After a flurry of inspiration and posts over the cooking holidays, I’ve been remiss about updating my blog lately. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been eating (and cooking!), it just means I haven’t been cooking anything I’d consider to be necessarily ground-breaking. But yeah, I cook and eat every day, as we all have to do. Here I share a smattering of recipes that indicate the types of dishes I make on regular ole weeknights from common ingredients. The types of dishes that I eat and enjoy thoroughly, but I don’t really talk about much. I originally did this post for Ecosalon, and I’m happy to share it here. Enjoy!

1. Smashed Potatoes and Garlicky Kale with an Egg on Top

20 minutes

1 large or two medium potatoes

2 – 4 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1 bunch kale, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Grated Parmesan or Pecorino (optional)

1 over-easy egg (optional)

Put the potatoes whole into a steamer basket and steam until tender. Meanwhile heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet, add the garlic and sauté gently. Add the kale and stir to coat. Add a little water, cover, lower heat and cook kale until tender, stirring occasionally. Add the potatoes to the skillet with the kale and smash them together with a potato masher. Add olive oil, salt and paper, and grated cheese to taste. Serve hot with an egg on top (if desired).

2. Spinach and Rice Soup

20 minutes

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

1/2 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/3 cup white rice

1 bunch spinach, washed

1 quart broth (chicken or vegetable or bouillon based)

Salt and pepper to taste

Grated Parmesan or Pecorino (optional)

In a soup pot, warm the olive oil or butter. Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft and fragrant. Add the rice and stir to coat. Add the spinach and sauté until soft. Add the broth and lower heat to a simmer. Cook until rice is tender, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with grated cheese on top, if desired.

3. Warm Chickpea Salad with Salmon

15 minutes

This one is free form. Add any selection of vegetables you like in your salads. Use any dressing you like, or make this one as directed. Stir in Harissa paste or pesto if you have it, or not if you don’t.

1 can chickpeas, drained

1 can wild Alaskan salmon

2 generous handfuls of salad greens or arugula

1/2 cup of sliced radish, grated carrot, avocado, roasted peppers, or any other vegetable you have (optional)

1 garlic clove, smashed with a mortar and pestle

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Gently warm the chickpeas in a small saucepan as you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Make a quick dressing with the garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil. Combine the warmed chickpeas, salmon, salad greens, and vegetables in a medium bowl. Toss with the dressing and season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Lentils and Sausage with Greens

45 minutes

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 of an onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup lentils

2 cooked or smoked sausages, sliced

1 bunch kale, chard, or spinach, washed and chopped

Paprika or smoked paprika to taste

Lemon juice to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Warm the olive oil in a medium pot. Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft and fragrant. Add the lentils and water to cover by one inch. Bring to a boil, lower heat to a slow simmer and cook until the lentils are tender, about 20 minutes. Add the sausages, greens, paprika, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook until everything is warmed through and the greens are tender. Add the lemon juice just before serving and correct seasonings.

5. Seasonal Vegetable Coconut Curry Stew

30-40 minutes

2 tablespoons vegetable or coconut oil

1/2 onion, chopped

2-3 cups cubed orange squash, root vegetables, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, mushrooms, or combination of any

1 can coconut milk

Good quality red or green Thai curry paste to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Cilantro for garnish

Heat the oil in a large soup pot, add the onion and cook, stirring until tender and fragrant. Add the vegetables and the coconut milk and enough water to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook until the vegetables are nearly tender. Add the curry paste and salt and pepper to taste. Continue to cook to blend flavors and until vegetables are the desired softness. Serve over white rice garnished with chopped cilantro.

6. Warm Roasted Sweet Potato and Sausage Salad

20 minutes

1 large or 2 medium garnet sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces

2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil

1 or 2 cooked sausages

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

2 teaspoons pure maple syrup

1 teaspoon grainy mustard

2 green onions, sliced thinly on the diagonal

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Salt & Freshly ground pepper

Toss the sweet potatoes in 1 tablespoon olive oil with a little salt, and put them on a baking sheet. Roast in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes or until soft and beginning to crisp and brown. Halfway through the cooking time, slide a spatula underneath the potatoes to loosen them and flip them over gently so they don’t break apart.

