PLUMMY END OF SUMMER

 

 Plummy End of Summer

           Cooks with gardens or convenient farmers markets enjoy the bounty of this season, with a slightly nostalgic look to the coming loss of plentiful and varied fresh salad ingredients.

A fresh baguette is a tasty delight but tends to lose its appeal the day after. The thrifty French cook solves the problem it by serving “Pain perdue”, more commonly known known as French toast, for breakfast. In Italy, abundance of tomatoes and herbs leads the cook to think of colorful and fresh salads.  Here is a salad for those sunny and still warm September days.

                                              Tuscan bread salad

1)   Cube some day-old baguette or country bread (4 cups).  Toast in a 300-degree oven until golden, 15-20 minutes. Cool completely.

2)   While bread is cooling cut a large fresh pickling cucumber in half lengthwise and then slice thinly. Halve enough colorful cherry tomatoes to make 2 cups

3)   Also prepare: ¼ cup quartered Kalamata olives; ½ cup chopped fresh parsley and torn basil leaves each; 1/3 cup chopped scallion; ½ cup thinly sliced celery and 1 tblsp drained chopped capers.

4)   Dressing: ¼ cup wine vinegar and olive oil each, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, 2 tblsp finely grated Parmesan cheese.

5)   Toss the bread together with the cucumber and the rest of the ingredients and the dressing. Allow the flavors to blend for 30 minutes, tossing occasionally. Serve for a colorful lunch with deviled eggs and rolled up slices of salami.

 This is a season also for fresh plums, which sometimes get overlooked in presence of the showier peaches and nectarines as well as the first fall apples. Last week I came upon some lovely prune plums in a local farmers market. Instead of making Plum Brown Betty, another good use for stale bread, I turned to my favorite plum coffee cake recipe. The name implies its original German origins, but it is moist and tender in any language.

                                                     Plum Kuchen

This cake is scaled for prune plums but is equally good with red plums with additional sugar for the topping.

1)   Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Sift 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour with 2 ½ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt and 1 tblsp sugar in a 3 qt bowl

2)   Cut in 4 tblsp cold unsalted butter with a pastry cutter or two knives until particles are rice sized.

3)   In a small bowl beat 1 large egg with 1/3 cup milk and 1 tsp lemon flavoring

4)   Add the milk and egg mix at once to the flour and mix quickly, just to dampen the dough..

5)   Spread evenly in an 8-inch layer cake pan that has been well greased or sprayed with baking spray.

6)   Cut plums in half, remove the pit and arrange on the dough cut side up. It will take about 15 prune plums and 6-8 red plums to cover the entire surface.

7)   Mix ¼ cup sugar with 2 tblsp pecans and sprinkle over the plums. Use ½ cup sugar for red plums. Dot with butter and bake for 25 minutes until fruit bubbles and the cake around the edges is lightly browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Here is another plum desert, a recipe that I once adapted from a cherry clafoutis when I needed a gluten free desert. Clafoutis is an easy French flan like desert, baked with fruit. It requires flour, but gluten free mixes are very adaptable for making clafoutis and it makes a puffed-up desert with slightly brown edges.

                             Plum Clafoutis

1)   Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Melt 4 tblsp. butter in a 10-in. ceramic quiche pan or 8-in cake pan and swirl to coat the edges.

2)   Cut and pit 4 medium plums and cut into eight wedges. In a medium bowl tiss the plums with ½ cup sugar and pour into the buttered pan.

3)   With a mixer blend together: 3 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, ¼ tsp. salt, 1 cup milk, 2/3 cup flour or gluten free mix and pour on top of the fruit in the prepared pan.

4)   Bake 35-40 minutes until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.

5)   Serve warm with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.

Enjoy some plummy deserts as a fond farewell to summer.

