Whipping up dinner

| Green Card Gardener

A frantic Monday at work. Honestly, if I did not have veggies in the garden that need to be picked and that took so much time getting to this stage, I would have fetched takeout (don’t get me wrong, we do have takeout pizza every now and then), or I would have made something else, definitely something with much less veggies.

While the dough was rising, I picked and prepared the vegetables for the filling. It took me a while to switch gears, but then I thoroughly enjoyed being in the kitchen and improvising this vegetable torta. I also found use for an almost full container of ricotta that was nearing expiration. The recipe for the yeast dough is from my favorite cookbook, or I should better say: my cooking bible, Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Tonight was another proof, cooking can be great relaxation. And what I like about this blog is that before, I rarely wrote things down when improvising, so that very often I could not remember how much I used. Now I can because I am taking notes!

Summer Vegetable Torta with Zucchini, Eggplant and Tomatoes

Dough:

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

½ teaspoon sugar

½ cup warm water

1 egg

3 tablespoons olive oil

Pinch of salt

1¾ cups flour

Filling:

1 medium zucchini

1 medium eggplant

20 cherry tomatoes

2 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 eggs

12 ounces ricotta

½ packed cup fresh basil leaves

Salt

Pepper

1. Mix yeast with sugar and water and let stand for 5-10 minutes until it foams. Lightly beat the egg and mix with the olive oil in a bowl (I use the KitchenAid for this). Add the yeast mixture and the flour and knead on low until the dough is smooth and elastic. Shape the dough into a ball.

2. Spray the bowl with olive oil and turn the dough over so the upper side is coated. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise 45 minutes.

3. Halve the zucchini and remove the seeds with a small spoon. Cut into thin slices. Peel the eggplant and quarter. Cut into thin slices (I use a mandoline for slicing). Quarter the tomatoes. Chop the garlic.

4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

5. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and cook the garlic until translucent but not browned. Add the zucchini and the eggplant and cook for 15 minutes until soft and browned in a few spots, stirring often. Add the tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes more. Remove from the stove and let cool for a few minutes.

6. Lightly beat the eggs and whisk in the ricotta until smooth. Chop the basil leaves and add to the cheese.

7. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to fit a 9-inch springform pan plus a good 2 inches coming up the sides. Line the pan with the dough and smoothen out the sides so the crust is evenly high all around.

8. Mix the veggies with the cheese and season with salt and a generous amount of black pepper. Spread the filling evenly onto the dough.

9. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the torta is lightly browned on top and the crust is golden brown. Remove the springform rim and let the torta cool off completely.

Garlic: Tell me where the flowers are

| Green Card Gardener

If I had listened to the lady from customer service at Burpee, the garlic I planted last October would still be sitting in the ground shriveling up in the summer heat. I’ve grown garlic successfully for the past years but something strange happened this year. The garlic did not develop any flower tops, aka scapes. So I called Burpee where I bought the planting garlic last fall to find out whether this variety, Early Italian Garlic, might be a non-blooming kind (just like the rhubarb I have in the garden). The lady at Burpee first didn’t know what scapes are, and when I told her “The garlic doesn’t bloom,” she said “Don’t worry, just wait until next year.” – as if garlic was a perennial, which usually starts to bloom only in its second year. That much for help from the pros. It was hilarious.

But the garlic was fine. We harvested about 50 nice, plump heads. Now that they have cured for a few weeks in the shed, I need to think about storage. I am debating with myself whether I should keep a small supply for a couple of months and freeze the rest as unpeeled cloves, like I’ve done in previous years. Frozen garlic is not good to use raw, but that’s not a problem for me because I use most of it for cooking anyway.

Hardneck garlic, the type that is the best to grow in this area, does not store very well. By Thanksgiving, it is light as air. Storing garlic in oil is not an option because it can produce botulism, a serious food poisoning that can paralyze or kill.

I think I will compromise. Half of the garlic will go in the freezer right away, and the other half I will hang up in bundles in the basement until I find that the garlic does dry out too quickly – or until someone complains about the strong garlic smell in the basement.