Meanwhile, cut the sausages into bite-sized pieces and brown and warm them in a skillet with a little bit of oil. In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, maple syrup, mustard, and a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

Toss the cooked sweet potatoes and sausages together in a medium bowl. Add the green onions, parsley, and dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve warm.

7. Chilaquiles

10 minutes

2 eggs

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1/2 a red onion, peeled and sliced

3 or 4 corn tortillas

3/4 cup of your favorite red or green salsa

Leftover beans, shredded chicken, beef or pork (optional)

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Sprigs of cilantro, crumbled cheese, diced avocado for serving

In a large bowl, beat the eggs until smooth and add salt and pepper.

Stack the tortillas and cut them into eight wedges.

In a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat, warm the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add the onion, and cook until soft. Increase heat to medium high and add the tortillas. Cook, stirring occasionally, until brown and crispy. Pour in the salsa, and stir to blend. Add leftover meats or beans (if using). With a wooden spoon or spatula, move the tortillas and salsa to one side of the pan, add the teaspoon of oil to the other side and pour in the eggs. Scramble the eggs for a few moments until nearly cooked. Stir them into the tortillas and mix together. Serve immediately garnished with cilantro, cheese, and avocado.

Last Christmas I posted about orevnitza, the Serbian bread we eat at Christmas…What I didn’t mention was that there’s a back story to orevnitza from my childhood. A story about foraging (or stealing), mortification, and class difference. I wrote it down about ten years ago and never published it. When I finally went public with it at a reading during October’s Litquake event,  I was gratified that people seemed to enjoy it, and vowed to post it here.

Father’s Nuts

It was mid November in 1975, I was 11 years old, and my parents and I were going to get the walnuts for the orevnitza, which is our Serbian family’s Christmas bread that my mom made every year. We set out in our 1974 brown four-door Toyota Corolla from Southeast Santa Rosa where we lived, toward Glen Ellen on Highway 12. It was the kind of day that causes harvest time visitors to sell everything, quit their jobs and move to Sonoma County.  It was warm. The leaves on the oak trees glistened in the sun. The vineyards were showing their fall colors. The light was muted and dreamy. A perfect fall day.

Orevnitza is a barely sweet yeast bread rolled out and then spread with a mixture of ground walnuts and dates and then rolled up jellyroll style. When it’s finished and sliced, it looks kind of like a babka. And making it really was a production that lasted over several evenings. The first evening we’d all sit around the kitchen table and crack pounds and pounds of walnuts. Our hands would ache, the table would be covered in walnut dust, and our mouths would be sore from eating so many of the tannic walnut meats.  The next evening, we would toast them in the oven and then chop them up in the little glass nut chopper.  The chopper looked like a big beer glass, with a metal lid that had a plunger stuck through it.  At the bottom of the plunger were four little blades arranged around the shaft in a circle. The nuts went into the glass and we took turns pushing the plunger down and twisting it by hand until the nuts were chopped finely. This went on forever since only about a cup of nuts could fit in the jar at a time. (the food processor really was a great invention)

Then the weekend would come and my mom would make the dough and set it to rise. After it had risen for a few hours, my two sisters and I would be called in to punch the dough down. We loved this for some reason. It was kind of like being a member of a firing squad because we’d all pound our fists into the dough at the exact same moment, and never know whose fist deflated it.  Once my older sisters moved out, I got to do it by myself, but only for a while. My mom found a short cut recipe that she said was just as good, but it really wasn’t.   Even as a kid, I could taste the difference in the new recipe, which only required one rise, and was not punched down.  After another rise, the dough was rolled out, the filling spread on, and then it was rolled up and arranged into a snail shape where it sat again to rise for a couple of hours under a kitchen towel. Finally it was baked, and would emerge from the oven golden brown, crusty, and aromatic.  My mom always made two…one to freeze or to take somewhere as a hostess gift and one for us to eat.  We ate thick slices at all times of the day and night all through the holidays.  After a couple of days it would get a little stale and then we’d toast it and eat it with lots of butter slathered on top and melted. And that’s still my favorite way to eat it.

