The Zucchini Challenge

            Leaving the garden unmonitored for four days in August is bound to cause trouble and it did!  The cucumbers I had been saving for making my dill pickles had gotten rather large and one was easily the size of my fist. But my lovely ridged Italian zucchini, which we have enjoyed in tasty stir-fries, or very young – just sliced with a dab of blue cheese as an appetizer had way exceeded my bounds in size for picking zucchini. They were as long as my forearm!  What was worse, there were several of them!

            This called for some determined action and I gave myself  the  “Zucchini Challenge” to come up with a dinner where every course included zucchini in some form, without being too obvious about it and yet being varied and delicious, rather than a monotonous one flavor deal. It is fortunate that zucchini is so malleable to flavors and can easily be disguised in texture.

So, setting Joe’s restaurant near Lancaster Pennsylvania as my ideal, where everything in the menu contained mushrooms as an ingredient, I set out to design my menu.  Starters: young zucchini slices with a dab of Roquefort and savory Madeleines made with shredded zucchini, Parmesan cheese, flour and eggs. Soup: Creamy zucchini ‘shape-up” soup with zucchini-rosemary-multi seed bread. Main course: zucchini-almond gratin. Salad: bib lettuce-orange sections-thin sliced zucchini with lemony peanut vinaigrette. Desert: hearty cinnamon-raisin-pecan cupcakes, with shredded zucchini substituting for the original shredded apple in my recipe. For anyone feeling that they really missed meat, I would serve sliced ham garnished with thin slices of zucchini twists.

An extra benefit in all these dishes is that zucchini has almost no calories by itself and whenever it substitutes for something else, you save some of those carbohydrate calories.  A wonderful example is the soup mentioned above, which can be served cold or warm, tastes like a more flavorful vichyssoise, but has only a fraction of the calories.

                        Creamy zucchini ‘shape up’ soup

In a 3 quart pot sauté 1 large onion and 1 stalk of celery with leaves,  coarsely chopped in 1 Tblp. olive oil for 5 minutes.  Stir in 1 tsp. thyme, then add 1 unpeeled large pickling cucumber (or seeded regular cucumber) and 1 pound zucchini, all coarsely chopped.  If zucchini has seriously matured, remove the seeds. Add 2 cups buillion and enough water to cover. Bring to boil and cook for 20 minutes until vegetables are soft. Remove from heat and add ¼ cup chopped parsley.  When cooled, add 4 chopped scallions with green part, 1/8 tsp. Tabasco, 3 Tblsp. rice vinegar and process in blender in batches with 2 cups non-fat yoghurt. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper to taste. Serve garnished with chopped red pepper and/or Caesar croutons.

                                    Almond-zucchini gratin.

            This is another recipe that uses a lot of the vegetable.  In a large bowl mix 4 cups coarsely grated zucchini or yellow summer squash with 1 ¼ cups Italian bread crumbs, 2/3 cups grated cheddar cheese and ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese. In 2 Tblsp. butter sauté 1 large chopped onion with ¼ tsp. garlic powder and 1 tsp. thyme for 5 minutes, add in 1 tsp. salt, ¼ tsp. pepper and ½ cup slivered almonds to heat and stir into the zucchini mixture. Turn all in a buttered 8x8 inch casserole. In a small bowl beat together 2 large eggs and ½ cup milk. Pour over the zucchini mixture in the casserole, making sure that it is evenly moistened. Sprinkle with grated sharp cheddar cheese or cover with thin slices of Provolone and bake in 350 degree oven for 40 minutes until top is browned and the filling is set. This dish freezes well and can be reheated.

            Benjamin Franklin is purported to have said: “’Waste not, want not” and I tend to agree if the results can all be delicious.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro 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)

Blueberry Sorcerer’s Apprentice

            The hapless Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Paul Dukas amazing musical portrayal, unforgettably played by Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”, had basically two problems: 1) insufficient planning for completion of the project and 2) too much water! The following tale has similarities in: 1) too many blueberries and 2) insufficient planning for the completion of the project!

