One of our first priorities after moving out of Manhattan was to start a garden. I know that it's small, but I'm so proud of our little container garden. We have tomatoes, herbs, zinnias, Swiss chard, green onion, radishes, and mixed salad greens.



[1-3. c. lynn]

Last night a few friends popped over for dinner, so I prepared a butternut squash and roasted garlic galette with a green salad. The galette recipe may seem intimidating with a semolina pie crust to roll out, but really the hardest part was peeling the squash! 

The squash roasted up so nicely in a 400-degree oven–I had no idea it would work so well. I have a feeling that we will be roasting more squash in the near future!

[1-4. c. lynn; 5. Sarah Shatz]

We just got our first Organics to You delivery since we arrived back home. Delivery days are perfect for making an ambitious new dish from fruit desserts and one pot meals to vegetarian entrees and soups, since the produce is so farm fresh. This time, I started thinking about doing a minestrone soup—something to incorporate lots of vegetables and still have the tomato angle that I crave.

I worked off of a Tuscan recipe from La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy, which is a product of the efforts of Italian culinary scholars who sought to preserve authentic and regional Italian cooking in a comprehensive book, almost fifty years ago. The scholars traveled around the countryside, interviewing grandmothers and farmers about their specialties and recipes that were handed down. I've found that it's an excellent resource with clear and simple instructions that you can tailor to your own taste.

--
This minestrone is robust and flavorful with all of the notes of harvest time. The vegetables are aplenty and the pasta gives a nice firm bite to every spoonful. Buon appetito!


Tuscan minestrone

5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 oz. applewood cured bacon, chopped
1 leek (white part only), washed thoroughly and chopped
1/2 cup basil, cut into chiffonade
1 potato, peeled and chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1/2 lb Swiss chard, cut into a chiffonade
1 head of baby lettuce, chopped
1 small summer squash, peeled and chopped
4 oz. string beans, chopped
2 or 3 ripe Roma tomatoes, peeled and chopped
2 cups tomato puree
2/3 cup white navy beans (I used canned beans, but Mr. Bittman would recommend dried beans instead)
Chicken broth
1/2 lb elbow pasta

1. In a pot, heat the olive oil and saute the bacon, leek, and basil over medium heat.

2. Add all of the vegetables except for the tomatoes.

3. Add salt to taste, cover, and cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

4. Add the tomatoes (without seeds), tomato puree, beans, and enough broth to cover.

5. Cook slowly for 2 hours, stirring occasionally and adding more broth or water as needed.

6. Add a bit of pasta for each bowl of soup that you are ready to eat and cook for 10 minutes; when the pasta is al dente the soup is finished. (If you add all of the pasta at once, it will become mushy when you reheat it for leftovers.)

7. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil.

A few photos from a farmers market that we stumbled into at Yoyogi-koen. It would seem that gourds have made their way into the market in a big way!

[1-3. c. lynn]

A's been contributing to our menu planning in a big way this summer. I guess we're both really inspired by the west coast bounty. Oh, and the excellent restaurants, of course. Last night, A asked for a sweet corn soup similar to the one we've been enjoying at Irving Street Kitchen. And so I flipped through my cookbooks and magazine archive came upon Dorie Greenspan's summer corn soup.

It was really simple to throw together with my new VitaMix. You just cut the corn from the cob with a serrated knife, plop the cobs into a pot with some whole milk, and saute up some onions, carrots, and celery. Combine everything together, dump the cobs, let it simmer, and then ladle everything into the food processor. A few minutes later you have a bowl of frothy sweet corn soup with a hint of onion.

[1-2. c. lynn]

I am loving my little porcelain fruit carton from Roost. These bone china baskets are perfect for displaying all kinds of berries for easy rinsing and eating, which is more than I can say about their paper carton cousins. Find them here.

[1. c. lynn]

I had been putting it off for long enough. Every time I entered the grocery store or grazed the farmer's market, I had put it off—grabbing only a single carton of strawberries for shortcakes, our morning cereal, atop Greek yogurt and honey, chopped into a salad—but never enough to make jam.

I knew I wanted to make strawberry jam the second I tasted Oregon strawberries while brunching at Accanto in northeast Portland. Their homemade jam spread over a salty, crumbly scone with ease and tasted like the wild summers of my childhood. In an instant, I was taken back to summer mornings spent barefoot in the garden sneakily eating the strawberries while I was supposed to be gathering chives for our breakfast eggs or tomatoes for our open-faced bagel sandwiches. My father would grow these tiny little strawberries of Polish origin that were about the size of my fingertip and that were sweeter than any other berry I had ever tasted.

And so finally, I borrowed a stock pot from a friend and made my move, just in time for the peak of season. (Strawberry season, after all, did come later than usual due to a very rainy spring.) Thank goodness for Eugenia Bone and her book Well Preserved, because with its help I made a delicious batch of strawberry balsamic jam that will be perfect for toast, pancakes, and future cheese plates.

[1. & 2. c_lynn]

When you are trying to grow organic food and herbs from your own little plot of land, you will inevitably encounter small bouts of pests and other natural phenomena that are the bane of gardeners throughout the world. What is important though, is how you decide to approach the problem. We're tackling pest control with a natural approach, which in this case, are little ladybugs that we will release at sunset to deter from flying off. They will make quick work of any pests that may linger in our garden without us having to resort to unnecessarily harsh chemicals.

[1. c. lynn]

With all of the peak produce on offer in Portland, I feel tempted to either join an organics delivery service or purchase a share in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. As a frequent traveler and a member of a small household, I'm looking for a service that has a flexible delivery schedule (I want to make sure that we're eating through our deliveries), is web-accessible (in the case that I need to suspend the service while I'm traveling), and that sources all produce items locally and at a competitive price (otherwise, you may as well visit the neighborhood corporate organic superstore).

A friend of mine recommended the local organics delivery service, Organics to You, which provides its clients with seasonal and local organic foods straight from nearby Oregon and California farms. With a range of customizable options including delivery frequency and household size, you can adjust the service to best suit your needs. Whether you have a single-person household, a large family, care for someone with dietary restrictions or a new baby, there are add-ons available that will complement any lifestyle. For a sample list of fruit and vegetables including in this week's bin, click here.

San Francisco Bay Area residents should try Betty's Organics, which gets rave reviews from my good friend M.

[1-3. Organics to You]

The produce on the west coast is far superior than anything I've seen on the east. I picked up some gorgeous little Easter egg radishes at the market today. I'm using them in a salad, but they'd be irresistible as a crudite alongside a plate of miniature vegetables. I can just imagine that the supermarkets in Tokyo would swoon over these little tubers and sell each one separately, vacuum-wrapped in cellophane.

[1. c lynn]

I am starting to pack for our trip to Napa for the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm following my pre-trip routine of making a leftover meal with all of the perishable foods that we are left with after the work week. Luckily for us, this means a delicious supper of linguine with tomato sage sauce (seasoned with a leftover pecorino rind) and English peas with fresh mint. I'm not a huge fan of canned or frozen peas, but fresh peas taste like the color green and are irresistible when prepared with mint and butter. Here's the recipe from Chez Panisse in Berkley, California:

Ingredients:
1 spring onion, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups fresh English peas, shelled
6 mints leaves, torn
salt
water

Sauté the spring onion in two tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the shelled peas, a pinch of salt, and enough water to barely cover. Cook over high heat for 2 minutes, then add the torn mint leaves. Continue cooking until the peas are tender, a few more minutes. Check for seasoning, and add more salt if needed.
[1. c_lynn, recipe: Epicurious]