My parents were quirky about the way we spent money, which was why we were headed out to the country to pick up walnuts off the ground, instead of going to the grocery store like other people. Though I don’t remember wanting many things that I didn’t get as a kid (except for designer jeans, a canopy bed, disco lessons, and the airplane for stewardess Barbie) my parents often behaved as if we were destitute.  They both grew up during the depression and had an attitude about money characteristic of people growing up during that time…or so I’ve heard.   They were the kind of people who clipped coupons and read the sales ads, and then would spend all Saturday grocery shopping, hitting several grocery stores all over town to make sure they got the absolute best price on everything.  If a store was out of an advertised item, they’d get a rain check, and you can be sure they’d go get the item later in the week. My parents prided themselves on their ability to save money …or better yet, to get something for nothing.  It was their recreation.

Walnut gathering was not an activity I would have volunteered for, as I was the type of kid who much preferred to stick my head in a book than to interact with the family. I had reached the age where I often stayed home alone during the Saturday grocery shopping marathons. I was probably only along that day because my parents felt we needed a family outing, and convinced me to go.  So, I leafed through a book, and daydreamed in the backseat as we pulled into a little road off the highway that led to someone’s farmhouse, set in the midst of a walnut grove.  My parents pulled over, and I sat in the car, most likely in a pre-adolescent spoiled brat gloom.  I couldn’t understand why they were taking walnuts off of someone else’s property.  They assured me it was ok, because they weren’t going to take them off the trees, but just off the ground.  The walnuts would just lie there and rot otherwise.

My parents eagerly leapt out of the car, paper bags clutched tightly in their hands.  Their bent, scurrying figures retreated farther into the walnut grove, and I sat, enjoying my book, until a shiny new dark blue Mercedes came up the road in a tear, raising a cloud of dust.  The Mercedes stopped right behind our Toyota. A well dressed thirty-something dark haired woman flung open her car door, jumped out, in full fury, and screamed at my parents:  “What do you think you are doing?  Those are my father’s nuts!” Time stopped.  I ducked down in the back seat to avoid being seen; She waved her arms. She was having trouble catching her breath. The dust from her sudden stop swirled around her combining with her nearly visible anger to create a strange vortex. I’d never experienced anything like it. I remember thinking she looked like a cartoon character. Throughout the scene, I kept poking my head up over the seat an inch to see what was going to happen.  My parents froze for a moment, and even looked a bit sheepish. This didn’t last long. They quickly regained their composure and attitude.  They stood up straight, looked at each other, looked at her, and laughed.  They laughed at her anger and at her double entendre.  I think they even repeated:  “your father’s nuts?” breaking down into giggles again.  From the backseat, I could hear insults being flung back and forth, but I was much too embarrassed to come up for air.  Things died down and my parents got into the car, with the nuts they had already taken, but no more, and we drove off.

As we drove home, my parents kept up their bravado and hid their mortification with a dissertation on class, although they wouldn’t have described it that way: “Who does she think she is in that shiny new car?”  “What are a few walnuts to her?”  “How selfish and petty.”  Of course they told the story to everyone they knew.  Someone finally saw fit to point out that walnuts are routinely harvested off the ground, not off of the trees, so really, they were not just scavenging, but stealing. For years the story was retold, with my parents cast as poor but resourceful people trying to get ahead through the bounty of the land, and “that woman” playing the part of a rich heiress along the lines of those horrible people on the TV show Dallas.  Though they wouldn’t admit it, the incident cured them of their gleaning tendencies.  From then on, the walnuts for our holiday orevnitza came from the store.

Get the recipe here.

I first made this soup a couple weeks ago with a small, Soul Food Farm stock bird. I used a technique I use often that provides me with a light but full flavored broth to freeze and use for soups and also a good amount of shredded chicken meat to use for enchiladas, tacos, salad, what have you. Basically I simmer a whole chicken with aromatics for about 15 – 20 minutes and then turn the flame off and cover the pot for 45 minutes or so (depending on the size of the bird). It finishes cooking and comes out tender and succulent, not like you’ve boiled the crap out of it.