            Each year at this time I like to replenish our winter supply of Maine blueberries in the freezer and in the form of delicious syrupy blueberry jam that graces everything from pancakes and waffles to ice cream and pudding. Well, with one thing and another August arrived and I still had not placed my order for a blueberry flat and to my horror found that Beth’s farm market was no longer taking orders, since the season had come early this year (like everything else). However, I was kindly advised to call back tomorrow afternoon, in case they had some extra. To cut a long story short, I called, they had them and of course I got them home.

            Except for two problems.  We still had a houseful of summer visitors. And I had forgotten how large is a 10 pound flat, and I had spoken for two. The following day as our guests were walking out the door, I was already busily filling quart boxes of blueberries for the freezer, since they freeze well unwashed and in the winter a quick thaw in cold water gives you blueberries ready for a pie, muffins or pancakes. The first flat filled all the extra space in the freezer and suddenly the second flat sitting on the kitchen counter gave me visions of Mickey pacing furiously trying to recall the magic that would stop the coming buckets of water being poured in the caldron. My problem was not water, but blueberries that would not quit!  It was time to start cooking.

                                                Natural Maine Blueberry Jam

            Wash and pick over 8 cups Maine blueberries and place in a large stainless pot with ½ cup fresh lemon juice. Bring to boil with occasional stirring. Reduce the heat to medium and with stirring add 7 cups of sugar. It helps to add the first 4 cups, stirring to dissolve and then add the last 3 cups that have been heated in the microwave for 2 minutes to facilitate dissolving all the sugar. After the sugar is fully dissolved, continue to cook on medium heat with constant slow stirring for 25 minutes. Fill into sterilized jars to within ¼ inch from the top and seal with a sterile lid. As the jam cools, the lid will pop indicating that it was vacuum sealed and you can store the jars at room temperature for a year. Often the supply will be eaten long before that time. Since the jam has no pectin added, it is more syrupy than jelly.

            The first batch gave me seven 8 ounce jars and I would have liked to quit, except there were still a lot of blueberries. Unlike Mickey, I had no angry master sorcerer appear and invoke magic to halt the activities. I had to go on!  So, I made the second batch of jam with 8 more jars, after which I was more than ready to call it quits. Except – there were still more blueberries!  My friend the refrigerator, fortunately took care of them until next day, when after breakfast  (with fresh blueberries of course), I baked my husband’s favorite fresh blueberry pie.

            I hope my friends like blueberry jam for Christmas!

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro 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)

SIMPLIFY SUMMER

Simplify Summer!

            To quote Mr. Gershwin: ”Summertime and the living is easy…”. We don’t shovel snow, we don’t have to slog in the mud, the black flies are gone, summer shorts with  tee shirts are the uniform of the day and the blue of Maine summer sky on a sunny day never ceases to amaze and inspire me. 

Our garden is doing beautifully with the early start this spring and the produce has come in consistently with abundance of greens, peas, cucumbers and now beans, summer squash, beets and even a few delicious cherry tomatoes and fingerling eggplant.  However, this litany of homegrown fresh produce successes comes with a price and I don’t mean the weeding. Harvesting is an ongoing process that requires persistence and time to get this bounty to the table or in the freezer for winter.

While I admire and relish each crop in succession, to be honest, it takes quite a bit of work and the concept of “living is easy” seems sometime to get lost.  But one can not live on fresh salads and raw vegetables, although there are food fads that aim to do just that.  So, it is with some reluctance that I admit to taking some shortcuts in my kitchen when summer visitors or events require food. Sometimes home-made does not have to be entirely “from scratch” and sometimes even not from my garden.

Recently a niece introduced me to a cornmeal pancake and waffle mix, It originally produced some very fine blueberry pancakes, but a few weeks later morphed in my kitchen in quite something else: zucchini-Parmesan corn friters that went very well with sour cream and bratwurst as the main part of a supper. The mix I used was Red Mill whole grain mix, but other brands are likely to work as well.

                        Zuchini – Parmesan corn fritters.

Mix together a slightly beaten egg with: ½ cup water, ¾ cups cornmeal pancake mix, ½ tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. onion powder, ½ cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese and ½ tsp salt and a dash of pepper. Fold in 1 ½ cups coarsely shredded zucchini. Heat 1-2 Tblsp. canola oil in a large pan and drop batter by a tablespoon to form slightly flattened fritters. Cook on medium heat about 4 minutes on a side. Drain on a paper towel and serve immediately.