Cake on wheels

| Green Card Gardener

With the early raspberries almost gone, and just a handful of ripe blackberries, there is not too much to harvest for sweet splurges right now. But I had set my mind on making a cake for my parents-in-law, and I wanted to use at least something from the garden.

So I settled on a lemon pie with blackberries only for garnish. The forgotten half-empty jar of English lemon marmalade in the fridge, for which I had tried to find a use (the parsimony mantra “do not waste food” was fed to me with the baby bottle) came extremely handy – it gave the top a nice shiny finish.

Yet looking at the cake now, I am starting to wonder if and how it will survive the five-hour car ride. At least I have the photo to show if it arrives all mush, and I can always make it again for on-site consumption – if my tasting panel likes it.

Lemon Cake with Blackberries

Crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup shortening, at room temperature

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ cup + 1 tablespoon cold water (as needed)

Filling:

3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 cups milk

1 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar

3 egg yolks

Juice of 3 lemons (at least two of them organic)

Grated zest of 2 organic lemons

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Garnish:

24-30 blackberries

½ to 1 cup lemon marmalade

1. Mix flour, shortening and salt thoroughly in a bowl with a pastry blender. Add just enough water to hold the dough together in a firm ball.

2. Roll out the dough between two large pieces of wax paper to fit a 9-inch springform pan plus about a 1-inch edge.

3. Grease the springform pan and fit the dough into the pan. Even out the edge with a knife. Place in the freezer while you prepare the filling.

4. Mix the cornstarch with a bit of the milk to a smooth consistency. Put the rest of the milk with the sugar in a double boiler. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the milk. Whisk the cornstarch mixture into the milk and cook over boiling water until it thickens and coats a spoon, about 10-12 minutes, stirring constantly (you might wonder if that coating ever happens, but you know unmistakably when you’re there).

5. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

6. Juice the lemons and chop the lemon zest of the two organic lemons very finely.

7. When the mixture thickens, stir in the lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and carefully transfer to the preheated oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the filling is set. If the crust gets dark but the filling is still too liquid, place a sheet of aluminum foil on top and bake a few minutes longer. But note that the filling will set more when it’s cold.

8. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool completely on a rack. Carefully run a knife along the edge and remove the rim of the pan.

9. Heat the lemon marmalade in a small saucepan and strain through a fine sieve. Brush a thin coat of marmalade on the cake.

10. Place the blackberries with their blossom ends down in a circle around the edge of the cake. Coat the blackberries and in-between the blackberries with marmalade. This works best with a small brush. If you have any marmalade left, brush the side of the cake. Refrigerate until serving.

Beets? Sweet!

| Green Card Gardener

I was a beet-avoider – until I found the best way to prepare them: roasted in the oven. What a difference in flavor and texture from the boiled, rubbery slices in jars and cans! Now I am growing beets in the garden, and for the first time I have a real harvest (thanks to Berlin Wall No. 2).

Tonight we’ll have a beet salad that I’ve made a few times already this year. But I will add a new, also homemade ingredient: raspberry vinegar. I found the vinegar recipe in the superb recently published River Cottage Preserves Handbook by Pam Corbin (though I used less sugar than the recipe calls for).

Roasted Beet Salad with Walnuts and Goat Cheese

8 medium-size beets

3-4 tablespoons raspberry vinegar

½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts

4 ounces crumbly soft goat cheese

3 tablespoons olive oil or walnut oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 375 F.

1. Peel beets and cut them into ½-inch dice. Toss with the raspberry vinegar and spread in one layer on a greased jelly roll pan. Roast in the preheated oven, turning once in a while and adding a bit of water if they seem dry. Roast for 25-30 minutes, or until you can pierce them with a sharp knife. dry. Cool completely.

2. Lightly roast the walnuts in a pan. Cool.

3. Whisk oil and red wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Toss dressing with the beets, walnuts and crumbled goat cheese.