Anyway, today I’m recommending you just use whatever broth you have, or make a broth out of your turkey carcass and use it to make a turkey version of my chicken soup. You can even use some fried tortilla strips to make a classic tortilla soup. But the day after Thanksgiving I want something light, spicy, warming, and hearty. And I want to skip the fried stuff.

If making the broth from your turkey carcass include a couple sprigs cilantro, one celery rib, two crushed garlic cloves, onions, and some whole cumin seeds and peppercorns. Reserve all but 6 cups of broth for another use. This recipe will make 4 to 6 servings

4 dried chiles (anchos, New Mexico, guajillos, or whatever you like)

6 cups chicken or turkey broth

Add about 1 – ½ cups diced orange squash (I used red kuri)

1 cup sliced cabbage

1/3 cup white rice, Arborio or white long grain

2 cloves chopped garlic

1-1/2 cups shredded turkey (or chicken)

Salt and pepper to taste

For serving:

Lime

Feta or queso fresco

Avocado

Cilantro leaves

Fried tortilla strips (optional)

Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles and slit them down the sides so they open up flat. Toast them briefly in a cast iron pan over medium heat until they are fragrant but not burned. Place them in a bowl and pour in hot water to cover. Weigh them down with a small plate to keep them covered. Let them sit for 20 – 30 minutes while you prepare the remaining ingredients.

Put the broth in a large soup pot and bring to a simmer. Add the squash, cabbage, and rice, and simmer on low until rice is done and squash is tender (about 20-25 mins). As soon as the chiles are soft enough, puree them in a blender or food processor with enough of their soaking water to make the mixture pourable. Add it to the soup whether the rice and squash is tender or not. Continue to cook until all the vegetables are tender and the flavors are blended. Add the shredded turkey and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve immediately, garnishing each serving with a squeeze of lime, a crumble of cheese, some diced avocado and cilantro leaves.

I’ve been on a ceviche kick lately. It’s the perfect appetizer…satisfying, yet light. And it perfectly suits my way of cooking…invent as you go. Every weekend I’ve been picking up some type of fish (sustainable only) and experimenting with different ceviche flavor profiles. Eventually I plan to go around the word with my ceviche experiments, so stay tuned.

As for this inaugural effort, I’m not sure where it hails from, exactly. But I know where it’s going: Smack dab in the middle of my Thanksgiving appetizer table. Serve with light crackers (like Mary’s gluten free or rice crackers), or homemade tortilla chips. If you’re part of the 99% and you’re feeding a crowd, you might want to sub out a less expensive firm, sustainable fish of your choice. I’m thinking tilapia, local rockfish, wild sockeye, or mackerel.

Measurements are exceedingly inexact. Eyeball it, play and taste as you go. Scale up (tee hee) as you wish.

Serves 2

Approx 6 ounces pole caught albacore tuna, (or other firm fish) diced

Juice of 3 or 4 limes to coat thoroughly (possibly more)

1/4 of a dried espelette chile (or a couple pinches of ground espelette, good paprika, Aleppo or any other moderately spicy, fruity ground pepper)

1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger

1/2 of a red Fresno chile, seeded and diced very small

1 tablespoon finely diced red onion

1 tablespoon finely diced green onion

1/4 of a Fuyu persimmon, julienned

1/4 cup finely diced avocado

1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro

1/4 cup toasted pumpkin seeds

Mirin to taste (the purpose here is a little sweetness for balancing the tart limes. You could also use mild honey)

Salt to taste

Put the tuna in a medium bowl. Add the lime juice and toss to coat. The fish should be well covered but not swimming in lime. If you need more to thoroughly soak the fish, add it. Add the remaining ingredients by eye and toss. Let sit 10 to 15 minutes, tossing occasionally to mix well. Taste and correct seasonings. Serve immediately or refrigerate and serve within 6 hours.

Oftentimes in the Bay Area, the weather doesn’t match up well with the season. Such as it was on November 1, 2011, when I made this soup. It was balmy, high 70s, no wind but I still wanted a winter soup. I couldn’t help myself. So here it is as we head into a weekend that promises to be rainy and chilly. Enjoy!