Summer fruit makes a great desert in any form, but sometimes a creamy desert, short of a cheesecake, seems appropriate.  Being rather partial to pies, I recently made my banana cream pie with a summer topping that was as colorful as tasty.

                        Strawberry-banana-cream pie.

Bake a single crust of prepared pie crust in a 10 inch pie plate and allow to cool.  Soften 1 envelope of unflavored gelatin in 3 Tblsp. cold water.  On medium heat cook 1 3oz package of  banana cream pudding with constant stirring in 2 cups of milk to boiling. Stir 3 Tblsp. of the boiling pudding into the softened gelatin to dissolve and add the mixture back to the pudding. Allow pudding to cool about 20 minutes with occasional stirring.  Beat ½ cup whipping cream until soft peaks form, sprinkle with 1 tsp. sugar, continue to beat until stiff peaks form and fold thoroughly into the pudding mixture. Pour about ¼ of the pudding-whipped cream mix in the bottom of the cooled pie. Slice 1 ½ to 2 bananas in thick slices and layer on the pudding. Pour the rest of the pudding on top, making sure that all banana pieces are covered.  Refrigerate for about 4 hours.  Before serving, decorate the top of the pie with halved strawberries alternating with milk chocolate chips. Simply festive and delicious!

“Summertime, when the living is easy….”.  Maybe with a few more shortcuts in the kitchen I may attain that goal of delicious meals with a minimum of energy expenditure.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro 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)

LEFTOVERS TO THE RESCUE

Leftovers to the Rescue

            The tick got me!  Despite ample warnings about their proliferation this year because of our mild winter and careful inspection of ones person when returning from the woods, somewhere during trimming of some overgrown rhododendrons in our yard one managed to get its lunch, dinner and breakfast at my expense. It unfortunately left as a tip a small infectious microorganism that causes Lyme’s disease.  As anyone who has had the misfortune to get Lyme’s disease will tell you, it is no picnic, especially during the summer, when friends and relatives stream through your front door to admire the lovely Maine scenery.

            The antibiotics are wonderful in stopping the infection in a few weeks, but the aftereffects linger on.  With sapped energy levels and swollen joints, everything seems to take at least twice as long. You need to sit down after doing most anything, but  -  you still need to feed everyone! So I have learned to be very economical with effort for cooking and in the process have learned a thing or two that will actually be useful otherwise. The secret weapon in this case is cooking more than enough for one meal and using the leftovers (no it is not a dirty word) to create other tasty meals with very little effort.  Desert is the easy part with summer meals, since melons and other summer fruit abound and are perfect for a light finish to any meal.

            Summer is great for grilling and chicken, steak or even butterflied grilled pork tenderloin paired with fresh corn and a salad will give a delicious meal with little effort. The bonus comes with cooking extra that provide ready cooked meat for at least one additional meal. Steak, sliced thin with a side of sour cream, horseradish and chive sauce makes an excellent cold supper base paired with my four bean summer casserole, which can be served hot or cold the second day.

            Grilled cooked chicken of course provides endless possibilities for improvisation. My recent tantalizing discovery was cumin and jalapeno flavored chicken wrapped in a tortilla. For a cold supper I like my canellini or garbanzo bean chicken salad.

                                    Spicy chicken tacos

            Have ready two cups of shredded grilled chicken. Sautè a thinly sliced medium onion in 1 Tblsp. olive oil for 5 minutes, add ½ tsp. cumin seeds continuing to sautè for 1 minute.  Stir in 1 Tblsp. finely chopped pickled jalapeno slices, the shredded chicken, ½ cup white wine or chicken broth, 1 tsp. soy sauce. Heat through and sprinkle with 1Tblsp. chopped parsley before folding in corn or flour tortillas.

            These are good with a cucumber salad dressed with sour cream, splash of rice vinegar, dill, chives and salt and pepper.

                                    Canellini Chicken Salad with Feta

            In a bowl mix together 2 grilled skinless chicken breasts cubed, 2 cans drained and rinsed canellini or garbanzo beans, ½ large red pepper cubed, 2 large scallions with greens thinly sliced, 2 Tblsp. chopped flat leaf parsley, 2 tsp. chopped capers, ½ tsp. toasted cumin seeds.  Toss with dressing: juice of 1 lemon, 3 Tblsp. sherry vinegar, 1 Tblsp. white wine vinegar, ½ tsp. honey, salt, pepper, scant ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil. Chill 3-4 hours, toss with 3 oz. crumbled Feta cheese and decorate with halved grape tomatoes.

