going to like the 2 tablespoons of ground Aleppo pepper the recipe called for, so I cut it down to a mere 2 teaspoons. The rest of the glaze consisted of the tamarind concentrate, garlic, fish sauce, sugar, dry white wine, and water to thin. When I taste-tested the glaze it was way too sour, so I added an additional 2 teaspoons of sugar on top of the 1 tsp. the recipe called for. It still wasn’t very sweet on the tongue, but I thought maybe the sweetness would come through once grilled.

I used a Caphalon grill pan to cook the chops, then brushed the glaze over them to finish. Unfortunately, the grilling did nothing to heighten the sweetness. Instead, the sour of the tamarind overpowered the chops — not even the salty flavor of the fish sauce or the six garlic cloves could cut through it. However, the heat from the two teaspoons of Aleppo pepper came though — I can’t imagine how strong it would have been with the recommended two tablespoons.

Next time: There won’t be a next time. This one was dudsville.