You can use any pinto, borlotti-like, or cannellini beans you want, and you can also play fast and loose with the sausage, even going so far as to use sausage in casings or lamb merguez or something like that. I happen to have used Rancho Gordo Good Mother Stallard beans and spicy, loose Italian pork sausage from Bi-Rite market. It was good, simple, and comforting, even on a warm day.

1/2 pound dried beans

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

1 dried chile, stemmed, seeded, and cut into strips or broken into pieces

3/4 pound loose Italian sausage

1 bunch kale, chopped

2 medium potatoes, diced

Other diced vegetables you may have like carrots, green beans, fennel (optional)

2 to 3 cups broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Soak the beans for several hours or overnight.

In a soup pot, over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion, garlic, and chile and sauté, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add the beans and enough water to cover by one inch and raise heat to high. Lower heat to a slow simmer, partially cover, and cook until tender (45 minutes to 1 hour for freshly dried beans; longer the older they are)

When the beans are nearly done, brown the sausage, breaking it up into smaller pieces with a wooden spoon. Drain the fat.

When the beans are tender, but still firm, add the drained sausage, kale, potatoes, and any other vegetables you want to use to the bean pot. Add 2 to 3 cups of chicken or vegetable broth to desired consistency. Bring to a simmer, and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until vegetables are tender and flavors meld, about 20 minutes. Correct seasonings. This soup will be even better the next day.

I promised to post this recipe after I posted the harissa recipe a few weeks ago. Apologies for my slowness. In the event you still have some eggplant hanging around in the garden or fridge at this late date, here’s a great way to use it. If you don’t have harissa, this is still fantastic on its on. Can easily be scaled up for a larger crowd.

There are three secrets to great baba ghanoush:

1.     It needs a bit of smoke. Don’t be afraid to roast it directly on the gas stovetop (or on a grill).

2.     Lay off the tahini. Eggplant has a delicate flavor and too much tahini (most recipes call for too much) will overpower it.

3.     See above. I like to roast some of the garlic and leave some raw because I dislike the heat of raw garlic and it overpowers the eggplant.

Makes about 1 cup

1 medium eggplant

3 large garlic cloves (1 peeled, 2 left unpeeled)

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon tahini

2 tablespoons parsley

Generous pinch of freshly toasted and ground cumin

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt to taste

Harissa to stir in before serving

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

Using a fork, puncture the eggplant in several places. Put the eggplant directly on your gas flame or grill and char it until it is evenly black all over, turning with tongs.

Transfer it to the oven along with the two whole, unpeeled garlic cloves and roast for 10-15 minutes, until the eggplant and garlic are both soft.

Meanwhile, assemble the other ingredients.

Pound the peeled garlic clove to a paste in a mortar and pestle with a pinch of salt. When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh off the charred skin directly into a food processor bowl fitted with a steel blade. If there are lots of large seeds remove them as you go, but don’t worry about getting them all.  Peel the roasted garlic cloves and add them to the processor with the eggplant. Add the pounded garlic, lemon juice, tahini, parsley, and cumin and pulse until the mixture is smooth. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil until it is all incorporated. Season to taste with salt.

Stir a little homemade or store bought harissa in just before serving (optional)

Lately I’ve been into making harissas and sambals and other fiery chile-based condiments. I think the attraction is that they provide a quick and easy way for a busy cook to make rather ordinary soups, seasonal salads, and baked chicken or fish a lot more interesting. Less than an hour in the kitchen on a weekend, with a few simple ingredients and a food processor, yields a jar full of fun recipe ideas to deploy on busier days.

For the harissa I more or less riffed off of this recipe in Saveur, but I used some very special chiles, removed some ingredients, and changed the proportions. The chiles were dried piment d’espelette from Annabelle Lenderink’s La Tercera Farm. I’d been meaning to do something special with them because they have such a bright, fruity, mildly spicy flavor and are so elegant. Plus, hardly anyone grows them outside of Basque country, as far as I know, but you can use any good dried chiles you like.