             Cool and delicious meals with a minimum expenditure of energy will be my motto for the rest of our unusually warm summer.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro 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)

Printed in the Lincoln County News –7/19/2012

Celebrate Your Taste Buds

Celebrate Your Taste Buds

            Flavors have been broadly categorized as sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory or sometimes called meaty or umami. It has also been known for more than a century that humans differ in their individual sensitivity to bitter, such as the bitter flavor in cabbage or Brussels sprouts. With the information from the Human Genome Project an entire field of scientific research has now identified a multiplicity of genes responsible for producing the sensors (receptors) on your taste bud cells.  

Not only do we now know that there are several sensors that detect the sweetness in a cookie, saltiness in a pickle, sourness of a lime, bitterness of beer and meatiness (umami) in your 4^th of July hamburger, but also how specific mo Each time you sit down to a delicious meal or pick up a tasty snack your mouth goes to work overtime.  Your teeth may do the chewing, but thousands of cells in your onion shaped taste buds on your tongue do most of the work by eagerly extending their sensors to sort out the flavors that make food one of the joys of life.

lecules from these foods react with these sensors to relay a further message to your brain. If you hated Brussels sprouts as a child and your sister or brother found them inoffensive, you apparently inherited a different combination of genes for that particular receptor to bitterness.

            Extending the taste receptor survey to animals, scientists have come up with fascinating findings.  I was amazed to find that our two cats for instance would have no taste for anything sweet, since they have no sweet receptors on their very pink tongues. Neither apparently do most of a group of non feline species of the order Carnivora, including sea lions, otters and hyenas. The proffered explanation is that dietary preferences had allowed their genes to be mutated to a non-functional form with time. What was claimed as a surprise was that bears have well functioning sweet receptors on their tongues. Which of course should have been no surprise to anyone at all who has read of Winnie the Pooh’s great love of honey!

            Such technicalities aside, I am searching for a variety of ways to challenge our taste buds with different servings of the abundant lettuce and green’s crops from the garden these days.  The rains have vastly out-produced what the slugs could not eat and daily harvests include several types of lettuce, curly endive, escarole, beet greens and arugula.

My favorite vinaigrette is: ¼ cup olive oil, 3 Tblsp. wine vinegar, 1 tsp. Dijon mustard, ½ tsp. soy sauce, ¼ tsp dried thyme, a pinch of  pepper and a shake of garlic powder. This dressing goes well with a mix of greens and thinly sliced scallions. Tasty variations have come from addition of crumbled Feta or thinly sliced Assiago or Parmeggiana Regano cheeses.

            My curry dressing is spicy and a bit lighter, but pairs well with chopped peanuts or pecans and the variety of greens from the garden. Curry dressing: ¼ cup olive oil, 3 Tblp. fresh lemon or lime juice, 1 tsp. cider vinegar, ½ tsp. sugar, ½ tsp. soy sauce, ½ tsp.  Madras curry powder, ¾ tsp. dry mustard and ½ tsp. hot mustard.

            As with all scientific discoveries, our taste buds/receptors are now in line for potential manipulation by the food industry and some fancy chefs are already experimenting with “molecular gastronomy”. However, the combinations of summer fresh flavors in delectable salads next to meat and vegetables from the grill, still remain unbeatable for pleasing anyone’s taste buds.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro 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)

LATVIAN MIDSUMMER's SOLSTICE FEAST

- Latvian Midsummer’s Solstice Feast Jāņi

            We all appreciate the long days of summer, but especially this has been true in Northern lands, where days are uncomfortably short for long parts of the year.  So, since pre-historic times the summer solstice has been celebrated vigorously with: song, bonfires, dance, flower wreaths for the women and oak wreaths for the men, search for the mystical flowering fern that blooms with silver flowers at midnight, plenty of drink and of course – food.

