Oven-Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

Have I ever mentioned that purple is my favorite color? I find the color exhilarating and like plants that bear purple fruits and vegetables, including tomatillos.

Our tomatillo plants were slow this year along with everything else in the garden. The extended cold, wet spring put a damper on things, making everything slow to grow and blossom. We finally harvested some tomatillos a few weeks ago, much later than last year, and with the early cold snap this week we didn’t get much of a growing season at all. All we can do is preserve what we have and hope for better next year. Read more

Ginger Plum Jam

In autumn I find myself drawn to the displays of fresh seasonal plums, adoring their shape and colors. Strawberries are my spring darlings, blueberries are our summer sweet, and plums are my fall favorite, a delight that my boys enjoy as much as I do. I brought home a few bags of plums last week with this ginger plum jam in mind, and I had a hard time protecting them from the boys for a couple days until I could make the jam. Top Gun especially is drawn to their deep color, and I would find him sneaking off with one every so often, and even discovered a plum pit under the living room sofa. He desperately wanted that plum all to himself. Fortunately there were plenty of plums leftover for him and his brothers. Read more

Zucchini Risotto

Zucchini season will soon come to an end, but there’s still time to enjoy this icon of the summer garden. We’ve made salads, pasta, bread, gratins, and all sorts of things with zucchini, even though it was a sad zucchini year for us after losing all our zucchini plants to garden pests.

Risotto is comfort food for me anytime of the year no matter what I put into it, and this one with zucchini and our fresh homegrown basil and garlic does not disappoint. The Grana Padano cheese adds a slightly nutty yet delicate flavor that is worth the search, but you can also substitute Parmigiano Reggiano if you can’t find Grana Padano. The recipe is adapted from My Italian Garden, by Viana La Place (in my personal collection), a lovely little book Read more

Spiced Vegetable Dal and a Memorial

My first cookbook from Sheila Lukins was the 1980s classic Silver Palate Cookbook, a popular book that led many people in the United States to change the way they cooked and viewed food. I’ve collected just about all of the books she wrote and have cooked from them many times over the years, learning something new with each dish. My favorite book of hers is the All Around the World Cookbook because it complemented my taste for authentic regional foods, and I’ve gifted copies many times over the years.

After learning of Lukins’ untimely death from brain cancer on August 30, I felt the urge to cook from her books again as a reminder of her importance in my own cooking. I opened my copy of All Around the World Cookbook and chose her Spiced Vegetable Dal, one of my favorites. Read more

Zucchini Soba Salad

My introduction to soba noodles was actually on a plane flying from Tokyo to Honolulu, admittedly not the best place to get good food. The flight attendants came around with breakfast and asked if I wanted the Japanese or the American breakfast, and I chose the Japanese because I could see the noodles that someone else already had on their tray. I swirled them in the sauce and enjoyed the slippery sensation and flavor while the American woman next to me eyed them with a look that said, “I can’t believe you are eating that.” I just smiled and enjoyed my breakfast. Read more

Zucchini and Tomato Gratin

We’ve reached that magical point in the summer where the tomatoes are starting to ripen. For a couple days we brought in only a handful of sweet cherry, grape, sun gold, or yellow pear tomatoes, but in the last few days we’ve brought in almost nine pounds of tomatoes and have more on the way. As long as something devastating doesn’t happen (knock on wood) we’re set to have a good crop of tomatoes. Right now we are harvesting Early Girl, Brandywine, Mr. Stripey, Cherokee Purple, and Roma, and we have some other varieties that aren’t ready yet but should be soon. Read more

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