Makes about 1/2 cup

12 medium sized, medium spicy, fruity dried red chiles, stemmed, seeded and soaked in hot water until soft

1⁄4 tsp. coriander seeds, toasted in adry skillet and ground in a spice grinder or with a mortar and pestle

1⁄4 tsp. cumin seeds, toasted in a dry skillet and ground in a spice grinder or with a mortar and pestle

3 cloves garlic, pounded to a paste with a pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle

Approximately 2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt to taste

Lemon juice to taste

Put the soaked chiles, toasted and ground spices, and pounded garlic in a food processor and pulse until fairly smooth, and blended, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Drizzle in the olive oil with the motor running until you have a smooth paste. Add a little salt and lemon juice and pulse to blend. Taste for balance, adding more salt, lemon juice, or olive oil, as needed. Will keep in small jars in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks, possibly longer.

So once you have the paste, what do you do with it?

1. Stir it into a basic lemon-shallot vinaigrette and use it on potato salad studded with bacon and green onions (above) or any other seasonal vegetable salad (corn, zucchini, green bean, roasted pepper, toasted pumpkinseed salad pictured below)—I plan to post these recipes soon.

2. Whisk together with white wine, fresh chopped herbs, and olive oil and use to marinate chicken before baking.

3. Stir into hummus or baba ghanoush (I’ll post this recipe soon)

4. Stir into a brothy chicken soup with potatoes or rice

5. Use it as a sandwich spread

6. Stir it into scrambled eggs

What are your ideas? Leave a comment and share them.

There are two summer themes this year—gathering free fruit to make jam, and seeing how little sugar we can get away with using and still call it jam. Ok, sometimes its sauce. But I’m ok with that.

I’ve been obsessed with making low sugar jam ever since I served as a judge in the Good Food Awards last year. Turns out that spending the day tasting dozens of jams can leave a person with a terrible stomachache that lasts a couple days. After the first five jams, they all tasted the same…sweeeeet. So this year my goal is to preserve the flavor of the fruit, not the sugar.

The first bout of jamming took place on 4 of July weekend. We’d been visiting friends who live in a development alongside a trail that leads to the nearby delta and Port of Sacramento. Before the trail was built, backyards had extended out farther, so the area the trail runs through is lined with feral fruit trees of all sorts. Plum season!

Yellow plums, green plums, red plums. All kinds of plums were ripe and plopping off the trees all around us. Five of us filled bags and bags of them and, since nobody else wanted them, we took them home to make jam. Mixed plum jam. We used about 1 1/2 cups sugar for every four cups of cut fruit. Considering most recipes call for equal parts sugar and fruit, that’s low. The jam was tart. Almost too tart. Since low sugar jam is more perishable, we processed it for 15 minutes in the jars.

Bout two of jamming crossed state lines. We timed our camping trip up north to coincide with Oregon blackberry season. After camping in the woods for two days, and picking blackberries for two hours, we were ready for a little indoor time. A rented apartment in Ashland, a few showers and nice dinners out, a Shakespeare play, and an afternoon reading and making blackberry jam…and before we knew it we were headed home with not quite enough jars of Oregon summer.

This time, we upped the sugar ratio to account for the blackberries being somewhat under ripe.  We used two cups sugar for every four cups of blackberries. And it’s almost too sweet.

What’s next? Figs? Show me the tree!

Chilly Bay Area summers make waiting for that first green tomato to ripen like waiting for Congress to negotiate a budget.

Thankfully green tomatoes have a lot more going for them than our typical legislators. They’re way more fun; they have a movie AND a book named after them; they’re tasty; and, instead of making you want to cry, they give you a great excuse to fry. If that’s not enough, you can eat them with the godfather of all milky goodness, burrata!

So get on it. Go out there and pick those suckers and make some fried green tomatoes. I served these as part of a special birthday meal that included tuna, olive, and avocado canapés, (pictured below), seared sea scallops with spicy brown butter over grits, and sautéed green beans with shallots and toasted walnuts, and for dessert: panna cotta with Ellen’s canned, honeyed cherries.

I accidentally bought cream instead of buttermilk so we decided to make butter (and buttermilk) a la minute in a jar, just like in elementary school.

This fancy stone ground cornmeal from a small mill in the south definitely made for a superior crunchy texture and super corny flavor, but regular cornmeal is just fine.