 (I. Winicov Harrington lives in coastal Maine and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)

 

 

FROM FRUIT TO A VEGETABLE SOUP

 

From Fruit to a Vegetable Soup

           Farmers markets at this time of the year brim with mounds of bright red tomatoes with contrasting purple and variegated eggplants in their vegetable stands. And yet, in plant classification they are fruit and by botanical definition berries. Both are well known as edible, even though they belong to the nightshade family of plants, with some deadly relatives.

          Cooks love them regardless of definitions, and despite their diverse origins, their flavors blend beautifully in a large variety of dishes. Eggplant or Aubergine originated in South Asia, where it grows wild. It is mentioned in an ancient Chinese Agricultural treatise in 544 AD and was part of both ancient Roman and Greek diets.

The tomato comes from Western and Central South America, was used in cooking by the Aztecs and was introduced to Europe after the Spanish Conquest of Aztecs. Wild tomatoes are small and were considered poisonous by some upon first introduction in Europe, and subsequently became known as ‘love apples’ because of their bright color.

Mediterranean cooking often melds eggplant and tomatoes since eggplant beautifully absorbs the umami flavors of tomato and other herbs. This is a recreation of a recipe for a wonderful soup we had in a New Hampshire Inn many years ago.

 

                                   Tomato-roast eggplant soup

This soup is best made with fresh tomatoes and Japanese or other thin-skinned eggplant that requires no peeling. If unavailable, use canned whole tomatoes (28 oz) un-drained and 1-2 purple globe eggplants peeled and sliced in ½ in. slices.

1)    Trim and slice 4-6 long Japanese eggplants in half. On a cookie pan spray with olive oil, salt with garlic salt and broil (or grill) on both sides until nicely browned.

2)    In a 3-4 qt. pot sauté 1 large onion, coarsely chopped in 2 tblsp. olive oil for 5 minutes with 1 ½ chopped celery stalks. Then stir in 3 slices garlic cloves for an additional minute. Add: 4-5 chopped ripe tomatoes (or canned), the broiled eggplant, 1 tsp. oregano, 1 tsp. Herbes de Provence (optional), ¼ cup chopped parsley, 3 cups water, ¼ tsp. red pepper flakes, ½ tsp. smoked paprika, 2 tblsp. Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp. salt.

3)    Bring to boil and cook for 30 minutes. Cool a bit and puree in a blender in batches with a dash of Balsamic vinegar. Adjust seasoning with salt and correct with water, if needed, to the desired thickness of the soup.

4)    Serve reheated with a dab of sour cream and chopped chives for garnish.

Summer fruit tarts and galettes are delightful and visually impressive deserts. Each requires preparing a crust, that for a busy schedule can seem like an impediment for making such a desert. However, I recently discovered that the deli-case in several stores carries sheets of Crescent dough, a perfect solution for preparing an easy fruit galette.

                                                    Easy Nectarine Galette

1)    Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2)    Filling.  In a small bowl combine: 1/3 cup sugar, 2 tsp. corn starch, 1 tsp. grated lime rind, ¼ tsp. salt, 1 tsp. grated ginger, 1 tblsp. plus 1 tsp. lime juice.

3)    Roll out the sheet of Crescent dough on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Gently pull the dough in an even rectangle.

4)    Cut 3 large, pitted nectarines in quarters, and slice each quarter in 3-4 wedges. Lay the wedges slightly overlapping in rows crosswise of the rectangle, leaving 1-inch edges all around. Add pieces of plum or dried cranberries for contrast. Then fold the edges up, slightly over the edge of the fruit.

5)    Spoon the filling over the fruit and sprinkle with additional sugar. Brush the edges of the dough with a tblsp. of cream

6)    Place in oven and immediately reduce the temperature to 375 degrees. Bake for 40 minutes. Remove to cool and serve warm or cold, plain or with a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream.

The bounty of fruit can come in different guises, all of them delicious and healthy. So, enjoy the fall and discover some new ‘fruit’ for your table.

 (I. Winicov Harrington lives in coastal Maine and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)