            Such wonderful ethnic traditions survive even in Maine, where last Sunday many of those with ethnic Latvian background by birth or marriage gathered to participate in some of the old customs even absence of a bonfire to stave off the onslaught of summer’s crop of mosquitoes.  I’m not sure about anyone searching for the flowering fern at midnight, but old folk music filled the house and the beer flowed freely, though it did not come from a barrel, home brewed with a centuries old recipe.

But the food could not have been better, had it come from a top line old Latvian culinary compendium.  For starters there were the traditional piragi (little bacon rolls), sliced hard salami and cheeses, including the traditional home made and molded Janu cheese with caraway and dark sourdough rye with sweet butter.

 The mouthwatering main spread ranged from home smoked salmon and oysters, anchovies, herring in sour cream, a spread of sausages with sauerkraut, two types of potato salad featuring dill plus rosols- a potato based salad with beets apples and herring. Then the decorative pork and veal in aspic (galerts) with sour cream and horseradish, Latvian brown peas (texture of garbanzos) with pancetta, a great tender lettuce salad with creamy dressing, as well as home pickled cucumbers and beans.

 

This substantial feast was capped off with a huge decorative ‘klingeris”: yeast sweet dough with raisins, cardamom and almonds shaped in the form of a giant pretzel and coffee.

            For a meal in the category of ‘potluck’ this was the ultimate, especially accompanied with good cheer and fellowship celebrating the Solstice with time honored traditions.        

ONLY ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

Open faced 'mini' sandwiches

As Murphy’s Law would decree, I managed to get behind a woman in the grocery checkout line with a two huge carts full of items that only could signify a major celebration party or a dozen plus relatives arriving for their annual summer vacation in Maine.  It was going to take a long time, so I cheerfully inquired about which of these events she was about to cater at her house. The answer was given proudly with a broad smile: “It is for my son’s graduation party”.

The leisurely wait gave me time to think of all the upcoming summer events from graduations, family reunions and all those wonderful opening nights of friends art exhibits, each requiring at least some food offering, preferably in the finger food category. Something that can be carried on a napkin, does not drip or fall apart, can be easily eaten in no more than two bites,can be made ahead and will look good for a couple of hours.

Aha!  Some version of a sandwich! The sturdy lunch sandwich has survived brown bagging for centuries and tea sandwiches look dainty on trays, but are sometimes difficult to guess about their contents. However the third alternative, open faced sandwiches, can come to the rescue for everyone who may be able to boil an egg, but lack more impressive culinary skills. Many Northern countries display colorful assortments of open faced sandwiches in cafes and shops and thus provide us with a ready made answer to our criteria for the perfect finger food. Best of all, ingredients can be obtained in a good deli and a little time and playful assembly of ‘mini’ open sandwiches will earn you applause from any hostess.

Bread for this purpose needs to be dense, in order to slice it thin and not have it become soggy once it has been covered. Cocktail rye works well cut diagonally in triangles and so does thin German rye sold in packaged square slices, which can be divided in sixths. Both cream cheese and softened unsalted butter work well as the basic spread for these breads before assembling any toppings. For white bread use baguette, the small and dense variety cut thin or dense English toasting bread slices, which should be cut in quarters without removing the crust. Use only unsalted butter as a spread for these breads, since cream cheese will make them soggy upon standing.

Toppings are the fun part, from plain to extraordinary with your imagination and pocketbook setting the limits. The simplest are cold cuts, such as smoked turkey, ham and salami, which can be decorated with a green olive, slice of cucumber, pickle or even thin pickled jalapeno pepper. For cheeses pick sharp cheddar, provolone or smoked gouda and decorate with half a grape tomato. The humble slice of an egg takes on a sophisticated taste on cream cheese, when decorated with sliced black olives and chopped chives, or for the daring - an anchovy. Another colorful combination on rye is cottage cheese topped with sliced radishes and chives.

Some elegant open sandwiches, which would not even be amiss at a wedding reception, can be made with smoked salmon or smoked shrimp. The salmon goes very well topped with thinly sliced red onion, some capers and a sprig of dill. Smoked shrimp can be displayed decoratively with small strips of roast red pepper and chopped dill.

The recent popularity of deviled eggs as pretty finger food at gatherings can’t hold a candle to the fantastic mouthwatering selection you can create with open “mini’ sandwiches, without even being able to cook. Well, you may have to boil that egg for the egg sandwich.

 (I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro 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)