Fried Green Tomatoes with Burrata and Basil

Serves Two

1 large, firm, green tomato, sliced

1/2 cup of buttermilk

3/4 cup cornmeal

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

High heat vegetable oil or peanut oil for frying

Burrata

Fresh basil, sliced into a chiffonade

Arugula (optional)

Your best olive oil for drizzling

Put the buttermilk and cornmeal in separate shallow bowls. Season the cornmeal generously with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy, cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Add the oil so it comes about 1/2 inch up the sides of the skillet.

While waiting for pan and oil to heat, dunk the tomato slices first in the buttermilk and then in the seasoned cornmeal. Test the pan for heat by dropping in a sprinkle of cornmeal. It should sizzle in a lively fashion, but not burn. The surface of the oil should look shimmery but shouldn’t smoke. When the pan is ready, put in the tomato slices two or three at a time, depending on their size and the size of your pan. You don’t want to crowd them or they won’t fry properly.

Fry the tomato slices until golden brown, then flip carefully and fry the other side. Meanwhile, ready your plates. Slice the burrata, Lay out a little arugula (if using) and drizzle it with good olive oil. Top this with the tomatoes, topping each tomato with a slice of burrata and a sprinkle of basil. Season the burrata with salt and freshly ground pepper and drizzle the top with good olive oil. Serve immediately.

If you’re a person who reads cookbooks as much for stories as recipes, and aspires to an elegantly rural, abundant lifestyle, then Plum Gorgeous by Romney (Nani) Steele will speak to you. If you swoon over gorgeous photos of seasonal fruits set in dreamy tableaux, Plum Gorgeous, with photos by Sara Remington, will send you off into a never-never land of wistful longing.

Steele’s first book, My Nepenthe, a memoir about growing up in the legendary Big Sur restaurant, was a personal account of the author’s relationships with her family and the history of a legendary place. Plum Gorgeous is loosely about Steele’s time living in a mountaintop orchard, but is more meditation than memoir, presenting snippets of observations and memories amidst fragments of poetry and quotations by writers as diverse as Rilke, Mas Masumoto, and Chekov—all interspersed with practical information about different fruit varieties and how to cook with them.

The recipes are from the off-the-cuff, cook-with-what’s-on-hand school of cooking—the type of cooking you imagine happens on a farm or in an orchard, far from the nearest grocery store. The type of cooking that often happens in my own kitchen. I like that I can take an idea from this book and run with it, using what I have on hand, adding my own twist of inspiration, adapting at will.

I was looking for a gluten free seasonal dessert that I could whip up quickly on a weeknight. I chose the cherry clafoutis in Plum Gorgeous. I’m no expert on gluten free baking, so I theorized that a dessert with such a small amount of flour would be a good candidate for a straight up gluten free flour substitution. I subbed rice flour for wheat flour, which worked just fine. I didn’t have any of the called for crème fraîche, so I used sour cream instead. I didn’t measure anything, just eyeballed it all in the midst of preparing supper. I used a hand blender instead of a blender-blender to mix the batter and then I skipped the step where I was supposed to strain it.

Out of sheer laziness and in a rush, I put the raw almonds on top about halfway through cooking instead of toasting them separately. The indignities I inflicted on this recipe should have come back to bite me, but they didn’t. The crepe-like clafoutis batter rose up like a Dutch Baby, encasing the sugared and liquored up cherries in a puffy embrace. The top browned, as it should; the almonds became crisp. I scooped it from the skillet steaming, eggy, and fragrant. It was a hit. I should always be so lucky with my haphazard baking habits.

my cherry clafoutis

cherry clafoutis from the book

The book is filled with similar seasonal fruit recipes that are forgiving, flexible, and uncomplicated. Come for the memoir and stay for recipes like Plum Soup with Basil Ice Cream; Heirloom Tomatoes and Peaches with Burrata; and Kumquats and Toasted Couscous with Halloumi. Or come for the recipes and be drawn into the memoir and photos.

As for the photos, Steele and Remington worked in collaboration on them, and it shows. Steele is a gifted food stylist (she styled the food in DIY Delicious, which the super talented Remington also shot) and together, these two women know how to make a book a work of art.